From owner-freebsd-chat Thu Jul 10 20:47:14 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id UAA13405 for chat-outgoing; Thu, 10 Jul 1997 20:47:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mercury.ashland.edu (mercury.ashland.edu [198.30.217.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with SMTP id UAA13386 for ; Thu, 10 Jul 1997 20:47:10 -0700 (PDT) Received: from warp4.ashland.edu for jroberts@ashland.edu by mercury.ashland.edu (SMI-8.6/1997.05.08.16.36 ) id XAA06189; Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:46:54 -0400 Date: Thu, 10 Jul 1997 23:51:07 -0400 (EDT) From: Jeff Roberts To: chat@freebsd.org Subject: My opinion about freebsd (fwd) Message-ID: X-X-Sender: jroberts@mail.ashland.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-chat@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Hi, everyone. This is posted for/at the request of Jonah Kuo. I think he'd like to hear some opinions regarding the usability factor, especially in the future. Please reply to him, jonahkuo@mail.ttn.com.tw , not me! =) Take care, Jeff ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 03 Jul 1997 19:07:06 +0800 From: Jonah Kuo To: jroberts@ashland.edu Subject: My opinion about freebsd I'm talking about freebsd in my opinion and it's really ONLY my opinion. Over the past half a year, I've liked and loved freebsd, it is so great, so wonderful and of course so powerful. As I mentioned, I'm a user of freebsd, I'm not a hacker, not even a programmer, but I can use freebsd happily, so I appreciate the many people out there who created it, who have helped other people, you and they are great and to be expected, thank you very much! A week ago, in the FAQ, I found I can use freebsd + squid + FWTK and a dial-up line to make an office to communicate with the internet.***Don't have to buy an expensive router, don't have to apply for an expensive leased line, this kind of collection can save people a lot of money, and reduce the bandwidth wasting, also it can decrease the depletion of IP addresses by using the private subnetworks*** (though I've not set it up yet :-P), It is a terrific and efficient function that other operaing systems don't provide, UNLESS you pay a lot of money buying this OS + A package + B package.... So, I'm planning to set it up. I fetched the Squid, followed the instructions in the README and INSTALL, I compiled it successfully but I don't know what the squid.conf is talking about :-(, due to my lack of understanding of protocols, ports or etc. O.K. ignoring that problem, I fetched the FWTK, followed the instructions in README and INSTALL, I make...., I encountered a problem during compile time..., Oh, no, I can't hack. :-(, I told myself: "Don't worry, I've subscribed to the fwtk's users list, I can ask somebody out there", though I've not get any reply yet. :-( Since I can't figure this problem out, I have questions about freebsd. Is it only a hacker's workbench? Can only the unix gurus can play freebsd well? Does every freebsd user have to learn C language? Is the threshold too high to common freebsd user? We all have to admit, basically, if one wants to join the freebsd community, he(or her) must know what the irq, io port, primary, seconary, jumpers are...and so on. Yes, this is simple, there are many easy to understand hardware-related books in the bookstore, but do you think the protocols, communication ports, routing, proxy, firewalls are easy to understand? Obviously not! Between freebsd and commercial OSs, from the common user's view point, the question is, "To pay or not to pay?"--pay in time or in money. We all hope the number of freebsd users will increase, and also hope they can enjoy what we are enjoying, and hope the commercial software vendors can treat users more fairly. I really don't want to see the following happen: "FreeBSD, turning your PC into workstation, hackers only" or "FreeBSD, turning your PC into workstation, unix gurus only" I'm not complaining that freebsd is too difficult to learn, in fact, I like and love it. I'm happy we all finally have a chance to say NO to commercial software whose prices are too expensive, and again, I deeply appreciate the people who constructed freebsd and who have helped others. I just think can we take more care of the silent group and let more people enjoy the effort that you have made. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jonah