Why are you still buying at Circuit City, Best Buy and Comp USA? Everyone knows that if you want a new Ford you don't go to a Dodge dealer. The chains you list are decidely Microsoft dealers.
If a store is charging you for a product you do not want, go elsewhere. It's going to be a bit harder, but it's better than whining.
it's hard to find a good x86 box with Linux preloaded... the unwashed masses will continue to buy MS.
Wait, don't you mean tha the unwashed masses will continue to buy PCs? You're implying that they'll use whatever is preloaded on their PCs. That means all those shrink wrapped Windows boxes on the store shelves are just for show.
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.
1) You still need the CAR HOWTO, but at least it's up to date.
2) Yeah, you still need to choose a steering wheel. If you want though, you can just clamp a couple of channel-lock pliers onto the steering column.
3) Fits into any garage. Heck, fits into most walkin closets. Won't fit in a doghouse though.
4) Uses the standard radio wiring harness. Unfortunately, most radios have wires three inches too short to reach the plugs.
5) Support available for a price, or free at the "We invented RTFM" Old Fart Channel.
6) Accessories are easy to add via the port-accessory system, but very timeconsuming. Most accessories have funny little penguin logos on them.
7) Trailer hitches are included as loadable modules, but only a few models are available.
8) Car is of fine pedigreed heritage. Unfortunately, that pedigree is "Studebaker".
9) Car takes 30 seconds to start. It's turning on the radio that takes five minutes.
10) Warnings dutifully logged to the console. You do drive with the hood up so you can actually see the console, right?
11) There's an autoroofrackmounterd, but it's a pain to set up. You could do put up the roofrack by hand, but only the registered owner of the vehicle is allowed to.
...and...
12) Available with stylish KDE and GNOME exteriors, but people will still think it's a hearse.
Fair enough, you're still talking only a few pounds. If the weight difference is that critical, may a suggest a mini-tower or smaller instead?
If I were a LAN gamer, I would go with the Antec Lanboy instead of the Antec Sonata. No, backup. I would go with a Shuttle instead. I do a lot of hardware changeouts at work, and I've found the weight of the case an insignificant factor compared to a clear workspace and easily removable side panels.
You're right in that a steel case isn't for everyone. But my original post said "and not flimsy aluminum". The point I was making was that if you wanted a sturdy case, steel was the better choice. If you're always lifting the case, both weight AND sturdiness become an issue.
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).
To be honest, if some manufacturer were to make a case that blended in with the rest of my office I'd be first in line to buy it.
Take a look at the Antec Sonata. No, it's not woodgrain, but the high gloss "piano" black is magnitudes more classy than plain beige or gamer-green. It's also damned quiet and well designed inside.
CPU prices always have a "knee" where the price starts shooting up. Current P4 prices at pixelusa.com: 2.8GHz = $298; 3.0 = $425. That's the knee. You save $60 by going with a 2.6, but spend $120 more by going to the 3.0. And jumping up to the 3.2 for $350 more is simply ridiculous.
I've always preferred buying one or two steps below the knee. I get good speeds at good prices. The only people who buy above the knee are PHB's or parents of whiny gamers.
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.
Most "high end" cases are designed only to appeal to the gamers. Racing stripes, brushed aluminum with plexiglass panels, 13 5" external bays, cold cathode strips everywhere, etc.
But a good case and PSU is easily worth $100. My new system has the Antec Sonata. It's gorgeous simply because it's understated. Sturdy steel construction, and not flimsy aluminum. Small size (sub mid) tower but with plenty of room inside so it doesn't feel like a small tower. Easy accesibility to all components, good airflow, well designed HD mounts, included top quality PSU, etc. For $100 it was really a good price. The alternative would have been a cheap ass $40 case plus a cheap ass $40 PSU, and $20 worth of hassles setting it up.
Then you've been buying cheap ass PCs or power supplies. I've NEVER had a power supply go out in fifteen years of owning computers. At work we have 486s still going strong with their original PSUs.
