“OBSERVATION: how’s this for cynical? One week Bill Gates and
trusted lieutenant Nathan Myhrvold are out touting the benefits of
Linux and open source, then the next, product manager Ed Muth says
it is a “poor value proposition”.”
“You would think the growth in Linux’s mindshare would enthuse
the entire open source community. In the main it has, but in an
indication of the sorts of issues vendors will have to ameliorate
as they push forward with their OpSrc strategies, it has also
angered a vocal minority. I have received an increasing amount of
e-mail from proponents of that other great Free Unix, the various
iterations of BSD”
“Some notable examples of enterprises using FreeBSD include
Yahoo!, Walnut Creek download site and even Microsoft’s Hotmail
free e-mail service. FreeBSD advocate Gavin Cameron wrote to me
recently, complaining that this column was biased: “I have to admit
that after a month of reading your column … that I’m extremely
disappointed that you have chosen to make your column a Linux
advocacy column rather than focusing on open source as a whole,”
Cameron wrote.”
“Perhaps one of the reasons Linux has gained a profile so
quickly is because it is backed by a personality – Linus Torvalds.
FreeBSD lacks this banner around which to rally the troops. Other
readers have offered reasons why they prefer BSD to Linux. Cale
Pearce, 17, opted for FreeBSD as his general PC environment, using
many Linux-oriented applications, Word-Perfect 8 and the GNU Image
Processing Program (GIMP)”
“About 90 per cent of Linux software binaries can be run at full
speed in BSD because of the excellent Linux emulator”
“Gartner also found embedded Windows NT “irrelevant” and “not
making sense”.”