FreeBSD Kernel Internals Documentation

Chad Perrin perrin at apotheon.com
Tue Jan 3 18:07:48 UTC 2012


On Tue, Jan 03, 2012 at 03:06:11AM +0100, Walter Alejandro Iglesias wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 02, 2012 at 12:33:20PM -0700, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > Ubuntu, actually, has thrown out the baby with the bathwater.  In its
> > zeal to make things "just work" in a particular manner, it seems
> > hell-bent on ignoring all but one way to do things, even as it tries to
> > dominate its entire market niche to the extent that it eclipses and
> > marginalizes alternatives.
> >
> 
> My two cents with other point of view:
> 
> OSs need popularity; it encourages hardware manufacturers to
> write drivers and, even better, share the source.  That makes
> the existence of Ubuntu necessary for linux and indirectly to
> freebsd.

Popularity certainly provides resources, especially in a community driven
development model.  Abandoning good sense in pursuit of popularity is
self-defeating, though; working to build popularity by drawing potential
users away from other, more technically excellent alternatives, or
working to spread the homogenous mediocrity of one approach to all the
alternatives, in no way to provide benefits to those other alternatives
like you describe.

Apologies if that sounds overly harsh as a characterization of what the
Ubuntu project is doing -- I just had trouble coming up with a friendlier
way to explain the problem with blind pursuit of popularity in this
context.  If you can formulate a friendlier version of the same message,
please pretend I said that instead.


> 
> Negate or hide obvious FreeBSD (or Linux) limitations is the
> same error than making look Ubuntu easier than it really is or
> worse, make it look like something that it definitely is not.
> New users feel fooled or betrayed, that's why some of them
> reacts complaining.  Anyway I don't feel confident enough to
> assure if this is a good or bad marketing strategy.  I remember,
> in a very bad network curse I did some years ago, a young
> classmate that after seeing for the first time the KDE desktop
> disappointed exclaimed: But, It is like Windows!

I seem to recall pointing out the very same fact -- that pretending flaws
do not exist is not productive.  Your tone here seems to be presented as
though you dispute what I said, though, which seems odd.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]


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