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New Commercial Word Processor For FreeBSD

martin-k writes "There is commercial software built for FreeBSD after all... SoftMaker, a German vendor of office apps, just ported the TextMaker word processor to FreeBSD, making this the fifth platform it runs on (after Windows, Pocket PC, Handheld PC, and Linux). Blazingly fast, reads and writes Microsoft Word files seamlessly, and offers everything you expect from a modern word processor. Also coming to your desktop: the PlanMaker spreadsheet and DataMaker database package."

116 comments

  1. Whee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If I don't have FP I'll suck Darl McBrides shriveled cock!

    1. Re:Whee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, baby, suck it hard!

  2. All yo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Better sell off your Microsoft Word shares, this thing is gonna be huge.

    1. Re:All yo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Better sell off your FP shares because YOU FAIL IT!!
      HAHAHA NIGGER!

    2. Re:All yo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am not really a nigger, I just wanna be one.
      Otherwise I am a kid in an above-average income suburban community in Boston running Windows XP.
      And I wasn't aiming for FP anyway.

  3. More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 2, Informative
    TextMaker started out under Windows, got ported to Pocket PCs, Handheld PCs, Linux and now to FreeBSD.

    Just for kicks, we did an x86 Solaris port in an afternoon. I guess we'll do a few more Unices -- except for Unixware, of course.

    1. Re:More platforms to come... by Sevn · · Score: 1

      Do you guys have anything Visio compatible? That would be a "killer app" for *NIX right now. Right now for Visio, the options are vmware with MS and Visio, CxOffice with Visio, or some serious winex breakdancing to get Visio working.

      --
      For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
    2. Re:More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1
      Do you guys have anything Visio compatible?

      Not yet. We have the building blocks (we just completed a complete AutoShapes drawing layer for TextMaker and PlanMaker), but we need to build a user interface and a significant symbol library around it.

    3. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *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 fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

      You don't need to be a Kreskin [amazingkreskin.com] 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. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

      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

    4. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I gotta ask....what is your 'value' when you have:

      Wordperfect
      Abiword (small footprint)
      K-word (or whatever the KDE word processor is called. Larger footprint then Abiword so I don't use it)
      The LaTex processor (lynx?)
      And for the Microsoft like feeling of bloat - OpenOffice.org
      Various versions of Microsoft office via WINE

    5. Re:More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1
      Sure...

      - Wordperfect isn't being developed anymore, and the WINE port they did was not really well-received, to put it mildly.

      - Abiword and Kword don't have enough features to make them viable for the office, and they don't provide good Word file compatibility.

      - LaTex is great for those that know how to use it, but your typical non-tech person won't grok it.

      - OpenOffice is too bloated for my taste.

      - What's the point in running Linux when you use MS Office through WINE? It will be slow, resource-hungry and is cost-prohibitive.

      The main points that TextMaker has going are:

      - Fast (should launch in one or two seconds on most machines) and compact (if your WM is fast enough on your machine, so will be TextMaker).

      - TextMaker provides solid MS Word compatibility, in quite a few cases better than OpenOffice or StarOffice.

      - TextMaker is multi-platform: Runs on FreeBSD, Linux, Windows, Pocket PCs, Handheld PCs and soon Palm OS 5.

      - Usability, usability, usability: Everything is where you expect it to be. Clean user interface, clean dialog box design. Text frames, picture frames etc. are shockingly easy to use. Mail-merge is a snap.

      Get the trial version of TextMaker if you think this is just marktin' speak...

    6. Re:More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1

      BTW, here is a good comparison of TextMaker and a bunch of other word processors.

    7. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      BSD you grow in the ghetto, living second rate
      And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate.
      The places you play and where you stay
      Looks like one great big alley way.
      You'll admire all the numberbook takers,
      Thugs, BSD pimps and pushers, and the big money makers.

    8. Re:More platforms to come... by nitehorse · · Score: 1

      It looks like you guys are using a statically-linked set of Qt and KDE libraries from the KDE2 days. Is this true?

    9. Re:More platforms to come... by jjgm · · Score: 1

      Uh-huh. Currently, Textmaker's asking me to spew a tarball into /opt or wherever.

      How about integrating with the OS packaging system? It's the first concern in my mind when I think about supporting this across multiple desktops along with all the other apps we support.

      J

    10. Re:More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1

      No. It "looks" like a Qt app, but everything is homegrown.

    11. Re:More platforms to come... by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      What's so difficult about it? Everything is in one directory. Untar it to wherever you want. It just works. If you don't like /opt, untar it to your home directory. Wherever. Geez.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    12. Re:More platforms to come... by outZider · · Score: 1

      With such an interesting assortment of platforms, do you have any intention of porting to Mac OS X or BeOS?

