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New FreeBSD Book Aimed At Newest Users
Chris Coleman writes: "Annelise Anderson has written a new FreeBSD book titled "FreeBSD: An Open Source Operating System for Your Personal Computer".
The book includes:
* installation CD-ROM for the entire system plus many software applications
* space requirements, screen shots, and detailed instructions for installing FreeBSD
* step-by-step instructions on configuring and running FreeBSD, connecting to the Internet, setting up an internal network, and setting up sound, X Window System (the graphical user interface), and printing." I think the raftload of available books have helped tremendously in making GNU/Linux popular, by first making it possible for non-experts to install it -- with more BSD books, perhaps the same will happen. Fame awaits you if you care to give this book a Slashdot review :)
Damn, and I blew my mod by posting. SOMEONE MOD THIS UP
It's part of being Buzzword Compliance.
In past years, the buzzwords have been:
A dingo ate my sig...
Is really here. Not to mention that ftp.freebsd.org isn't in the US of A anymore (traceroute it, no, really!). There are also the wonderful contributions of the Japanese FreeBSD users, like PAO, acpi, ... (There are tons of Japanese FreeBSD books). The list goes on.
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I just don't get the contempt some have for people who prefer the GUI.
The GUI is the single most signifigant development in computer user interfaces in the past 20 years. Sure OS's don't like using all those resources on a GUI, but for users, it turns the computer from a cryptic oracle that speaks in an arcane language to an tool that coresponds to our innate understanding of the world. "I need to stop using this file, so I will drop it on the desktop for a minute."
When I fist installed Linux, my first reaction was: "So THIS is what the hype is all about? A user interface from the 1970s? No wonder this is free, who would pay for it?" I gave up on Linux for a year and have only recently tried again, mostly unsuccessfully because the install and hardware detection routines are damn so hard to use. The contempt that experienced users have for those of us who would prefer a GUI certainly doesn't help.
While I agree that Linux GUIs aren't really the right tool for interacting with a lot of Linux's features, that is a failing of the GUIs and distributions, not a failing of the concept of a GUI.
why is it that everything has to be billed as opensource? like that's really a selling point? i mean sure, there are some people that are just looking into the opensource thing, but it makes it seem as though that's the only reason you might want to run FreeBSD. never mind the fact that it's stable, fast, and has many of the popular apps that linux does. plus it includes linux emulation so that you can run native linux apps under FreeBSD. why not have a title that shows this in addition to it's being opensource? "FreeBSD: The opensource OS for your PC that's fast, versatile, and dependable". Sounds much more catchy to me.
Well, to explain this, I can easily quote a friend of mine as saying:
"Linux is for people who hate Windows. FreeBSD is for people who like UNIX."
What this pretty much means, is that FreeBSD is popular in the role Linux was originally intended for ('nix for low-cost PCs), while Linux is touted as the big/noisy "alternative to Microsoft".
Another thing to note, is that while Linux can't technically be called a UNIX (it looks the same, but is very different inside), BSD is a real UNIX (though it can't be called one only for legal reasons).
"It's the most definitive Linux book you can buy" (Linus Torvalds).
"Absolutely superb." (Richard Stallman).
"The only book you'll ever need about Linux...heck...about UNIX!" (W. Richard Steven's widow).
I think we Americans should consider buying this book and moving to FreeBSD, because most of the FreeBSD developers are Americans. Nothing against the Finns, UKians, Russians and Germans that make up the bulk of the Linux developers, but I'm not so sure I'd want my OS of choice to be dependent on a bunch of foreigners. Sure, we're mostly friends now, but it was only a few decades ago that some of those folk were our mortal enemy. I'd feel better knowing that in a national crisis, I'd have a bunch of Californians keeping my OS developing.
Our local UUG (CUUG) ran a course where they put you step-by-step though the process of making a firewall in one evening. You just had to take the thing home and plug it into your cablemodem/hub or PC. They even made sure you had the right IP's for your local provider, being DSL or cable
Books are good, yes, but the UNIX/Linux community reaching out with projects kept simple to show the user something they can't do with Windoze is another way to clue the masses to the strenghs of other OS's.