There are few "US" or "European" corporations--they are all transnationals.
But they're all run by Americans and Europeans and headquartered in North America and Europe. The stockholders life in the US and Europe. Profits from Asia are siphoned out to investors in the western hemispere. It's corporate colonialism.
if US style markets guaranteed dominance and wealth, we wouldn't even be talking about this.
The current US style markets are largely broken, and why we're losing our economic dominance. But I was speaking of "freer markets". The US doesn't have have, and really never had, a true free market. But it has been relatively freer than those in many other nations. This isn't a US thing. Europe and Australia also have markets relatively freer than most other nations.
Look for totalitarian states and you will find abysmal economies. Look for strong socialistic countries and you will find better, but still poor economies. Your strong economies are found in nations with moderate to light socialism. In other words, where the government doesn't try to manage all aspects of the market.
India has moved from strong socialist to a moderate socialist nation, and its economy is improving accordingly. China threw off totalitarian rule and its now poised to become an economic powerhouse for the rest of the century if it can stay that way.
But the workers in India and China are working for US and European corporations. Somehow I don't think that's best for them in the long run. India and China should be creating their own jobs if they want healthy economies.
The US wasn't lucky or advantaged. Instead the US had a freer market (relatively speaking) than the "unlucky and disadvantaged" nations. Luck is finding a wonderful opportunity, but luck isn't what created that opportunity.
Today they do. But what about tomorrow? The current fad of offshoring is creating a huge demand for IT workers in India. Their wages go up. Soon they'll be making $60+K a year just like us. And then their bubble will burst just like ours, when the corps decide to outsource somewhere cheaper.
I agree. I think the long term solution to this is to get the government out of the situation. What? The government is involved in outsourcing? Indirectly, yes.
If you take a look, you'll see that the only companies outsourcing skilled workers overseas are public corporations. Private companies are not. Corporations are artificial entities created by governments.
A private company is owned by individuals who have their own long term self-interest at heart. They want short term gains, but they won't take them at the expense of long term profitability. But corporations are run by individuals who only care for short term stock price changes. This creates a horribly skewed market sense. Corporate executives really don't care if they're squandering the company's future, so long as they look good next quarter.
Talk to any private business owner. Their workers are almost like family to them. They're only going to lay off employees for cause or if money is very tight. I've actually had some jobs where I made more money than the owner. But a corporation is owned by millions of disintered and unaccountable stockholders. There is no sense of family. Employees are resources at best, liabilities at worst.
Public corporations could still be formed without a government charter, but the owners are going to be much more cautious in doing so, because they'll still be liable without the current government absolutions that occur when a corporation is founded.
Of course, getting governments out of the corporation creation business isn't going to happen. But there is something we can do in the meantime. If you own stock you are a part owner in a company. Exercise your ownership rights. Make your voice heard. Your employees (also known as the management) have a job to maximize your investment, not to squander it on short term "stock price roulette".
In response to the parent post, I'm all for the free market. If the free market truly says that IT jobs should go to India, then so be it. But as long as corporations are artificial entities created by governments, it's not a free market.
I meant to turn off all ports, not to turn off the bloody systems. Sheesh.
If they're systems in a lab, you're probably going to have to keep some ports on. But for 99.99% of Windows users there is not need to. They're client machines, not servers.
he knows as much about this topic as Rush Limbaugh knows about american football.
Actually, Rush knows quite a bit about football. He has forgotten more about football than you have ever learned. Next time please engage brain before attempting witticism.
Or you could just make sure everything is off. I don't know how much more simple you can get. Of course, you do need a little bit of education to know how to tell that you really do have everything off, but it's still a heck of a lot simpler than learning assembler.
Oh! We're talking about Windows. Maybe learning assembler is easier...
Mr. Hurst's review of FreeBSD is puzzling to me. It's almost like he was reviewing a completely different OS, because hardly anything correlated to my own experience.
