Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 12:29:20 +0000 From: ken@mui.net To: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Fw: Your Article "Freeware: The Heart & Soul of the Interne Message-ID: <199804092230.MAA04112@rocksalt.mui.net> In-Reply-To: <199804092140.PAA04541@lariat.lariat.org> References: <199804092124.OAA00915@dingo.cdrom.com>
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> If there is not an exceedingly strong effort to promote FreeBSD as superior > to Linux, Linux -- which has a larger installed base -- will be catapulted > to a dominant position while FreeBSD will see no noticeable increase in > its user base or its popularity. FreeBSD needs to have a few "zealots" and > "evangelists" -- just as Linux does -- to stubbornly insist that Being one that came from slackware, then later redhat, I supposed I should provide some kind of input. There was no real reason for me to try FreeBSD. It had no "claim to fame" so to speak. Linux does have a kind of claim to fame. Basically, linux has been promoted as "free unix". They have a presence at trade shows. It's been promoted as the OS via grass roots. A way of learning unix without having to spend money. Slackware at the time was the linux with lots of capabilities. Someone from the dos world could get into it fairly easily. My switch to redhat came about when I discovered that RPMs made upgrades easy, as well as adding new packages made life easy. You wanted something? simple, didn't have to know anything, just add the rpm. Everything was put in its proper place, never a worry about what went where. Of course everything started to blow up with the last release of redhat -- I think it was ver 5.0 My switch to FreeBSD ONLY came about b/c a colleage suggested it. Even when he suggested it, it meant nothing to me. I did a little homework, and there was one thing that convinced me to try it. That was when I received a newsletter with testimonials from cdrom.com and yahoo.com that showed them running their sites using FreeBSD. It showed how they tried lots of unix variants, and decided that this platform was easy and stable to work on. It convinced me to TRY it. Once I got it, a few things I noticed. Linux support is awesome in many ways. If you have a question, simply go to the irc. There's tons of people always there, always helpful. That's one major difference. There's very little presence on the FreeBSD side (on the irc). Newsgroup support via linux is also pretty good. FreeBSD doesn't seem to have much there. That means, that FreeBSD doesn't have 2 very visible means of showing the world who they are. It's not a criticism, just an observation. Doug and the others have been very helpful, please don't misunderstand me. It's made the difference in my getting comfortable. I'd suggest however, a few things. 1- make the FAQ and HANDBOOK more easily accessible from the front page. It probably should probably be put nearer to the top of the page rather than the bottom of the page. 2- the FAQ and HANDBOOK look very similar in terms of the table of contents. Perhaps having it seem very different may be a thought. Merge on one side or the other topics that are similar. Perhaps change the focus a little so that it's easy on the user to figure out which side is what they want. 3- "search" isn't so obvious to the new user. Perhaps it may be helpful to put it with "documentation". Esp if people are trying to figure out what's what. Search usually on most sites are to find topic interests. Search on FreeBSD is more useful in finding documentation on "how do I" stuff. 4- put something in the initial page that gives the message "want to know something about freebsd, look no further." b/c most pages on the net aren't information intended, but rather sales intended, people may not know that it is the difinitive source of info. Most pages are more related to "wanna buy it?". 5- make it more apparent the freebsd-questions is where they want to be. It's not really clear that it's the best place to be, b/c most mailing lists have the "general questions" place to be total newbies without much meat. It's not the case here. I think the problem is the culture out there. It's not the same as what tone FreeBSD is trying to set. 6- Linux is starting to be written in lots of books. There's no link to FreeBSD. No logical step for someone. If they have DOS, then it's logical to get win31. if win31, then win95. If linux, then redhat. perhaps if redhat, then FreeBSD <grin>. Greg Lehey's book is a good start. It references FreeBSD specifically. There needs to be more to get popular. O'Reilly would be a good place to try to drum up support, perhaps. 7- Perhaps links to lots of pages on various topics might be good. I'll end my thoughts here. don't want to waste too much bandwidth. ken To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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