W9x:Thanks for the make-work project Bill.
I am relatively young to the scene myself, but let's take a walk down memory lane say six years ago. Back in those days the Linux Howto's, especially the Installation Howto, were essentially Slackware Howto's. (The book I used to figure out how to install Linux was essentially the Howto's printed out.) My PC's BIOS from that era did not support booting from an ATAPI CD Rom drive. Hard drives were much smaller but the EIDE ones were coming up against a succession of limits, limits in where a kernel could be located and still be seen by a bootloader. For Linux there was a well-defined path introducing newbies: you installed and created a custom bootdisk. Linux installation instructions also told how to edit the kernel for the bootdisk floppy to change the root partition location.
From my newbie perspective, this was installation Nirvana! I didn't have to worry about LILO if I didn't want to. From the perspective of other people sharing the PC I used, other than taking up hard drive space, they didn't have to know Linux existed. And Linux could be installed in an extended partition not just a primary partition. Keep in mind that hard drives were a lot smaller then, so for dual-boot setups it was nice to be able to dedicate some more room for the Windows C: drive. And not only that but since everyone did the custom bootdisk compiling as a rite of passage, people could compile bootdisks to help others if the default floppy didn't have the right drivers.
Now from what I have read of the FreeBSD community's thoughts, they couldn't care less about such concerns. The ISP I used back then was hosted on a collection of FreeBSD boxes, abandoning a more monolothic solution with an SGI server, because the ISP's lead technical person knew how to do it. FreeBSD is more like an industrial consortium as far as the core developers go, and at least at that time there was a huge emphasis on stuff related to running ISPs. From their perspective it was laughable to devote much effort to support the most unreliable medium of all, a floppy, for custom booting a machine. And someone like an ISP wouldn't be using EIDE, they'd be using SCSI. 528MB limit, "get some real hardware, kid" I'd imagine they'd think. And they'd have their internal network and their own procedures for mass replicating setups to many machines.
Six years later I think we can see everyone got what they wanted. The Linux community developed critical mass and got wildly popular with newbies. The FreeBSD community was left alone by the newbies they didn't want to deal with.
Just when I'm down and out and nearly giving up with *nix, I find FreeBSD. I install it in half the time on my old computer that the other Linux distros took. I was running Lynx and felt like a ninja soon after. Within a day I got X running. Then I went to a bookstore to pick up a book. There's a whole shelf for Linux books. And one lonely FreeBSD book. A day later I've recompiled my kernel as well. The book is a bit too advanced for my tastes, so I should probably pick up this book and maybe a 'Basic *nix Primer' or something. But for me FreeBSD has been infinitely more valuable as a learning tool than Linux was. But really, that's just my experience. No doubt I'm in the minority, and people with more typical hardware will do better with Linux.
community and not BLOWING IT OUT YER A$$, then you'd have logged in. Linux needs new users BADLY. :)
Market share translate to influence and ATTENTION.
Because M$ has failed to implement a GUI PROPERLY does not mean GUI is bad, I personally think there is NO BETTER PLACE for a GUI done RIGHT to originate. MOB software model
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Is there some sort of competition between Red Had and *BSD?
As an amateur tinkerer with various unix flavors, I found rh5 a bit awkward to do anything with, 6.2 was considerably better. From there I went to buying the 4.1 BSD at the house of evil (aka Fry's), and found it to be the easiest *nix distribution yet.
Between the book (the whole reason for buying the package in the first place) and the install system, I found it very easy to get up and running. The management system for getting patches and updates was wonderful...
Then I got a copy of RH7.1 That has to be the slickest install package yet. Flawless install, everything works, and less interaction than even the most basic windoze install (ducking violently hurled heavy objects).
If rh keeps going this way, it could well be ready for general use in the near future.
As for the book in question, it sounds worth a read, although I won't be doing a write up on it - as you can already see, my writing sucks...
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
It's (BSD) not any harder to install than most linux distributions (save mandrake, redhat, oh, perhaps it is harder to install)...
