Freebsd vs. linux

[Anthony Atkielski]

Ramiro Aceves writes:

> How can I trust on a company that creates such a bad OSes?

Most companies that write operating systems don't do a very good job of
it on the first few tries.  The older Mac OS (the one that preceded Mac
OS X) was of the same generation as 16-bit Windows 3.x, and had the same
defects.  That doesn't mean that Apple was "untrustworthy," only that it
couldn't afford to build a new OS from scratch.

Today, most operating systems are a net loss financially.  You have to
depend on the peripheral effects of the OS to make up for the loss of
creating it.

> My girlfriend has got WinXP professional (is it sopoessed to be NT
> base, is not it?) and from time to time she calls to me horrified to
> say that she has a new problem with her machine: viruses, spyware,
> malware, things that suddenly stop working, etc. I start trembling
> each time it happens. :-/

You need to change girlfriends, not operating systems.  If she would
stop clicking on e-mail attachments, reading HTML e-mail, visiting
questionable sites, and so on, she would not have problems with viruses,
spyware, or anything else.  These things do not ship with the OS.

> We have to live with that.

No, we don't.  Some of us just skip the GUI and run more stable and
secure systems in consequence.  Servers don't need GUIs.

> Linux and FreeBSD do it perfectly, as it have the same software
> collection.

Good.

> If the Winbugs were well designed that should not happen.

Exactly the same thing was happening long before Microsoft ever existed.

> For me Linux/FreeBSD works, why should I use Windows?

You should use whatever works.  But for most people, the things they
wish to do require Windows.

> Windows is not free, I have to pay money and I do not have the source
> code.

That's true for most of the world's software.  Writing it all off
because it's not free and you can't look at source is an extreme and
unnecessary sacrifice in most environments.

> Why should I pay for software that it is a like a "black box",
> when I can use great free OSes?

Because it does what you require?

> I can not afford paying a license for every piece of software I use.

Some licenses are really cheap.  I believe the record for low cost in my
case was $5 for a shareware product.

> How can I use the GIMP, xcircuit, pcb without a GUI ?

Well, you can just use _equivalents_, just as people suggest to me when
I point out the necessity of Windows.

-- 
Anthony