thank you for your ideas, i'll consider them all. incidentall: i'm not a 'linux evangelist', i don't even run a linux desktop right now, FreeBSD meets my needs better.
the cd is also not a gift, it's for acquaintances, though i'm flattered many/.ers think i actually *have* frineds, cool. it's for people who already use computers, know what they're doing, and think that linux is TOO HARD for them. i want them to just consider that there are alternatives to the windows nightmare.
maybe they'll use it as a coaster or throw it on the fire, but maybe they'll MISS and it'll land in the drive, or give it away, or to their kids.
now... i have some work to do, Christmas is only a month away. he he.
Anyone who subscribes to a list and then demands any form of 'payment' to be sent mails is confused and shouldn't be on the list.
If you subscribe, and want the mails there need only be an opt-out where you make the source of the mailing list excempt from the scheme.... Like a button in your mail client that says 'Accept mail from this address without challenging.'... probably based on IP address.
I use 5.1 on desktop, have been using FreeBSD there for about 2 years. my advice: go for it, you'll love it, or at least get a kick out of it. (I do use slackware on server for various reasons.)
I prefer it because it's a smaller and neater system. has startup in common with slackware, the little differences that make it a joy to use. since you use it as a server, you already know the differences.
The ports collection easily provides all software i've needed, and things like apache, postgresql and other good stable applications, i just download the unix tarball, and compile usually with no/little difficulty.
as for hardware, well, my hardware needs are very undemanding. consult the handbook and prepare to be pleasantly surprised.
It's a lovely system, I'm not certain if you'll reap any significant advantage to using it over slackware 10 on the desktop though.
"They pay for the production costs, which sure a hell ain't $16 a CD; more like $0.50."
Much less perhaps, if these are the CDs that wouldn't sell anyway then they don't have to store them, and the don't have to pay to have them shreaded in the end. It's probably nearer $0.03, I doubt it's 50.
It seems much like MS's settlement paid in software, it's not much of a punishment at all, shouldn't really be allowed.
if i use ( freeBSD | linux ) on the desktop, and am happy with a PII, then my hardware is already ~free. so is my software. in the future i can look forward to free hardware and paid-for software?
that's not an improvement.
i suspect (hope) that in time both will be freee, or rather, software free, and usable hardware very cheap. of course, if you want cutting edge so you can have transparency and 3d windows and..., well, that's fine too.
you guys can all laugh, perhaps if i weren't knee deep in exams i might too. when i read this i only think that it is very very very sad. this is a new low, even for them. who would put up with this? i sincerely hope i never have to use windows again.
who would you rather be holding such a patent, Microsoft, perhaps our friends SCO. In the climate of patent fever in america, it's not so much whether they have the patent as how they use it.
we should wonder will they want to work in the computing industry again. why are they even at SCO? is it just that the industry is that bad, or do they have reasons beond that, and would they come here as ACs and tell us what's going through their heads, i'd be interested.
IIRC anytime was a very good value package, i don't remember exactly what it sold for, while you have an interesting perspective you are missing one point:
1-2 pounds per day does not buy you 24 hours online AND a dedicated modem at your ISP. (it might buy you an ice cream)
the high users modem bank had a preferable contention ratio to the normal one. it was *the users themselves* who 'crippled' it,
thousands of customers saw the benifits of improved ability to connect, and i'm sure at least some of *them* were disabled or lonely too.
lastly, i didn't work for BT, and am not defending them, the points i made were from a 'human nature' perspective and while your observations are valid, and very dramatic there are people who want their connection on while they sleep because they percieve they are getting better value.
i worked in tech support for a large brittish isp for a short while, about a year ago. there was a big problem with people keeping their internet connections open when they're not really using them. remember we're talking about diaup connections here, 56k and isdn modems.
the problem was not really the bandwidth, because if you're not surfing or doing somoething then you're not really using any bandwidth. the problem was that idle connections left open consume a modem in the isp's modem bank, so other people cannot connect at all when ther's no modems left.
at the time they were changing their contract from essentially: '24 hours a day any time you like for as long as you like' to something more like 'x number of hours a month, then it runs out'.
people were always furious because they hadn't read the conditions and had used their connection for more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period and been barred.
