Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FreeBSD As A Workstation For UNIX Newbies

Posted by timothy on from the cpu-keyboard-os-go dept.

JT writes: "OSNews features an article introducing the FreeBSD operating system to newbies and Windows users. The article describes the installation, its GUI, application base and it has some more information about Unix and *BSD in general." Since Linux (at least the varieties with cute installation routines) is often presented as the *nix beginner's best choice, it's good to see articles like this one pointing out a broader range of choices.

3 of 78 comments (clear)

  1. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    It's official. Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dead

  2. Tried running FreeBSD 4.4 TWICE recently... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    In the past 2 weeks, I have tried running FreeBSD 4.4 *twice*. The first time I installed it, I couldn't find XFree-4.1.0 in the package list, so I installed the default 3.3.6. After installation, KDE2 was giving me random errors, losing title bars, etc.

    I reformatted, installed Slackware 8. 2 days later I had a change of heart and tried FBSD 4.4 again.

    This time I found XFree-4.1.0. KDE2 ran just fine. I figured out how to change my shell from tcsh to bash (thank you chpass). I even got a kernel to compile properly (after only an hour of console-flipping between LINT and MYKERNEL)!

    And yet - recompiling the kernel killed BSD for me. Why?

    The kernel wouldn't boot. And the instructions in the FBSD handbook on how to recover from a bad kernel didn't work, because the sendmail daemon kept locking up whenever I tried to run the original generic kernel.

    The biggest reason I was recompiling my kernel was to get my Soundblaster PCI64V (ES1371) card to work so I could play my MP3's in XMMS...

    But since the FBSD bootloader is damn near impossible to configure (unlike Linux's LILO), I couldn't hack my way out of FBSD's crap.

    I've since returned to Slack8, and won't be returning to FBSD until (at the earliest) 5.0 is released late next year. Configuring the kernel is a pain in the ass, although compiling it is slightly easier than on Linux. But that doesn't matter if the fscking kernel doesn't work!!

    The ports collection is nice though - when the system runs... Although it sucks donkey balls if you're still on dialup (as I am).

  3. BSD is WINNING by WaffenSS · · Score: 0, Troll

    Hello, This my first post lol :) Anyway, i want to say that BSD will win the server martket in couple of years, maybe 7 or 10. Right now Windows is getting pounded by hackers and most likely windows will go down. Second runner up will be Linux which will be the leading market in server OS and desktop OS. You know what happens when you give people to much power and money? They get corrupted. What will most likely happen is all the linux distros like Suse and Redhat will start charging. And who knows maybe they won't linux no more, but something else. Third runner up will be *BSD. Don't you see people that this is a cycle? For now windows is winning, then linux, then bsd, then something else will come out. Who knows maybe solaris or something else.