Daemon's Advocate article

[markemmanuel]

I agree.  I wish people will see that connection between desktops and 
servers.

I'm not a developer, programmer, or anyone six feet deep in the 
computing industry. Here are some experiences I have.  I used MacOS X 
and heard there were BSD parts in it so I joined the lists.  FreeBSD 
doesn't have a working PPC port so I went to NetBSD so I can install 
NetBSD on an unused iMac.  My brother is an EE student at IIT.  Most of 
his classes uses Windows based programs so he uses Windows on his 
personal computer.  He's interested in setting up a webserver in his 
dorm room.  He just built a new computer for his workstation so he can 
do homework faster and play games and using his old machine as a 
server.  Guess what he's considering for his server?  He pokes fun at 
me because I can't play cool games and it takes me forever to get this 
fileserver at home going on NetBSD because I'm not used to using a *NIX 
computer.  I played around with Linux on a PowerMac 6100 and didn't 
like the install experience as I was a newbie user.  No graphic 
interface or anything.  I wanted to learn *Nix but I wanted gradually 
get into it.  I got turned off.  Recently, I saw some of the new Linux 
distros and found them to be really nice.  I don't need them now since 
I'm using MacOS X usually and mess around with its guts using Terminal. 
  My friend uses Linux.  We share webspace over at a company that's 
known to use FreeBSD.  He's moving to another server leaving me to find 
a new internet room mate.  The company serving his files uses Linux.  
My brother makes fun of Linux users because every one he knows has had 
problems with Linux keeping track of time.

Long story short... There's a connnection between those who use it on 
the desktop first and those who use the desktop later.  I personally 
would love to see two flavors floating around and marketed.  A set of 
CDs or DVD that has the GUI as default and one that uses a TUI.  I'd 
also like to see updated drivers for all the BSDs and a major company 
deciding to back the BSDs and openly advocate them.  MacOSX has some 
text saying that parts of the OS was derived from BSD BUT it's in 
really smnall text and it feels like Apple is trying to align 
themselves with the Linux crowd.  If I had a company, I'd push BSD in 
some way, have a default and standard GUI for the everyday user and to 
lower tech support costs,  increase BSD advocacy, hire some people 
involved with BSD so they can spend time on BSD and get paid, and many 
other things.  Now, how to build a profitable company and pursue these 
ideas?  I don't know.  Maybe I can become yet another box builder and 
ship each computer with an uninstalled copy of FreeBSD and a pamplet 
about it.  I'd love to see some native games on FreeBSD.

Sorry for my rambling.

On Mar 2, 2004, at 8:57 PM, Narvi wrote:

> The attitude towards "FreeBSD on desktop" used to be *REALLY* bad. Up 
> to
> and including core(*1) members saying that FreeBSD on desktop was
> pointless and servers are the only direction. Its reasonable now even 
> if
> not exactly embracing. Which is a pity - peopel don't seem to draw a
> connection between developers choice of desktops to servers getting
> installed.
--markemmanuel
___________________t_h_e_w_o_l_f_p_u_p_._c_o_m_.
Markemmanuel F. Rodriguez
http://www.thewolfpup.com/
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