The beastie boot menu.
Brad Knowles
brad at stop.mail-abuse.org
Tue Nov 30 02:49:38 PST 2004
At 12:26 AM -0800 2004-11-30, Chris Pressey wrote:
> But what then is FreeBSD? The same .sig calls it "the most powerful."
Yup.
> And what does that mean?
See below.
> Highest performance? Most stable? Easiest to
> use? Most featureful? Fewest bugs?
Yes.
> Most accessible?
What do you mean "accessible"? And by whom? Do you mean
handicapped-friendly? Do you mean moron-resistant?
> Most conformant
> to standards?
Which standards?
> Plays nicest with other OSes?
What do you mean by "nicest"? Which other OSes?
> Largest package system?
That's a side-effect, not a direct goal.
> Does anyone know?
I would think that the term "power" would be pretty obvious.
OpenBSD may be the more "secure", and NetBSD may be the most
"Portable", but these are not things that FreeBSD is going to tend to
focus on.
FreeBSD will have the best/most scalable SMP. FreeBSD will
handle ultra-large memory systems in the best/most scalable way.
FreeBSD will handle large disk farm systems best. FreeBSD will have
the most scalable network system.
User-friendliess, especially moron resistance, is one area that
FreeBSD will not tend to focus on. So, if you don't like hacking on
Forth, your options of limiting the beastie boot menu may be limited.
FreeBSD will be portable to some other platforms, but not as many
as NetBSD. FreeBSD will have a reasonable level of security, but
won't try to take it to the extremes that OpenBSD does.
There are plenty of other areas where FreeBSD may not be the best
platform to choose, if that's the sort of thing you want to do.
But if you want power, speed, scalability, and robustness, you
know where to go.
> Only core is in a position to say officially, I suppose. All I can say
> is that until they do, I think FreeBSD will continue to flounder.
I'm sorry, I just don't see the source of confusion. I don't see
the floundering.
I see lots of good work going on, with the occasional bikeshed --
including topics such as "what is FreeBSD"?
--
Brad Knowles, <brad at stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little
temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
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