A quality operating system

[Michael Sierchio]

My comments inline.  Summary:  utter rubbish.

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 9:47 PM, Evan Busch <antiequality at gmail.com> wrote:

> (1) Lack of direction.
>
> FreeBSD is still not sure whether it is a desktop OS, or a server OS.

Not at all the case.  FreeBSD is a server OS.  Desktop features get
considerably less support.  Much effort goes into filesystem work,
kernel optimization, networking and firewall components.

> (2) Geek culture.
>
> Geek culture is the oldest clique on the internet. Their goal is to
> make friends with no one who is not like them.

I am the counterexample to this strawman argument.  I feel entirely
welcome by the geeks, but I treat them like people and probably get
the same in return for that very reason.

> (3) Horrible documentation.
>
> This is my specialty and has been since the early 1980s. The FreeBSD
> documentation is wordy, disorganized, inconsistent and highly
> selective in what it mentions.

The documentation is incomplete.  It is not valid to criticize folks
for being selective when there are limited resources and many possible
tasks to perform.  But hey, it's a volunteer effort, so... if you
think you can string whole sentences together without slaying the
language to the root, please contribute.

> (4) Elitism.
>
> To a developer, looking at some inconsistent or buggy interface and
> thinking, "If they can't do this, they don't belong using FreeBSD
> anyway" is too easy of a thought.

I don't see any validity to this at all.  You attribute motive (and
dialogue) that doesn't exist.  Many command line utilities have
inconsistent interfaces - there are reasons for this, usually
historical and for backward compatibility.  Deal with it.  GNU/Linux
isn't any better here.  POSIX-compliance won't save you.

> (5) Hostile community.


> (6) Selective fixes.

See above.  It is not valid to criticize someone for being selective -
you might have a different order to your priority list - which, by the
way, feel free to share.

> (7) Disorganized website.

I seem to find everything I need there, what are you looking for?

> Sadly, Ron is right. FreeBSD is not right for us, or any others who
> care about using an operating system as a means to an end.

You overreached there.  I use it as a means to an end every day.  I
built high performance systems, high performance firewalls,
high-availability, always-on services.  FreeBSD is my first and best
choice for these.  Also for embedded systems.  You can say it's not
for you, but you sound like a spoiled little turd when you assert that
"right-thinking people everywhere will come to the same conclusion as
I did, having spent several minutes pondering the matter while popping
pimples."

Regards (very slight),

Michael Sierchio