      --
      - oZ
      // i am here.
    13. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > except for Unixware, of course.

      Why? Because of some political bullshit? Go
      away loser GPL fanboy.

    14. Re:More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1
      Mac OS X is on my personal wishlist, but if we decide to do it, we'd probably start out with an X11 version running under Mac OS X.

      For BeOS, amount of work vs. userbase is not really attractive (FreeBSD was one changed line in the source code).

    15. Re:More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1

      No, I simply try to avoid doing business with litigious people.

    16. Re:More platforms to come... by jjgm · · Score: 1

      *bzzt*. The keyword was "packaging system".

      You obviously don't maintain 250 systems. I do.

    17. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, that's a bad comparison.

      The review of OO.org on the given website was pretty horrible. For instance, I've been using OO.org for 1.5 years now and my fonts are sharp and anti-aliased. I just used the spadmin command to add in TTF fonts. This is one of the reasons I really liked switching to Linux (having upgraded from win9x)-- the super sharp anti-aliasing for free.

      I also have to mention that OO.org 1.1 loads quite quickly and my wife recently complete creating a 100-slide presentation that she saved as a powerpoint and reviewed in powerpoint at her office with not a whole lot to adjust.

      If there are recognized issues, fine, but to dismiss the package based on this short-shrift spewing is all too typical with the easy-for-the-lazy-and-ignorant-to-publish nature of the Internet.

    18. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you're not planning a port to SCO because of political
      reasons and not because nobody actually uses it?

      All 5 users of UnixWare won't be happy... but then again
      UnixWare does have Linux compatibility, right? Guess
      they have no reason to be mad afterall then, other than
      they're using SCO.

    19. Re:More platforms to come... by Wolfrider · · Score: 1

      --So install it on ONE, and export with NFS... Unless your 250 aren't networked together.

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    20. Re:More platforms to come... by outZider · · Score: 1

      True -- but there is an X11 server for Be. Compiling on a BeOS target with X11 and BONE installed would theoretically be trivial.

      --
      - oZ
      // i am here.
    21. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instead of raw LaTeX, try LyX, http://www.lyx.org a ``What You See Is What You Mean'' Document Processor.

      William
      (who thinks LyX is one of the most innovative opensource projects ever)

    22. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That was the one I was thinking of. Thanks for the mental reminder.

      (I used it 5+ years ago...left it for Wordperfect for Linux, then left that for AbiWord.)

    23. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fantastic. Looking forward to the Mac OS X version... X11 initially would be just fine... particularly with Panther.

      Thanks for the good work.

    24. Re:More platforms to come... by chenwah · · Score: 1

      Just out of curiosity, can you show us the line 8-)

      - flip

    25. Re:More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1
      It's the beep function which had to be #ifdef'd. If you count the matching #endif, that would be two lines...

      #if !defined(DWFREEBSD) && !defined(DWSOLARIS)
      fd = open("/dev/tty10", O_RDONLY);
      if (fd == -1) return(FALSE);
      ioctl(fd, KDMKTONE, (DUR << 16) + (1193180 / frq));
      #endif

    26. Re:More platforms to come... by jjgm · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you would care to make some more sweeping assumptions about my computing environment.

      We don't run NFS; it's too old, creaking and trusting. We have 20 sites over five continents, and we have laptops. There are many other packages routinely installed and maintained. Special cases make my job, and my team's job, much harder.

    27. Re:More platforms to come... by Wolfrider · · Score: 1

      (sympathy) Ah. Well, then. (/me shuts up)

      HAND.

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    28. Re:More platforms to come... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Darl here-

      This was stolen from SCO unix - you owe us $699 per copy you sell, and $2 Billion up front. The letter from our lawyers is in the mail.

      -Darl

    29. Re:More platforms to come... by ozuma · · Score: 1

      I tried to display a Japanese document with using Japanese fonts, but I can't.(Mojibake occurred.)

      OpenOffice.org has a project of l10n and i18n. Does TextMaker have a framework of i18n?

    30. Re:More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1

      TextMaker doesn't do Unicode yet. This is planned for a future release. Currently, we only do one-byte character sets with left-to-right writing.

    31. Re: More platforms to come... by skidmarx · · Score: 1

      Since you mentioned porting, would you give any consideration to doing a port for OS/2 using the Odin libraries ?

      Odin is the OS/2 analog to WINE for Linux.

      There's a company out of Germany, InnoTek, using the Odin technology to port applications to OS/2. So far they have done:

      ~ VPC for OS/2
      ~ Adobe Reader 4
      ~ Java 1.4.2

      And they are working on OpenOffice 1.1 for OS/2.

      Gregory L. Marx

      --
      The only thing that Microsoft could make that wouldn't suck is a vacuum cleaner ...
    32. Re: More platforms to come... by martin-k · · Score: 1
      We had a nearly-finished OS/2 version of TextMaker in 1996, but since then, interest in OS/2 software has declined so much that we never completed it, let alone release it.

