[nycbug-talk] What's the point

[G. Rosamond]

->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.

what is the make and model of laptop?

these are some good laptop related links:

http://www.zapatec.com/freebsd/laptop/

http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~dkulp/fbsd/laptop.html


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

it's good to have a philosopher in nycbug.

->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.

sums it up for me. . .

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

simply, it's security, reliability, performance.

it's why so many isp's choose it.

it's why so many embedded systems are on it.

why so the best of hardware manufacturers use it.

to be honest, for me personally, i first installed linux (redhat,
caldera) in 1998 and wasn't happy about the relation between the kernel
and the distro's. . .there shouldn't be a wall there.  it relates back
to security, stability and performance.

i can't say i had an easy time at first with bsd (openbsd, at first),
but i had only a light unix background (vi, light sendmail, etc).

what i learned in the process of learning bsd was that little was hacked
together.  i'm not a developer, and need to rely on the insight of
others for hardware, etc.  from the long list of architectures supported
by netbsd to the evolution of pf in openbsd, and to the great strides
that seem to have been made with 5.x with freebsd, i find it impressive
in its regular accomplishments.

there's also a seriousness in the bsd world that doesn't seem to exist
in other worlds.  the bsd family is not filled with bragging but
inadequate techs who just know the lingo of their os and nothing else.

phew.

happy new year to all.

g