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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!simtel!news1.oakland.edu!news.concourse.com!ragnarok.oar.net!malgudi.oar.net!news.sprintlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!spool.mu.edu!olivea!ncd.com!dana.ncd.com!newshost!henryt From: henryt@tabor (Henry Tieman) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: The Future of FreeBSD... Date: 25 Jul 1995 19:22:17 GMT Organization: Network Computing Devices Lines: 83 Message-ID: <HENRYT.95Jul25122217@tabor> References: <3uktse$d9c@hal.nt.tuwien.ac.at> <3ulsro$ssl@agate.berkeley.edu> <3umkok$de2@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> <marcus.197.009F3034@ccelab.iastate.edu> <3us0rg$7ph@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: tabor.pcx.ncd.com In-reply-to: Jon Jenkins's message of 22 Jul 1995 23:16:00 GMT I just had to add my comments to this thread. I think that the major difference between the MS operating systems and FreeBSD is a design goal issue. Most UNIX systems are designed from the start to be a server communicating with other servers. When you put a MS operating system on a machine, it is a client computer, depending on other hosts and servers. Since servers are harder to configure it makes since that FreeBSD is harder to configure. In article <3us0rg$7ph@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> Jon Jenkins <jenkinsj@ozy.dec.com> writes: ... > As much >as I hate to say it, what actually sells and operating system these days is >hype. Yes I agree with you here, Look at the advance orders for Windows 95. Why would anybody in their right mind order an operating system months even years ahead of its first release? answer: hype!! Apparently non every one is falling for the hype. There was a box associated with a story on MS-Windows 95, in PC-Week. It told of a software developer who was desprate to get around the 640k problems with DOS/MS-Windows. After using a beta of MS-Win 95, they are now shipping their program with a copy LINUX. I think they should have used FreeBSD, but I'm a little biased. ... Whoa there, surely you jest! I wont go into a diatribe here. Just compare setting up two simple applications (forgetting all the nasty kernel configuration) compare setting up Eudora Mail on Windows with /etc/sendmail.cf on UNIX!!!! and then compare setting up a dot matix printer in Windows versus printcap etc on UNIX: Nuff said. This is the difference between configuring a server and configuring a client. I'm not familure with Eudora, but most other MS style mail programs use POP to get their mail from a server, they are incapable of acting as a server. On FreeBSD mail is a full SMTP implementation, which requires major effort to setup. > People talk about having to reconfig >the kernel, and edit some files in /etc, but look at all of the time and >tweaking it takes in DOS just to get some device drivers going, I have never had a problem with this but I have had plenty of problems setting up FreeBSD and I work inside the kernel of OSF/1 and ULTRIX everyday!! You obviously have not setup a PC with: net card 2 hard drives sound blaster accelerated video to run multipul apps from microsloth, under MS-Windows. This usually takes about a full day, although there have been cases where it's taken most of a week. > let alone to >get the thing on the network. Windsock was trivial, perhaps a few minutes. /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.conf, bind, NIS, SLIP, PPP, routing, device slattach, etc etc .... There really is no comparison With a real network card, the network setup for FreeBSD was taken care of by the install. Worked flawlessly, first time. I answered the standard questions once and it just worked. It even uses our NIS server to contact the real world. I do agree though that setting up PPP/SLIP under FreeBSD is much more work than under most of the MS-Windows stacks. But most MS-Windows inplementations do not allow the user the full range of options that PPP allows. You pay a price for flexability. henry These are my opinions and don't reflect my employer, my boss or the guy who signs the checks.