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Old 9th May 2009
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Oko Oko is offline
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I thought that original post was a troll and I still think this is a troll. I am surprised how many serious people posted their answers. Since we are already trolling I will post couple observations.

An average Linux user is a desktop user who is dual booting Windows and Ubuntu. He/she is primarily GUI user mostly unaware of Operating System. He/she knows about Unix as a barrel of donkeys. If, accidentally, such a Linux user stables across BSD he/she will give us lots of FUD. The FUD usually goes something like this:"Flash doesn't work, Java plugins are difficult to install, Skype doesn't work with video or not at all, and HAL either doesn't exit or doesn't work out of box". Then they will continue about lack of drivers for BSDs.
It is interesting to note that all above technologies are proprietary which seems odd having in mind the vision of founding fathers of GNU movement.
Or is it really odd that BSD sucks because couple companies see no viable reason to provide their proprietary products for BSD. No, not at all since GNU founding fathers are full of shit as their followers. The image they are trying to project to their flock has little to do with reality.

For example: http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Stallman/index.shtml

Why does Linux seem to have more drivers than BSDs? Because of their willingness to
sign non disclosure agreements with hardware manufactures unlike most of BSD people minus some minority of FreeBSD gang. Linux people are trying to lock the hardware for any other open source project much like their alleged nemesis M$.
In reality Linux owns its very existence to M$ who ported Unix to crappy i386 machines. It owns its existence to the IBM and HP which needed it to combat M$
on the commodity server market.

Linux is neither free nor non-proprietary product for the most part. Presently it is mostly product at least kernel of one proxy company called RedHat (read IBM and HP instead) which has different revenue model than M$. Even RedHat(Fedora) openly admins that Linux desktop has no future. Canonical (buntu) and Novel(SuSE) are here to prove RedHat wrong. I think they will be filling for bankruptcy soon. All other Linux distros are jokes. How many kernel commits have been done by Slackware developers last year? Compare that to RedHat.

Story of GNU is even more comic. Emacs runs fine on M$ as well as GCC. As a matter or fact GCC is presently completely controlled by corporate interests. If that is not the case I am sure that SGI enthusiasts will be able to compile more than 2000-3000
which currently can compile on SGI.

Why BSD is not popular? Because for the most part with exception of Apple and FreeBSD (up to some point) doesn't care for GUI users. Those users will not benefit from BSD nor BSD will benefit from them.
Because BSD used to be a joke. Serious people in early and mid nineties were running Digital Unix, Solaris, and Irix. The only advantage BSD offered to real Unix users was its ability to run crappy Wintel hardware (that is why FreeBSD which essentially runs only on Wintel hardware is the most popular flavor of BSD).
Most present day BSD users are old Unix users who have commodity hardware. Oh wait a minute. Real hardware doesn't exist any more unless we count there three
years old SUN's blades which are as fast as P4 and cost $1000.


OpenBSD is a niche product never meant to be widely used. NetBSD is almost gone
since non-Wintel hardware is almost gone (Those who run Amiga, Atari, SGI, or even
SUN please raise your hands). Sparc 64 port of NetBSD is buggy as Hell doesn't support any hardware beyond 1998. PPC port of NetBSD is on life support. NetBSD port of SGI supports two essentially Wintel machines (O2 and Indigo). What else are there? Nothing. Everything is just Wintel junk. That is way NetBSD is only relevant for embedded devices (which is HUGE market). DragonFly actually is cool project.
It did manage the develop Hammer. Couple clever guys managed to beat 100 of RedHat engineers who couldn't even properly copy the Journaling File Systems developed by proprietary Unix-es 20 years ago. In particular comparison of Ext3 and
ZFS is laughable. Oh wait a minute Linux has a new Journal File System in the pipe line and is already better than ZFS. Sure. That is why SGI who donated that journal file system is out of business.


Ok. I am going to stop trolling now. I feel better. Count until ten Oko.

Last edited by Oko; 10th May 2009 at 01:32 AM.
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