I've been using FreeBSD as my primary OS since FreeBSD 4.0. I've used FreeBSD 5.0 and am currently using FreeBSD 5.1. In fact, I CANNOT go back to Linux, because no currently shipping Linux distro will install on my new hardware, while FreeBSD will.
What I was not told was that this is the bleeding-edge alpha grade release in BSD's terms.
You were not told this, because it's not true. 5.0 wasn't "stable", but that word has different connotations in the FreeBSD world than it does in the Linux world. There were some rough edges, and it wasn't as stable as 4.8 currently is, but it's a long cry from "bleeding edge apha grade". 5.0 was released because it needed wider usage to ferret out the remaining rough edges.
But be that as it may, Ed's complaints don't stem from the "unstable" nature of FreeBSD 5.0.
The install scripts are probably the roughest part of my experience. One really _must_ read a thorough guide before attempting it.
Note to all users of ANY operating system: read the documentation. Remember the first time you installed Linux, and didn't know the difference between hda and hdb drives, and why the partitions jumped from hda2 to hda5? Welcome back. This isn't Linux so you shouldn't expect it to be. In the case of FreeBSD, you're going to be a newbie all over again. The install scripts are rough, but not terribly so.
When I went back to run sysinstall, it wiped a lot of config and log files. I had to add my user account back, and create the passwords for that and the root account. The locate database was wiped. I also found nothing but empty files in/var/log.
This is very strange. I can't imagine how sysinstall could do this even if you tried. First, it doesn't touch any log files. Period. Second, most of its configuration goes into the single/etc/rc.conf file. If you could reproduce this, send in a bug report pronto.
The Linux "emulator" is broken, and I never got any of my Linux apps to so much as install, never mind use them
This is really strange. Linux compatibility is something that "just works". You don't even need to configure it. All you need to do is to turn it on in sysinstall or during the install process. Every Linux binary I've used has worked. Most work so flawlessly you would think they're native binaries. Acrobat, Opera, Textmaker, Loki games, Blackdown Java, etc., all work "out of the box". You might have some problems with older binaries that aren't properly "branded", but these things are downright scarce today.
(Opera, Textmaker and Java now have native FreeBSD binaries)
While CUPS was installed, it required Linux-compat to set up, and mine didn't work.
You do know, don't you, that there's a native CUPS package for FreeBSD?
Firewalling is a nightmare of hand-editing the ipfw configuration.
I've never set up a firewall, but it seems obvious to me that the configuration syntax for ipfw is going to be different then that for the Linux firewall du-jour. There is a wealth of documentation out there for ipfw. In addition, pf is being (or has already been) ported over from OpenBSD.
There is no default machine name, such as one finds with most Linux distros -- "localhost.localdomain" or "local.linux" and so forth.
Hmmm, my default machine name if I don't explicitly set one is "localhost.localdomain". Did you accidentally knock your system off your desk in the middle of install or something?
Frankly, Ed's review puzzles me. I don't think I could have this hard of a time with FreeBSD if I actively worked at it. I suspect (but do not accuse) Ed ignored the voluminous FreeBSD documentation and then dropped in some preexisting Linxu config files into/etc.
I wish there was a more up-to-date binary packages repository than the packages tree on the freebsd.org site
Ditto. I think they're just having server space problems, or the 4.x vs 5.x is causing problems. It used to be that every package was there. Now only a few are and they're usually out of date. For OpenOffice packages go to . For KDE packages go to.
If I had the server and the bandwidth, I run my own FreeBSD packages site.
Slashdot Mirror
Why are you still buying at Circuit City, Best Buy and Comp USA? Everyone knows that if you want a new Ford you don't go to a Dodge dealer. The chains you list are decidely Microsoft dealers.
If a store is charging you for a product you do not want, go elsewhere. It's going to be a bit harder, but it's better than whining.
it's hard to find a good x86 box with Linux preloaded ... the unwashed masses will continue to buy MS.
