Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 19:25:55 +0200 (MET DST) From: Marco Molteni <molter@logic.it> To: Adrian Chadd <adrian@obiwan.psinet.net.au> Cc: "Victor A. Sudakov" <vas@vas.tomsk.su>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: To UNIX or not to UNIX ;-). Was: PPP problems. Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.970615184746.194A-100000@dumbwinter.ecomotor.it> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.95q.970615232011.8568A-100000@obiwan.psinet.net.au>
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[moved to chat] On Sun, 15 Jun 1997, Adrian Chadd wrote: > Well, basically in my eyes it boils down to this: > > * We (ISP's) are out to provide a service to people, and make money. > * In order to make money we have to cater for the majority of the market, > unless of course the minority want to pay us huge amounts of money :) > * The majority of users use a Microsoft-based OS, so the ISP which caters > for the Microsoft-based OS, no matter how whacky Microsoft twist TCP/IP, > PPP, or whatever into.. will be making the most money. Sad, but surely true. > Get UNIX into the homes is what I say. Dress it up, make it easy to use, > make it pretty, make it do what people want. Once its out there, and its > gained some popularity, people WILL start writing more applications for > it. I agree when you say "make it do what people want". But, IMHO, the problem lays in the "make it easy to use" part. I don't think Unix is for dummies. Unix is Unix. Hard at the beginning, but when you know it, you can do whatever you want with it, IF you know C, IF you know what IPC is, IF you know networking, IF ... This is what I like about it, it is an OS for real men ;-) (hey, this *doesn't* mean I like the obscure parts of it ;-) If I'm suggesting a configuration change of your system, I can simply say: "modify /etc/fstab and put the line ...", I don't have to say: "fire up your GUI, double click on the icon you find on the bottom left of the second display ...." Surely, I do love the X window system, but I'm glad I can fix my Unix box from a dumb terminal on the other end of the planet. I don't think Unix can be made the OS of choice for the casual user, because to achieve this goal you (probably) have to distort the philosophy behind it. I think everybody wanting to seriously learn Unix has to love computers, has to have the right attitude at it and has to find the time to learn it. --- Marco Molteni Computer Science student at the Universita' di Milano, Italy. "You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself. (Especially code from companies that employ people like me)." Ken Thompson, 1983 Turing Award Lecture.
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