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Printing for the Impatient using ApsFilter
BSD Forums writes "While Unix has roots in document formatting and layout, configuring printers has always required more black-arts arcana. This hasn't been helped by the appearance of low-cost commodity WinPrinters. Fortunately, tools like Ghostscript, gimp-print, and Apsfilter make configuring printers much easier. Michael Lucas demonstrates quick and dirty -- and working -- printer configuration."
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent 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 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. 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 dilettante 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 dying
all the more reason why BSD dead. not too many BSD fans I imagine.
Now, Apache uses a BSD style license but they have an open development model which allows them to take advantage of a very large developer pool in order to stay ahead of their competition. In fact although proprietary versions of Apache exist which perform better than the official releases, SGI has put out some open source patches which generate even larger performance boosts. This is the reason why they have such a strong showing in terms of market share.
BSD once had potential but the procedural problems they are experiencing hurt it when it comes to the market. I suspect that this is probably in part because the BSD teams are not interested in such things, and that is a shame... In fact, although I labeled it as an inferior OS, this is not due to lack of progress within BSD -- it has been progressing somewhat, but rather because all the improvements they make tend to be quickly copied by their competitors AND they lack the developer pool to stay ahead of this game (a problem which does not exist in the Linux or Apache communities, though for somewhat different reasons).
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result, even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
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All our times have come
Here but now they're gone
Mac OS don't fear the reaper
Nor do the windows, SUN or the rain..we can be like they are
Come on baby...don't fear the reaper
Baby take my hand...don't fear the reaper
We'll be able to fly...don't fear the reaper
BSD's bought the farm....
Distro is done
Here but now they're gone
Romeo and Juliet
Are together in eternity...Romeo and Juliet
40,000 server crashes every day...Like Romeo and Juliet
40,000 workstations reformatted everyday...Redefine happiness
Another 40,000 coming everyday...We can be like they are
Come on baby...don't fear the reaper
Baby take my hand...don't fear the reaper
We'll be able to fly...don't fear the reaper
BSD's bought the farm...
Love of two is one
Here but now they're gone
Came the last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn't log on
Then the file was opened the wind appeared
The mobo blew then disappeared
The curtains flew then Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith appeared...saying don't be afraid
Come on baby...and she had no fear
And she ran to them...then they started to fly
They looked backward and said goodbye...she had become like they are
She had taken their hand...she had become like they are
Come on baby...don't fear the reaper "
Use Ghostscript - it's the one best suited for BSD. Also remember that funerals are expensive.
"Do not stand at my hard disk and forever weep.
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn's rain.
When you reboot in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my hard disk and forever cry.
I am not there. "
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 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. 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
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.
.
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 (an Athlon64 w/4 Gigs 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 180 running NT 3.51, 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 386/25 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this Athlon64 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.
Subject says it all.