From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Nov 20 3:22:50 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from atkielski.com (atkielski.com [161.58.232.69]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC30137B405 for ; Tue, 20 Nov 2001 03:22:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from contactdish (ASt-Lambert-101-2-1-14.abo.wanadoo.fr [193.251.59.14]) by atkielski.com (8.11.6) id fAKBMht92281; Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:22:43 +0100 (CET) Message-ID: <012001c171b5$ac8d86a0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> From: "Anthony Atkielski" To: "Kris Kennaway" Cc: "setantae" , References: <3BF9B12B.3D521A4D@nycap.rr.com> <20011119220243.A268@prayforwind.com> <009a01c171a9$4eedbee0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <00cd01c171ac$ca0fa0e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <20011120102625.GB75402@rhadamanth> <00d201c171af$61dccb80$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <20011120024643.B92409@xor.obsecurity.org> Subject: Re: home pc use Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 12:22:37 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Kris writes: > This is a tautological statement ("code which > needs to do more complicated things is more > complicated and larger"). It is indeed, and yet many people still manage to ignore the reality of it. There is a (religious) belief among many that their preferred OS will somehow be able to maintain a complex GUI environment without any of the complexity of code or potential instability that goes with it. Obviously, this cannot be, and yet they continue to believe it. Linux users seem to be the worst-afflicted in this respect, with their irrational belief that somehow they will match the functionality and comprehensiveness of Windows using an open-source, cobbled solution and somehow make it _more_ stable than the commercial product. However, I've seen the same attitude on these FreeBSD lists. My impression is that many FreeBSD users are rabid Microsoft-haters who are more interested in duplicating Windows without any Microsoft code than in using FreeBSD in the applications where it performs best ... namely, multiuser server and network applications. But all flavors of UNIX are _very_ poorly suited to desktop GUI environments, and it makes no logical sense to try to replace a purpose-built OS like Windows with a completely different OS having a completely different purpose; it can only be motivated by an irrational desire to "teach someone a lesson" (such as Microsoft). Similarly, and in the interest of equal time, I should point out that anyone trying to configure NT/2000 to match UNIX for certain server and network applications is spitting into the wind ... it's an uphill and potentially losing battle. While NT/2000 can be made to work in this way (the underlying kernel is certainly capable of it, largely because its design so much resembles that of UNIX and other multiuser timesharing systems), it requires a lot more resources to accomplish it, and the ergonomy is lacking. But NT/2000 religious devotees are just as dogged in their attempts to fit a square peg into a round hole as are the followers of UNIX variants. > This is an overgeneralization; under FreeBSD > it's very rare for a window manager bug to > "take out the OS". Even if the X server crashes > the system still runs. You'd think so. But it worried me tremendously that, while simply trying to change a font in KDE, the entire system crashed. It should not be possible for an application like a windows manager to crash the kernel. The fact that this was possible worries me because it casts a shadow on the security of the kernel--how could a user application manage to crash the system like that? I console myself by speculating that perhaps the window manager called some kernel function or driver that faulted because of a configuration problem or (most likely) an incompatibility with the display hardware. Still not very useful from a practical standpoint, but at least it would not make the OS look as insecure. > In real terms, well-written and well-tested simple > window managers rarely have catastrophic bugs. Well, KDE is apparently neither simple nor well-written and well-tested, because it crashed the system; and when it didn't crash the system, it froze or did other weird things a lot. > I can't remember the last time I had problems > with windowmaker, for example. I'm not familiar with it. The KDE experience has soured me on window managers for UNIX for the moment. I do just about everything from a command line right now, anyway--I even surf with Lynx--so trying to clone Windows is not a high priority. Unlike many people here, it seems, I see FreeBSD as an excellent server OS, and that's how I use it. My desktop environment remains Windows NT (and in fact most of my interaction with FreeBSD is via NT, as you'd expect in a server/client environment). 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