Date: Wed, 3 Mar 1999 08:03:39 -0500 (EST) From: Bill Pechter <pechter@pechter.ddns.org> To: dyson@iquest.net Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Guess we've lost the server market too...? Message-ID: <199903031303.IAA01648@pechter.ddns.org> In-Reply-To: <199903030411.XAA00446@y.dyson.net> from "John S. Dyson" at "Mar 2, 1999 11:11:34 pm"
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> A little insider note: I happen to have access to the insides > of the proverbial largest computer manufacturer, and they really > love FreeBSD. The reason why it isn't being used in certain > applications has NOTHING to do with technical excellence. > > -- > John | Never try to teach a pig to sing, > dyson@iquest.net | it makes one look stupid > jdyson@nc.com | and it irritates the pig. Having worked at IBM two years ago, I know the one of the reasons they went to Linux was probably it's market recognition and it's internal use by the techies (including myself) who used Linux instead of FreeBSD due to the Token Ring support which wasn't in FreeBSD 2.1 and wasn't going to be there unless someone with a vested interest in Token Ring hardware did something. I ran Linux at work on my desktop. Linux's support of non-high end hardware still beats FreeBSD. I've already begun to lose the battle. I've got two machines at work running 2.2.8 that will go Linux, since there's no Scsi support for their controllers in FreeBSD 3.x. (We shouldn't have lost the AIC and NCR5380 support in 3.1.) Unfortunately, coding this stuff is beyond my poor old sysadmin capabilities. I can script, compile and test -- but not code stuff like that. The way I got FreeBSD in to work was showing it's excellent server capabilities on low end (5 year old) hardware. We're losing this battle. Linux used to have some drivers out a little before FreeBSD, but FreeBSD has walked away from the desktop towards server class hardware and isn't doing what it needs to to support the widest range of hardware. I've offered loaner hardware up to anyone doing the drivers. I've already lent two NCR5380's to John Ruschmeyer who worked on the NetBSD NCR5380 drivers. I really would like to see someone CAM-ize the FreeBSD drivers from 2.2.8. Bill --- Bill Gates is a Persian cat and a monocle away from being a villain in a James Bond movie -- Dennis Miller bpechter@shell.monmouth.com|pechter@pechter.nws.net|pechter@pechter.ddns.org To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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