Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2002 17:33:48 +0100 From: Nils Holland <nils@tisys.org> To: Sam Drinkard <sam@wa4phy.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Printing Question Message-ID: <20020103173348.B4460@tisys.org> In-Reply-To: <3C347256.3990CC69@vortex.wa4phy.net>; from sam@wa4phy.net on Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 10:01:42AM -0500 References: <3C339CDA.C74F940A@vortex.wa4phy.net> <20020103111011.A1591@tisys.org> <3C347256.3990CC69@vortex.wa4phy.net>
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On Thu, Jan 03, 2002 at 10:01:42AM -0500, Sam Drinkard stood up and spoke: > Hi Nils, > > Well, it just seems kind of like beating around the bush to have to > go thru all the print gyrations to get a pcl output. I realize > apsfilter works, and works quite well, as I use it, but if you happen to > have a printer not supported by apsfilter, then what does one do? The > whole thougt was geared towards the direction that *BSD and Linux are > headed, at least IMHO, and that is to be a "desktop appliance". I > remember when I started out with Interactive Unix, it was small, simple, > and for many things broken, but if you look at the big picture, FreeBSD > is nowhere near what it was a few years ago. So much cruft added that > people want.. like a splash screen, various other sundry utilities, and > so forth. Look at all the window managers.. tons of garbage on top of > tons of garbage, applets, etc.. sorta like windoze. However, this is > what people want, I suppose, otherwise the folks writing the code > wouldn't put it in. Not to mention all the different kinds of human > devices. Not meant to be degrading to the OS whatsoever.. just some > thoughts that I felt needed to be questioned. Well, we're moving away from talking about printers here, but generally, I would like to disagree a little with what you have said. While it is true that FreeBSD has a spash screen, window managers, even whole desktop environments (KDE) and can by now be used for many things that a Windows desktop machine can be used for, there's an important point: On FreeBSD, about everything is optional. So, I have not seen anything to be pushed down on me just because *people wanted it*, I've only seen that things got added because people wanted to have them. In the end, it's my choice if I am also going to use these things. If your "tons of garbage" is referring to KDE, GNOME, Enlightenment, and so on, well, then just take your right: You can run FreeBSD without that. You can go entirely without graphics - just don't install X. Or install X and set up fvwm2 for basic, highly customizable, non-nonsense window management. It's up to you. And exactly this is where FreeBSD's is most different from Windows: I have not yet seen a way to set up Windows truly the way I want to. You can customize FreeBSD in whatever way you want, if neccessary, even down to the source code level. I don't see problems with the "direction" FreeBSD is heading in. I guess the OS is the same as ever, only that in the past few years a lot of more thinge became possible. In the end, however, it's your job to decide if these things are for you or not. Nobody forces you to use anything. Alright, now, folks, do me a favor: Don't let this start another FreeBSD vs. Windows discussion. I don't want to be the one to start the first discussion of that kind in 2002. So, *if* you reply to this, please write something useful ;-) Greetings Nils -- Nils Holland Ti Systems - FreeBSD in Tiddische, Germany http://www.tisys.org * nils@tisys.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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