On Wed, May 04, 2005 at 02:13:54AM -0700, T. Joseph CARTER wrote: > On Sun, May 01, 2005 at 01:41:09PM -0700, Jacob Meuser wrote: > > > It was absolutely tiny by modern standards, but it was a relatively full > > > CD which provided a pretty full system. What it didn't provide was the > > > huge redundancy the average linux user associates with "power" because it > > > interfered with what the average non-linux user associates with "usable". > > > It had more in common with Ubuntu than it would with something like DSL, > > > I'd guess. > > > > you know, the BSDs have operated with this mentality for some time. > > I know--and if not for the vastly greater number of drivers offered by > Linux (Linux supports more crap by far than Windows on ia32 at this point, > though it is not a clear superset), I would probably take a closer look at > FreeBSD. The main thing preventing this is that I'm not much interested > in rtfm-style answers to questions, especially to questions with short > answers that would be easier to have answered by a knowledgable person > than to dig up tfm to r.
the OpenBSD manpages are very good. I'll bet you can find these little things there, or in the FAQ -> http://www.openbsd.org/faq.html faster than asking on a mailing list (the list servers use spamd grey-listing, so you're probably going to have to wait a little for your posts to get through anyway). what particular "crap" do you need support for? > I'm a very busy person these days. =/ I know a lot of general use crap > about UNIX in general and Linux and MacOS X in particular (my Linux is a > little rusty, but not really THAT much has changed from 2.4 to 2.6), but > applying this to a particular platform (a BSD or any particular variant of > Linux which does something in ways I'm not used to) is going to require > some Q&A. print out the faq, print out `man intro` and read them when you're on the crapper ;) > It's pretty easy at this point to get that from Linux people because they > are so used to idiots who think Linux will make them l33t h4x0rz that an > occasional simple, direct, and intelligent question is a welcome relief, > even if it could be found somewhere in documentation. They're too swamped > with new users to be snooty and indignant that someone hasn't read the > spotty, incomplete, and in places incomprehensible documentation cover to you see, that's the difference. BSD documentation really is pretty good. Linux moves too fast, things get reimplemented and switched around too quickly, and the people writing the docs are in many cases not the developers. that's not the case with BSDs. > cover. I find too many BSD users, who largely are used to trying to > justify their superiority to Linux users, relish in their snootiness. well. I left Debian and went to OpenBSD *for that exact reason*. yeah, you may get flamed on an OpenBSD list, but the flame will usually contain the info you're looking for. when you get flamed elsewhere, it's just a flame. > This is of course not an accusation to any particular person, just an > overall reaction to the community vibe. Linux went through the same thing > back in the latter 90s when it started to become popular. That kind of > exclusionism just resonates with me in bad ways. there has been somewhat of an attitude shift in BSD land as well. > Of course, I am pretty sure I don't remember any FreeBSD systems having a > nice little integrated configuration for things like what services are > enabled or anything like that either. In fact, I remember FreeBSD being a > lot like Gentoo, but without the cute little etc-update tools (and it's > not like those are all that effective either!) no, they are different, very different. anyway, I would think NetBSD would probably fit your personality better than Free or Open. > > a pretty complete base system that's easy to install (one web server, > > one mail server, one inetd, one version of each basic tool, etc) and > > packages for extra stuff. > > > > I remember doing a tiny OpenBSD & gnome install on one of Jamie's > > old laptops (~200 MB harddisk IIRC) at a clinic a couple years ago. > > Again, it wasn't so much the size as it was the 0 to ${workingthing} in a > very short time period. That's something lost from the major Linux dists installing OpenBSD is way fast. out of the box. try it. > which all want to give you a desktop system, either designed to be mind > numbingly simple (Ubuntu) or ridiculously overly complex with everything > and anything available--and often required--to be tweaked (Gentoo). Most > everything else fits in there close to those extremes, without much middle > ground, and not much notice that a person might not want a desktop at all. > > Yeah I know Gentoo can be any kind of system you want, but c'mon, it's not > meant for production servers. And I know Fedora can be run without X if > you want to, but that's not its intention. And Debian .. well, who knows > what Debian is or isn't these days. And there are tonnes of minor dists > with niche purposes for firewalls and whatnot. > > I just lament that Linux has generally gone the way of trying to compete > with Windows in the feature list rather than trying to simply be better. > Quality and integration were my interest. you _so_ need to look into OpenBSD. but I find it funny, that you start the email with, more or less "A doesn't have enough features", and end with "B has too many features". -- <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _______________________________________________ EUGLUG mailing list [email protected] http://www.euglug.org/mailman/listinfo/euglug
