Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 00:40:00 +0200 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Rajappa Iyer <rsi@panix.com> Cc: Thierry Herbelot <thierry@herbelot.com>, arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Listening to users [was Re: Package system wishlist] Message-ID: <20020710224000.GA1331@lpt.ens.fr> In-Reply-To: <200207102204.g6AM4UD11370@panix1.panix.com>
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Maybe this isn't terribly on-topic, but anyway: Rajappa Iyer wrote: > > <http://members.optusnet.com.au/~knigits/articles/switched_back.html>; > > Note that almost all of his frustration was due to the multiple > distributions problem in Linux No - he notes that but didn't have a problem with that. His problem was that *none* of the distributions were suitable. But almost all of them would have been friendlier than FreeBSD. > In other words, I have to say that the complaint above does not in any > way support your contention that FreeBSD is hard to install and use. Well, let's go through the major points of that article again: XFree86 -- FreeBSD uses it too, but the linuxen have better configurators, and possibly better default font setups, these days. So FreeBSD is actually worse off. Drivers -- FreeBSD hardware support is, if anything, worse than Linux (eg, cardbus; a lot of multimedia hardware; winmodems; etc). And I haven't encountered so many third-party binary device drivers for FreeBSD, much less drivers that work across different kernel versions (as he wants for linux). Software distribution -- well, that's what this whole thread has been about, hasn't it? I like FreeBSD ports, but I've met enough people who think rpm is "easier" that I'm not going to argue with them. If you read what he's asking for, you'll see that FreeBSD doesn't provide it. Support -- Well, linux does have some commercial distributors who'll support you for a fee. FreeBSD doesn't. The FreeBSD mailing lists are great, but his complaint of RTFM-type "elitism" is equally true of FreeBSD. In short, everything he says, and more, applies to FreeBSD. Pretending otherwise won't help anyone. And generalizing your own experience (you find it easy, so everyone must find it easy) is exactly the elitism he doesn't like. - Rahul To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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