Wait, don't you mean tha the unwashed masses will continue to buy PCs? You're implying that they'll use whatever is preloaded on their PCs. That means all those shrink wrapped Windows boxes on the store shelves are just for show.
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.
Obligatory FreeBSD FanBoy post (purely in jest):
1) You still need the CAR HOWTO, but at least it's up to date.
2) Yeah, you still need to choose a steering wheel. If you want though, you can just clamp a couple of channel-lock pliers onto the steering column.
3) Fits into any garage. Heck, fits into most walkin closets. Won't fit in a doghouse though.
4) Uses the standard radio wiring harness. Unfortunately, most radios have wires three inches too short to reach the plugs.
5) Support available for a price, or free at the "We invented RTFM" Old Fart Channel.
6) Accessories are easy to add via the port-accessory system, but very timeconsuming. Most accessories have funny little penguin logos on them.
7) Trailer hitches are included as loadable modules, but only a few models are available.
8) Car is of fine pedigreed heritage. Unfortunately, that pedigree is "Studebaker".
9) Car takes 30 seconds to start. It's turning on the radio that takes five minutes.
10) Warnings dutifully logged to the console. You do drive with the hood up so you can actually see the console, right?
11) There's an autoroofrackmounterd, but it's a pain to set up. You could do put up the roofrack by hand, but only the registered owner of the vehicle is allowed to.
...and...
12) Available with stylish KDE and GNOME exteriors, but people will still think it's a hearse.
Fair enough, you're still talking only a few pounds. If the weight difference is that critical, may a suggest a mini-tower or smaller instead?
If I were a LAN gamer, I would go with the Antec Lanboy instead of the Antec Sonata. No, backup. I would go with a Shuttle instead. I do a lot of hardware changeouts at work, and I've found the weight of the case an insignificant factor compared to a clear workspace and easily removable side panels.
You're right in that a steel case isn't for everyone. But my original post said "and not flimsy aluminum". The point I was making was that if you wanted a sturdy case, steel was the better choice. If you're always lifting the case, both weight AND sturdiness become an issue.
Hmmm, takes me 18 minutes on a 2.8GHz machine. You using a ramdisk or something?
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).
To be honest, if some manufacturer were to make a case that blended in with the rest of my office I'd be first in line to buy it.
Take a look at the Antec Sonata. No, it's not woodgrain, but the high gloss "piano" black is magnitudes more classy than plain beige or gamer-green. It's also damned quiet and well designed inside.
CPU prices always have a "knee" where the price starts shooting up. Current P4 prices at pixelusa.com: 2.8GHz = $298; 3.0 = $425. That's the knee. You save $60 by going with a 2.6, but spend $120 more by going to the 3.0. And jumping up to the 3.2 for $350 more is simply ridiculous.
I've always preferred buying one or two steps below the knee. I get good speeds at good prices. The only people who buy above the knee are PHB's or parents of whiny gamers.
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.
Who cares how light it the case is? I never pick it up! And extra five pounds is nothing. If it's a problem for you, get a sturdier desk.
Most "high end" cases are designed only to appeal to the gamers. Racing stripes, brushed aluminum with plexiglass panels, 13 5" external bays, cold cathode strips everywhere, etc.
But a good case and PSU is easily worth $100. My new system has the Antec Sonata. It's gorgeous simply because it's understated. Sturdy steel construction, and not flimsy aluminum. Small size (sub mid) tower but with plenty of room inside so it doesn't feel like a small tower. Easy accesibility to all components, good airflow, well designed HD mounts, included top quality PSU, etc. For $100 it was really a good price. The alternative would have been a cheap ass $40 case plus a cheap ass $40 PSU, and $20 worth of hassles setting it up.
This happens ALL THE TIME with PCs.
Then you've been buying cheap ass PCs or power supplies. I've NEVER had a power supply go out in fifteen years of owning computers. At work we have 486s still going strong with their original PSUs.