      If and when we do ports, we'll never again use emulation libraries. We used Micrografx Mirrors to port DataMaker to OS/2 in 1995/1996, and I never want to experience such a nightmare again.

      How far along is OpenOffice for OS/2?

  4. The *BSD Wailing Song by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The *BSD Wailing Song

    What's left for me to see
    In my ship I sailed so far
    What can the answer be
    Don't know what the questions are.
    And after all I've done
    Still I cannot feel the sun
    Tell me save me
    In the end our lost souls must repent.
    I must know it is for certain
    Can it be the final curtain
    As long as the wind will blow
    I'll be searching high and low.
    Who knows what's really true
    They say the end is so near
    Why are we all so cruel
    We just fill ourselves with fear.
    And heaven and hell will turn
    All that we love shall burn
    Hear me trust me
    In the end our lost sould must repent.
    I must know it is for certain
    Can it be the final curtain
    As long as the wind will blow
    I'll be searching high and low
    Final curtain
    Final curtain

  5. haiku by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    flask of ripe urine
    pressed to bsd lips
    bsd drink up

  6. Shit on me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    SHIT ON ME! It's official - Netcraft has fucking confirmed: *BSD is dying

    Yet another cunting bombshell hit the "community" of *BSD asswipes when IDC recently confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of one single puny fucking percent of all servers. Coming hot on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more fucking market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is ingesting itself backwards, disappearing up its very own shitter, as fittingly exemplified by coming a piss poor dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a cock-sucking 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 fucking future at all for *BSD because that sorded, shit-filled, mutated testicle of an operating system is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink splashes across the accounting documents like a series of exploding bloodfarts. FreeBSD munches the most ass of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD cuntwipes Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying and its rotting corpse smells worse than a maggot, vomit, shit and piss cocktail.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the fucking numbers, shall we? OK!

    OpenBSD wanker Theo states that there are a pathetic 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Oh, God, let's fucking see... The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore it's turd-suckingly obvious that 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, by simple fucking arithmetic, there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. Surprise fucking surprise, this is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of those arseholes at Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD showed themselves to be a bunch of retarded tossers, went out of business and were taken over by BSDI who sell another special needs OS. Now BSDI is also a miserable failure, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house... pathetic.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily fucking declined in market share. *BSD is where it belongs, at death's door and its long term survival prospects are almost non-fucking-existant. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among moronic, dilettante shitheads. *BSD continues to Chew Satan's Dick And Fuck The Baby Jesus Up The Pooper. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD IS A FUCKING USELESS WASTE OF BITS AND IS DYING LIKE THE DOG THAT IT IS. IT MAKES ME SICK JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.

  7. Nice surprise by __past__ · · Score: 1
    It's nice to hear that, however, I'm mildly surprised. There was a poll at bsdforums IIRC that asked whether people would be willing to pay for it - the vast majority (including me) seemed to see no real need for it. There are already various free office suites that work quite well, and if anybody would need TextMaker, they could simply run the linux version - works fine for lots of other apps, from acrobat reader to a complete Lisp IDE including native-code compiler (generating Linux binaries, of course), debugger and profiler I happen to use with FreeBSDs Linux compatibility.

    In other words, while I'm always happy to see my platform of choice supported, I wouldn't expect any significant commercial gain for SoftMaker. Most people won't be interested in a proprietary office suite - just as with Linux people, but the FreeBSD desktop market is obviously a lot smaller than even the Linux one - and others would have bought it anyway, even without a native port.

    (Of course, if they would be hiring, I would be much more enthusiastic ;-)
    (As I would if this story wouldn't be about TextMaker, but VMWare, which is the only proprietary program that I really, really miss.)

    1. Re:Nice surprise by martin-k · · Score: 1
      I wouldn't expect any significant commercial gain for SoftMaker.

      It got us posted on Slashdot...

    2. Re:Nice surprise by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      According to SoftMaker, all that was involved was a recompile. So it cost them extremely little to support FreeBSD.

      I've used the demo TextMaker, and frankly it's awesome. Blazingly fast, does everything I need a WP for, and even handles some Word docs that OO can't format correctly. I'm certainly considering a purchase.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    3. Re:Nice surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Failure of *BSD

      Of course we can all agree that BSD is a failure, but why did BSD fail Once you get past the fact that BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know BSD keeps losing market share but why Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players Or is it larger than their troubled personalities
      The record is clear on one thing no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for BSD.

    4. Re:Nice surprise by __past__ · · Score: 2, Interesting
      According to SoftMaker, all that was involved was a recompile. So it cost them extremely little to support FreeBSD.
      As far as I understand, their main problem wasn't about porting, but about supporting another OS. I have little idea about what kind of framework they use, so I don't know how platform-independent their code really is, but it certainly has at least some potential to make support more complicated.

