Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 15:56:57 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> Cc: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, "Andrew C. Hornback" <achornback@worldnet.att.net>, "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>, <chat@freebsd.org>, "Eric Melville" <eric@freebsd.org>, "Randall Hamilton" <nitedog@silly.pikachu.org>, "GB Clark II" <gclarkii@vsservices.com> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <040701c179af$4bda25f0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <15367.37543.15609.362257@guru.mired.org>
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Mike writes: > My observation of windows users - both at home > and in the office - indicate that "most" is about 60%. Even if that is true, it's still a lot higher than for most systems. > No, it isn't. You overlooked what happens in > reality, which is that the users go where > Microsoft wants them to be, and give up on the > being where they want to be. Urban legends die hard. It's comforting to think that Microsoft succeeded by cheating somehow, instead of just by being smarter than the rest of us, but there just isn't any solid evidence of that. It's a question of management decisions, and Microsoft's decisions have been right more often than not, whereas the decisions of competiting companies have too often been wrong. Let's not forget that the world was Apple's oyster once, and they completely blew that out the window. Indeed, I've always been amazed by how long Apple has survived, given how feverishly and frequently it shoots itself in the foot. The same can be said of other companies. > But that users *is* suffering - that's why they're > complaining about Windows. Most people are _not_ complaining about Windows. And of those who are, most have never tried anything else, and they don't realize how bad things could be. > As for the second part, most of the Windows users > I know are hostile to computers. Most of the Windows users I know don't really care either way. The computer is just an appliance to them, and evokes no particular emotions in them. Mac users, in contrast, have a pathological hatred for Microsoft and Windows, no doubt out of jealousy. Fans of some other operating systems, especially Linux (and UNIX in general to a lesser extent), manifest comparable pathologies. > Those that have had experience with things other > than Windows - the Mac, for instance - tend to > be hostile to Windows. Not necessarily. I know people who were quite pleased to move from the Mac to Windows. It was nice to not have to depend on one company for both (overpriced) hardware and (overpriced) software, and one user told me that she was pleased to finally be able to buy the software she wanted (most of what interested her wasn't available on the Mac). > In other words, you've placed yourself in a > position where you can't escape from a proprietary > solution. Proprietary or not, you're stuck with standards. Even open-source environments still lock you down in practice. Running FreeBSD may not help you if you need a driver that only is available for Linux. > I'd also advise you to change that situation as > quickly as you can, because the longer you stay > in it, the more painful it will be when you are > finally forced to change for some reason. Believe it or not, it really isn't that important to me. Computers are tools, most of the time. > Since experience has taught me not to get caught > in the position you're in, *nothing* is sine qua > non for my use. Then I assume you don't actually use your computer for anything essential? > That's why some of the Linux distributions are > turning themselves into a clone of Windows - because > they want to lower the learning curve as much as > possible. And that's another reason why I'm glad that I never bothered with Linux. The problem is, though, that some people are going to try Linux after hearing the hype, find out it's nothing like they expected, and then go running back to Windows even more devoted to the platform than before. Since most of them know nothing of UNIX generally, their first (bad) experience with that category of OS will likely also be their last. If someone suggests FreeBSD to them afterwards, they'll just say "no, thanks, I've already been through that with Linux." > Windows certainly isn't that. It's basis is DOS, > which was a single-tasking program loader. No. Windows NT has no basis in DOS at all. Most of the DOS influence disappeared with the demise of Windows 3.x. Modern Windows resembles DOS about as much as UNIX resembles Multics--not even that much, in fact. > Every version since has been saddled with backwards > compatability to that design ... No. The NT architecture sacrificed it, in favor of better stability and security. If XP is built on NT code, as I've heard, it will inherit this stability and security as well (if Microsoft hasn't hacked away at it too much). > I've been told by an NT developer that that was the > reason that Windows NT was so unstable that even > Bill Gates admitted it. Your NT-developer friend was wrong. NT had no DOS roots to speak of, and many DOS programs would never run on NT at all. That's one reason why many organizations were slow to adopt it--they wanted compatibility more than they wanted stability and security. That's probably also why NT was hobbled slightly in later releases to make it more DOS and Windows 3.x-like. > As far as I can tell, there have only been two OS's > that have made it to market designed from the ground > up as a windowed system - the Mac and BeOS. There have been several GUI-based operating systems, but the Mac and Windows NT are the only ones that have enjoyed real success. > But for a graphic server and a simple wm, that's just not > true. Is there a server that I can run at secure_level=3 on FreeBSD? > Nuts, even with a relatively complex wm like gwm, > it's not true, because the window manager doesn't > need any extra privileges. See above. > So install a terminal server, and set them up > with serial consoles. Then run X and a simple > windowm manager - ratpoison would be nearly ideal > for this - that has the console for each displayed > in a window. I don't understand ... what would this buy me? The console and ssh sessions are fine. I use FTP to move files. 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