in ireland there was uproar two years ago when a major isp changed the terms of their 'unlimited' connection to restrict useage because they claimed they couldn't keep up. anyone who kicked up enough of a fuss was allowed to keep their connection because it was in their contract that it was unlimited. anyone who didn't complain lost their 'unlimited' contract. i believe some people still have these contracts, because it was not a condition of the contract that further restrictions could be added later.
funny story: in the job i mentioned, anyone who breached the 12 hour rule was 'upgraded' to use another telephone number. they would call up conplaining 'i can't connect' and we would check their file and see that they'd been flagged as abnormally high users. we would tell them that, because they were heavy users of the service they had been changed to our 'high useage' dialup number, and help them change their settings to dial the new number, and they were so happy that they had been recognised and helped.
of course, now they were neatly switched to another modem bank along with all their selfish idle connection loving kindred, and could barely connect anymore. we were instructed that, if anyone called complaining that their new high useage dialup number wasn't good, or they couldn't connect, we were to get rid of them quickly. this is a reputable firm, but they couldn't have people tying up a modem, when they were sleeping, or out of the house, or otherwise not using it.
"Times are bad in IT right now. If the past is any guide, at some point in the not too distant future, times will be good again, and employees will be more scarce. And employees (and potential employees) will remember how the company treated people in these lean times."
negative. it is my experience that, should times get good again, those practices will simply stop. existing employees may remember, but new ones won't know or care.
when slimey people coagulate, exploitation and intimidation is the order of the day. they'll just 180 when it ceases to work, and pr will take care of the rest. it's one of the things i most detest about people forming groups, noone is ultimately responsible for anything.
dual booting freeBSD shouldn't be difficult though exactly how you do it depends on the other os. the boot manager (as you probably know) will boot any primary partition on your drives without prior configuration, the default being the one that booted last time. the convenience of that vs. lilo is one of the _little_ things i was talking about before (especially back when lilo was all you got, and it had the 1024 cylinder thing). of course, it only boots the partition, it won't be responsible for loading a kernel, with a windows or BDS partition that's not a problem, another stage of the boot loader resides at the start of the partition to take over the boot process. i'm certain it's not rocket science to boot a freebsd partition with grub. the next (second?) stage of the boot loader should reside in the FreeBSD partition, to grub it'll be no different to windows.
okay, now that's just silly. how can you let the antics of SCO, a fart of a company destroy your love of something, anything. if you really loved unix this shouldn't change that. one of the reasons i took to FreeBSD is that i learned more from it more quickly. i'm not sure exactly why, but i found it a much better learning tool than linux, this has more to do with how i feel about it than who 'owns' it. even if i never saw it again, i'd miss it, but there'll always be the memories.
there are also some really neat things about FreeBSD that differ from linux, disk partitions, the boot loader... maybe they're small... i'm not going there again. maybe it is the same boat, but the oars are different? slackware's hot too.
perhaps i just don't see it, but why are you so willing to turn your back on decades of tradition. the systems that were really technically neat yesterday are today too, at the very least they're part of where it all came from.
> portability, it's intel + a few others, that's no secret.
> hw compatibility... don't have new/obscure hw, i know.
> scalability, i've never fully investigated this, i will.
the caffine's wearing off now and it's time for my nap.
perhaps the days of building your world are receeding. i always admired the ability of BSD to have a kernel tuned exactly to the hardware of the box, and the number of expected users, don't want PII support, take it out.
in FreeBSD this seems still widely practiced, you compile it in or load the module. i'm not giving up on FreeBSD so soon. If linux is the way of the future, that'ld be hard to argue with too. There is worse.
yeah, you're right, that's all true, but i just have a strong sense of attachment to unix (SCO was a joke, you know that?).
i have the handbook for the pdp/11, one of the earlier machines unix was built on, let me see now,... 1971.
i love unix more than linux, and FreeBSD is a _little_bit_closer_ and it smells musty, and it's easier in many respects. why do you linux guys really want to take that away from me, really, i'm just like you:(
by the way, do you have kernel securelevels yet? can you make critical files unchangeable without booting into single user mode?
