I love how you imply systemd is good because it doesn't run on BSD.
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Originally posted by DaemonFC View PostBSD is a colossal yawn-a-thon that's totally unfit for a modern desktop.
I do agree FreeBSD is not the best choice for the desktop; it may lack proprietary drivers for many closed hardware. But the proprietary video drivers are quite on-par in terms of performance with the Linux equivalents. Still, saying FreeBSD sucks because it isn't the best choice for the desktop is kind of strange. Comparing server features would be much more logical. Though you can also see what is possible with FreeBSD by looking at Max OSX, which basically is a fork of FreeBSD with a new graphical shell built on top.
Server operators probably look at FreeBSD with different eyes. In particular, FreeBSD has arguably the best ZFS implementation, with unique features that integrate ZFS with jails, allow booting from RAID-Z pools, automatic SWAP volumes and other enhancements. Linux userscan compile ZFS kernel module themselves or use FUSE module, but basically they are restricted to their own project called Btrfs. And last time I checked, Btrfs could not even correct filesystem damage making it an alpha-quality filesystem at the moment. ZFS is fully usable and the most sexy filesystem to date.
FreeBSD developers may not hate the GPL, but rather the GPL v3 poses a real threat to FreeBSD. Currently they still use the latest GCC compiler collection still released with GPL v2; the newer versions with GPL v3 will not be used, although they can be installed using the portstree. Instead, FreeBSD goes its own path by not being dependent on very restrictive licenses such as the GPL v3. The LCC/Clang compiler collection is being leaded by Mac OSX will make sure FreeBSD does not keep behind with an outdated compiler suite, an important infrastructure development needed to allow FreeBSD to keep alive.
Perhaps you could state your opinions with a little bit more nuance, DaemonFC, then you may even get some positive replies instead. There surely is some truth in what you're saying, but due to your extremely negative attitude it currently looks more like a troll post.
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Originally posted by Teho View PostKDE Workspace might no work out of the box but rest of KDE SC will work just fine. Most of KDE runs where Qt runs (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, Haiku, *BSD etc).
Back to FreeBSD, their problem is that their core system is usually good if you only want some system with no sound or video concerns to use as a server. It can be a desktop, it's just not a very good one. GNOME, KDE, and XFCE are all throwing the BSDs under the bus because the BSDs don't have a good enough sound system or video card driver architecture to enable a modern desktop experience, unless you use Nvidia video cards with their nonfree driver or something. Which in my case is not an option because I personally hate Nvidia and their attitude toward freely licensed and open source software is disgusting. They're like a spoiled child who breaks all of their toys to make sure that nobody else gets to play with them. The nv driver was so obfuscated that they ended up introducing a complex formula just to represent a constant. By the time Nouveau (which only works on modern systems, not BSD but bear with me) finished de-obfuscating nv, they found it was so unoptimized (on purpose, by Nvidia), that it was basically unusable and ended up having to rewrite the 2d acceleration code and a lot of basic low level stuff they had hoped to pull from nv themselves.
Nvidia now recommends VESA (an unaccelerated fallback framebuffer driver) as a broken stepping stone to nvidia proprietary, when Nouveau works well on almost any Geforce sold.
Since the BSD people don't have any concern over freely licensed open source software, they encourage support through nonfree binary drivers, and if Nvidia ever decides not to support FreeBSD, there won't be ANY video cards that do much at all on a BSD. They're hanging by a thread. They could port over KMS and DRI 2 but they're too busy whining that Linux improves itself where they do not bother, and pointing people to nvidia cards with proprietary drivers that can be dropped whenever. Then it's only a matter of time until nothing works with FreeBSD at all, or they have to freeze a "stable" ABI for old Nvidia drivers (which don't support new cards) which can't have bug fixes or security problems resolved. A lot of the reason Linux isn't such a mess can be read in "stable_api_nonsense.txt in the Linux kernel tree documentation.
