Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 04:33:46 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "mpd" <mpd6334@cs.rit.edu>, <questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) Message-ID: <014f01c17886$a7d59df0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.1011128163141.50019G-100000@fledge.watson.org> <011501c1785b$911c42b0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <20011128174155.A38325@rit.edu>
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Mike writes: > It's not the best choice for me, nor for several > others who have already made that known. Perhaps not, but I was not addressing you and your circle of acquaintances exclusively. And overall, it _is_ the best choice. It surprises me that anyone contests the obvious. > Please don't make blanket statements like this, > especially on this list, where you're going to be > looked at and treated as a troll. Only by those with a religious devotion to a different operating system. I'm sure there are plenty of ordinary, professional IT folk here, too, who do not possess religious beliefs in one software product or computer system over another and thus do not feel inclined to leap irrationally to their defense at every perceived aspersion cast upon their faith. > I personally have no use for the extra crap that > so many windows users can't seem to live without. That's true of most users, but that is not what makes Windows attractive. The availability of 100,000 different applications for the platform in itself justifies Windows. So does its near-total dedication to the desktop environment. So does its compatibility (most other people use Windows, so Windows applications are the most compatible with what most other people are using). There are many reasons. > Others may, but that still doesn't qualify > your statement, which is just an opinion. My opinion seems to correlate well with the market figures, and that is not surprising, since the market figures are in part what drives my opinion. > ... and as a software engineer, I find that windows > is one of the most piss-poor and developer-unfriendly > systems around. As a software engineer, then, you should also know that systems that are the most friendly to users tend to be the most unfriendly to software engineers, and vice versa. I tend to agree that Windows is a nightmare to program for. But that has no influence on its utility for the average user, since the average user is not programming for his own system. > Uh, lots of people do, but they don't feel like > feeding the troll, I suppose. Or they lack religious devotion to the OS. After all, people running FreeBSD on servers are using the OS for what it does best, and absent a special affection for it above and beyond that, they probably will not run it on the desktop (unless it is more economical to do so, as in certain cases of a single machine). > Windows isn't "more open," it's just more proliferated ... No, it is more open as well. _Anyone_ can write programs for Windows, and this has always been true. It has not been true in the past for Apple, and I suspect it is still not true now. Apple is a good example of what happens when religious faith is given priority over practical considerations. Microsoft is a good example of what happens when practical considerations are given priority over religious faith. As proof, note that the most important application on the Mac is Microsoft Office. > ... so it benefits the software companies to release > software for that platform. It's the other way around: Software companies decided to write for Windows (because it was a very inexpensive and open operating system, compared to the Mac), and so more people bought Windows. Eventually a synergistic effect develops, leading to a dominant market position, and this can happen entirely independently of the vendor. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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