Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 09:38:21 +0200 From: Lars Engels <lme@FreeBSD.org> To: <freebsd-arch@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: FreeBSD problems and preliminary ways to solve Message-ID: <18ea84978d3705e47de87a5d9a0dd7ea@mail.0x20.net> In-Reply-To: <slrnj4r3rl.2853.vadim_nuclight@kernblitz.nuclight.avtf.net> References: <slrnj4oiiq.21rg.vadim_nuclight@kernblitz.nuclight.avtf.net> <705869186.20110819012421@serebryakov.spb.ru> <slrnj4r3rl.2853.vadim_nuclight@kernblitz.nuclight.avtf.net>
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On Thu, 18 Aug 2011 22:17:25 +0000 (UTC), Vadim Goncharov wrote: > Hi Lev Serebryakov! > > On Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:24:21 +0400; Lev Serebryakov wrote about 'Re: > FreeBSD problems and preliminary ways to solve': > >>> The other social problem is lack of companies which offer >>> commercial >>> support of FreeBSD like RedHat does. >> Main social problem, IMHO, that there WAS NOT (I forgot Linux >> history and don't rememberfirst uf-distributive) and, later, >> Ubuntu-like versions of FeeBSD. Even if these doen;t replace Windows >> on many desktops (1% now?), they prepare Linux-aware users, and some >> of these users becomes admins or people, who decide which OS should >> be >> used in their business. > > PC-BSD is exactly for that. > And IMHO PC-BSD should get pushed more. The changes in 9.0 are a great opportunity for this. We should write mails to PC magazines and ask them to include a version of PC-BSD on their DVD, ask IT websites to write some news about the release, tell the people that it's a system which is actually easy to use, has some unique features and is definitively worth a try. To gain market share, PC-BSDand FreeBSD need to be known! In my experience, maybe one out of ten IT admins have ever heard of FreeBSD, and one out of hundred has actually tried it. Of them, maybe 10 percent actually used it for some time but for whatever reason eventually went back to Windows or Linux where they came from. So there's only a very small amount of fresh users with every release, while others go ahead and switch to different OSes because of the reasons Vadmin wrote about. But that was only the situation of our fellow admins. What about their bosses who are the ones who decide which way to go and which OS is allowed to run on their servers? I know answers like "Free-what? Ah, some Linux-like OS. Never heard of it. Why don't we use Linux if it's similar? Everybody uses Linux, it's standard! Do you get support from Big Companies for FreeBSD? Who do we call if we have a problem with it on our servers? Doesn't HP hang up the phone if we tell them that we installed that Free.. what was it called? FreeBSD??? on it?" So FreeBSD urgently needs a wider awareness level. People have heard of FreeBSD -> People are more willing to try it -> Some people try it -> Some people stay with FreeBSD and like it -> Some people spread the word -> More people try it -> At the end of the chain we have some new contributors, devs, donors, and new installations For the people who may say now: "We don't want Ubuntu-like users, they only ask stupid questions I don't want to answer again and again." We need them! Everybody once started by asking dumb question but eventually we began to answer other people's question. Take a look at FreeBSD Forums: 26,000 members, 137,000 posts in 20,000 threads. Only a small fraction of theses posts are from FreeBSD developers, the others are good and valid answers to the questions you don't want to answer any more.
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