okay, there's points there. there are distros that behave more like freebsd, cool. i'm not criticizing linux, it's good stuff, FreeBSD's gained much from linux too. i have two questions for you, then a little rant, then I'm done.
what distribution of FreeBSD did you last try?
what _specifically_ did it do that made it not worthwhile? you don't just say that for no reason, it offended you somehow.
these are my experiences, they don't invalidate yours:
tech, programmer, ex-admin, i have work to do, a dog to care for, my job hasn't been outsourced to India yet. I abandon windows because it was not worth the constant pain in the ass, now here's linux. how many options and dialogues are involved in a graphical configuration of the linux kernel. you are obviously smarter than me if you could get it to work straight off. FreeBSD, one file, some lint, first time, that's not trivial to me. Nor is it an isolated experience, naturally i want FreeBSD on my desktop, linux is not worth the trouble because i don't want magic fairy dust sparkle 3D X windows.
FreeBSD is an operating system, linux is not, it's a kernel, my os comes as one package, it's stable because it's moderated. If linux were a car (oh lord, i'm doing it) the bonnet (hood) would be made in China, and the boot (trunk) in... Detroit say. And it's not that long ago you had to knit the seatbelts yourself.
rpc, nfs, if you want them you turn them on. doing this is simple, you edit the rc deltas, and it's done, that's not a disadvantage, that's a little thing called security, sometimes it's considered good practice.
boot manager? lilo, i know it, pain in the AAAss. grub? better, FreeBSD MBR, flawless, boot problems? use the boot loader command interpreter. sometimes it's the little things that count (do you relate?)
boot partitions, partitions in the extended partition just like good old braindamaged dos, BSD: one slice, all you need, the BSD partitions sort themselves out.
SCO doesn't own my OS.
FreeBSD is a smaller system, it's less cluttered, this matters to me, you can know it like the back of your hand in a very short time.
Professional, reliable documentation associated with the project, straight from the horse's mouth as it were, the handbook is great when you're starting, and later too.
kernel securelevels, immutable flags, in a network environment this means peace of mind.
look, i could go on, and on, and on, but suffice it to say FreeBSD is better for ME than linux, it is EASIER for ME, we're still on the same side d00d, it's just, i use unix, you don't.
(sarcasm is my natural state).
By the way Dr. Moren, it is considered good sport to recompile one's kernel to reduce memory footprint and increase speed, one user in a hundred or thousand? i think not. perhaps it's time for you to braoden your knowledge of unix.
software written for linux, i don't disagree, but see the FreeBSD ports collection at http://freebsd.org/ports/. i can install any one of thes with: cd/usr/ports/blah/; make; make install;
i know a guy who started in FreeBSD way years before now, he's in linux now. i did it the other way around. here's why:
compared to redhat7, neat quick startup, bsd style, other linux distros have it too, i know.
small neat system, excellent and stable for kde / x, unlike redhat, no scary process like rpcThis and nfsThat. (slackware's good too)
not really THAT difficult, if you can manage linux, it's not going to show you anything you can't handle, wusss,
but above all else, the _kernel_compilation_worked_. i know it probably says more about me than linux, but bsd worked first time, my hardware aint new. this gave me a boner, 'cos i couldn't get it up with linux.
if you don't at least have a bsd box, try one, if you don't like it.... you owe it to yourself, you owe it to me, and to the community at large.
how about a simpler explanation? the difference here is mostly about pride. if Linus woke up tomorrow and found three worms successfully blowing holes in boxes running the linux kernel i think it's fair to say he would feel embarrassed, possibly even a little ashamed and being in the public eye doesn't help. the same could be said about freeBSD developers because their contributions are voluntary, and therefore motivated by pride in good part.
Microsoft's motivation is money in one or another form (marketshare == mindshare == money).
mr. worf: 'They have no honour. THAT is our biggest advantage'
Slashdot Mirror
thank you for your ideas, i'll consider them all. incidentall: i'm not a 'linux evangelist', i don't even run a linux desktop right now, FreeBSD meets my needs better.
