xdm-options - non-bsd user needs bsd rc.d advice

[Polytropon]

Readers will surely see more and more people having
similar reasons why those who happily use FreeBSD do
not want to go back to Linux, or even worse, "Windows".
I may include myself here, with the special case that
I've never been a "Windows" user, so my mind is clean
and healthy and unspoiled of MICROS~1's strange ideas
of how things work. :-)



On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 15:28:10 +0100, "Christopher J. Ruwe" <cjr at cruwe.de> wrote:
> I started with Linux when being in high-school out of frustration of
> Windows forcing me to do things their way.

In my case, it happened in school, simply because of
the reason that I needed a versatile typesetting system
(text, formulas, graphs) to print to a laser printer.
As LaTeX was already available on Linux, I started
with Slackware which was a very UNIX-like system (a
positive opinion!) at that time. Later on, I did use
PTS-Linux (derived from DLD, a german Linux distribution,
if I remember correctly), as well as S.u.S.E.-Linux (its
formal name at that time). While I found that generic
UNIX knowledge was applicable everywhere, "Linux knowledge"
was not, as you could see from file names and locations,
procedures, and configuration statements which could not
be transferred 1:1 between the systems.



> When at university, I tried Gentoo Linux, learned a lot and solved
> problems my way. Having bought a notebook later on, I decided trying
> the then very much in vogue Ubuntu with a Xubuntu installation.
> Although satisfied with the very usable defaults, I was quickly
> unnerved by not being able to control things.

University was the time when I found out about FreeBSD.
Having generic UNIX knowledge already (Linux, Solaris,
IRIX) I could predict (!) where things are on a FreeBSD
system, how they act, and what they do. This was my main
reason to keep using this system, exlusively as a home
desktop since version 4.0, without any disadvantages so
far. I doubt that Linux would have delivered the quality
I'm looking for: The quality of not being forced to abandon
fully functional hardware simply because new defaults
tell me I need a plentycore CPU and tenmelonhundred GB of
RAM, just to keep doing the same things.

As a developer, targetting Linux (as a family of operating
systems) is not very easy, as they all do differ in some
way. At least there is source code to consult if problems
arise, but sometimes you're searching through header files
to find out what *foo() is today. :-)



> What drove me away from Gentoo apart from that GPL-flu was deteriorating
> quality of system tools. You install what is world in FreeBSD from
> portage in Gentoo, so when updating your portage, necessary system
> tools sometimes break.

Linux does not differentiate between "the system" and "everything
else"; even the kernel can be seen as a package on the system.
Along with different packaging systems, distributions differ
in what packages they use to make their "base system" (default
amount of installation).



For developers, FreeBSD is an EXCELLENT operating system as
it offers consistency, compatibility and interoperatbility
at a good speed ratio (won't run slower after upgrading).
The code quality and the availability of good documentation
(man pages, handbook, FAQ), even accessible LOCALLY with no
Internet connection at hand, makes it a strong partner for
DURABLE solutions in software development. A friendly and
intelligent community adds to the sum. The sum is SUPERIOR
to what I could experience in my "career".

I know this is a quite general statement and doesn't help
the OP in particular, but I thought it would be worth sharing
it. I hope it was. :-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...