So I only covered so far that the FreeBSD sound system is representative of hardware from the 90s. Lennart Poettering actually pointed that out. And the video driver situation is a mess. There have been multiple Phoronix posts which have said that in those words but didn't expand into WHY it is a mess. (The FreeBSD developers *are* a disease and their system is totally backwards), and networking cards usually leave them pointing you towards a binary driver, if any exists, for Windows XP (since nothing open source supports NDIS 6.x), and since Windows XP only ever caught on on x86-32, you better hope you aren't using anything else or your wifi will probably be totally nonfunctional.
FreeBSD and Linux do share one major problem, they allow binary device firmware with no source code (Linux-Libre scrubs this out and OpenBSD should be commended for never allowing it in the first place). Binary firmware is just another way the device maker gets to hide incompetence and bugs and security problems, and make all kinds of crazy licenses to satisfy, and to declare hardware broken forever when they want to sell you something else.
Out of every possible driver architecture fuck up, I think FreeBSD has at least several, and Linux has the one. I'll use Linux. I won't havet o make all kinds of crazy compromises to make sure I can use a limited subset of hardware and applications so that I can go "rabble rabble rabble, $&%$Y&#* GPL, hah, losers! Apple steals OUR code because it's FREE! Herpa Derp Derp, broken compiler and BSD Grep!!!" (Too bad you can't really use the FreeBSD system as it is, fopr a desktop, unless you want some kind of novel freak show) *shrug*Last edited by DaemonFC; 18 November 2011, 03:55 PM.
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Originally posted by curaga View PostI love how you imply systemd is good because it doesn't run on BSD.
Edit: I should point out when I say obsolete that in some ways their base system is actually nice. But they wash their hands of all the problems in about 90% of user space that a desktop user will interact with by claiming "It's not part of the base system, don't blame us for anything it does". The driver system for video and sound and wifi is an unholy mess.Last edited by DaemonFC; 18 November 2011, 03:50 PM.
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Originally posted by sub.mesa View PostDaemonFC, you seem to think FreeBSD is a distribution with a strong focus on desktops. This is, however, not true. FreeBSD like the other BSDs is primarily a server operating system, with a strong focus on internet service providers and hosting providers. Features like Jails, ZFS, strong SMP performance, GEOM I/O framework and the portstree are quite popular for server operators. FreeBSD generally has the best I/O framework and appears to lead the development in TCP/IP stacks as well as SMP performance enhancements, where FreeBSD innovations are migrated to projects like the Linux kernel, MySQL and I believe Firefox as well.
I do agree FreeBSD is not the best choice for the desktop; it may lack proprietary drivers for many closed hardware. But the proprietary video drivers are quite on-par in terms of performance with the Linux equivalents. Still, saying FreeBSD sucks because it isn't the best choice for the desktop is kind of strange. Comparing server features would be much more logical. Though you can also see what is possible with FreeBSD by looking at Max OSX, which basically is a fork of FreeBSD with a new graphical shell built on top.
Server operators probably look at FreeBSD with different eyes. In particular, FreeBSD has arguably the best ZFS implementation, with unique features that integrate ZFS with jails, allow booting from RAID-Z pools, automatic SWAP volumes and other enhancements. Linux userscan compile ZFS kernel module themselves or use FUSE module, but basically they are restricted to their own project called Btrfs. And last time I checked, Btrfs could not even correct filesystem damage making it an alpha-quality filesystem at the moment. ZFS is fully usable and the most sexy filesystem to date.
FreeBSD developers may not hate the GPL, but rather the GPL v3 poses a real threat to FreeBSD. Currently they still use the latest GCC compiler collection still released with GPL v2; the newer versions with GPL v3 will not be used, although they can be installed using the portstree. Instead, FreeBSD goes its own path by not being dependent on very restrictive licenses such as the GPL v3. The LCC/Clang compiler collection is being leaded by Mac OSX will make sure FreeBSD does not keep behind with an outdated compiler suite, an important infrastructure development needed to allow FreeBSD to keep alive.
Perhaps you could state your opinions with a little bit more nuance, DaemonFC, then you may even get some positive replies instead. There surely is some truth in what you're saying, but due to your extremely negative attitude it currently looks more like a troll post.
Also, I agree with the reference code for most standards being licensed under a permissive license. It makes a standard like VP8 or Vorbis or ODF have less problems competing with entrenched opponents which are not freely available, such as OOXML, MPEG, etc.