There are few "US" or "European" corporations--they are all transnationals.
But they're all run by Americans and Europeans and headquartered in North America and Europe. The stockholders life in the US and Europe. Profits from Asia are siphoned out to investors in the western hemispere. It's corporate colonialism.
if US style markets guaranteed dominance and wealth, we wouldn't even be talking about this.
The current US style markets are largely broken, and why we're losing our economic dominance. But I was speaking of "freer markets". The US doesn't have have, and really never had, a true free market. But it has been relatively freer than those in many other nations. This isn't a US thing. Europe and Australia also have markets relatively freer than most other nations.
Look for totalitarian states and you will find abysmal economies. Look for strong socialistic countries and you will find better, but still poor economies. Your strong economies are found in nations with moderate to light socialism. In other words, where the government doesn't try to manage all aspects of the market.
India has moved from strong socialist to a moderate socialist nation, and its economy is improving accordingly. China threw off totalitarian rule and its now poised to become an economic powerhouse for the rest of the century if it can stay that way.
But the workers in India and China are working for US and European corporations. Somehow I don't think that's best for them in the long run. India and China should be creating their own jobs if they want healthy economies.
The US wasn't lucky or advantaged. Instead the US had a freer market (relatively speaking) than the "unlucky and disadvantaged" nations. Luck is finding a wonderful opportunity, but luck isn't what created that opportunity.
Amen brother! Unfortunately, the government will probably go the protectionist route and screw things up even further.
They get $550/month in india.
Today they do. But what about tomorrow? The current fad of offshoring is creating a huge demand for IT workers in India. Their wages go up. Soon they'll be making $60+K a year just like us. And then their bubble will burst just like ours, when the corps decide to outsource somewhere cheaper.
Governemnt interference with the market is bad.
I agree. I think the long term solution to this is to get the government out of the situation. What? The government is involved in outsourcing? Indirectly, yes.
If you take a look, you'll see that the only companies outsourcing skilled workers overseas are public corporations. Private companies are not. Corporations are artificial entities created by governments.
A private company is owned by individuals who have their own long term self-interest at heart. They want short term gains, but they won't take them at the expense of long term profitability. But corporations are run by individuals who only care for short term stock price changes. This creates a horribly skewed market sense. Corporate executives really don't care if they're squandering the company's future, so long as they look good next quarter.
Talk to any private business owner. Their workers are almost like family to them. They're only going to lay off employees for cause or if money is very tight. I've actually had some jobs where I made more money than the owner. But a corporation is owned by millions of disintered and unaccountable stockholders. There is no sense of family. Employees are resources at best, liabilities at worst.
Public corporations could still be formed without a government charter, but the owners are going to be much more cautious in doing so, because they'll still be liable without the current government absolutions that occur when a corporation is founded.
Of course, getting governments out of the corporation creation business isn't going to happen. But there is something we can do in the meantime. If you own stock you are a part owner in a company. Exercise your ownership rights. Make your voice heard. Your employees (also known as the management) have a job to maximize your investment, not to squander it on short term "stock price roulette".
In response to the parent post, I'm all for the free market. If the free market truly says that IT jobs should go to India, then so be it. But as long as corporations are artificial entities created by governments, it's not a free market.
I meant to turn off all ports, not to turn off the bloody systems. Sheesh.
If they're systems in a lab, you're probably going to have to keep some ports on. But for 99.99% of Windows users there is not need to. They're client machines, not servers.
he knows as much about this topic as Rush Limbaugh knows about american football.
Actually, Rush knows quite a bit about football. He has forgotten more about football than you have ever learned. Next time please engage brain before attempting witticism.
Or you could just make sure everything is off. I don't know how much more simple you can get. Of course, you do need a little bit of education to know how to tell that you really do have everything off, but it's still a heck of a lot simpler than learning assembler.
Oh! We're talking about Windows. Maybe learning assembler is easier...
Running FreeBSD, checking what ports are open...
