The beastie boot menu.

[Brad Knowles]

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.