Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1998 18:18:22 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: doconnor@gsoft.com.au (Daniel O'Connor) Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, bs_13943_34262@adimus.de, sgk@troutmask.apl.washington.edu, akm@zeus.theinternet.com.au, nate@mt.sri.com Subject: Re: Fortran in the base system (was Re: sysinstall) Message-ID: <199812181818.LAA20653@usr01.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <XFMail.981218151550.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> from "Daniel O'Connor" at Dec 18, 98 03:15:50 pm
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> > To jump on Jordan's favorite analogy, the car, these guys are > > drivers, not mechanics, and they are so far afield from the guts > > of how the tool works (other than its applicability as a tool) > > that if the Os were a car and it ran out of gas, they would buy a > > new car rather than learn where the gas cap was. > > > > This *doesn't* mean that a typical physicist should have to trapse > > through a maze of twisty checkboxes in categories recognizable to > > computer scientists (and maybe technical lexicographers, but not > > physicists) which all look alike, just to install what was, > > historically, a base system component. > > These two statements conflict.. > The physicist wouldn't be installing the software (or fitting out the > car) the sys admin would.. Desktop computers do not have system admins, they have the person whose desk they are on. > And IF you do have someone who doesn't 'know where the fuel cap is' > installing FreeBSD then they're probably using the novice install, > in which case you give them fortran.. I have no problem with that, so long as it actually happens that a "novice" (or, a better name, "express") install does this. My problem with seperating things into components is that FreeBSD, while better than Linux at layered software (well, except for the inability to start and stop layered software at system startup and shutdown like Linux can, of course), it's not good enough to make it transparent. Wearing my CS hat instead of my Physics hat or Mathematics hat, I have to say that the thing I found most annoying about the Sun compiler being unbundled was not that they were charging for the thing (Universities tend to have site licenses), but that it was harder than it should be to get the thing installed. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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