A quality operating system

Dave Pooser dave-freebsd at pooserville.com
Sat Aug 20 22:47:02 UTC 2011


On 8/20/11 4:38 PM, "Adam Vande More" <amvandemore at gmail.com> wrote:

>freebsd-update works quite well and quickly on systems with a custom
>kernel with the additional caveat you *should* rebuild and install the
>kernel afterward, and even this isn't always necessary.  This is assuming
>you're on RELEASE or some BETA.

An honest question here-- how many people run production servers on
RELEASE, never mind BETA? Mine has been running on STABLE, first 8.1 and
then 8.2.

I hold no brief for the original poster; I think he probably was trolling.
I'm pretty sure Vadim Goncharov was NOT trolling on freebsd-arch when he
wrote the message Test Rat referenced
<http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-arch/2011-August/011412.html>.
And guess what his post listed as the biggest hinderance to wider adoption?

===
> 1. Social (psychologic) problems of community (marketing, docs, ...).

This is the most important one, because all technical problems are just
won't get solved because are even not viewed as problems. The FreeBSD
Project does not listen to users' needs. The typical response when poor
user want something is: "we don't need this, we won't change for you",
with "where are your patches?" at best. Then many users go out when see
such attitude toward them.

The key points are:

 1) *The competent user is not zealot*.
 2) The system is *for users, not for developers*.

===

I probably would have been wiser not to respond to this thread at all;
once the OP threw the bait out there people were bound to get angry and
defensive. But Vadim's post resonated with me, as he covered many of the
reasons I'd decided to retire FreeBSD in my company, so I figured I'd add
one more perspective.
-- 
Dave Pooser
Cat-Herder-in-Chief, Pooserville.com
"...Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in one pretty and well-preserved piece, but to slide across the
finish line broadside, thoroughly used up, worn out, leaking oil, and
shouting GERONIMO!!!" -- Bill McKenna






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