FreeBSD Looks At Making Wayland Support Available By Default

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD Looks At Making Wayland Support Available By Default

There's an active discussion this week about making Wayland support available by default on FreeBSD...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=FreeBSD-Wayland-Availability

[tildearrow]

Typo:

but for the forseeable future FreeBSD will continue

[starshipeleven]

The discussion in their mailing list is about enabling Wayland support in GTK and Qt and stuff so that people who want to try out Wayland can just install packages instead of having to recompile half the GUI packages from source to enable Wayland support.

It is NOT about using Wayland by default.

Overall, it's getting positive votes (and many people that misread that announcement and though it was about using Wayland compositors by default).

[aht0]

starshipeleven thanks for clarifying the facts. I've been waiting Wayland..

[Kemosabe]

What's the point of BSD again? The kernel has a better networking system and everything else is a catch up game with Linux, right?
I know it's great that we have it, I really don't know! :-P

[aht0]

Why would we even need Linux - we also have Windows and bunch of commercial Unices. Even Minix, which also "is free".

[starshipeleven]

What's the point of BSD again?

Apart from just legacy reasons (people who were using it before will keep using/improving it as it is easier than switch to another OS), the different license is the main reason it (still) exists, imho.

It caters to those (users/companies) that prefer permissive opensource licenses in their systems/products (and are inclined to contribute back or donate).

The kernel has a better networking system and everything else is a catch up game with Linux, right?

They have the best ZFS support in a relatively modern system (OpenSolaris/Illumos is meh), and have some other tricks around for server usage that make them at least competitive with Linux.

For desktop usage yeah, they play catch-up with Linux. On embedded it's not really common on low-end stuff where Linux dominates, but on more powerful embedded systems like firewalls/routers and Sony consoles yeah it's used. How much the company using it actually contribute back is unknown (and probably not that much given their public fundraisers).

[Guest]

Why would we even need Linux - we also have Windows and bunch of commercial Unices. Even Minix, which also "is free".

Because Linux isn't commercial crap? Your analogy is really stupid.

[SystemCrasher]

Why would we even need Linux -

Sure, you wouldn't. BSD users tend to be utterly irrational beings. Maybe because there're no rational reasons to prefer BSDs (except fucking greed and proprietary mindset, going such a great lengths it makes it irrational and self-destructive either).

we also have Windows

Sure thing, you're doomed to praise proprietary backdoored vendor-locked OS coming with bizarre EULA and spyware which costs some bucks. Because BSDs suck as desktop and BSD users are irrational and stubborn enough to fail to admit Linux could have some point. That's a whole point of BSD users mindset. "Anything but Linux", eh? Ironically, this mindset tends to plaly poor jokes on its owner, turning one into utterly irrational creature. Who is really wrong person to ask to do any technical jobs. Companies may really want to fire individuals like this, because this grossly irrational approach hurts their large-scale missions/goals hell a lot.

and bunch of commercial Unices.

Which are mostly on their deathbeds, thanks to greed, vendorlocks and resulting shitty ecosystems which tends to cause overall failure of OS development, making this crap uncompetitive or pointless.

Even Minix, which also "is free".

Somehow the only known use of this "free" thing is Intel Management Engine. Something hostile and unwanted. When it comes to free choice, nearly nobody in sane mind uses Minix. Because it quite pointless as general purpose OS. But it serves as showcase of BSD licensing. Minix started before Linux did. Now we can compare state of projects and draw some conclusions about project management and licensing stuff.

[SystemCrasher]

embedded it's not really common on low-end stuff where Linux dominates, but on more powerful embedded systems like firewalls/routers and Sony consoles yeah it's used.

As far as I know, large companies like Google, Facebook, etc got fed up with proprietary appliances and are designning their own, Linux based things boasting open firmwares. So they could integrate management/diagnostics/etc to their infrastructure management reasonably, etc. Not to mention there is no vendor-lock on the way, so nobody would suddenly screw 'em. And sony consoles... yet another showcase of DRMed anti-user hardware. Showcase of BSDish ecosystem development is a bonus. You see, PS4 based on FreeBSD. What is the most ironic thing about it? Original FreeBSD still suxx when it comes to HW support. Most funny part? APUs similar to those used in PS4 are kinda unusable in FreeBSD. That's how BSDish ecosystems really perform. So no wonder BSD nuts would praise Windows, haha.