Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1998 20:42:55 +1000 (EST) From: Nicholas Charles Brawn <ncb05@uow.edu.au> To: Sue Blake <sue@welearn.com.au> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Fw: Your Article "Freeware: The Heart & Soul of the Internet" Message-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.96.980410200949.18216F-100000@banshee.cs.uow.edu.au> In-Reply-To: <19980410200542.08150@welearn.com.au>
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On Fri, 10 Apr 1998, Sue Blake wrote: [snip] > If you go to Dymocks in Sydney and ask for FreeBSD, all you will be offered > is a dusty old Turbo FreeBSD 2.1.5. They have all of the ORA books, and a > huge range of Linux books and CDs. They say have never heard of Walnut Creek > or Walnut Creek's version or The Complete FreeBSD but they don't expect it > would sell any better than their current copy of 2.1.5 hasn't. They would be > prepared to try to order one copy for a customer but require payment before > the order is placed and expect a wait of some weeks or months. I don't know > of any other shop in Australia where you can hope to see FreeBSD books or > CDs. That's where I found that "dusty old Turbo FreeBSD 2.1.5" cd. :) It is unfortunate as that particular Dymocks store is one of the very few places in Sydney that I know of that has a "decent" (comparitively speaking) selection of books on Unix/Networking (non-MS), and programming. The only other place I've seen which looks prospectively better is a place in chatswood (forgot the name sorry) that houses *only* computer technical books. :) > A lot of Australians don't have or don't like to use credit cards and mail > order, and sending money overseas is quite expensive (my bank charges $10), > not to mention the costs and delays of freight. Internet access is expensive > here too, and all the above would apply to several other countries. Why > bother trying FreeBSD when Linux books and CDs are everywhere. As a lowly student, I couldn't afford to send away for the cd, although I would do so given the opportunity to support the great work being done. In the end I d/l it on my trusty 14.4 and installed it from dos. My only gripe about freebsd install is that it's can be rather bare to begin with (especially for the first-time user), and requires some customisation before you feel comfortable with it. But then perhaps that's because I only installed base w/proflibs & kernel source. :) > There's only so much enthusiastic supporters can do. When the people who can > make money out of FreeBSD won't pull their finger out it's bloody hard for > anyone else to. PR is little help if we cannot conveniently access the > product behind it. Heh, as a result of all the recent postings about the lack of marketing of freebsd, and the overshadowing of the great work being done with freebsd in favour of Linux, i've decided to change the os i'll be writing a security paper on. I was initially going to write my paper tentatively titled "Assessing and Auditing System Security in Linux". But now in a flurry of evangelistic fervor, i've decided to do it on freebsd. It'll give the people at the university's computer security research group (www.itacs.uow.edu.au/ccsr) something to think about, seeing as they appear to focus more on Linux as the default free os of choice, and will also save me the inevitable flame-wise feedback of "oh but that problem only affects redhat distributions, not slackware" or vice-versa. :) > Is there any way around this bottleneck, or is general promotion as well as > sales to be targeted at the USA until we get that warm trickle-down feeling? A friend of mine is seeking to become a local .au equivalent of cheapbytes.com selling such things as free *nix software as well as cheap hardware. I had a cursory look at www.cdrom.com and it offered information on current resellers, but not information on how to become one (apart from emailing the people @cdrom.com). Perhaps some information along these lines should be available via the web? > > -- > > Regards, > -*Sue*- > > find / -name "*.conf" |more > > -- Email: ncb05@uow.edu.au Nicholas Brawn - Computer Science Undergraduate, University of Wollongong. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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