[nycbug-talk] What's the point

[Michael Welsh]

All,

I was talking to a friend of mine today...I was excited about loading BSD on 
my laptop.  I was telling him how well the sysinstall program worked and how 
easy it was to load desktop software like X and OpenBox3.  Once I got 
Mozilla-Firebird and a few other apps installed, I had it in a pretty usable 
state.  I was telling him how I had CVSUP'd and poked around the ports tree 
a bit.  I have already recompiled a GENERIC kernel, working up the courage 
to do some serious tweaking.

He stopped me, "What's the point?  You had a perfectly good linux 
installation on there.  And I DO NOT want to get into a license argument 
right now."

I probably laid it on too thick when I replied, "Leaning is the journey and 
knowledge is the destination."

He smirked at this... and I let it go.  "True, the laptop was fine the way 
it was, but, I did it for the experience for when I load BSD onto a server." 
  I went over some points why I believed BSD was a good thing.. including 
long development history, strong community, reputation for security and 
reliability, great documentation, ease of installation, ease of maintenance 
and use... I included little bonuses like the quick boot and quick shutdown 
times that I especially like for my laptop.  It also 'appears' to run really 
fast.  In the end I am not sure I did BSD the justice it deserved.

Open question for the list:  How would you answer, "What's the point?"  Not 
necessarily for a laptop, but in general... Why BSD?

Michael


end of message --------------------------------

_________________________________________________________________
Check your PC for viruses with the FREE McAfee online computer scan.  
http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963