[OT] Re: Laptop suggestions?

[Norberto Meijome]

On Fri, 1 Aug 2008 14:28:51 HST
knowtree at aloha.com wrote:

[....]

> Success on the desktop and laptop is vital to the future of FOSS. The
> commercial market will continue to try to monopolize new technology, their
> goal being to lock customers in and lock us out.

hi :)
I understand your point, and to a certain degree I agree - good support for
desktop platforms is important and will obviously increase the  user base of
that particular OS  . ( the discussion whether OS dominance  is the goal of
part of the communities behind Linux (it seems to be) or *BSD (I don't think
so) is another altogether, and probably OT in this list.)

But I don't think the future of FOSS hinges on desktop platform support.All the
big $$ into FOSS isn't being made (AFAIK), on desktop products, but on the
server, embedded , consulting side of things.

I am by NO means saying desktop support isn't important, for the project or
personally (I've been running Linux and lately BSD on several of my home
desktops + work laptops for 10 years )

[....]

> If the FOSS community
> cannot offer a *viable* alternative to commercial operating systems, nobody
> will come to our party. Sure I can put up with not using the built-in WiFi
> interface in my D830 -- I have a Lucent Gold PC-Card that works just fine.
> That is the tolerance only found in fans. In true believers. The vast
> majority of people will laugh at this, dismiss me as eccentric, and go
> right on using the commercial OS. Because it works.

Does it work? for them, great. for me, it doesn't. Or maybe FBSD has worked
great enough that I don't need to consider the MS alternative ( most of the
'commercial' needs I have point me to MS (Sonicwall, Visio, testing of w32
apps...)
FWIW, my experience with OS-X driver support not that great, .. What works
out of the box, works also in FBSD. when there aren't drivers for OSX, there
usually is there something out there for FBSD (in particular, a canon USB
scanner I've had for years wouldn't work on OSX nor Windows, but sane just
picked it up. funny hey. I can possibly install sane on OSX, but I can't be
bothered investing time on learning how to plug in all the FOSS frameworks into
it.)

> I remember when FOSS fans loved to brag about how long they left their
> servers up. An uptime of 360d was the Holy Grail. What made such
> conversation entertaining was the look on the Windows SAs faces. These poor
> guys were lucky to have a system run a whole day. In their world, lockups
> and reboots were taken for granted. 

and those facts (not so much that Unix is better ;) , but the instability of
early NT3.x/4/2000... systems)  pushed Microsoft to make more reliable systems,
and I am sure this improves things for everyone (except those that have this
near-religious view that anything they don't agree with must be removed from
all silicon-powered devices throughout the world...). 

> I want the same thing now. I want
> FreeBSD + Gnome to blow the doors off of any and all commercial platforms.

Correct , >YOU<. There may be others that don't. There is room for everyone :)

(btw, I agree with you ;) )

> Speed. Reliability. Functionality. Ease of installation. Ease of use.

Absolutely :) 

Cheers,
B
_________________________
{Beto|Norberto|Numard} Meijome

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