Different OS's? Marketshare

[Jacob S]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:21:06 +0100
Anthony Atkielski <atkielski.anthony at wanadoo.fr> wrote:

> Ted Mittelstaedt writes:
> 
> > Note that Linux is doing much better against these measuring sticks
> > because the Linux community, for all their loud proclamations about
> > being GPL, has been steadily making Linux less and less
> > distinguishable from the commercial OSs. When for example was the
> > last time you saw a Linux enthusiast with a burned CDROM of an ISO
> > he downloaded somewhere? The ones I see all have colorful cardboard
> > boxes with penguins on them that they bought at Fry's.
> 
> I've been looking at Linux these past few days (trying to decide
> whether to install FreeBSD or Linux on the machine I just freed up),
> and I've noticed the same thing.  "Free" appears to be a near-total
> illusion when it comes to Linux.  And hardly any distribution seems to
> require less than 6 or 7 CDs.  And the Web sites I visit are extremely
> circumspect about exactly how to download "free" versions of their
> distributions, when they even offer such free copies.
> 
> It all looks very much (too much) like Microsoft.

You obviously didn't look at Debian then. The soon-to-be-released Sarge
version is currently 14cds, but you only need to download a 35MB or
110MB installation cd to get started. The rest of the programs are
downloaded from mirrors as needed. In fact, the Debian download page
_discourages_ people from downloading all 14 cds. The principles behind
Debian's apt-get is similar to FreeBSD's ports and portupgrade - but the
organization scheme is different. 

As to which will suit your purposes better; why not do a dual boot
between Linux and FreeBSD? They can co-exist happily.

HTH & HAND,
Jacob