/.ers think i actually *have* frineds, cool. it's for people who already use computers, know what they're doing, and think that linux is TOO HARD for them. i want them to just consider that there are alternatives to the windows nightmare.
the cd is also not a gift, it's for acquaintances, though i'm flattered many
maybe they'll use it as a coaster or throw it on the fire, but maybe they'll MISS and it'll land in the drive, or give it away, or to their kids.
now... i have some work to do, Christmas is only a month away. he he.
awwww crap. now i can't moderate.
Anyone who subscribes to a list and then demands any form of 'payment' to be sent mails is confused and shouldn't be on the list.
... Like a button in your mail client that says 'Accept mail from this address without challenging.' ... probably based on IP address.
If you subscribe, and want the mails there need only be an opt-out where you make the source of the mailing list excempt from the scheme.
I use 5.1 on desktop, have been using FreeBSD there for about 2 years. my advice: go for it, you'll love it, or at least get a kick out of it. (I do use slackware on server for various reasons.)
I prefer it because it's a smaller and neater system. has startup in common with slackware, the little differences that make it a joy to use. since you use it as a server, you already know the differences.
The ports collection easily provides all software i've needed, and things like apache, postgresql and other good stable applications, i just download the unix tarball, and compile usually with no/little difficulty.
as for hardware, well, my hardware needs are very undemanding. consult the handbook and prepare to be pleasantly surprised.
It's a lovely system, I'm not certain if you'll reap any significant advantage to using it over slackware 10 on the desktop though.
Yes, but I had also thought about adimnistration and shipping!
"They pay for the production costs, which sure a hell ain't $16 a CD; more like $0.50."
Much less perhaps, if these are the CDs that wouldn't sell anyway then they don't have to store them, and the don't have to pay to have them shreaded in the end. It's probably nearer $0.03, I doubt it's 50.
It seems much like MS's settlement paid in software, it's not much of a punishment at all, shouldn't really be allowed.
That's your only question?
if instead of 'free' you were to substitute 'subsidized', would that alleviate confusion?
mobile phones are subsidized. (=free for all intents and purposes.)
they make it up on the software (/phone service).
if i use ( freeBSD | linux ) on the desktop, and am happy with a PII, then my hardware is already ~free. so is my software. in the future i can look forward to free hardware and paid-for software?
..., well, that's fine too.
that's not an improvement.
i suspect (hope) that in time both will be freee, or rather, software free, and usable hardware very cheap. of course, if you want cutting edge so you can have transparency and 3d windows and
you guys can all laugh, perhaps if i weren't knee deep in exams i might too. when i read this i only think that it is very very very sad. this is a new low, even for them. who would put up with this? i sincerely hope i never have to use windows again.
tell granny to type this in her address bar:
javascript:alert("Actual URL address: " + location.protocol + "//" + location.hostname + "/");
very sad.
who would you rather be holding such a patent, Microsoft, perhaps our friends SCO. In the climate of patent fever in america, it's not so much whether they have the patent as how they use it.
it's a bit early yet to really trust ibm IMHO.
we should wonder will they want to work in the computing industry again. why are they even at SCO? is it just that the industry is that bad, or do they have reasons beond that, and would they come here as ACs and tell us what's going through their heads, i'd be interested.
IIRC anytime was a very good value package, i don't remember exactly what it sold for, while you have an interesting perspective you are missing one point:
1-2 pounds per day does not buy you 24 hours online AND a dedicated modem at your ISP. (it might buy you an ice cream)
the high users modem bank had a preferable contention ratio to the normal one. it was *the users themselves* who 'crippled' it,
thousands of customers saw the benifits of improved ability to connect, and i'm sure at least some of *them* were disabled or lonely too.
lastly, i didn't work for BT, and am not defending them, the points i made were from a 'human nature' perspective and while your observations are valid, and very dramatic there are people who want their connection on while they sleep because they percieve they are getting better value.
i worked in tech support for a large brittish isp for a short while, about a year ago. there was a big problem with people keeping their internet connections open when they're not really using them. remember we're talking about diaup connections here, 56k and isdn modems.
the problem was not really the bandwidth, because if you're not surfing or doing somoething then you're not really using any bandwidth. the problem was that idle connections left open consume a modem in the isp's modem bank, so other people cannot connect at all when ther's no modems left.
at the time they were changing their contract from essentially: '24 hours a day any time you like for as long as you like' to something more like 'x number of hours a month, then it runs out'.
