On Mar 13, 2011, at 1:15 AM, Yaron wrote:

> On Sun, 13 Mar 2011, Mike Miller wrote:
> 
>> When I see people calling it "noob"untu, I think they are trying to tell me they are more experienced users who don't need an easy-to-use distro. I've been using Unix and Linux systems for more than 20 years and I greatly prefer something easy that requires almost nothing from me as a user.
> 
> I've got a similar point of view. I've been using UNIX since well before Linux. When I started using Linux there /weren't/ distributions. We /had/ to do it all ourselves. You think Arch Linux is DIY, think again (;
> 
> And hey - we loved it. If we didn't love it we'd not have done it, right?

I used RHL until I was hacked in 2002. Switched to FreeBSD and haven't looked back

[snip]

> I used to know some people who were FreeBSD snobs. They considered Linux a 'weaker' UNIX-vaiant because we had packages. We had RPM and apt and yum and yast and whatever, but FreeBSD has 'make world'. You know what? I'm an experienced enough computer user to tell you that having packages built specifically for your distribution is FAR from a weakness, or a crutch. It's invaluable. Having a system that fits together as well as Ubuntu does just saves an INSANE amount of time, and effort, and work.

Hey now! I personally don't think Linux is weaker but where RHL lacked in 2002 FreeBSD did it right. Dependencies? They downloaded automatically - no more searching for RPMs all over the net. It made my life easier by making my preparation/installation/deployment way easier.

Even my firewall appliance runs nanoBSD (pfSense). I love it. Especially when I could make packages of gphoto2 on my webapp server at work and FTP them onto the nano box and they worked (when I pulled in missing libs).

But to each their own. I don't bash people for their choice of *nix variety but others seem to have the need to trash my choice. Rather than wasting the disk space, transmission time and the readers time just think about it to yourselves, please. Same goes with the other flame-worthy discussions here.

--
Ryan