Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 14:27:59 -0400 From: "Andresen,Jason R." <jandrese@mitre.org> To: Lyman Bradford <lsbrad@mail.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Message-ID: <39A2C62E.1A2F88B@mitre.org> References: <000801c00c62$100d2880$4cee1fd0@lsb4>
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> Lyman Bradford wrote: > > An anarchist website that I was reading over had a link to this > FreeBSD website (http://www.freebsd.org). I followed that link and > here I am. I am a Windows 98 user with no real understanding of how a > computer actually operates. I have owned my PC for a few years now and > am able to access the internet, make webpages, create images in > photoshop, among other things. But when I looked over the FreeBSD FAQ > 'everything' was greek to me. Hmm, where to start... FreeBSD is an Operating System, much like Windows 98 is an operating system. Basically FreeBSD works like a "middleman" between your hardware (the actual components of your computer like the processor and memory) and the software (like your web browser). FreeBSD runs independant of Windows98 (you can not run both at the same time, although you can change between the two with a simple reboot). FreeBSD is much more stable than Windows, but cannot normally run Windows programs, although many programs written for Windows have equivelents under FreeBSD. For instance there is a FreeBSD version of Netscape, as well as the Gimp, which works much like Photoshop. FreeBSD is also open sourced, which means anybody can read the source code[1] to the system and modify it if they want to. Windows is closed source, you cannot see the source code to windows without going to Redmond. In addition, FreeBSD is available for Free over the internet, you have to buy Windows. FreeBSD is also more stable (it doesn't crash as often) than Windows, and most of the third party applications (like the Gimp) are free, unlike in Windows where most third party application are commercial and cost money. > What is FreeBSD and why is it valuable to anarchists? Can an average > PC user take advantage of such a resource? I don't know, I can only speculate wildly. Here goes: Perhaps anarchists figure that when government collapses, it will bring most major corperations with it, so they need an operating system that will exist after their parent body is destroyed. Maybe they like to perform security checks themselves and don't trust a big company to make things secure (although you would think they would run OpenBSD for this). Maybe they just like their operating system to be stable. (as opposed to their governments) -- _ _ _ ___ ____ ___ ______________________________________ / \/ \ | ||_ _|| _ \|___| | Jason Andresen -- jandrese@mitre.org / /\/\ \ | | | | | |/ /|_|_ | Views expressed may not reflect those /_/ \_\|_| |_| |_|\_\|___| | of the Mitre Corporation. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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