On Wed, 27 Dec 2000, Jeremiah Gowdy wrote:
> > The amount of free Windows software is much less than what is
> > available for Unix.
>
> I almost choked to death on my Submarina Sandwich when I read
> this. I think you need to take a step back and think a bit on
> this one. Do you really think the 4000-5000 ports in the ports
> tree and the other misc free applications on the net outnumber the
> hundreds of thousands of free Windows applications ? Even if you
> don't count Shareware, which you really should, the number of free
> Windows applications outnumbers the number of free Unix
> applications 10 to 1. Now, the power, importance, usefulness, etc
> of the Unix apps may be superior, but the "amount" or number of
> free Windows applications is certainly not "much less" than what
> is available for Unix. It's much much more. Giving Windows a :(
> for Free Applications is absolutely unbelievable. Oh, and if
> you're going to include all of the Linux binary compatible
> applications as "free software for FreeBSD", then you would have
> to include in Windows 2000's count all of the DOS binaries it is
> compatible with, which far far outnumbers any amount of software
> written for any operating system ever. The amount of freeware
> produced between MSDOS 3 and MSDOS 6 is uncountable, and much of
> it is compatible with Windows 2000.
Uuuuh, I'm gonna have to agree with Murray that there is a complete
dearth of free software for Windows. Go search shareware.com, or
Tucows, or any of the other Windows-centric software sites, and just
TRY to find most of the same tools or applications you take for
granted on your Unix box. I do all the time, and wished to hell I was
managing thousands of BSD boxes instead of Windows. The free software
either doesn't exist, is of very poor quality, or you have to pay for
it. While "free as in beer" software for Windows is fairly prevalent,
GOOD free software is quite rare, and open-sourced software for
Windows is very rare indeed. The Windows-programmer mindset that is
still very prevalent, even in this "open-source" day and age, is "I'll
make this proprietary piece of software, of which there are forty
different other pieces of software almost like it, not release any
code, and you're gonna pay me for it one way or another if you want to
use it".
-- Chris Dillon - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet.
For IA32 and Alpha architectures. IA64 and PowerPC under development.
http://www.freebsd.org
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