*BSD News Article 56411


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From: michael@okjunc.junction.net (Michael Dillon)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.advocacy,comp.unix.misc
Subject: Re: Linux vs FreeBSD
Date: 9 Dec 1995 09:05:19 GMT
Organization: Okanagan Internet Junction, Vernon B.C., Canada
Lines: 68
Message-ID: <4abjgf$dap@felix.junction.net>
References: <49ssit$51@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <49ve3t$of2@taiwan.informatik.uni-rostock.de> <4a03ff$htd@bell.maths.tcd.ie> <4a4at5$a49@snowdon.elsevier.co.uk>
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.os.linux.advocacy:29773 comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:10068 comp.unix.advocacy:11936 comp.unix.misc:19950

In article <4a4at5$a49@snowdon.elsevier.co.uk>, Paul Richards  <dpr> wrote:
>tim@maths.tcd.ie (Timothy Murphy) wrote:
>
>>>       What are you talking about?   Do you really think  not seeing a book
>>>   with  'FreeBSD How To Do"  on the cover there  are no good documentation
>>>   available? 
>
>I'd say this was a bit of a gut reaction since there's always this accusation
>that there's no available documentation for FreeBSD when the simple fact of
>the matter is that there's little reason for a FreeBSD specific admin
>book since it's *BSD* and the bookshelves are full of the things.

What bookshelves? I have never seen a book anywhere on any bookshelf with 
BSD in the title. Not that it bothers me personally a lot because I *DO* 
know how to read man pages, use "strings -" on binaries, etc...

But the lack of FreeBSD books is clearly one of the greatest failures of 
the FreeBSD project. Read the following statement to see why.

   The simple fact of the matter is that there's little
   reason for FreeBSD to exist because it's *UNIX* and
   the world is full of Unices.

I suspect you disagree with that statement. Can you also see why people 
would disagree that there is no need for a FreeBSD book (or two or three)
merely because some other books cover the same topic material?

From a marketing point of view FreeBSD needs at least 4 things..

   FreeBSD Journal published monthly
   Getting Started with FreeBSD
   The FreeBSD Internet Server
   The FreeBSD Network Server

The last 3 titles are books. A "Getting Started" book would be an add-on 
sale for a CD-ROM distribution, and could also be supplied to bookstores 
with the CD-ROM included. The "Internet Server" book would cover setting 
up a server for email, sync cards, WWW, ftp and the like. The "Network 
Server" book would be more LAN oriented covering things like NFS, SAMBA 
and Appleshare file and printer services.

>The documentation situation in FreeBSD is vastly improved and still
>getting better. You can know read the online handbook using a web browser
>and the current pages are very good. Most common tasks are now covered,
>setting up dial-up connections, printers, kernels etc and the handbook
>gets improved continually.

Can anyone who wants to take the Handbook text and incorporate it into a 
"Getting Started" book?

>If you want to get help with FreeBSD then use the mailing lists. This is
>the first time I've read these newsgroups in many many months and things
>haven't changed at all. Most of the the threads are cross-posts devoted
>to slagging off each other's OS, (mainly linux<->BSD comparisons).

If you believe this you've never seen an NT vs. OS/2 thread...

IMHO, both Linux and FreeBSD have their places. Neither is clearly better 
than the other one overall so everybody really does have to make their 
own choice. But having two such OSes in *FRIENDLY* competition is good 
for both of them and thus, good for all of us.



-- 
Michael Dillon                                    Voice: +1-604-546-8022
Memra Software Inc.                                 Fax: +1-604-542-4130
http://www.memra.com                             E-mail: michael@memra.com