Date: Sun, 31 Jan 1999 19:44:57 +0000 (GMT) From: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@u.washington.edu> To: The Hermit Hacker <scrappy@hub.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: From Slashdot... Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9901311925380.17441-100000@s8-37-26.student.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9901311508520.374-100000@thelab.hub.org>
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On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, The Hermit Hacker wrote: >I'm just curious, but what direction is FreeBSD taking? I just picked up >this really nice AGP video card (Creative Graphics Blaster RivaTNT >chipset, 16MB of RAM...specs on it look very impressive)... The same direction it always has. Should FreeBSD change it's tack because one very cheap, very kickass video card hit the market? Hardly! >Its barely supported by XFree86, none of the Creative Graphics cards >appear to be supported by AccelX...and, with the above notice, it looks >like Creative has a whole department of programmers setup to fall behind >Linux... If this happens and those people are going to write drivers for Linux, then that means that they are going to write drivers for XFree86. Unless the Linux folk have figured out a reason/way to not use X for accelerated video. (It wouldn't suprise me to see Linuxites reimplement X under GPL though using the NIH philosophy.) If they write drivers for Xfree86 then their source will be available. This means that they have written drivers for _free software_ in general, including FreeBSD. >...is FreeBSD destined to be a "server" environment only, with anyone >wanting to do any serious graphics or multimedia needing to fall onto the >Linux bandwagon? FreeBSD is _not_ currently a server only. Also, serious graphics and multimedia has not yet arrived on anything but very expensive proprietary Unices. (e.g. SGI). Gimp is still a toy compare to Photoshop. I run a single user server. You should see people watch as I use KDE and and Word Perfect on the other side of campus. "Hey, what did you do to make NT look like that?" "Oh, that's not NT. That's my unix server running in my bedroom. I am not even using NT right now except to connect to my home computer. I am using my home hard drive and my home processor. It's all very convenient." "Cool!" >What do we have to do to improve our imagine? Get the "big companies" >like Creative to recognize us and provide us with driver support? Or, is >this something that really doesn't concern us, as we are trying to fill a >totally different niche? This would always be good. Let me loosely quote a Jordanism, "If you want to see some work done, then do the work." Also, what is wrong with filling a "totally different niche"? Answer me that! FreeBSD is not Linux. FreeBSD is also not M$. (Stating the obvious, but some people don't seem to recognize this.) FreeBSD fills its niche quite well. FreeBSD continues to improve and add new features. FreeBSD improves on BSD with virtual memory and filesystem improvements. I have two new up and coming converts under my wing for a total of three. The sky is not falling on FreeBSD. This is not written to Mr. Hermit but is a general reply to the original author who is probably not listening. :) Catchya Later, | Give me UNIX or give me a typewriter. Jason Wells | http://www.freebsd.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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