people were always furious because they hadn't read the conditions and had used their connection for more than 12 hours in a 24 hour period and been barred.
in ireland there was uproar two years ago when a major isp changed the terms of their 'unlimited' connection to restrict useage because they claimed they couldn't keep up. anyone who kicked up enough of a fuss was allowed to keep their connection because it was in their contract that it was unlimited. anyone who didn't complain lost their 'unlimited' contract. i believe some people still have these contracts, because it was not a condition of the contract that further restrictions could be added later.
funny story: in the job i mentioned, anyone who breached the 12 hour rule was 'upgraded' to use another telephone number. they would call up conplaining 'i can't connect' and we would check their file and see that they'd been flagged as abnormally high users. we would tell them that, because they were heavy users of the service they had been changed to our 'high useage' dialup number, and help them change their settings to dial the new number, and they were so happy that they had been recognised and helped.
of course, now they were neatly switched to another modem bank along with all their selfish idle connection loving kindred, and could barely connect anymore. we were instructed that, if anyone called complaining that their new high useage dialup number wasn't good, or they couldn't connect, we were to get rid of them quickly. this is a reputable firm, but they couldn't have people tying up a modem, when they were sleeping, or out of the house, or otherwise not using it.
article summary: "your OS is nearly as bad as our OS .. HA HA"
paraphrasing a little, you understand.
"Times are bad in IT right now. If the past is any guide, at some point in the not too distant future, times will be good again, and employees will be more scarce. And employees (and potential employees) will remember how the company treated people in these lean times."
negative. it is my experience that, should times get good again, those practices will simply stop. existing employees may remember, but new ones won't know or care.
when slimey people coagulate, exploitation and intimidation is the order of the day. they'll just 180 when it ceases to work, and pr will take care of the rest. it's one of the things i most detest about people forming groups, noone is ultimately responsible for anything.
dual booting freeBSD shouldn't be difficult though exactly how you do it depends on the other os. the boot manager (as you probably know) will boot any primary partition on your drives without prior configuration, the default being the one that booted last time. the convenience of that vs. lilo is one of the _little_ things i was talking about before (especially back when lilo was all you got, and it had the 1024 cylinder thing). of course, it only boots the partition, it won't be responsible for loading a kernel, with a windows or BDS partition that's not a problem, another stage of the boot loader resides at the start of the partition to take over the boot process. i'm certain it's not rocket science to boot a freebsd partition with grub. the next (second?) stage of the boot loader should reside in the FreeBSD partition, to grub it'll be no different to windows.
okay, now that's just silly. how can you let the antics of SCO, a fart of a company destroy your love of something, anything. if you really loved unix this shouldn't change that. one of the reasons i took to FreeBSD is that i learned more from it more quickly. i'm not sure exactly why, but i found it a much better learning tool than linux, this has more to do with how i feel about it than who 'owns' it. even if i never saw it again, i'd miss it, but there'll always be the memories.
... maybe they're small ... i'm not going there again. maybe it is the same boat, but the oars are different? slackware's hot too.
there are also some really neat things about FreeBSD that differ from linux, disk partitions, the boot loader
perhaps i just don't see it, but why are you so willing to turn your back on decades of tradition. the systems that were really technically neat yesterday are today too, at the very least they're part of where it all came from.
> portability,
it's intel + a few others, that's no secret.
> hw compatibility...
don't have new/obscure hw, i know.
> scalability,
i've never fully investigated this, i will.
the caffine's wearing off now and it's time for my nap.
> By the way Dr. Moren, ...
you're going to have to get used to it sometime.
perhaps the days of building your world are receeding. i always admired the ability of BSD to have a kernel tuned exactly to the hardware of the box, and the number of expected users, don't want PII support, take it out.
in FreeBSD this seems still widely practiced, you compile it in or load the module. i'm not giving up on FreeBSD so soon. If linux is the way of the future, that'ld be hard to argue with too. There is worse.
yeah, you're right, that's all true, but i just have a strong sense of attachment to unix (SCO was a joke, you know that?).
... 1971.