      It would be really great if SoftMaker - or other company that made the same step, like Opera - would follow up with some data, like how many units they sold, how it affected their support expenses, etc. I can see why they wouldn't, but I would certainly be most interested in it.

      I've used the demo TextMaker, and frankly it's awesome. [...] I'm certainly considering a purchase.
      Well, more power to you, and SoftMaker for that matter. I don't want to be misunderstood: I think this is great - as a FreeBSD user and supporter I love these kinds of thing, and SoftMaker certainly gained some Geek credit points with it. I'm just surprised given the mostly negative feedback before. (And while I do not consider a purchase at all, simply because I can't even remember using an Office suite the last time, let alone for something OOo (which sucks more on FreeBSD than elsewhere, probably due to Sun's idea of portability - "any platform, as long as it's Windows, Solaris or Red Hat") or Gnome-Office wasn't sufficient, I realize that I'm simply not their target audience)

      If this works, great. If it doesn't, we'll have a disgruntled commercial vendor and potentially (if they withdraw the offer) disgruntled end users. I'd hate this to happen because of unjustified expectations on either side.

    5. Re:Nice surprise by pknoll · · Score: 1
      I run the Linux version of VMWare on FreeBSD. Works fine. Networking is a little trickier, but you can do both host-only and bridged.

      Granted, I'm using version 2.0.4, and don't know whether or not Workstation 4 would run or not.

    6. Re:Nice surprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a long time (8 yr) FreeBSD user, I am actually really excited to hear about this. OO is much too bloated for my tastes as well and I don't care much for abiword, Kword, or much of anything else that I've seen so far. I frequently write most of my documents in Word, or on Fbsd I'll use vim (I have yet to break down and bother with xemacs, just habit really). Hearing that there may be a more light-weight and feature-full word processor for fbsd natively is actually good news. I'll be checking out the demo and if I'm satisfied I would be more than happy to purchase it. I think there are plenty folks like me as well.. just because there are free alternatives doesn't make the offering any less attractive in my book.

    7. Re:Nice surprise by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 1

      According to SoftMaker, all that was involved was a recompile. So it cost them extremely little to support FreeBSD.

      To be honest, this statements bugs me. Even if all they did do is recompile, and if it worked (a recompile is not sufficient in all cases, they're pretty lucky) that just solves the coding aspect of the app.

      Other major aspects:
      Packaging.
      Documentation.
      Testing.

      Of those 3, packaging is sure to be done, since they can't really ship without it being installable. Documentation, well, for the most part they can use the warmed over Linux docs (with maybe some errata on installation and printing) and users should be fine. What I'd be worried about is if they did a full QA run on it. Becaue it works on Linux doesn't mean it's just going to work on FreeBSD, and I hope I'm correct in assuming they did do a QA run, just didn't mention it.

    8. Re:Nice surprise by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      There's some evidence that they did do some significant QA on the FreeBSD build. The product first came to my attention because someone was beta testing it. It wasn't just built and thrown out there.

      Packaging is simple. At least with the demo, you just untar it somewhere and it's ready to run. Since everything is statically linked but xlib and libc, so there are no installation issues.

      The documentation covers Linux *AND* FreeBSD, since there are no functional disimilarities in the products. Printing is identical (lp or gv or add your own command).

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    9. Re:Nice surprise by Felis+Rex · · Score: 1

      Hey, this software is genuinely a pleasant surprise. I am so impressed that I'm going to buy it. And in the last three years, I have only bought three programs, all of them games. Sure, I have OOo installed under FreeBSD. It works very well for my needs so far. But TextMaker is not only very impressive software, it's a great price, and I want to encourage this behavior. How can I lose by purchasing it? I get a surprisingly good word processor, and I show other companies that, yes, FreeBSD is a platform worth supporting. I win both ways. And at the same price as my last game purchase! Just waiting on the next paycheck.

      --
      "it's only after disaster that you can be born resurected" - My friend Dave
  8. Productivity Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you BSD fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this BSD box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
    In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Emacs Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.

    I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various BSD machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a BSD box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the BSD machines faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 800 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that BSD is a "superior" machine.

    BSD addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a BSD over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.

    1. Re:Productivity Problems by judmarc · · Score: 2, Funny

      I've recompiled and reinstalled the *entire OS* in 20 minutes. (1.5MHz machine.)

      Sure there isn't something you're doing wrong?

    2. Re:Productivity Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      If you got a 20 minute compile on a 1.5MHz box, I'd say there's something you're doing extraordinarily right.

      Care to share?

    3. Re:Productivity Problems by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Hmmm, takes me 18 minutes on a 2.8GHz machine. You using a ramdisk or something?

