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#! rnews 4040 sserve.cc.adfa.oz.au Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news.kei.com!news.mathworks.com!gatech!purdue!not-for-mail From: dpm@cs.purdue.edu (David Moffett) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Slight flame from Linux user Date: 6 Jun 1995 15:17:23 -0500 Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Lines: 72 Message-ID: <3r2d4k$ehm@ector.cs.purdue.edu> References: <3qqotb$sla@hamilton.maths.tcd.ie> <D9nMI9.Lys@midway.uchicago.edu> <D9nMoA.M8G@midway.uchicago.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ector.cs.purdue.edu Summary: Different folks need different tools Keywords: Easy mindless install, mindless operation In many articles by Tim Pierce <twpierce@midway.uchicago.edu>, Timothy Murphy <tim@maths.tcd.ie> and others wrote: >>>There is no reason at all why installing Unix should be particularly >>>difficult. It's not meant to be an obstacle race. >> >>I don't believe that there is an advantage in making an >>operating system as easy as instant pudding. > >As an object lesson, consider the following message posted >recently to this newsgroup: > > I have the FreeBSD 2.0 working. > During the setup I only created "Guest" as > a login. > 1) How can I create a sysop login? > 2) How do I get to my initial setup? > > I am new in unix and really desperate! > >I will be interested to hear what Mr. Murphy's suggestions >are in improving the documentation for this poor fellow. > OK folks. This thread is getting a bit thin. Some observations from my own world of using FreeBSD: * I have a customer (whose thankfully paying most of my PhD schooling bills) who runs FreeBSD as a firewall between the Internet and their local network. Nothing special, just keeping the badies out. Their biggest worry was it going to be free of recurring care? It logs bad things that happens to it and emails them to the local administrator. It would have been nice, and less expensive to all if the installation had just taken 3 hours, not 2 days (I'd never brought up a firewall and I had a learning curve). A mindless, menued install would have been great. * I run FreeBSD at home (as well as other less popular Unixs). It took me two weeks of fiddeling to get everything just right. I liked it and I learned bunches. I had 10 years of SYS V system administration before I started and the BSD way of doing things was different. I'd have been bumbed if a menu had held me away from the gory details. * In a presentation I attended a zillion years ago given by a couple of Bell Lab's MTS's, their perspective was Unix was supposed to be like the guts to a machine. Other people were to put wrappers on it and keep mear mortals away from the guts. Many companies small and large have done just this. A long-term health care software provider in Indianapolis Indiana called HealthCare Systems lets users see the login and password prompt but that's all user's ever see of Unix (SCO). A nationwide (US) employement service called ADIA has done likewise (PC/AIX). Installations to these folks are a painful experience that they never want to know anything about. The point here is that FreeBSD is becoming many different things to many different groups. It is shortsighted for anyone to say that FreeBSD should only be installed by serious folks just as it is equally shortsighted to insist that installation be wholy done by Menus (are you listening SCO?). A broad diversity of users will be why FreeBSD becomes a broad success, not just a nitch O/S for technically skilled users. David Moffett (dpm@cs.purdue.edu) P.S. Want FreeBSD to begin replacing DOG/Windoz? Write a few real applications like a robust word processor that has even half the features of Word or WordPerfect. Free with fewer, but fully functional features always beats expensive with buggy features. Until there are powerful so called "personal productivity" tools for FreeBSD or any inexpensive *nix we're not apt to begin to cause Bill to do anything but laugh.