On 06/09/06, White Hat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Immaterial. the singularly most important feature is suitability to task. If it is free and it does not work, what good is it?
It depends what you are using it for. You made a comment about "occaisonal word processing" (pasted below). For such use OpenOffice is perfectly good enough.
Yes, the lack of documentation is a shame.
In Windows, yes. In FreeBSD I can't see a lack.
The same lack of documentation plagues every facet of software today.
No it doesn't. FreeBSD is well documented. However, you have made my point. No I haven't. I have contradicted your point. You said " A very large majority of users simply want to use their PCs for email, occasional word processing and possible game playing." I am saying that using XP as you suggested is not as easy as you suggest for a very large number of people. If a user cannot
decipher how to configure a simple thing like Outlook Express, and there are programs available that will do it for them, then how are they suppose to be capable of handling a CLI OS like FreeBSD? It boggles the mind -- at least mine. Worse, the configuration of OE is handled by a wizard. It is truly sad when a user cannot configure something when it is simplified down to that level.
It's not so much the wizards, but third party applications like virus scanners which change those settings which is a part of the problem. But you are not quite comparing apples with apples. Configuring Thunderbird on FreeBSD is near enough identical to doing the same on Windows. I wouldn't however expect a complete computer novice to be able to set up a FreeBSD box without some help. How? Drop in two CDs or download the programs, run
them and case closed. Neither one requires any significant configuration. The defaults work just fine for most users. You could eliminate the Counter Spy since ZA has its own proprietary SpyWare program, but I just happen to prefer Counter Spy.
Your statement is simply wrong. AV and anti-spyware DO require configuration. And they do require installing, and maybe downloading, and being kept up to date. The defaults certainly don't work all the time in all cases. Have a look here: " http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/06/faulty_ca_update/";. I have heard of broken installations for Norton numerous times. And trying to help these customers is time-consuming for our techies. Frem. _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to "[EMAIL PROTECTED]"
