I wouldn't say that it has a clunky interface, exactly, or a higher learning curve. What it has is actually a very simple and elegant interface which encourages and assists you in learning in depth about your system very rapidly. Admittedly, my first free Unix-like system that I installed was Debian GNU/Linux (Specifically, "slink"), and I thought it was pretty easy to do, and people are always bitching about that, so YMMV.
Regardless, I found the interface to be refreshingly simple, and it gave me a great deal of control over my system. I'm now completely addicted to OpenBSD. Sure, there are some things about Debian I miss, but there were things that I missed about Windows when I switched to Debian. And in both cases, I feel the benefits I get from the transition far outweigh the sacrifices I have to make.
The ports system goes a long way to making things easier, much as apt does with Debian. So I can browse with a graphical browser, I can use KDE if I want, I can use Dia, the Gimp, and most other programs I find important for doing work. The main thing that needs to be done to make OpenBSD just about perfect for me as a Workstation OS is to have more supported audio programs, and part of that could just be ignorance on my part.
Anyway, I've been using OpenBSD as my workstation OS for the past sixth months, and I've been very happy with it.
Um, they do have drivers now. What they are promising is *better* drivers. While the current ones are adaquate, they could/should be much better. The problem isn't a lack of drivers, it's a lack of access to some good code to mess about with. This would have been clear if you had paid attention to the article.
I completely agree. When I was trying to decide what graphics card to get, I basically considered two things: what the card performed like, and how support under XFree86 was (so I could run Linux or *BSD). I have been essentially happy with the card, but as I have moved more and more to basically just always running Linux, I have grown increasingly irritated by various little problems. I calmed myself by remembering that non-sucky, open source drivers would be released soon with the new version of XFree86; if I still didn't like something then, I could just hike up my hubris and mess with it myself. Now, I kind of feel like I've been lied to: when I visited their site during my search, it implied (at least to my mind) that they would release open source drivers for Linux. That was a relatively significant consideration, to my mind. Oh well. "Life will find a way." I think I'll shut up now.
As we all know, it is an absolutely digusting and vulgar thing to ever change anything. In fact, I am appalled that we are speaking in Modern English. How can we desert its root ("God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr), Old English? Why do we use computers instead of abacuses (abacii? whatever, I'm not going to fix it, since that would be worng)? One monumental fix should be issued at the End of the Universe. It would be so much more convienient for enterprise businesses...
Um... NO! Wrong! Well, except in the part about Go being much cooler. First of all, computers have beaten humans at Go many times. So far, no program has beaten any dan-level (professional level) players, AFIAK; there is no theoretically reason for this, however. It has more to do with the practical reason that in Go there are almost always an extremely vast number of possible moves, so the best way to figure out the best move is by being able to recognize patterns. People are better than computers at recognizing patterns than computers. While this means it is *unlikely* that a program will beat a *really good* human, it does not mean that it is theoretically impossible.
I think that *any* MS presentation has the same credibility as one of their videotaped ones... I'm sure that even if what we are shown isn't *technically* the truth it will certainly reflect how MS thinks the world should be- which is, of course, the same way everyone else views it:)
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't say that it has a clunky interface, exactly, or a higher learning curve. What it has is actually a very simple and elegant interface which encourages and assists you in learning in depth about your system very rapidly. Admittedly, my first free Unix-like system that I installed was Debian GNU/Linux (Specifically, "slink"), and I thought it was pretty easy to do, and people are always bitching about that, so YMMV.
Regardless, I found the interface to be refreshingly simple, and it gave me a great deal of control over my system. I'm now completely addicted to OpenBSD. Sure, there are some things about Debian I miss, but there were things that I missed about Windows when I switched to Debian. And in both cases, I feel the benefits I get from the transition far outweigh the sacrifices I have to make.
The ports system goes a long way to making things easier, much as apt does with Debian. So I can browse with a graphical browser, I can use KDE if I want, I can use Dia, the Gimp, and most other programs I find important for doing work. The main thing that needs to be done to make OpenBSD just about perfect for me as a Workstation OS is to have more supported audio programs, and part of that could just be ignorance on my part.
Anyway, I've been using OpenBSD as my workstation OS for the past sixth months, and I've been very happy with it.
Um, they do have drivers now. What they are promising is *better* drivers. While the current ones are adaquate, they could/should be much better. The problem isn't a lack of drivers, it's a lack of access to some good code to mess about with. This would have been clear if you had paid attention to the article.
I completely agree. When I was trying to decide what graphics card to get, I basically considered two things: what the card performed like, and how support under XFree86 was (so I could run Linux or *BSD). I have been essentially happy with the card, but as I have moved more and more to basically just always running Linux, I have grown increasingly irritated by various little problems. I calmed myself by remembering that non-sucky, open source drivers would be released soon with the new version of XFree86; if I still didn't like something then, I could just hike up my hubris and mess with it myself. Now, I kind of feel like I've been lied to: when I visited their site during my search, it implied (at least to my mind) that they would release open source drivers for Linux. That was a relatively significant consideration, to my mind. Oh well. "Life will find a way." I think I'll shut up now.
As we all know, it is an absolutely digusting and vulgar thing to ever change anything. In fact, I am appalled that we are speaking in Modern English. How can we desert its root ("God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr), Old English? Why do we use computers instead of abacuses (abacii? whatever, I'm not going to fix it, since that would be worng)? One monumental fix should be issued at the End of the Universe. It would be so much more convienient for enterprise businesses...
Um... NO! Wrong! Well, except in the part about Go being much cooler. First of all, computers have beaten humans at Go many times. So far, no program has beaten any dan-level (professional level) players, AFIAK; there is no theoretically reason for this, however. It has more to do with the practical reason that in Go there are almost always an extremely vast number of possible moves, so the best way to figure out the best move is by being able to recognize patterns. People are better than computers at recognizing patterns than computers. While this means it is *unlikely* that a program will beat a *really good* human, it does not mean that it is theoretically impossible.
I think that *any* MS presentation has the same credibility as one of their videotaped ones... I'm sure that even if what we are shown isn't *technically* the truth it will certainly reflect how MS thinks the world should be- which is, of course, the same way everyone else views it :)