Re: Competition

[David Young <dyoung%pobox.com@localhost>]

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 08:32:20PM +0200, Daniel Carrera wrote:
> I've read a couple of posts in this list that suggest to me that
> participants use Windows on the desktop and see *BSD as a server OS
> only. I am genuinely surprised. I have always used some flavour of
> Linux on my desktop. I think the only proprietary software I have is
> Adobe Flash. I am happy with my system and I don't feel the
> slightest temptation to buy a program that will force me to run
> Windows.
> 
> When I need an office program I run OpenOffice. For photo editing I
> use GIMP. When I want to draw something I may use OO or Inkscape
> depending on what I need. My plantearium program is Stellarium. My
> scientific work is done in Fortran compiled with GCC.

At work the other day we were lamenting the high price of the tools that
our designers use.  Somebody suggested free alternatives and the general
agreement seemed to be that they would do in a pinch but not for doing
your job.  The quality just isn't high enough.

I think that it's very difficult to match the quality of a for-pay
monolithic graphics app with a free monolithic graphic app.  I suspect
that it's rather easy to match the quality of a for-pay Gaussian blur
function with a free Gaussian blur function, however.

> I had always assumed that BSD users would feel similar. I had
> assumed that everyone on this list *likes* running NetBSD or *BSD
> and naturally would want to use it on their desktop rather than
> endure Windows.

For me, the trouble with "the desktop" is that none of the traditional
UNIX design principles (everything is text, composition of simple
functions, blah blah blah) are apparent, and the gulf between what I
want to do and how I do it is too great (too much mousing around).

Please don't misunderstand this as an aversion to GUIs.  GUIs can be
great, UNIX just hasn't got one. :-)

FWIW, the desktop that I use is Mac OS X.  I find that it's more
bearable since I use Quicksilver.  There *are* things that UNIX could
benefit by borrowing from Mac OS X, btw, but WIMP is not one of them.

Dave

-- 
David Young             OJC Technologies
dyoung%ojctech.com@localhost      Urbana, IL * (217) 344-0444 x24