Re: Is it always this difficult to get started with BSD/unix?

From: user (nospam_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/13/05 

Date: Thu, 13 Oct 2005 16:59:15 GMT

I really don't want to start a flame war here. I really appreciate the help
that I've received in this thread.

I wanted to provide a little feedback that I thought would be of interest to
the community as a whole. That is, if the community ever hopes to
commercialize BSD on a larger scale, then they will have to 'convert' people
just like me.

So when I tell you that coming from the Windows world, that it is not that
easy to change my expectations of what an OS is or should be overnight,
that's just feedback. Although, spending three days trying to get an OS
running for the first time does seem excessive to me. Let's face it, the
path of least resistance for me is to go out and buy Win server 2003 (if I
could afford it). But I digress...

Some people in the community will inevitably think that I am too
stupid/lazy/ignorant/Windows-centric to grasp what BSD is all about. They
are wrong, and I will try really hard to ignore them if/when it comes up.
I'm not a Windows elitist and I have an 'open' mind. Just please don't bash
me too much when I draw comparisons.

However, the good news is that I have been able to get DesktopBSD running
(although I will have some questions about video support, as I continue to
have lock-up problems with the ATI M4 video chip -- I'll start a new thread
on this).

I did want to say that the DesktopBSD installation has been a BIG help to
me. The K environment is familiar. I can navigate around the system with the
explorer-like interface and have started dipping into the config files. It
gives me a toe-hold in a place that is foreign to me.

G.T.

"entropy" <entropy@domain.invalid> wrote in message
news:MPG.1db8563086acf34b98a5a6@news.verizon.net...
> nospam@hotmail.com wrote...
>> With all due respect to yourself, ALL of my small business and home
>> office
>> IT clients run Windows. Like it or not, that's 92% of my market. And, I
>> like
>> it just fine.
>
> If it's your market, it's your market. It's off-topic here, though.
>
>> I also do web application development -- hence the new interest BSD.
>
> Then just take BSD/*nix on its own terms and do what you have to do
> to work with it. Or not. But getting wordy with people here because
> it's "harder" than Windows justs wastes time and energy.
>
> I've had to do some occasional development on Win32, and there's
> nothing "easy" about writing software for a platform you don't know
> very well. "Easy" is a function of how much knowledge you have.
>
> Given a GUI, my 4-yo and 2-yo sons can surf PBSKIDS.ORG equally well
> on any of several OSes we have running here. I'm posting this from
> XP because I'm too lazy to hit the console switch to post it from
> Linux or FreeBSD.

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