So in essence what you're saying is that Linux is for the point-and-clicker newbies, and FreeBSD is for the intelligentsia that don't need fancy dancy pointy-clicky wizards and helpers? I get it. So the progression of knowledge should be:
>-PlayStation 2 ->-Windows 98 ->-Linux ->- Windows 2000 ->-GEM (Atari ST) ->-BSD.
;-) Seriously though user friendliness is one of those hilarious multi-headed hydras: When you don't have it you can disparage it as being for idiots and dullards, but once you have it it's a wonderful feature.
On a few levels I quite agree with you. The real problem with the whole concept of "user friendliness" is just that, the *user* part. What comes to mind is the SWAT (SAMBA ) interface. It's pretty decent, covering all the essentials that an experienced user might wish to quickly check/alter. The problem is that an unexperienced user would have no idea about most of the settings . Does that mean that this UI is crap? I don't think so. The real solution is to correctly target your audience with the right level of "help". Don't forget, SWAT (and most *nix apps - correct?) allow for editing the config file with a text editor for all that advanced stuff anyway..
So back to BSD - heck any *nix; the level of computer education is the real problem. Grandma probably shouldn't be using *BSD, and CompSci grads probably should't be using Windows.
Oh wait this is /. the birthplace of self importance.
Most of the 'into' *nixish books assume a general command line background, if even DOS. Many of the younger geeks have not been exposed to DOS or a command line in general.
But- can you REALLY consider yourself a computer geek if you've never had regular exposure to the command line in some form? Last I checked, the more *geeky* the operating system the more available the command line.
Ah well, anything to help a quality OS become more popular and gain "market" must be a good thing.
I've always said that one of the biggest problems with the BSD/Linux community was the high level-of-entry that was required. I mean, just to start into a text-only operating system is intimidating enough, but trying to decode cryptic interfaces and even more cryptic man pages is often too much for John Q Computer User.
I dunno. BSD has been around for a LONG TIME. In many ways, no offense, I am using a linux box to type this, it is a superior OS to linux (not to say that linux doesn't beat it in other areas). It's not any harder to install than most linux distributions (save mandrake, redhat, oh, perhaps it is harder to install), but I think that what makes Linux more popular is a face recognition and the loud mouths of its user (again, nothing wrong with that). BSD has been popular in academic circles for AGES, but you hardly ever hear someone who's never touched unix say "hrmm, maybe I'll try BSD." Whereas you hear plenty of windows users either slamming linux, in an uninformed manner, or saying "gosh, maybe I'll try that, often in an equally uninformed manner." BSD is a great OS, but I don't think that a lack of documentation is the reason linux has "more popularity (if it does)." I just think that it's more advertised.
I think this is just what the general public needs. Most of the 'into' *nixish books assume a general command line background, if even DOS. Many of the younger geeks have not been exposed to DOS or a command line in general. If there is a book they can read through and gather background knowledge, in easy to understand format, that will be at help to them, at least.
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- I am primarily a Windows user (and Windows support tech,) but want to get more involved with the alternative OSs, especially because of Windows XP. (I already installed Mandrake 8.0, but I don't want to be permanently GUI handicapped)
- I don't have an enormous pipe to download applications. I can only get 28.8 where I live
- When people say 'RTFM' I actually have something to refer to
- It's too time consuming to look up all kinds of documentation online. I know it exists, but downloading it, finding what I want, printing it, etc is annoying. I don't have another box to use while setting up BSD.
- It essentially centralises everything, and I can even learn things without my box at hand because I can just sit down with the book
It's this kind of thing that might lasso in users who otherwise have too little time/patience to break out of the windows mold.
I count six buzzwords in there out of a total of only 12 words.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
NewbieSpaz wrote:
;)
>
> BSD is NOT dying!
Mr. Praline : 'Ello. I wish to register a complaint.
(The owner has his back to the register and does not respond.)
Mr. Praline : 'Ello, Miss?
Owner : (turning around, very angry) What do you mean, "miss"?
Mr. Praline : I'm sorry, I have a cold.
(The owner nods, understanding.)
Mr. Praline : I wish to make a complaint!
