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Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!news.oz.net!news.lei.net!news.pixi.com!eskimo!lparsons From: lparsons@eskimo.com (Lee Parsons) Subject: Re: Slight flame from Linux user X-Nntp-Posting-Host: eskimo.com Message-ID: <D9z6BA.1Ft@eskimo.com> Keywords: Linux FreeBSD Sender: usenet@eskimo.com (News User Id) Organization: Eskimo North (206) For-Ever References: <3ql3gd$je2@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <3qstb1$oca@dg.thepoint.net> <D9rtsG.3v@eskimo.com> <tporczykD9s35B.1Ko@netcom.com> Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 20:59:34 GMT Lines: 54 Tony Porczyk <tporczyk@netcom.com> wrote: >And the award for the most bizarre reason to choose an operating system >goes to: > >lparsons@eskimo.com (Lee Parsons) writes: >> I personally run FreeBSD to (in part) keep my Ex-Sysadmin hand in on >> the nuts and bolts of installations. A Linux install that doesn't force >> me to get out the old calculator and figure out how big the partition >> is would not be very useful to me. > >And speaking of calculators, how can you tolerate a machine >doing what you can do with a pen and a piece of paper? I dont. Calculators are for sissies. I use my toes like any real man. My only problem is since that lawnmower problem last summer verything is base 7. >I, for one, applaud Jordan & Company for their efforts to make >mechanical, repetetive tasks more automated. I value the computer for >its ability to free one to be more creative, not for forcing one to do >the same, routine, daunting, boring crap over and over and over again in >the longest and least automated way possible. The scripting and the [...] >And while I am glad I have learned how to calculate sectors, blocks, >clusters, partitions, slices, etc., I see absolutely no reason why I >have to repeat the same process over and over again. Point well taken, I'm not saying we shouldn't have a single script that does everything for me. I'm just saying I wouldn't use it. I'm sure I would change my mind when I had to do my 15 BSD installs a day. But since I gave up my SysAdm Hat to become an Oracle Geek, I haven't done an install of anything but FreeBSD on one box. This is gets into my personal reasons for wanting to use FreeBSD and likely isnt very transferable to the rest of the free world, so I wont spend a lot of time on it. My point is that having Unix at home (the only place I run FreeBSD) is not as important to me as going through the ugly details of installing it. If We looked out tommorow and found that ALL commercial versions of UNIX installed like Linux I would run Linux. (Well I would think about it.) But the last time I checked nobody got any brownie points during a job interview for being current on the latest Linux installation routines. Installing FreeBSD (via the last install I did) is atleast a more transferable skill. Conclusion: People do things for lots of different reasons and you cant make everybody happy at the same time. -- Regards, Lee E. Parsons Systems Oracle DBA lparsons@world.std.com