Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2001 23:28:29 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@physics.iisc.ernet.in> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: Kris Kirby <kris@catonic.net>, Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>, Chip Wiegand <chip@wiegand.org>, FreeBSD Chat <chat@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Just an observation - MUA's seen in the lists Message-ID: <20010413232829.P82834@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <200104131754.KAA14193@usr02.primenet.com>; from tlambert@primenet.com on Fri, Apr 13, 2001 at 05:54:02PM %2B0000 References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104131309160.90249-100000@spaz.huntsvilleal.com> <200104131754.KAA14193@usr02.primenet.com>
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> o FreeBSD has not actively pursued desktop software: > > o FreeBSD has not lobbied Microsoft to port > its "Office" suite of software > > o FreeBSD steadfastly refuses to choose a > single official GUI and toolkit (this is > one of the reasons Microsoft states they > have not ported Office to Linux) When did Microsoft say that was a reason? And do you honestly think they would port it to FreeBSD if "lobbied" to do so? > o FreeBSD does not have a standard install > software system that is as sophisticated as > InstallShield, for use by commercial > software installation It seems to me that all a company needs to do is supply their own install and uninstall programs, which are graphical front-ends to the pkg_add and pkg_delete commands. One click, pkg_add; another click, pkg_delete. > o FreeBSD does not have a standard method of > installing and uninstalling startup and > shutdown procedures for third party layered > software that would allow such software to > replace FreeBSD default components (e.g to > replace Sendmail with MS Exchange for FreeBSD). The thing to do would be to have separate startup scripts in /usr/local/etc/rc.d or whatever for exchange, and ask the user to say sendmail_enable="NO" in /etc/rc.conf (any competent sysad should know to do that, surely?) Besides, I don't think one should encourage them to port MS Exchange for FreeBSD. (Or MS Office, either, actually. Unless it switches to some open XML-based document format, as I read somewhere they're planning to do.) > o FreeBSD management and operation is far from user > friendly; thus a Microsoft product would be as hard > to manage as any other package, well below Microsoft's > usability standards: > > o Fixing this requires a "regitry" style system /var/db/pkg? All one needs is a GUI tool to use it. Surely Microsoft would be willing to write that if they thought it was a big issue. > o FreeBSD's developement environment is nowhere near as > usable for shallow programmers of desktop software as, > for example, Visual BASIC or Visual C++. kdevelop? > Really, FreeBSD is unsuitable for use as an MUA supporting > desktop machine, unless your users are much more sophisticated > than average. I disagree. The reason most users use windows is that they get it pre-installed; they don't find it any easier to fix if they have a problem. I have installed linux (around 2 years ago, when the GUI's were much less polished) for people having trouble with their windows machines, and they're continuing to use that linux installation to this day. Netscape for email and web browsing, Staroffice for basic word processing, KDE 1.0 desktop, and they're quite happy. Today, I'd go for FreeBSD with KDE 2.x; I agree that I couldn't ask them to install it themselves, but if I did it for them, I'm quite sure they'll be happy with the end results. - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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