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Date:      Fri, 13 Sep 2002 20:54:56 -0400
From:      "Brian T. Schellenberger" <bts@babbleon.org>
To:        "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com>, "FreeBSD Questions" <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Windows as opposed to Other OS's
Message-ID:  <200209132054.56504.bts@babbleon.org>
In-Reply-To: <00e201c25b88$9c7af960$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
References:  <20020911035308.GA90385@peitho.fxp.org> <200209132037.40608.bts@babbleon.org> <00e201c25b88$9c7af960$0a00000a@atkielski.com>

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On Friday 13 September 2002 08:49 pm, Anthony Atkielski wrote:
| Brian writes:
| > Trying it for a short time was no doubt the
| > problem.
|
| I tried running Windows XP for just thirty seconds, and it ran fine. 
| I've been running it ever since.
|
| > Getting X initially configured can be a pain,
| > though it has greatly improved, but once you
| > have it set up it stays set up better and requires
| > less fiddling than Windows in my experience.
|
| I didn't have to do anything to set up Windows XP; I just turned the
| machine on.  I haven't had to fiddle with it at all since, either.

But that's not a fair comparison of the O/S.

What you are saying here is "Windows XP cam pre-installed; FreeBSD did 
not."

Granted, this is a big advantage of Windows.  My experience when I have 
had to actually *install* Windows has frequently been worse than my 
experience installing FreeBSD.  In fact, my experience is that FreeBSD 
is far easier to install than Windows on a variety of hardware.

But nothing is easier than paying somebody else to do it for me, of 
course.  That's what you did; it's hardly an apples-to-apples 
comparison.

| > I will say that the "mount" semantics (requiring
| > that you mount the CD and/or floppy) *are* a real
| > pain for the desktop.
|
| Actually that is one of the few things that I like.  It emphasizes
| that these media are not perpetually online.

The *best* semantics for these were implemented by AmigaDOS.  I 
remembered every disk that had been inserted since boot and asked for 
the same disk back, by name, when it needed it for an operation again.

I'd love to see that in Windows or Unix.  (It's possible the the Mac 
works this way; I've never used it.)

| > The lack of programs, especially games, is the
| > only drawback I can see, and I don't happen to
| > play games, so that's no loss.
|
| I never play games, so I don't care about their availability.  But of
| the hundreds of other programs I use on the desktop, only two or
| three work on any flavor of UNIX.

Many programs lots of people use don't work, but other programs that 
perform the same tasks as well if not better frequently do.

-- 
Brian, the man from Babble-On . . . .   bts@babbleon.org (personal)

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