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    4. Re:Productivity Problems by evilviper · · Score: 1
      takes me 18 minutes on a 2.8GHz machine.

      There's a huge difference between the MHz rating for an AMD processor, and a Pentium 4 processor. If he's talking about an XP chip, that would put his 1.5GHz a lot closer to your 2.8GHz than you might think.

      Then there's the issue of how much memory you have, how fast your disks are, etc.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    5. Re:Productivity Problems by TheLink · · Score: 1

      Hmm, What O/S and version is that?

      I got a CPU 1000 times faster than 1.5MHz and recompiling and reinstalling FreeBSD takes longer than 20 minutes. While one could think the HDDs are a bottleneck the disk I/O stats don't seem to indicate so.

      --
    6. Re:Productivity Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I used to believe that the justice system was just at one time, but justice has fallen in the streets,it has been destroyed by the socialists with the help of the disinterested pubs; it is a sad day indeed now that mothers kill their children before they are born and now plan to kill the old , sick, hurt, and otherwise innocent people who can not protect themselves.

      I'm glad that Jesus Christ is coming to rule and reign over the whole earth from the hills of Zion, the evil liberals and atheists will be sent to their own place because of the evil they do and the blood they cause to be shed.And the sad thing is that it is their own choice. They should listen to the small still voice of their consciences and not deny the creator God Jesus Christ, who loved us and gave Himself for our iniquities.

    7. Re:Productivity Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Care to share?

      I didn't know you did drugs.

    8. Re:Productivity Problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have a 2.1 *GHz* machine and it takes me almost half an hour (5.x-current)!

      More seriously, is that -stable or -current? All of my 4.x boxen are old and slow, a make world on a more modern machine might actually be that fast.

    9. Re:Productivity Problems by judmarc · · Score: 1

      Yes, 1.5GHz was what I meant to say.

      The 20 minute times were for -STABLE. -CURRENT takes a lot longer.

  9. Nice troll. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Deserves to be modded "-1 Retarded".

    BSD has never been stronger. It's a very attractive OS for those who can see past the community's Stockholm Syndrome infatuation with Linux.

    Linux is certainly not perfect - nor is FreeBSD - but each have advantages over the other. If you're running an OS to get work done, you're going to be more productive (and productive sooner) on FreeBSD than Linux.

  10. FreeBSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. Almost everyone knows that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing 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 hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  11. Infringement? by agent+dero · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Maybe I am unclear on the copyright infringement thing and everything, but doesn't this conflict with MS in some way?!

    I mean, Open Office is freeware (also works on FreeBSD) but they're selling something like this with Word capabilities? I smell trouble...or maybe it's just me ;-)

    BTW, I am not a fan of commercial apps for OSS platforms, seems contradicting somehow

    --
    Error 407 - No creative sig found
    1. Re:Infringement? by evilviper · · Score: 2, Funny
      I am not a fan of commercial apps for OSS platforms, seems contradicting somehow

      You've listened to RMS' ranting too much.
      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    2. Re:Infringement? by thanjee · · Score: 1

      In what way is it infringing?

      the .doc format is now an open xml format (with optional digital signing if you want the security), so any wordprocessor can have the ability to import a .doc file (the xml kind).

      Microsofts reasoning behind this move: If .doc becomes the standard format for all documents (on all wordprocessors, despite their OS), then Microsoft Word by default becomes the defacto standard for all documents.

      The question then becomes, who will be able to outdo Microsoft in working with the .doc format given they have a 10 year head start?

      --
      Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
    3. Re:Infringement? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, it's just your upper lip.

  12. the price is weird though by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (I don't need it right now, but surely, it's nice to have.)
    Anyways...Why is it more expensive for Europeans? not only it's more costly.. the price is in Pounds, when most Europeans would pay in Euros !!

    1. Re:the price is weird though by martin-k · · Score: 1
      The symbol that looks like a C= is the Euro sign, not the pound sign... :-)

      TextMaker costs either EUR 49.95 or US$49.95.

  13. Words to use in *BSD program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Here are the words to use in the BSD word processor program:

    dead, kaput, corpse, cadaver, zombie, deceased, bought the farm, kicked the bucket, stick a fork in it its done, time for a funeral.

    I, for one, look forward to using it to write CSI: Miami scripts and obituaries for the local newspaper, and fan letters for the Jack Klugman "Quincy" fan club.

  14. Best machine to run *BSD on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Click here to see the most appropriate case mod for a *BSD system.

    If you can also print out your word processor documents on mummy-wraps, you've got it made.

    Start by calling HP and asking for the special *BSD-compatible inkjet printer that shoots out embalming fluid instead of ink.

  15. I for one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    would like to welcome our dead operating system overlords.

