Gan,

On Tue, 18 Sep 2001 oinkfreebiker@att.net wrote:

> have been utterly wasted. Note that I am composing this 
> email on my trusty Win98 machine -- because all my NetBSD 
> machines are useless for KMail, all producing the same 

Kmail is only one of many mail clients.

> I do not care to waste my time like that again. I don't 
> have that much time to waste. If it happens to any such

You are not the only person to have spent time using software. Sadly, I
have wasted much time on Windows systems.

> extent again, I will abandon NetBSD -- and fully document 
> the extent of my deep and abiding frustration on the Web.

Fair enough. I have also heavily documented my experiences with NetBSD on
the web: http://www.reedmedia.net/misc/netbsd/diary.html

And I admit that much of this was also frustrating (and some of it a waste
of my time). (But I enjoy learning and I enjoy NetBSD.)

I really believe that there is no one perfect operating system for
everyone.

> It will then be my pleasure to maintain a link in my 
> email signatures to that doc for at least a year. I may 
> permit my few current NetBSD Newbie How-To's to remain up 

That will be appreciated.

> the web (for what they're worth) but will preface each 
> with a comment that I have abandoned NetBSD, and why. I 

Fair enough.

> will also cough up however many dollars it takes to 
> submit that page with a commercial link-listing robot. I 

Don't waste your money: there are several free services on the web.

> have done it before: once in a dispute with my insurance 
> company; again in a difference of interpretation of a 
> contract with a roofer -- both to my complete 
> satisfaction.

Strange; I am not seeing the association between your problems with
freely-available, volunteer-produced software and with this.

> I will go to that extent only because I feel that the 
> advertisements for the package system on NetBSD have 
> deliberatly led me into wasting time and effort to that 
> degree. I tend to consider a duty on my part to counter 

Okay. Point us to an advertisement that says Kmail or KDE works
flawlessly. Let's try to fix those advertisements :)

Also, please note that on Sept. 10, I told you that several things were
known to be broken in KDE under NetBSD.

That reminds me of all the time (and money) that I have spent using big
name software that never lived up to its advertising.

> any and all such false advertisement as has personally 
> cost me wasted time, effort or money.

(How many times did my NT/IIS servers crash ...)

> Care to talk me out of that? Then give me a reason why I 

No, your comments appear to me as a threat.

> should struggle any further with NetBSD. I want a 
> full-featured, graphical desktop. KDE2 looks to be well 
> and truly broken on NetBSD. So what about Gnome on 
> NetBSD? Who uses Gnome on NetBSD? How broken is Gnome on 
> NetBSD? And, given the fact that one of Gnome's 
> dependencies for NetBSD has been rolled back to a level 
> below that required by the current Gnome package for 
> NetBSD, how the hell is anyone supposed to install it? 
> even if it isn't half so broken as KDE?

No comments on Gnome or KDE. I have installed and used KDE and
Konqueror; but I don't use it very often. I don't use Gnome.

> If I can't get a decent GUI up and running on NetBSD 

What's your definition of "decent GUI"?

I have used blackbox for a few years. It is not perfectly stable (for me);
but the problems I have seen also happen on Debian Linux systems. (It is a
lot more stable than any Windows machine I have used.)

> without a bunch of tedious workarounds, well...then I 
> will have learnt what the term "experimental" means 
> regarding the NetBSD OS. I will then have to abandon it 
> as just another failed "experiment" on my part.

Yes, a lot of any volunteer-produced, free software is experimental.
Nevertheless, most software included with NetBSD is well-used and proven.

> I've got NetBSD installed on four separate machines. One 
> more week of this fruitless effort will be all it takes 
> to get me to wipe NetBSD completely off one of them and 
> put on FreeBSD instead. Then, if that has a decent GUI 
> desktop, unbroken, usefull for mail and archiving and such...then the
> other three machines will be very soon to follow. If not, then I'll
> try linux on that machine, with like consequences.

Excellent. You will find that FreeBSD and then Linux have many
improvements; and then you'll learn that they also have many problems.

> If all fails, then I will just resign myself to Win2K, which although
> no really to my tastes, at least lets me know before-hand whether
> something at least CAN be made to work how it should. It seems to me
> at this present moment that Microsoft has nothing to fear.

As I mentioned above, there is not a one-fits-all solution. As for myself,
I prefer to use NetBSD. It is stable and does most of the work that I want
and need to do. (Well now I am repeating myself: I also shared these same
thoughts to you on Sept. 4.)

By the way, have you asked any KDE user or developer lists to help you?
(As you have found here, few people seem to use KDE.) I am sure you'll
find better assistance for a particular software from the forum for that
software.

Good luck with whatever operating system you end up using.

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://bsd.reedmedia.net/