Date: Fri, 04 Apr 2014 06:53:28 -0400 From: Allen <SlackWareWolf@comcast.net> To: Randi Harper <sektie@freebsdgirl.com>, Jordan Hubbard <jkh@mail.turbofuzz.com> Cc: "FreeBSD, Advocacy" <freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org>, hackers@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Leaving the Desktop Market Message-ID: <1452c5f24a0.277d.49425171f56f22d4251074c8012c3090@comcast.net> In-Reply-To: <CAM9wqY9STvt7%2BrMVkX6G0UmyEe6g86DAS89FXQCnsN5_uRT6-w@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAF6rxgkeBozvfV-L0%2BrFZ6fWRn0=Gi3BNq1kPL=-HTq0TD6MkQ@mail.gmail.com> <A70900DF-4BAA-427F-8731-01211FFD1887@mail.turbofuzz.com> <CAM9wqY9STvt7%2BrMVkX6G0UmyEe6g86DAS89FXQCnsN5_uRT6-w@mail.gmail.com>
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Hi, before I go any farther, I just want to point out that I currently can only really send emails from my phone because Comcast are jerks. So I'm Hoping that basically this email will be displayed properly. I'm using AquaMail, which seems to work pretty well but I haven't been active on these lists all that often because of that. > > There is no such thing as a desktop market for *BSD or Linux. There never > > has been and there never will be. Oh come on now, it depends on a couple of things, and I wouldn't go that far. I've got a lot of family members that know next to nothing about computers, and I got tired of fixing them all the time. Just as an example, my cousin basically destroyed his parents computer and got a job, and bought himself a brand new computer, and had me set it up. This was a while back and his Windows XP Home computer took all of one week too have issues. I updated Windows and saw he had never tried. I installed Spybot and AVG and updated them and ran them. When I got back home, I checked them and they had found over 12,000 infections! Everything from trojans and back doors, to those fake security centers. He is an idiot when it comes to this stuff and I don't mind saying so. The weird thing was that all he did on this computer, was go online with a web browser, IM with friend's, and listen to music and download all types of things. He did do some homework in between porn marathons too. My point for all this is that I eventually did something that worked; I installed Linux on his computer, made a script to keep it updated, and basically, I had KDE installed, Gnome, and a few others, and by setting up KDE and putting Web browser short cuts on the desktop, a shortcut to some IM clients, an XMMS shortcut, and a few others so that he could do what he was doing. I set up some Office suites as well, and this worked. His machine stayed up to date without any issues, and he no longer had any problems. > You know you opened a can of worms with that one. Because all the nerds are > going to step up and say "Well, I run FreeBSD on my desktop! It's totally > viable!" Like I said, I wouldn't go that far; Those of us on this list probably aren't fans of Windows, and probably only use it when required, but in the example I gave above, I found that people who know literally nothing about computers in general, do really well with Linux and BSD as long as I took the time to set up the desktop for them and installed all the stuff they needed and placed the shortcuts on the desktop. It worked really well. Even my Mom who knows nothing about computers, can sit down and use Linux or BSD without any trouble, as long as the desktop is set up properly. > Dear nerds, get some perspective. You aren't an end user, and you're > masochistic. It's okay, we accept you here. But your individual use case > doesn't indicate a place in the market. Your basement isn't a market. It's > a basement. Your small company isn't a market. It's a small company. Many > companies combined create a market. > Back to sleep. Now see, that has a point, but I do personally think that Unix not only does fine on the desktop, but depending on which version, some versions are more suited to being used as a desktop than others; PC-BSD for example, along with SUSE and even Mandriva, all work well for this. -Allen Sent with AquaMail for Android http://www.aqua-mail.com
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