Owner : (hurriedly) Sorry, we're closin' for lunch...!
Mr. Praline : Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this OS, what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
Owner : Oh yes, the, ah, the FreeBSD... What's, ah... W-what's wrong with it?
Mr. Praline : I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it.
Owner : No, no, 'e's ah... he's resting.
Mr. Praline : Look, matey, I know a dead OS when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Owner : No no, h-he's not dead, he's, he's restin'!
Mr. Praline : Restin'?
Owner : Y-yeah, restin.' Remarkable OS, the FreeBSD, isn't it, eh? Beautiful command line!
Mr. Praline : The command line don't enter into it. It's stone dead!
Owner : Nononono, no, no! 'E's resting!
Mr. Praline : All right then, if he's resting, I'll wake him up!
(shouting at the system tower)
'Ello, Demon! Mister Demon OS! I've got a lovely fresh OC-3 for you if you wake up, Mr. Demon OS...
(owner hits the monitor)
Owner : There, he moved!
Mr. Praline : No, he didn't, that was you pushing the monitor!
Owner : I never!!
Mr. Praline : Yes, you did!
Owner : I never, never....
(He pulls the hard disk out of the box and screams into it.)
Mr. Praline : 'ELLO DEEEEEEMMMOOONN BEEE-ESSSSS-DEEEEE! DEMON OS! WAKE UP!
(He bangs the disk against the store counter, horribly hard.)
TESTIIIING! TESTIIIING! THIS IS YOUR NINE-O' CLOCK ALARM CALL!
(He does it again, harder.)
BEEE-ESSSSS-DEEEEE!
(He tosses it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor. Longish pause.)
Now that's what I call a dead OS.
Owner : No, no.... No, he's stunned.
Mr. Praline : STUNNED?
Owner : Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin' up! FreeBSDs stun easily, major.
Mr. Praline : Look my lad, I've had just about enough of this. That OS is definitely deceased, and when I bought it not half an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of market share was due to it being tired and shagged out after a long download.
Owner : Well, he's... he's, ah... probably pining for the fjords.
(Praline looks angrily back and forth, stuttering.)
Mr. Praline : PININ' for the FJORDS? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got 'im home?
Owner : The FreeBSD prefers kippin' on its back! Remarkable OS, isn't it, guv, eh? Lovely command line!
Mr. Praline : (coldly) Look, I took the liberty of examining that OS when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on the hard disk in the first place was that it had been WRITE PROTECTED there.
(pause)
Owner : Well, of course it was write protected there! If I hadn't write protected that OS down, it would have nuzzled up to the ethernet card, hacked its way out with its little trident, and VOOM!
Mr. Praline : "VOOM?"
(Praline puts the system down and take the hard disk into his hands.)
Mr. Praline : Look matey, this OS wouldn't "voom" if you put four thousand volts through it! It's bleedin' demised!
Owner : It's not! I-It's pining!
Mr. Praline : It's not pinin,' it's passed on! This OS is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to meet its maker! This is a late OS! It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn't write protected him to the disk he would be pushing up the daisies! Its active processes are of interest only to historians! It's hopped the twig! It's shuffled off this mortal coil! It's run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This.... is an EX-OS!
(pause)
Owner : Well, I'd better replace it, then.
-------------
Sorry folks. Couldn't resist!
Hey, your writing doesn't suck. I'd rather have a plain-ish, appeal to everyone type review than the flaimbait Katz writes or the unforgivable academic speak that Jamie is so fond of. Can we say English major?
So, sadly, marketing and buzz will allow a less technologically elegant OS (Linux) to trump a better one, FreeBSD.
I have found FreeBSD to be far more straightforward than the Linux distros I've dealt with.
Will you shut up already! Geesh, you're gonna have all these Linux folks blocking up the FreeBSD servers if you keep talking like that. Where the heck are you going to cvsup from if the entirety of the Linux community starts in on it. Think man!
Ummm, woohoo, uh, Redhat, Mandrake, Debian, Yay! Root root, hip hip, and all that. Nothing to see here, move along.
The line must be drawn here. This far. No further.