:(
i have the handbook for the pdp/11, one of the earlier machines unix was built on, let me see now,
i love unix more than linux, and FreeBSD is a _little_bit_closer_ and it smells musty, and it's easier in many respects. why do you linux guys really want to take that away from me, really, i'm just like you
by the way, do you have kernel securelevels yet? can you make critical files unchangeable without booting into single user mode?
i think i was Brian Kernighan in a former life.
okay, there's points there. there are distros that behave more like freebsd, cool. i'm not criticizing linux, it's good stuff, FreeBSD's gained much from linux too. i have two questions for you, then a little rant, then I'm done.
... Detroit say. And it's not that long ago you had to knit the seatbelts yourself.
/usr/ports/blah/; make; make install;
what distribution of FreeBSD did you last try?
what _specifically_ did it do that made it not worthwhile? you don't just say that for no reason, it offended you somehow.
these are my experiences, they don't invalidate yours:
tech, programmer, ex-admin, i have work to do, a dog to care for, my job hasn't been outsourced to India yet. I abandon windows because it was not worth the constant pain in the ass, now here's linux. how many options and dialogues are involved in a graphical configuration of the linux kernel. you are obviously smarter than me if you could get it to work straight off. FreeBSD, one file, some lint, first time, that's not trivial to me. Nor is it an isolated experience, naturally i want FreeBSD on my desktop, linux is not worth the trouble because i don't want magic fairy dust sparkle 3D X windows.
FreeBSD is an operating system, linux is not, it's a kernel, my os comes as one package, it's stable because it's moderated. If linux were a car (oh lord, i'm doing it) the bonnet (hood) would be made in China, and the boot (trunk) in
rpc, nfs, if you want them you turn them on. doing this is simple, you edit the rc deltas, and it's done, that's not a disadvantage, that's a little thing called security, sometimes it's considered good practice.
boot manager? lilo, i know it, pain in the AAAss. grub? better, FreeBSD MBR, flawless, boot problems? use the boot loader command interpreter. sometimes it's the little things that count (do you relate?)
boot partitions, partitions in the extended partition just like good old braindamaged dos, BSD: one slice, all you need, the BSD partitions sort themselves out.
SCO doesn't own my OS.
FreeBSD is a smaller system, it's less cluttered, this matters to me, you can know it like the back of your hand in a very short time.
Professional, reliable documentation associated with the project, straight from the horse's mouth as it were, the handbook is great when you're starting, and later too.
kernel securelevels, immutable flags, in a network environment this means peace of mind.
look, i could go on, and on, and on, but suffice it to say FreeBSD is better for ME than linux, it is EASIER for ME, we're still on the same side d00d, it's just, i use unix, you don't.
(sarcasm is my natural state).
By the way Dr. Moren, it is considered good sport to recompile one's kernel to reduce memory footprint and increase speed, one user in a hundred or thousand? i think not. perhaps it's time for you to braoden your knowledge of unix.
software written for linux, i don't disagree, but see the FreeBSD ports collection at http://freebsd.org/ports/. i can install any one of thes with: cd
i know a guy who started in FreeBSD way years before now, he's in linux now. i did it the other way around. here's why:
compared to redhat7, neat quick startup, bsd style, other linux distros have it too, i know.
small neat system, excellent and stable for kde / x, unlike redhat, no scary process like rpcThis and nfsThat. (slackware's good too)
not really THAT difficult, if you can manage linux, it's not going to show you anything you can't handle, wusss,
but above all else, the _kernel_compilation_worked_. i know it probably says more about me than linux, but bsd worked first time, my hardware aint new. this gave me a boner, 'cos i couldn't get it up with linux.
if you don't at least have a bsd box, try one, if you don't like it.... you owe it to yourself, you owe it to me, and to the community at large.
how about a simpler explanation? the difference here is mostly about pride. if Linus woke up tomorrow and found three worms successfully blowing holes in boxes running the linux kernel i think it's fair to say he would feel embarrassed, possibly even a little ashamed and being in the public eye doesn't help. the same could be said about freeBSD developers because their contributions are voluntary, and therefore motivated by pride in good part.
Microsoft's motivation is money in one or another form
(marketshare == mindshare == money).
mr. worf: 'They have no honour. THAT is our biggest
advantage'
riker: 'let's hoope it will be enough'