Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 18:05:19 -0700 From: David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com> To: Jonas Sonntag <js@jonsonn.de> Cc: freebsd-newbies@freebsd.org Subject: Re: AW: Innovation and Promotion Message-ID: <3B8AEE4F.5055499C@acuson.com> References: <OGEMLNCPKLDPIACJOMOLAEJHCDAA.js@jonsonn.de>
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Jonas Sonntag wrote: > i'm just a subscriber to this list, but i personally wouldn't want to have > the average joe sitting in front of my router. > i think if you made a kind of windows out of your fav. unix (an os that most > people can easily use) you would get the same stupid little problems that we > have since microsoft re-invented the web. I must respectfully disagree. FreeBSD is much more than just an OS for routers. It is a general purpose operating system. Until very recently (when I got a new unsupported motherboard), FreeBSD *was* my desktop OS. For the next few months (until bug #28418 gets fixed) I'm using Slackware as my desktop OS. I definitely plan to switch back. By desktop OS, I mean an OS that supports my browsing the web, reading email, playing games, word processing, ripping audio CDs, etc. FreeBSD (and Unix as a whole) can succeed in all areas of computing, not just routers. Maybe the FreeBSD core team doesn't care about the desktop. But some other Unix or variant will. Mac OSX is on the desktop. It's easy to use. For the most its OS is FreeBSD derived. And it is not "a kind of windows". Joe User is not going to be sitting in front of your router. You are. If you don't want any desktop type stuff on your router, then that's solely up to you. No one will force it on you. This isn't Microsoft. But it's ridiculous to deny Joe User the access to a stable, robust and secure system simply because he isn't running a router. 90% of the stuff in ports have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with configuring, maintaining or operating a router, but it's still there. The best thing I like about FreeBSD is that I can do with it whatever I want. Flexibility. I can use it for a router, or a file server, or a web server, or a development environment, or a gaming platform, etc. I can choose to work only on the console, or bring up X with ten different xterms all at once, or start KDE and have a modern desktop. Maybe the average Joe doesn't want choice and options and flexibility. But I don't think so. I think he's smarter than that. I really don't think he's going to say sometime in the future that "I can't use FreeBSD-5.2 because it doesn't limit me to only one way of working." > add that and all the other things that make an os simple to use for average > people in average houses and average offices and you will get windows. > remove explorer, right-click menus and multiuser functionality and you will > get mac os which is easily to use for everybody. > the more you try to make an os usable for a lot of people, the harder it > will be for experieced users to find their own solutions and get deeper into > the system. see the difference between 9x and nt? > average systems for average people. There are two ways to make an OS (or any software) "friendly". One is to make it simple and the other is to make it easy. At first the two seem to be the same thing, but they are not. Simple means not complex. Easy means not hard. To make a system simple you must remove functionality. That is a Bad Thing, and is for the most part what Microsoft has done with Windows. The other way is to make it easy. It's much more difficult, but it can be done. Don't remove the functionality but change the way it is accessed (keeping the old way around for old farts like me). There's no reason you have to eliminate cp, rm, ls and cat just because the user has access to an easier to use file manager. > this became a little long, just wanted to add that promotion has to be paid > and i think is not possible for an os that claims to be free. Yes, the promotion has to be paid for. But it doesn't have to us that pays for it. IBM, HP, VA Linux, SGI and a whole bunch of other companies are paying for the half-assed promotion of Linux. There's no reason why Windriver, Apple, and other parties interested in the well being of FreeBSD can't pay for ours. It will still take a while before FreeBSD/Linux/Unix is ready for average Joe's desktop. But they are all ready right now, today, to replace half the NT and W2K machines out there. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-newbies" in the body of the message
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