Date: Wed, 01 Dec 1999 12:16:08 -0500 From: Peter Schwenk <schwenk@math.udel.edu> To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Some Observations Message-ID: <384557D8.ECEF0BDD@math.udel.edu>
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I've recently switched back to FreeBSD 3.3 on my home computer (P5/233, 64MB, 9GB UWSCSI HD, Symbios Logic 875 host adapter, SoundBlaster 64AWE, IDE CDROM and Zip drives) after using RedHat Linux 6.x for several months. As a little background on myself, I'm a system administrator by trade that's familiar with Solaris, which is Sys V-style UNIX. I've been using both FreeBSD and Linux (Slackware, then RedHat) at home and work for roughly five years. I still consider myself a newbie. I also consider myself to be a software consumer, not a hacker. I'm a Walnut Creek FreeBSD subscriber since mid-2.2.x. That being said, I would like to present my observations about FreeBSD, in contrast with my recent Linux experiences, with the hope that they will help the FreeBSD community make a better product. Now's a good time to delete this message, if you don't care what I think. First of all, I consider FreeBSD to be a technically superior operating system when compared with Linux. I like the core team development model. Linux development seems too rag-tag. Where I believe FreeBSD lacks is in the area of initial setup. The setup program itself is fine. I've only recently had troubles with it (for some reason, the most recent install complained about the failure to install a distribution called 'local'). I just wish that the FreeBSD team made some different assumptions about which type of user will be using the software. Right now, it seems that the assumption is the software will be used on a server without a GUI. I think this alienates a bunch of new users. For example, xdm is turned off by default. Most people coming from other OSs expect a graphical login and a GUI to be immediately available. When compared with RedHat Linux 6.x, FreeBSD makes it much more difficult for newbie users to use removeable media. I tried both the Gnome and KDE GUIs briefly (operative word) , and I was unable to figure out how to access the floppy and cdrom drives from the GUI. Being used to UNIX, I know how to mount filesystems, but the average user will not know how to do this. The Gnome setup that RedHat uses comes with desktop icons for working with the contents of removeable media. I didn't use KDE under Linux. These may be more KDE and Gnome issues. I'm not very familiar with the inner-workings of either of them, but the point is RedHat makes the assumption that their target user is not very UNIX-savvy, and I think this a good assumption when a company wants to make serious inroads into the comsumer software market. RedHat and Linux in general are far from perfect from the software consumer perspective, but I believe that they are on the right track. It may be that FreeBSD's market focus is on the server end of things. This is fine, but it's hard to tell what the focus is. I'm going to keep FreeBSD on my home system for a while longer, just to see if I can work out some of the ease-of-use issues. This system is used by my wife and I, and I found I needed to do less explaining on how to do things when I had RedHat Linux on it. This being a home system and my being a software consumer not prone to tinkering, RedHat Linux is looking like a better option. This is a downer because a lot of the nut-and-bolts of FreeBSD works better. For example, the user-PPP of FreeBSD works a ton better than Linux's. I hated messing around with the 'ipchains' firewalling setup to filter out traffic that was keeping my demand-dial PPP link up longer than it needed to be. People suggested 'diald', and I thought 'Oh great, another piece of software to mess with and try to integrate into the RedHat way of doing things. No thanks.' So now I'm back with FreeBSD, but for how long? I need to decide how much ease-of-use outweighs how well the system works behind the scenes. I would be interested to see what you folks in this mailing-list think of my opinions. -- PETER SCHWENK | UNIX System Administrator Department of Mathematical Sciences | University of Delaware schwenk@math.udel.edu | (302)831-0437 <-NEW!!! To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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