*BSD News Article 57595


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From: jackson@replicant.csci.unt.edu (Bruce Jackson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: a monthly FreeBSD magazine (and other *BSD's too)
Date: 15 Dec 1995 22:50:51 GMT
Organization: University of North Texas, Denton
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Message-ID: <4asu4b$lvt@hermes.acs.unt.edu>
References: <4ajc07$sb7@unix2.glink.net.hk> <4arhgi$f0c@felix.junction.net> <4as2e7$91r@cnn.Princeton.EDU> <4asrpo$85k@agate.berkeley.edu>
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In article <4asrpo$85k@agate.berkeley.edu>,
Nick Kralevich <nickkral@parker.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:

> I've seen plenty of Linux books on the market.  Heck, when I go to
> Barnes and Noble's, there are only slightly more UNIX books then
> there are Linux books.  I think the Linux section takes up more than
> 3 or 4 shelves.

> I've never seen a FreeBSD book.  And I seriously doubt that 20,000
> people are using FreeBSD.

There is plenty of documentation for Berkeley UNIX.  You seem to be
troubled by the fact that there isn't a lot of new documentation for
FreeBSD.  I have never purchased a manual for FreeBSD UNIX because I
never needed it.  90% of the material from my BSD 4.3 documentation
from '86 is still correct for FreeBSD and any deltas are not that hard
to figure out.  The truth is that you don't need a manual for FreeBSD,
any book on BSD or general UNIX is all you need.  That is an advantage
to being a standard.

> Just for reference, the Linux journal has a distribution size of
> 29,000.  (source: Linux Journal, issue 20, Dec 1995, pg 65).  If you
> figure that the number is 5% of the actual number of Linux users,
> then that would put Linux users at over half a million.  Then again,
> 5% seems really high, so I wouldn't doubt it if there were over a
> million Linux users.

I'm not a FreeBSD bigot, I have used and occasionally specify Linux
for projects.  When someone has hardware that is supported under Linux
and not FreeBSD I'll install Linux.  I'm far more comfortable with
FreeBSD, it is less buggy, networks better and handles heavly loads
better.  Operating systems are not religions though.  If Linux is
better for a particular project we use it.

As far as numbers go, there are enough people still developing and
improving Berkeley UNIX that it doesn't matter if more people use
Linux.  FreeBSD has acheived "critical mass" so its immediate future
is good.
--
 Bruce Jackson        | P. O. Box 13886-NT   | GAB 550E
 UNIX Systems Admin.  | Denton TX 76203-3886 | (817)565-2279
 Computer Sciences    | jackson@cs.unt.edu   | FAX (817)565-2799
 Univ. of North Texas | http://replicant.csci.unt.edu/~jackson/