my thoughts on FreeBSD

[Matt Jarjoura]

Hello,

Again, repeating on a message from an earlier email I sent out on the 
list... if RedHat and SUSE are good enough that ISPs are using them, 
instead of saying how silly ISPs are to turn their heads away from 
FreeBSD, we NEED to be looking at what exactly RedHat & SUSE have that 
FreeBSD doesn't.  I doubt it's the cushy corporate backing, although 
Novel will certainly have the inroads necessary to see a lot of old 
Unix machines replaced with their SUSE/Novel boxes.

A) RedHat and SUSE both have GUI installers.  -- Honestly, how 
important is it that FreeBSD remain a TUI-only menu based 
installation-??  Sure it's simple, but screen-shots of it sure don't 
appear appetizing to ISPs in a 2 week window.

B) RH/SUSE both have great upgrade engines.  -- I forget the command 
line program in FreeBSD that allows you merge old settings w/ the new 
settings.

C) The FreeBSD Foundation -- Great job w/ releasing Java, but I am sure 
they can pull a lot more strings to start hiring UI Research Developers 
and release their findings under a similar BSD license.


My last thought here...

I am not saying FreeBSD should be focused on Desktop users, but server 
admins are starting to get a lot more "desktop-like" features from Mac 
OS X Server, Win 2k3, even RH and SUSE.  Bandwidth for running X11 over 
SSH isn't a problem like it used to be.

Just some stuff to keep open for discussion.

-Matt