Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 21:03:08 -0600 From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> To: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@atkielski.com> Cc: <questions@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: home pc use Message-ID: <15355.6508.841314.798412@guru.mired.org> In-Reply-To: <01e201c17234$24bc2360$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <15354.60877.44081.17515@guru.mired.org> <019701c17224$013e6520$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15355.2770.644343.846234@guru.mired.org> <01e201c17234$24bc2360$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
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Anthony Atkielski <anthony@atkielski.com> types: > Mike writes: > > There are those who claim that XP is going to > > shake out all the people who don't want to pay > > for an OS. > The problem is that there might not be enough people left to make the OS > profitable. That's only a problem if you are one of the wealthiest people in the world and your last name is "Gates". Or you work for him. > > Money isn't the crucial resource, programmer time is. > Same thing. Programmers have to pay the rent, too. Correct, except that it's easier to explain where the programmer time comes from. > > Some of it goes to marketing, but that's because > > more programmers using FreeBSD means more programmers > > working on keeping the product alive. > I don't know about that. One of the problems with open source is that everyone > wants to use the product for free, but hardly anyone is willing to contribute to > maintaining or developing or supporting it. So long as there are enough people working on it to keep it alive, the number that use it without contributing is immaterial. > > > > Exactly. If I wanted to clone Windows, I wouldn't run FreeBSD on my desktop. > > > Agreed. That's why FreeBSD has just a plain text console on my desktop right > > > now. > > There are *lots* of other options. > Let's see ... plain text, a GUI ... and what else? There are lots of GUI's that aren't a clone of MS-Windows. Being able to get to those is a good reason not to run MS-Windows. > > If you've got sufficiently good - or stupid - > > management, you *can* tell them you're waiting on > > an answer from the support list. > If they are stupid, I'd agree. If they are good, then either you won't be using > open-source freeware, or you will know the freeware you are using so well that > you don't have to wait on a response from a support list--you're more likely to > be _answering_ questions on the support list. See next answer. > > You do know you can buy tech support for FreeBSD > > if you really want it, don't you? > So I've heard. Is it any good? Even vendor-supplied support is often dismal. The good managers *know* that vendor-supplied support is often dismal. As such, they realize that what you can get from a mail list may be every bit as good, and so understand about "waiting on the list." In particular, I used to get answers back from sun-managers before I got answers back from Sun's vendor support, and Sun is among the better vendor support groups I've dealt with. As for freebsd commercial support, I can't say. I've never had a client or manager open-minded enough to use free software and stupid enough to need that particular comfort blanket. > > I agree - the chances of a typical user having > > a use for an application that is only available > > under Windows is about one in one hundred million. > There are quite a few commonly-used applications that exist only under Windows. Of course there are - that's one of the things that keeps people stuck with MS-Windows. However, what ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine people out of a hundred million use them for can be done with applications available on Unix. > > Does it have to be an integrated tool? > I'd like it to have a simple way to maintain the directory structure for the > site, although I guess I could do that by hand with FTP or something. It would > also be nice to have a good source editor. The editor is more important than > the file maintenance stuff. I never use any of the other "features" of Visual > InterDev, which is a mess overall. There are certainly better tools than ftp for maintaining file structure. Personally, I use Perforce. > > I have as yet to find a point-n-clicky html or > > xml editor that was as nice as psgml mode in > > emacs. > Does it also work for C code and Perl and so on? I like something that handles > indents automagically, in particular. Yes, it autoindents for HTML, XML, C and Perl. Not to mention Python, LISP, and a host of other things. It doesn't pretend to be a WYSIWYG HTML editor, but it can format HTML and follow links on the fly. It also has hooks to interact with Perforce. The XML/HTML editing features include syntax coloring, validation, completion of legal tags, and a "close the currently open tag" command. > > Sounds like things have improved radically since > > I got sick of dealing with it. > Version 3.x was at least equal to Netscape 4.x; from version 4.x on, MSIE was > the leader, and remains so today. MSIE 4.x may have been better than Netscape 4.x, but trying to get something that did anything complicated, worked in both of them, and followed the standards was a nightmare. > > From the looks of the web, MS still supports > > their extensions, as that's what people are using. > Which ones? I see a rare marquee extension now and then, but that's about it. The one I see when I look is the MS tag for embedding things, as opposed to OBJECT. I forget the name of it. > > That latter is the real difference. Writing an > > application that works in a GUI environment on > > both Windows and other platforms is a PITA, > > and MS is doing everything they can to keep > > it that way. > What choice do they have? Actually paying attention to the anti-trust laws, and honoring the license agreements they sign that have portability stipulations in them would be nice. > > All traps in kernel mode go through a procedure > > that does a core dump before rebooting the > > machine. > Maybe I missed the dump. Where does it go by default? I looked in what seemed > like likely places, like / and /tmp and what-not, but I didn't see anything that > ended in .core. They aren't on by default, but they go to /var/crash. <mike -- Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org> http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/ Q: How do you make the gods laugh? A: Tell them your plans. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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