Nacho-BSD

[Bill Campbell]

On Sat, Jun 24, 2006, Steve Bergman wrote:
>Walter Vaughan wrote:
>>
>>Thus I wonder why all the fuss about Linux, when we have real 
>>BSD-unixen with all the work in the past few years designed around 
>>making the OS work better in a future world of multi-processing 
>>servers, rather than a *nix-like OS that really wants to be Windows2000.
>
>That's really a bit of a mischaracterization of Linux.  But I really see 
>*BSD, Linux, OpenSolaris, et. al. as being complementary to each other. 
>(And didn't FreeBSD just vow to become a W2K clone^W^W^W^Wcatch up with 
>Linux on the desktop within a year?)

I see Macs as the primary desktop system replacing Windows, not Linux,
FreeBSD, or others.  There's far more high quality commercial software
available for the Macs than for Linux, and most of the open source *NIC
software is available as well.

It's *FAR* easier for the average person to plug in a Mac and connect to a
network, wireless, or modem, hook up printers, than it is with Linux.  I
have friends who have been running Linux as their primary desk since
StarOffice 5.2 and Caldera eDesktop 2.4 were current, but I'm available to
update things, and answer problems as necessary.

Perhaps Novell will make their desktop Linux work as easily as a Mac.  I
have heard some very positive comments about the new guy in charge at
Novell ``Hovsepian is a God-send for Novell. Best things since sliced
bread!'' -- this from a friend who's very well connected in the Linux
space.

>What Linux brings to the table is momentum, name recognition, and mind 
>share.  We've been selling and supporting point of sale, manufacturing 
>accounting,  and business accounting for a long long time.  We used to 
>use SCO Open Server, but have transitioned to Linux.  The BSD's are 
>non-starters for these applications because not a one of the products we 
>sell has support for any of them.  I would wager that Linux's popularity 
>has increased *BSD's absolute mindshare.
>
>I'm quite happy with Linux, and so don't use BSD's anywhere.  Not that I 
>don't think that they are good solid OSes.

This is basically my position too.

The main advantage of Linux is the wide and rapid support of new hardware.
There's been a thread on one of the freebsd mailing lists asking where the
hardware support for it is.  There are frequent threads asking how can I
make xxx Linux run on my FreeBSD system.

I have one FreeBSD 4.8 box running here as our primary server.  It hit a
landmark yesterday, uptime 730 days/two years, and it's been up long enough
that I have some concern of its being able to boot if it does go down.

I'm going to Frys today to pick up a new main board, AMD-64, RAM, power
supply, etc. to convert a 4U box running a PII 350.  My plan is to move
everthing off the FreeBSD box to this one when it's ready, recycling the
FreeBSD box for something else.

Bill
--
INTERNET:   bill at Celestial.COM  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
URL: http://www.celestial.com/  PO Box 820; 6641 E. Mercer Way
FAX:            (206) 232-9186  Mercer Island, WA 98040-0820; (206) 236-1676

``Ah, you know the type.  They like to blame it all on the Jews or the
Blacks, 'cause if they couldn't, they'd have to wake up to the fact that
life's one big, scary, glorious, complex and ultimately unfathomable
crapshoot -- and the only reason THEY can't seem to keep up is they're a
bunch of misfits and losers.''
        -- A analysis of Neo-Nazis, from "The Badger" comic