None. I'm not running a server, so I never turned anything on. inetd is off. Every connection made is by my explicit command.
Why this isn't the default on every single operating system out there is beyond my comprehension.
The company I work for at its peak had 1200 employees worldwide. But we have a class B network domain. Huh?
Mr. Hurst's review of FreeBSD is puzzling to me. It's almost like he was reviewing a completely different OS, because hardly anything correlated to my own experience.
/var/log.
/etc/rc.conf file. If you could reproduce this, send in a bug report pronto.
/etc.
I've been using FreeBSD as my primary OS since FreeBSD 4.0. I've used FreeBSD 5.0 and am currently using FreeBSD 5.1. In fact, I CANNOT go back to Linux, because no currently shipping Linux distro will install on my new hardware, while FreeBSD will.
What I was not told was that this is the bleeding-edge alpha grade release in BSD's terms.
You were not told this, because it's not true. 5.0 wasn't "stable", but that word has different connotations in the FreeBSD world than it does in the Linux world. There were some rough edges, and it wasn't as stable as 4.8 currently is, but it's a long cry from "bleeding edge apha grade". 5.0 was released because it needed wider usage to ferret out the remaining rough edges.
But be that as it may, Ed's complaints don't stem from the "unstable" nature of FreeBSD 5.0.
The install scripts are probably the roughest part of my experience. One really _must_ read a thorough guide before attempting it.
Note to all users of ANY operating system: read the documentation. Remember the first time you installed Linux, and didn't know the difference between hda and hdb drives, and why the partitions jumped from hda2 to hda5? Welcome back. This isn't Linux so you shouldn't expect it to be. In the case of FreeBSD, you're going to be a newbie all over again. The install scripts are rough, but not terribly so.
When I went back to run sysinstall, it wiped a lot of config and log files. I had to add my user account back, and create the passwords for that and the root account. The locate database was wiped. I also found nothing but empty files in
This is very strange. I can't imagine how sysinstall could do this even if you tried. First, it doesn't touch any log files. Period. Second, most of its configuration goes into the single
The Linux "emulator" is broken, and I never got any of my Linux apps to so much as install, never mind use them
This is really strange. Linux compatibility is something that "just works". You don't even need to configure it. All you need to do is to turn it on in sysinstall or during the install process. Every Linux binary I've used has worked. Most work so flawlessly you would think they're native binaries. Acrobat, Opera, Textmaker, Loki games, Blackdown Java, etc., all work "out of the box". You might have some problems with older binaries that aren't properly "branded", but these things are downright scarce today.
(Opera, Textmaker and Java now have native FreeBSD binaries)
While CUPS was installed, it required Linux-compat to set up, and mine didn't work.
You do know, don't you, that there's a native CUPS package for FreeBSD?
Firewalling is a nightmare of hand-editing the ipfw configuration.
I've never set up a firewall, but it seems obvious to me that the configuration syntax for ipfw is going to be different then that for the Linux firewall du-jour. There is a wealth of documentation out there for ipfw. In addition, pf is being (or has already been) ported over from OpenBSD.
There is no default machine name, such as one finds with most Linux distros -- "localhost.localdomain" or "local.linux" and so forth.
Hmmm, my default machine name if I don't explicitly set one is "localhost.localdomain". Did you accidentally knock your system off your desk in the middle of install or something?
Frankly, Ed's review puzzles me. I don't think I could have this hard of a time with FreeBSD if I actively worked at it. I suspect (but do not accuse) Ed ignored the voluminous FreeBSD documentation and then dropped in some preexisting Linxu config files into
Try
I wish there was a more up-to-date binary packages repository than the packages tree on the freebsd.org site
.
Ditto. I think they're just having server space problems, or the 4.x vs 5.x is causing problems. It used to be that every package was there. Now only a few are and they're usually out of date. For OpenOffice packages go to . For KDE packages go to
If I had the server and the bandwidth, I run my own FreeBSD packages site.