FreeBSD Working On Improving Its Audio Stack & Creating Graphical OS Installer

[jaypatelani]

Boooooooyyyyyyaaaaaaa!!! The "Year of FreeBSD" is only about 10 years away now

It will be still early than year of Linux desktop. 😁

[partcyborg]

I want in; I wonder how I get on the payroll?

Simple
1. Learn to program in C
2. Learn how to do system software engineering
3. Learn the ins and outs of the FreeBSD operating system code
4. Send enough quality changes in that you get a commit bit
5. Continue contributing enough to warrant a stipend

Of course, you won't do any of that because you would rather spend your time trolling phoronix

[ReaperX7]

Why? The NCurses installer works fine. It's a minimalist system just like ArchLinux. You build out from the basic FreeBSD install... It takes like what, less than 7 minutes to install FreeBSD on a ZFS partition with all required packages.

Why bother messing up what works. They need to work on writing a Wiki on oar with ArchLinux. The Handbook is very vague at times and many post install documents are easily pushed off screen during the installation process so proper setup is haphazard at best, plus there's very little documentation to help properly setup other expanded packages to really make a FreeBSD based desktop system extremely flexible and functional.

[User29]

Why? The NCurses installer works fine. It's a minimalist system just like ArchLinux. You build out from the basic FreeBSD install... It takes like what, less than 7 minutes to install FreeBSD on a ZFS partition with all required packages.

This is one thing. The other one is, how many times does one run the installer? Exactly once per server. There's no need to add eyecandy because FBSD is not for level1 end users. Never was, never will be.

[Jumbotron]

Simple
1. Learn to program in C
2. Learn how to do system software engineering
3. Learn the ins and outs of the FreeBSD operating system code
4. Send enough quality changes in that you get a commit bit
5. Continue contributing enough to warrant a stipend

Of course, you won't do any of that because you would rather spend your time trolling phoronix

Aaaaand…right at step one, just stop and leave. C is the new COBOL. It’s only good to know it for maintenance of all the trillions of unsafe lines of code out there. Every major corporation and most militaries have made it a requisite to start new projects only in memory safe code with program by contract protocols as well. C can never be that. Well, without becoming Java or Swift. And don’t even mention that engineering monstrosity C++. If you have to add not one but TWO plus signs at the end of C you have already failed in proper engineering. Even Objective-C is better.

All the BSDs need to be seen from henceforth as the last bastion of legacy Unix where the way of engineering and doing things was set in the 1960s and 70s where C and Bash scripts and X still rule. That time is over. There will still be a discernible market for all that. But an ever shrinking one. This will accelerate from 2026 onward. Why? 2026 will be the year that all major Linux distros, Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora and Suse will default to Wayland and in some cases, not even have X installed at all. systemd will continue to rule. Rust will continue its inevitable penetration into Linux kernel code, Linux app code and Linux driver code. OpenGL may even be deprecated in one of the Big 3 Linux distros by 2026 replaced fully by Vulkan. OpenGL has already been deprecated by Unix based MacOS as of 2018. And once OpenGL is deprecated (my guess is that it will be Red Hat) that’s it.

This will leave all BSDs in the untenable state of being nothing more than a legacy Unix way of doing things platform which will also be increasingly a security threat as they hang on to increasingly unsupported, unmaintained and even abandoned frameworks and protocols .

Here is the ONLY future you have BSDs.

Wayland/Xwayland
systemd
Pipewire
Vulkan
Rust and Swift (for those who still must have something C or C++). And replace any Python code in the BSD stack with Go.
Gnome or KDE. Preferably Gnome as it’s the default in most Linux distros and the only two that matter that being Red Hat and Ubuntu. This way someone moving from Linux to BSD or vice versa has an easier go at it. You can still have KDE as an option for anti-Gnome zealots and lovers of Windows 10.

Of course at this point one could argue that all the BSDs should just adopt Linux userland and just become a competing kernel with Linux . I believe that in the end by 2030 that’s what all the BSDs will essentially be. If they want to survive the exodus from BSD to Linux.

[User29]

Of course at this point one could argue that all the BSDs should just adopt Linux userland and just become a competing kernel with Linux . I believe that in the end by 2030 that’s what all the BSDs will essentially be. If they want to survive the exodus from BSD to Linux.

Wasn't there an attempt 1-2 decades ago (probably by Debian) to use one of the BSD kernels with linux userland?