  16. Visio, the killer app for *NIX? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    1. Re:Visio, the killer app for *NIX? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but only faggots and women use macs.

    2. Re:Visio, the killer app for *NIX? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      MacOS Ex is not unix. It is the same shitty microkernel with some bsd utilities copied over. I have some gnu unix-utils on my Windows 2000 machine, is it unix now? No.

    3. Re:Visio, the killer app for *NIX? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, but only faggots and women use macs.

      Just like soccer.

  17. DEAD OPERATING SYSTEM SKETCH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cast:
    Mr. Praline: John Cleese
    Shop Owner: Michael Palin

    A customer enters an operating system shop.

    Mr. Praline: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint. (The owner does not respond.)
    Mr. Praline: 'Ello, Miss?
    Owner: What do you mean "miss"?
    Mr. Praline: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
    Owner: We're closin' for lunch.
    Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this operating system what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
    Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, *BSD...What's,uh...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, it's uh,...it's resting.
    Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead operating system when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
    Owner: No no it's not dead, it's, it's restin'! Remarkable OS, *BSD, idn'it, ay? Beautiful kernel!
    Mr. Praline: The kernel don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
    Owner: Nononono, no, no! It's resting!
    Mr. Praline: All right then, if it's restin', I'll wake it up! (bashes at the keyboard) 'Ello, Mister *BSD! I've got a lovely fresh kernel update for you if you show...

    (owner hits the keys)

    Owner: There, it spewed some debug output to the command line!
    Mr. Praline: No, it didn't, that was you hitting the keys!
    Owner: I never!!
    Mr. Praline: Yes, you did!
    Owner: I never, never did anything...
    Mr. Praline: (yelling and typing into the console repeatedly) 'ELLO COMMAND PROMPT!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock cron job!

    (Rips out hard drive from computer case and thumps it on the counter. Shoves it back inside the case and reboots the system - blank screen.)

    Mr. Praline: Now that's what I call a dead operating system.
    Owner: No, no.....No, it's stunned!
    Mr. Praline: STUNNED?!?
    Owner: Yeah! You stunned it, just as it was finishing an I/O task! *BSD stuns easily, major.
    Mr. Praline: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely 'ad enough of this. That operating system is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of responsiveness was due to it bein' in the process of recompiling itself after a particularly comprehensive code update.
    Owner: Well, it's...it's, ah...probably pining for some dilettante dabbling.
    Mr. Praline: PININ' for some DILETTANTE DABBLING?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its back the moment I started Emacs?
    Owner: *BSD prefers swapping everything out to the hard drive! Remarkable variant, id'nit, squire? Lovely kernel!
    Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining the system when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been printing any text at all to the screen was because of all the WORRYING COMPILER WARNINGS encountered while it was being rebuilt.

    (pause)

    Owner: Well, o'course it was spitting out those warnings! If I hadn't updated the kernel with an unstable development build, you might have had your FTP server compromised [slashdot.org], and VOOM! Bye bye to your business.
    Mr. Praline: "Server"?!? Mate, this OS wouldn't "serve" if you put four million volts through it! It's bleedin' demised!
    Owner: No no! 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! [lemis.com] It's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! It's kicked the bucket, it's shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin' choir invisibile!! The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting

  18. Regarding Textmaker by thanjee · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Has anyone here actually tried Textmaker? If it delivers what the web site states, then it is probably worth paying for. They have a free 30 day trial version which I am currently downloading. If I like it and think it will do a better job than the other software I am currently using then I will pay for it. If not, well hey, it is just fun trying new stuff out.

    --
    Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
    1. Re:Regarding Textmaker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I tried it

      its one of the most terrible packages I've ever used - it often corrupts your files and one time while I was writing a 20 page report, it lost my ENTIRE DOCUMENT

      not to mention the fact that its slow, bloated, ugly, and is just a PAIN to use

    2. Re:Regarding Textmaker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yah, right. Pass the crack pipe, brother.

    3. Re:Regarding Textmaker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah, how dare I criticize shitty software..

    4. Re:Regarding Textmaker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I found it not slow but .doc importing was really, really bad bad bad..complicated docs get so mixed up
      that its not even clear where they are about.
      For now stick to Abiword or OpenOffice if you use a mixed env. else Texmaker might be a good alternative.

    5. Re:Regarding Textmaker by martin-k · · Score: 1

      If you have a .doc file that gets imported incorrectly, you might want to send it to support@softmaker.de for inspection. We are always improving the filters, and many of the improvements are based on user feedback.

  19. 10 Tips for Word Processing when using *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1. You can not play games on it.
    2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
    3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
    4. There is no support available for it.
    5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
    6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
    7. You have to compile everything and know C.
    8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
    9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
    10.It is dying.

