Which OS for notebook

[Charlie Kester]

On Wed 06 Oct 2010 at 07:31:58 PDT Mark Blackman wrote:
>Charlie Kester wrote:
>>On Tue 05 Oct 2010 at 06:25:05 PDT Mark Blackman wrote:
>>>
>>>There's also the whole train of thought that says FreeBSD isn't really
>>>aimed at the desktop/laptop/notebook use model and any benefit in that
>>>arena is entirely coincidental.
>>
>>I've often seen that opinion expressed, but never on the FreeBSD website
>>or in any of its "official" materials.
>>
>>On the contrary, most of the official literature presents it as an OS
>>for general-purpose computing, and not only for servers.
>>
>>If I'm wrong about and there is an official statement somewhere that the
>>main intention is to provide an OS for servers, it would be good to
>>know.
>
>It's derived from a server/workstation OS and I assume the number of 
>FreeBSD deployed servers wildly outnumbers the desktop/notebook 
>installations and the tag line is "The power to serve", so there's a
>strong server bias.

Yet if you go to http://www.freebsd.org the first thing you will read is
that "FreeBSD is an advanced operating system for modern server,
desktop, and embedded computer platforms."   Nothing about a bias toward
servers or that it "isn't really aimed at the desktop/laptop/notebook
use model."

If FreeBSD is really aimed primarily at servers, I would expect to see
something about this in the goals statement found in the FAQ and
Handbook.  But there's no such indication there.

So I can see why some people might be frustrated by the lack of
attention to some important issues for desktop/laptop/notebook hardware
support.  Nothing in the project literature tells them it's not a
priority.