Desktop FreeBSD

[Mike Hoskins]

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Narvi wrote:
> Not in numbers by any means.

true.

> And like with Solaris, if anything, the marketshare is decreasing.

untrue.

> Huh? you are completely off your rocker - being able to do a desktop
> install - and having the OS behave rationaly in a desktop environment does
> not in any way maen that it needs to always install X.

great, so we all agree.  either write a perfect joe-sixpack-desktop
installer (keeping it modular and easily removed as mentioned), pay
someone to do it, or quit wasting bandwidth.  (please.)

> It means no more or
> less that when on a desktop machine, the OS should behave apprropriately,
> including automaticly detectinga nd loading sound, finding mouse, having a
> resonable set of desktop apps installed, using a printing system and so
> on.

who said i have a sound card in my server?  or a mouse?  his point was,
there are two different directions, often with different goals.  i think
most sane people would agree.  that doesn't mean we can't come up with a
great desktop/install/whatever, and it doesn't mean the current system is
useless for everyone.  quit overgeneralizing...  you're reminding me why
it's a bad idea to subscribe to advocacy.

> Windows is not a fringe server OS - do you know what percenatge of
> worldwide servers - whetever web or not are running windows? This is not
> 1995 any more.

i've got over 700 servers in production.  none are windows.  i have many
friends with similar setups...  so his point remains valid.  m$ is loosing
market share, that's why they've had to start directly targeting linux in
enterprise mags and on large billboards in the valley.  that costs money,
i wonder why billy boy bothers?  because he's loosing customers.  so don't
waste time arguing something that's obvious by looking around...  get back
to writing that dream installer/desktop.

and if you can't write it...  that's OK.  not everyone's a developer, or
has oodles of free time.  put together some requirements (ones that won't
be laughed at by real developers would be nice), and start a paypal
fund...  then you'll actually be helping the project, which you seem to
care so much about.  (great, but just talking a lot doesn't help anyone.)

-m

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  Information Welfare."  --Richard A Steenbergen