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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.uwa.edu.au!disco.iinet.net.au!news.uoregon.edu!hpg30a.csc.cuhk.hk!news.cuhk.edu.hk!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!in2.uu.net!news.ios.com!usenet From: Bryan Seigneur <freds@gramercy.ios.com> Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.os.linux.advocacy Subject: Re: Historic Opportunity facing Free Unix (was Re: The Lai/Baker paper, benchmarks, and the world of free UNIX) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 1996 05:39:14 -0400 Organization: SONETECH, Inc. Lines: 152 Message-ID: <317CA542.F15E726@gramercy.ios.com> References: <4ki055$60l@Radon.Stanford.EDU> <DpsKyx.1Jo@catzen.gun.de> <tporczykDptpAL.8uG@netcom.com> <4l0fv9$1bfs@news.missouri.edu> <4l2u61$fdg@solaria.cc.gatech.edu> <4l8o73$i28@news.missouri.edu> <4laudl$q55@news.duke.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp-26.ts-4.dc.idt.net Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.01 (X11; I; Linux 1.3.20 i486) Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.development.system:22222 comp.unix.bsd.386bsd.misc:821 comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc:3487 comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc:3340 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:18072 comp.os.linux.advocacy:46979 Charles Reese wrote: > > As a long time Windows user I would like to offer my opinion on some of > the points that have been made in this discussion. I am a chemist not a > computer scientist and I apologize in advance for ignoring free unixs > other then FreeBSD. I have not changed the newsgroups as I feel my > comments probably apply to the other free unixs as well but FreeBSD is > the only one I have tried. > > First: Why not UNIX as a desktop OS. > > Forget about displacing Windows or OS/2 or MAC OS or whatever. What > makes people loyal to these operating systems is the ease of use and time > invested in applications that they use. I use Word 6.0, Excel and Matlab You know of course that there is Matlab for Linux (ergo, probably for *BSD, too). > extensively in my work (chemometric analysis of analytical data). I have > written macros that can accept raw data files from our instruments, load > them into word, reformat them into tables, transfer them to Excel > spreadsheets, do some preliminary math operations and then write them to > files that MATLAB can read. I am also currently writing a book in Word. All this without making Windows barf. Lucky man. :) > It has taken me several years using Word, Excel, etc. to get to the point > where I feel comfortable and in control of these apps. In other words I > have invested a lot of time learning how they work, not internally, I > don't care about that, but just what each command does and how to combine > them together to do what I want to do. > > The point of this is that I don't care if "Tex" will read word documents; > I am not going to switch and neither is anyone else that has spent years > learning how to get the most from his/her apps. Word Perf. and Ami Pro > can read Word documents and I won't switch to them either and I am sure > people who use them a lot will not switch to Word. The reason is I > remember how long it took me to get productive with Word and the > frustration of having to open up the help file and read how to do every > little thing at the beginning. > > I think the people who imagine that this can be done have just not done a > lot of serious word processing. Write a book with lots of graphs, > diagrams and equations in your favorite word processor and then imagine > having to learn a whole new way of doing everything you learned for that > WP for your next book. UGH! Unix people and all CS types are used to this type of thing, it's in their job description. But most people aren't. You're point is taken. So really being able to run Win apps would be good for free Unix. Really, your type of person is going to stick to the platform they know until they're forced off. We should worry about new users and tech/power users. > So. Why UNIX (in my case FreeBSD). Because you don't like crashing? :) > I am learning to use FreeBSD for one specific reason. I want to set up > as an Internet content provider (on-line journals etc.) and the > preponderance of the literature suggests that Windows (95,NT) and OS/2 > are not really solid enough and don't have enough choice of apps. for > this area. For instance I want to be able to setup on-line forums where > experts could give interactive lectures and I have been told that the > structure used for MUDs could probably be modified to do this. > > As others in this discussion have pointed out, networking is one area > where the UNIXs still have a strong lead. I think that one area that > FreeBSD could really expand into is providing ISP solutions to 'newbies' > There are lots of people in non-computer fields that have great ideas > about what they would like to accomplish in the communication medium > provided by the Internet. They would flock to an OS that provided the > tools that let them implement their ideas with a minimum knowledge of the > underlying OS. > > FreeBSD has come a ways in doing this. The sysinstall program is just > the kind of thing that provides a user interface that most Windows/Dos > people can feel comfortable with. It provides on-line help, it is > structured so that you go from step to step and it has limited choices > (for most steps) so you can at least hope you aren't doing something so > wrong that you will irreversibly destroy your hard disk. > > The package system (pkg_manage) that comes with FreeBSD is also quite a > nice way of doing installs although it does not seem to recognize the > CDROM after the initial installation. > > This sysinstall program could be expanded a bit, for instance it would be > nice if one could change the setting for some of the devices. In my case > the boot probing did not find my ethernet card because it was not using > the standard IRQ and port. In fact the sysinstall program could be made > into a sysmanager program by adding functions to it a bit at a time. > > What 'Windows' users don't want in an OS. > > NO COMPILING (at least no known compiling). In many cases, compiling is a no brainer. This is a peeve of mine. People hear the word compile, and the run shreaking. Compiling an app can be a real PITA, but it should usually be a no brainer, and it usually is. Optimising your kernel under Linux is, for instance, very easy. 'Make config'; answer y/n questions about what you want 'Support for this? y/n' a few dozen times; Make dep; make clean; make zImage; copy the zImage to your kernel file. Compiling is not programming, sheesh. It's tough for the most squeemish users, but a lot of the people who run screaming don't know how simple it can be. > To ask me to compile a program is like me asking you to run a synthetic > reaction. I'll give you all the reagents needed to do a synthesis and > some glassware and a page or two of instructions (that I and my > professional colleagues are comfortable with) and just let you get on > with it. It may go as planned and all well and good, or it may blow up > in your face if you make a mistake or maybe just if the humidity is too > high that day. I'll leave a few cryptic notes that you can try to figure > out if things seem to be not quite right and I'll give you the keys to > the Dept. library so you can go down and pull a book (written for people > with PhDs in Chem.) off the shelf to consult if your feeling lost. GOOD > LUCK. > > In conclusion: > > The opportunity is there for free unixes to own the network communication > medium, but this is a time limited opportunity. Windows will become more > solid and (network) apps to do everything that can be done in unices will > be developed for Windows. Bill got his fingers burned a bit with > Netscape and you can be sure he has a lot of people working on schemes to > displace Unix as a network OS. If we can get enough FAIRLY technical or power users, we can concentrate on ease of use sooner. Bill seems to be taking forever. The more you see how far NT has come, the more you see that it's still aeons away from Unix. I'm glad to see you haven't overestimated NT, or changed your definition of a Net OS to fit NT. NT is our real enemy. Don't you know that if you stay with MS, you'll be forced to NT? The thing is, everything changes and you are forced to learn new things whether you stay with MS or not. Everything evens out so much in the end, why can't more of us be more farsighted and go with the open alternatives where we might actually have a say in the direction/speed (vector?) of things? > Cheers > Charlie Reese > > An old dog trying to learn new tricks. Bryan -- __ _ / / (_)__ __ __ _ __ / /__/ / _ \/ // /| |/ / /____/_/_//_/\___//_/|_|...priceless.