FreeBSD and hardware??

[Chad Perrin]

On Mon, Dec 01, 2008 at 01:25:24PM -0500, Bob McConnell wrote:
> On Behalf Of Chad Perrin
> 
> > While I agree that, without some kind of supporting argument, the
> > statement that Linux systems are "low end" Unix replacements are kind
> of
> > spurious sounding, I don't think that market share is really an
> effective
> > metric for determination of the quality of a replacement for a given
> > class of OS.
> 
> I believe that he forgot to reference this article from ServerWatch.
> This
> shows more than a marginal increase in "market share". It suggests that
> Sun and others have good reason to be nervous about their future
> prospects,
> and need to find new ways to make money.
> 
> <http://www.serverwatch.com/eur/article.php/3787586>

Market share is still not an effective metric for determination of the
quality of a replacement for a given class of OS.  Your statements and
the article to which you linked in no way contradict what I said.  Even
though the article whose URL you provided does talk about Linux
suitability for certain tasks traditionally handled by commercial UNIX
systems, market share itself is not a very effective metric except,
perhaps, by accident -- because growing market share can indicate any of
a number of different potential causes.


> 
> On the other hand, both Unix and Linux have a long way to go before they
> can match Microsoft's ease of use on the GUI. I believe the best way
> to attack that problem is to find a new paradigm to replace the desktop,
> which is not a great interface model to begin with.

I guess that depends on your definition of "ease of use".  In my little
world, "ease of use" involves the ease, efficiency, and speed of task
completion via an interface with which I'm familiar.  It seems from what
you said that in your little world "ease of use" means "familiarity",
since that's really the major win for MS Windows interfaces, to the
majority of its users.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ content licensed PDL: http://pdl.apotheon.org ]
Quoth Friedrich Nietzche: "Those who know that they are profound strive
for clarity.  Those who would like to seem profound to the crowd strive
for obscurity."
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