Why FreeBSD not popular on hardware vendors

[Da Rock]

On Sun, 2008-12-14 at 19:21 -0700, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Sun, Dec 14, 2008 at 11:39:26AM +1000, Da Rock wrote:
> > 
> > Hence why I tend to send really green unix newbies to linux school than
> > grind their teeth on FreeBSD straight up. Let em get their skills and
> > experience in how *nix in general works on something a little easier
> > (for MIB lovers: noisy cricket), then move up to the big guns.
> 
> Why not send them to something like DesktopBSD or PC-BSD, or even
> FreeSBIE (if that project is still around)?  If they go to some chintzy
> user-obsequious Linux distribution like PCLinuxOS first, they'll just
> have more stuff to unlearn *if* it ever occurs to them to give some BSD
> Unix variant a try -- and if they haven't been poisoned against BSD Unix
> systems by GNU/FSF propaganda in the meantime.
> 

I doubt it. Knowing how linux works, they'll get sick of its layout and
config and appreciate the BSD way once they get the hang of handling
*nix methods. The hardware issues are across all those BSD platforms,
which makes it tougher for newbies coming from the handfed world.
Unlearning is _real_ easy when the config and layout is shit.

As for the GNU philosophy, consider Ubuntu popularity versus Fedora.
Fedora takes "the high road", and Ubuntu allows the users to subscribe
to extra repositories of software- guess which users prefer? The threads
for these arguments on the Fedora list exceed even this one in length!
FreeBSD ports- you can install pretty much whatever license type in
software you want, as long as someone has setup a port for it. Users
consider THAT freedom.

Plus, if you compile your own software there is a clear place to install
it, not wandering in confusion between /usr, /opt, /usr/local, and any
other variation of these (and maybe more...).

I think freebsd is great, but if you haven't clue about *nix don't waste
time- get some bearings first on a simple similar system which offers
more user friendly features and all the cli stuff, then try the real
thing. Don't worry- those worth their salt will return, the rest will
stay where they're happy.