[zexelon]

Aaaaand…right at step one, just stop and leave. C is the new COBOL. It’s only good to know it for maintenance of all the trillions of unsafe lines of code out there. Every major corporation and most militaries have made it a requisite to start new projects only in memory safe code with program by contract protocols as well. C can never be that. Well, without becoming Java or Swift. And don’t even mention that engineering monstrosity C++. If you have to add not one but TWO plus signs at the end of C you have already failed in proper engineering. Even Objective-C is better.

All the BSDs need to be seen from henceforth as the last bastion of legacy Unix where the way of engineering and doing things was set in the 1960s and 70s where C and Bash scripts and X still rule. That time is over. There will still be a discernible market for all that. But an ever shrinking one. This will accelerate from 2026 onward. Why? 2026 will be the year that all major Linux distros, Ubuntu, Red Hat/Fedora and Suse will default to Wayland and in some cases, not even have X installed at all. systemd will continue to rule. Rust will continue its inevitable penetration into Linux kernel code, Linux app code and Linux driver code. OpenGL may even be deprecated in one of the Big 3 Linux distros by 2026 replaced fully by Vulkan. OpenGL has already been deprecated by Unix based MacOS as of 2018. And once OpenGL is deprecated (my guess is that it will be Red Hat) that’s it.

This will leave all BSDs in the untenable state of being nothing more than a legacy Unix way of doing things platform which will also be increasingly a security threat as they hang on to increasingly unsupported, unmaintained and even abandoned frameworks and protocols .

Here is the ONLY future you have BSDs.

Wayland/Xwayland
systemd
Pipewire
Vulkan
Rust and Swift (for those who still must have something C or C++). And replace any Python code in the BSD stack with Go.
Gnome or KDE. Preferably Gnome as it’s the default in most Linux distros and the only two that matter that being Red Hat and Ubuntu. This way someone moving from Linux to BSD or vice versa has an easier go at it. You can still have KDE as an option for anti-Gnome zealots and lovers of Windows 10.

Of course at this point one could argue that all the BSDs should just adopt Linux userland and just become a competing kernel with Linux . I believe that in the end by 2030 that’s what all the BSDs will essentially be. If they want to survive the exodus from BSD to Linux.

Pretty well spot on... saddly BSD has lost so much critical mass to Linux that it can no longer innovate. The HAMMER FS is about the most interesting thing left in the BSD world, but it's unable to get "development mass" behind it to make it relevant.

Disagree though on the Python vs Go thought. They serve ery different purposes and Go has some really key issues that are going to keep it backwater like C#.

[sophisticles]

Simple
1. Learn to program in C
2. Learn how to do system software engineering
3. Learn the ins and outs of the FreeBSD operating system code
4. Send enough quality changes in that you get a commit bit
5. Continue contributing enough to warrant a stipend

Of course, you won't do any of that because you would rather spend your time trolling phoronix

I already am a Certified Unix Admin and I have about 60 college credits in computer science which includes classes in C, C++, FORTRAN, Pascal, COBOL, Java, Web Development, Python, Assembler, Data Structures and Algorithms, and VB.

Based on the garbage that most open source developers produce, i think i might be overqualified.

But i am not interested in working for free, I wanted to know how i can get my beak wet, they way they do, by misappropriating donations and basically scamming donors.

I want some of that tasty cake, where they pull in 1 million bucks but somehow spend twice that.

[sophisticles]

Aaaaand…right at step one, just stop and leave. C is the new COBOL.

Let me step you right there.

When i was in high school in the 80's I took COBOL, back then our teacher told us it was essentially a dead language and in a few years it would be the way of the Dodo. He told us the same thing about FORTRAN.

Fast forward to today, and not only are they not dead, there is massive demand for both, especially COBOL.

While i have taken classes I am not proficient enough to get a job using it but a state college near me was recently offering free college classes in COBOL on a first come first served basis to their students because there is such massive demand for it and all the current COBOL programmers are retirement age.

IBM's new z16, the only computer in the world capable of quantum safe encryption uses COBOL and these mainframes are being used by major police departments across the country as well at the DoD.

COBOL isn't going anywhere.

[sophisticles]

Wasn't there an attempt 1-2 decades ago (probably by Debian) to use one of the BSD kernels with linux userland?

Not that long ago, look up Ubuntu BSD.