Ways to promote FreeBSD?

[Mehmet Erol Sanliturk]

On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 4:31 PM, Jerry McAllister <jerrymc at msu.edu> wrote:

> On Fri, Apr 27, 2012 at 08:27:07PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
>
> > >After using Linux for almost 15 years, I only recently started using
> > >FreeBSD. I own an internet startup and was looking for a solution for
> >
> > Those who need FreeBSD already use it. no need to promote. Or maybe need
> > to promote bigger donations to FreeBSD community from big users.
> >
> > Those who actually need high performers and have servers that are loaded
> > and are working not toying around - use FreeBSD.
>
> Not really true and kind of a poor attitude.
> Yes. many people needing high performance already use FreeBSD, but
> there are lots of services that could benefit from FreeBSD who are
> not very aware of it.  They may have heard the name, and even know
> that it is an OS, but have heard it passed off as a non-entity in
> the field and do not know better than that.
>
> Sure, if people take the time and come to the web site and then
> download and use it and learn it, they know and don't need to
> be told much.  But, most others are not yet in that situation.
> They might appreciate the help.   Of course, some may be too
> lazy or prejudiced to go through that, but many just need some
> more information and encouragement I would guess.
>
> ////jerry
>
>
>


My opinion is that most important obstacle in front of FreeBSD is its
installation structure :


It is NOT possible to install and use a FreeBSD distribution directly as it
is .

In Linux distributions , when a distribution is installed , the user , NOT
root ,
can use its facilities WITHOUT setting a ( large ) number of parameters
which it is approximately ZERO .


Contrary to this , when a FreeBSD is installed , an ordinary user can NOT
use USB , CD/DVD , etc. , and even key board / mouse in X without setting
MANY parameters in MANY files ( loder.conf , rc.conf , etc. ) .

This point is a very important difficulty for the beginners and a really
very tiring for experienced users .

The first thing for FreeBSD to promote its use is to be done is to remedy
this obstacle .


All over the years , this fact is ignored , and left as it is , with a
counter argument that FreeBSD is for servers .

If we stick into this idea indefinitely , FreeBSD user base will not exceed
a few with respect to number of desktop users because number of servers
with respect to number of desktop users may be considered very small . Such
a small user base is not sufficient supply a "breath" to FreeBSD to make it
live .


An important example is www.wikipedia.org which I mentioned many times .
In yearly campaigns , they are collecting more than 15 MILLION US dollars
as donations where average donations being around 5 US dollars per donation
.

Contrary to this , www.freebsdfoundation.org has a yearly budget less than
HALF a MILLION US dollars .

If the news I read is correct , Mozilla Foundation is getting 300 MILLION
US dollars from Google for specifying its name in its search bar .


Failure point for the FreeBSD is its usage difficulty and a small number of
user base .

Another point is that server installers are highly educated with respect to
desktop installers and their numbers are small with respect to desktop
users .

For them , it is very easy to "harden" FreeBSD after installation if ever
it is needed , because during installation , it is a simple question to ask
:

Will  this be used as a Server ?

With respect to answer to this question , even during installation a
"hardened" FreeBSD may be installed .

Another , for me , irrespective , idea is to mention PC-BSD in place of
FreeBSD .

With a more than FORTY years of computing experience , my idea about PC-BSD
is that it is "complete failure" and mentioning it in front of FreeBSD is
only to create another obstacle for it .

Trouble for PC-BSD is that , for me , it is an untested ( as even as a
simple installation on a bare hardware ) distribution .

Thank you very much .

Mehmet Erol Sanliturk