On Monday 27 Dec 2010 21:44:05 Alvaro Mantilla Gimenez wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I think it is not fair to pointing the reader out directly to Linux.
> There are other systems out there more Open Source than Linux like OpenBSD
> (for example). I think a briedfly review of these other OS would be good
> for the article and, after that, let the reader to choose between Linux -
> OpenBSD - FreeBSD - NetBSD, etc...
First of all, while the licence of most of the BSDs is a permissive one
whereas the licence of most of Linux is the GPL, which is more restrictive,
the GPL is still open-source. You can argue that the BSD licence and the X11
licence are more "open" or more "free" than the GPL or LGPL but that doesn't
make them more "open source".
Secondly, the reason I didn't point the user to the BSDs was the same as the
reason I didn't refer them to Gentoo Linux or Archlinux: they are not ready or
even not intended for newcomers, who are the target audience of the article.
For example:
1. I tried installing PC-BSD on a VirtualBox virtual machine. After
downloading the first two CDs and installing using them, the installation
asked for the third CD which was clearly marked as "optional components".
Since I didn't download that, I tried to avoid it, at which point the
installation aborted and left the installation in an unusable, unbootable
state.
From what I know of Mandriva Linux and other Linux distributions, you can
easily install them using only the first CD.
2. Next, I tried installing plain FreeBSD on a similar virtual machine. The
installation was made in text mode, and try as I might, it wouldn't detect the
VirtualBox internal networking interface. Someone told me that the installer
wasn't worked on for several years.
3. Someone who was able to successfully install FreeBSD, had to recompile a
large percent of the system from ports (including X, etc.) after wishing to
install something. I don't expect most newcomers to be able to tolerate this
without giving up.
4. An Israeli developer who tried to install OpenBSD commented about the
hostility of the installer and how, at a point, the instructions scrolled past
and he couldn't see them.
-------
So while I don't rule out that after some experience, an open-source
enthusiast will opt to experiment with the *BSDs or with less user-friendly
Linux distributions, I cannot recommend any of them as introductory OSes, and
mentioning them as alternatives to introductory distributions will just
confuse the reader. They are out of the scope of the document.
Regards,
Shlomi Fish
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Shlomi Fish http://www.shlomifish.org/
Freecell Solver - http://fc-solve.berlios.de/
Chuck Norris can make the statement "This statement is false" a true one.
Please reply to list if it's a mailing list post - http://shlom.in/reply .
--
To unsubscribe, e-mail: beginners-unsubscr...@perl.org
For additional commands, e-mail: beginners-h...@perl.org
http://learn.perl.org/