    1. Re:10 Tips for Word Processing when using *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Time to feed the trolls:
      1. Sure you can.
      2. My mother-in-law uses it. She's a grandma.
      3. Wow, I _thought_ I was using a GUI (xfree86 with fluxbox. Been through kde, gnome, enlightenment, windowmaker, etc)
      4. There's this site called freebsd.org with mailing lists and documentation.
      5. Name an OS that isn't.
      6. Whoa. Crack overload.
      7. Ports tree. Very very easy to install and update.
      8. Not so much anymore. It's still got issues, and this may be your only valid point but it also applies to GNU/Linux.
      9. You really have no clue. Linux emulation anyone?
      10. Whatever you say.

  20. Different POVs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    - Abiword and Kword don't have enough features to make them viable for the office, and they don't provide good Word file compatibility.

    When I pimp Open Source in offices and hear 'I want word' I show Abiword. The response is 'ok, I can try that, it looks like word'. The 70 users in 3 locations using Abiword have not come back and said 'I'm missing this from word.'.

    $0 is a powerful modivational tool. Alas, you are not 'at the bottom'. But, if Abiword 'fails' I'll offer up TextMaker. (also, contact the freebsd team and have textmaker put into ports.)

  21. Portability: What commercial unix software needs by harikiri · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The better the codebase is, and if indeed it is so portable a simple ./configure ; make install will suffice, the more platforms software "X" will run on. For commercial software, this means that they don't have to bend over backwards for a slight increase in marketshare by offering a commercial (if unsupported) piece of software for the more esoteric UNIX platforms out there.

    Ie, if you were a company that created a word processor built on C/C++, and you had made an effort to use appropriate configure scripts on Unix to assist in creating builds, by putting a small amount of time in to enable the code to build on esoteric-platform-1, and it worked, you suddenly have an entirely new (if small) market to sell your product to.

    However, if your application sucks, nobody is going to buy it. But if you sold each application with a license that enabled *any* platform (ie, pay $49 and download program for windows/linux/bsd), and not having to pay for a copy of the linux vs bsd version, woo.. happy endusers.

    I dunno what I'm saying at this point, just rambling. :-)

    --
    Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
  22. Hard Times for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personas?

    The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

  23. I typed this using TextMaker! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Elegy For *BSD


    I am a *BSD user
    and I try hard to be brave
    That is a tall order
    *BSD's foot is in the grave.

    I tap at my toy keyboard
    and whistle a happy tune
    but keeping happy's so hard,
    *BSD died so soon.

    Each day I wake and softly sob
    Nightfall finds me crying
    Not only am I a zit faced slob
    but *BSD is dying.


  24. Re:Productivity Problems (OT) by cperciva · · Score: 1

    I assume you're talking about a buildworld/installworld here.

    Can you give me details of how you did this? I'm looking to get a buildbox soon, so I'm interested in any tips (at least, those backed up by benchmarks) people have on the issue.

  25. Re:Productivity Problems (OT) by judmarc · · Score: 1

    As some of you have pointed out, yep, that's 1.5GHz. *blush*

    This was with FreeBSD-STABLE; I'm now using -CURRENT, for which buildworld/installworld takes considerably longer.

    Also, (some may consider this cheating), I usually skipped the kernel config unless something important had changed. The kernel config might add 5-10 minutes (again, longer now with -CURRENT).

    Setup details (hardware): The 1.5GHz chip is an Athlon XP1800+. The FreeBSD slice is on a RAID0 array consisting of two IBM 40GB ATA100 drives (shared with Win2K; Gentoo and Win98 share a 20GB IBM ATA66 HD). 512MB of PC2100 DDR RAM. Nice stuff for when I built it, but solidly middle-class today, I think.

    Setup details (software): Softupdates enabled on root. Tagged queueing at that time on the IBM drives, no longer an option now. No ramdisk; I tried it, and build times were within seconds of what they were without it, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. And definitely no -jx; as others have reported, that slowed things down for me. Make.conf set (with gcc 2.95 at the time) for i686, no games and no profiled libraries. I mounted the non-root non-swap partitions (for me, /var and /usr) -noatime. Because of the 512MB RAM, I could also leave swap turned off if I chose. I dropped to single user most times, but occasionally didn't bother - I don't remember this making a significant difference to build times. That's pretty much it.

  26. Its a load of shit! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Once again, Opensources caps propeitery's ass!

  27. No, Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Appears to be based on Qt so no thanks. Either
    write software using X11 or don't waste my time.
    Qt is not X11.

    1. Re:No, Thanks by martin-k · · Score: 1

      "Appears" is the correct term. It's a straight X app without any external library references except for Xlib and glibc. Definitely no Qt in there.

    2. Re:No, Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? That sucks. You make it look like Qt but it's not Qt?

      Yeah thanks...

