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From: Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Linux or FreeBSD
Date: 23 Sep 1995 03:15:21 GMT
Organization: Utah Valley State College, Orem, Utah
Lines: 85
Message-ID: <43vu49$cpj@park.uvsc.edu>
References: <409iah$inf@galaxy.ucr.edu> <41ogs7$jui@park.uvsc.edu> <1995Sep7.221221.28091@state.systems.sa.gov.au> <43dm5r$638@park.uvsc.edu> <43hqa7$3rk@nntp5.u.washington.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hecate.artisoft.com
tzs@u.washington.edu (Tim Smith) wrote:
]
] Terry Lambert <terry@cs.weber.edu> wrote:
] >I mean I find it hard to believe that Linux has "10 times as many
] >people"
]
] I don't. First, consider non-net sources. Linux seems to be much
] more widely available. Walk into any reasonable bookstore, and there
] are Linux books that include Linux on CD-ROM. The closest thing you'll
] find in most of those stores to any flavor of Berkeley Unix is the 4.4
] BSD CD-ROM.
Refutations:
1) "Seems" is subjective.
2) BSD (and Linux) don't require books to use.
3) I don't necessarily want to pay for both a book
and a CDROM.
4) You shop at the wrong bookstore. The one
I go to has it.
] Second, what does get out to stores is too out of date to run on many
] people's systems. I've not been able to find a store that caries anything
] later than FreeBSD 2.0. Since then, IDE CD-ROM has become the norm on
] PC hardware, and is not supported in FreeBSD 2.0.
Refutations:
1) This is a channel marketing problem for all
products everywhere.
2) You can go to the FTP site for "most recent"
if you in fact want that.
3) You can call Walnut Creek CDROM directly.
4) Software is not fresness dated.
] Third, Linux used to get along better with DOS. You could try it out
] using the UMSDOS file system if you had no unpartitioned space on your
] hard disk. If you did have unpartitioned space, you could add a real
] Linux partition, but use LOADLIN or BOOTLIN to start Linux, so you didn't
] have to worry that Linux would mess up your other operating systems.
] FreeBSD, on the other hand, appeared to want to take over the boot
] process, and there was no obvious way to load it some other way (e.g.,
] nothing like LOADLIN). I understand that some or all of these issues
] have been addressed, but given the lag between the latest FreeBSD and
] what is available in stores, they are probably still real issues for
] a lot of potential FreeBSD users.
Refutations:
1) If it's been addressed, it's no longer an issue.
2) The "past lag" is no indicator of future or even
current ternds.
3) Linux less "net friendly" than BSD. The argument
cuts both ways equally and is therefore zero sum.
] Combining all of the above, I'd expect Linux to be overwhelmingly
] more common among those who are buying CD-ROMs in bookstores or
] computer stores.
]
] I have no idea what the numbers are like for people who obtain their
] first system from the net rather than from stores.
Refutations:
1) There is no figure of merit for market skew based
on where the media was purchased. Even if we were
to grant you the argument of "more common among
those who are buying CD-ROMs in bookstores or
computer stores" (which we won't), there is no
evidence of the division of sales on this basis.
2) You admit that you have no idea of the relative
distribution ratio via network distribution, so in
fact some potentially huge percentage of a unknown
skew ratio prefer BSD.
3) You can't combine "all of the above" and come up
with a valid argument for the combined reasons
above.
Terry Lambert
terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.