      Q: Name one thing you need more of on your UNIX system?

      A: More inconsistency!

    3. Re:No, Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      YMM libc, not glibc. :-)

    4. Re:No, Thanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      fuck off

  28. Let It Go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Damn people, let it go!!! Who cares if a BSD
    platform based word processor reads/writes MS
    Office formats. Why do you keep trying to fit
    into the MS world/way of doing things. Just be
    BSD, strive for excellence and be your *own*
    community. Give me a word-processor that produces
    Troff and/or LaTex, please.

  29. Tested out by rraton · · Score: 1

    Tested it on NetBSD with Linux emulation. Works just fine, was quite fast and sweet. Only problem was that when I tried adding lists, I could not get out of the list mode... Anyway, I wouldn't pay 50eur from it, because there are similar choises for no charge.

    1. Re:Tested out by aelfwyne · · Score: 1

      For the casual word-processor user, geek, and perhaps undergrad student, KWord or OpenOffice is sufficient, and to pay US$69 for it doesn't seem an viable option.

      However, if it truly delivers fast, reliable, feature filled, word processing to linux/freebsd, then *SERIOUS* word processors should be interested. Some of us have to do more than just a letter to grandma.

      For instance (and I don't know if it supports these) as a student in upper level History, and soon to be in grad school (next Fall), I know I need a word processor that handles the following all correctly:
      * Headers & Footers.
      * Supressing first page on Headers & Footers
      * .RTF format in/out
      * .DOC format in/out (mostly in, maybe out)
      * Footnoting (Keeping numbering straight)
      * Endnoting (Keeping numbering straight)
      * Indexing

      And that's off the top of my head. You'd be surprised how rare some of those features are. And when they do exist, they don't always work correctly.

      Beyond that, you want good spell check, grammar check (neither do you depend on though), and versioning capability. That's just off the top of my head.

      A word processor that handles all of that and:
      * Doesn't crash frequently
      * Can load up in a matter of seconds (single-digits here folks)
      * Doesn't output strangely formatted text (1)
      is probably worth US $69 to me.

      (1) Strangely formatted text: I recently printed out a coverpage that had some large lettering on the front in Open Office. It looked fine on the screen, but when printed, the letters were bunched up too closely - the spacing didn't match the size of the font. UNFORGIVABLE. A real word processing user cares about the appearance of printed output.

      --
      -- If it ain't broke - overclock it more.
  30. Re:Productivity Problems (OT) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Judmark, you seem to be "in the know", and perhaps have experience in this matter. Could you explain to me why so many gay folks use FreeBSD? I always thought of Apple as the "gay" operating system, but FreeBSD is closing fast. To what do you attribute this?

  31. yhbt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    yhbt

  32. Plan to add the grammar checker feature in future? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is the only way to win me. ;-)

  33. It's a troll people by Burb · · Score: 1

    Unfortunately, the trolls are taking over the BSD postings (or more correctly everyone else is abandonding slashdot bsd forums and leaving them to pleasure themselves in peace)

    --

    1. Re:It's a troll people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe BSD folk feel they don't need to say a lot.

  34. A one line change and an OpenBSD version? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If it compiles with a one line change for FreeBSD, how about a demo version compiled for OpenBSD, with hopefully one line changed? I'll buy it if it runs on OpenBSD. Guess I should look into freebsd emulation mode.

  35. "advertisement for proprietary software" category by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slashdot needs an "advertisement for proprietary software" category, so that those who don't want to hear about proprietary software unless followed by "now has a Free Software replacement" can filter them out.

  36. Correction, this just in!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is growing

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Windows community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has risen yet again, now up to more than 30 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has gained more market share , this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is sending other OSes into complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by topping the charts in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Daemon to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a long and prosperous future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Windows Server because *BSD is growing. Things are looking very good for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to gain market share. Red ink flows from Redmond like a river of blood.

    FreeBSD is the most loved of them all, having gained 93% more core developers. The sudden and pleasant release of the long developed 5.0 only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is growing.

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

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 70000 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 70000/5 = 14000 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 7000 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (70000+14000+7000)*4 = 364000 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the release of OSX, cool new technologies and so on, FreeBSD is expanding into more desktops than ever. FreeBSD has become more than the sum of its parts.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily gained in market share. *BSD is very powerful and its long term survival prospects are very bright. If Windows is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to improve. The progress achieved is nothing short of a miracle. For all practical purposes, *BSD is alive and kicking.

    Fact: *BSD will kick your ass

  37. I'm with you 99%. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You mean IHBT.

  38. Dead men tell no tales by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    " Maybe BSD folk feel they don't need to say a lot."

    Dead men tell no tales.

  39. Re:More platforms to come...BeOS??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What about us poor diehards who still haven't gotten the message (and never will!) that BeOS is dead?