TCP/IP is a good candidate.
What I wonder is why there are no complaints when Microsoft and Apple make BSD code proprietary, but only when the GPL makes sure there is an implementation that stays freely available which is something permissive licenses don't do very well.
The other problem with BSD licenses is there's no patent grant, so Apple could take BSD code, fork it for themselves, and then sue other people who use that code or even the developers of the code themselves. The Apache license, MPL, CDDL, or even the MS-RL are good alternatives to BSD. Apache is BSD-like but makes sure that people can't take it and sue the author or give their own code to it and sue people for using that. The CDDL, MPL, and MS-RL go a step further and make sure that the software stays under the license which is otherwise very BSD like with the addition of an Apache style patent grant. Perhaps the BSD license isn't fit for the times it finds itself in and other licenses would be safer for developers and their eventual end users.
As for the BtrFS FUD, BtrFS is designed to be better than ZFS, it's just a lot newer. The fsck tool cannot repair the file system yet, but there are many fewer cases where the file system is likely to become corrupt than in competing file systems anyway. It would be more of a disaster to release a fsck tool which is not finished and could end up damaging the file system itself than making people wait for a few more months. If it makes people who would otherwise complain about problems in BtrFS which would eventually be fixed anyway, so much the better. These types of problems create FUD that never dies, long after the code is fixed. File systems are not "sexy" they are tools. As a tool, their job is to enable you to do yours with minimal interruptions and demands on the user. ZFS uses a lot of CPU and RAM, in fact, they even tell you not to use it without at least a GB of RAM. it scales up, but not down. Which Sun admitted themselves. It's not a good general purpose file system and I would hate to find myself stuck with it on a tablet or netbook or a computer that is more than a few years old. BtrFS has resolved these problems.
As to the GPL 3? If the BSD people hate it because it protects the user from companies that sue over the code they made or using DRM, then I don't give a rats ass what the BSD people think of it. If they are siding with companies who use DRM, then to hell with them from my perspective.
What can I say about Clang? It likes to spit out code that is broken, slow,or doesn't do anything at all. It's the part of the LLVM project that rides the short bus. Ironically, the best thing I've seen LLVM doing only works on Linux. Gallium3D can optimize GL shaders with it. Since nothing on any BSD uses Gallium3D, you can forget bragging about it there.
Servers? I don't run a server, I run a desktop. Linux is great as a desktop, BSD can only barely be used as one, and even then you need a perfect match to the limited hardware pool it supports. Linux is not unpopular on servers. Some of the biggest and most profitable open source companies got there with Linux. But I don't need to tell you what Red Hat is or where their stock has been heading for the last few years, do I?Last edited by DaemonFC; 18 November 2011, 04:57 PM.
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Originally posted by DaemonFC View PostOpenSSH (which Firefox uses) came from OpenBSD, not FreeBSD.
I installed FireFox 3 on a couple of computers yesterday and must say I've been pleasantly surprised. The del.icio.us and Google Toolbar ...
OpenBSD is a better server than FreeBSD from what I have heard
You won't get any argument from me if your claim is that security software like this should be as freely licensed as possible, even if it means corporate theft from Microsoft and Apple.
What I wonder is why there are no complaints when Microsoft and Apple make BSD code proprietary, but only when the GPL makes sure there is an implementation that stays freely available which is something permissive licenses don't do very well.
The other problem with BSD licenses is there's no patent grant
As for the BtrFS FUD, BtrFS is designed to be better than ZFS
The fsck tool cannot repair the file system yet
File systems are not "sexy" they are tools.
ZFS uses a lot of CPU and RAM
Oh and if you have 32GB RAM and do some I/O, virtually all filesystem will consume most of the RAM by design. UFS, NTFS, Ext2/3/4. Why leave memory unused and wasted when it can be effectively utilized? The filecache is designed to be available should applications require the memory. Same goes for ZFS, which is why it calls its filecache the ARC - Adaptive Replacement Cache.
DDR3 memory is very cheap these days. 16GiB RAM can be bought for just 75 euro, a steal I think.
Servers? I don't run a server, I run a desktop.
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I did not say [anything] about SSH, I was referring to jeMalloc, which is a FreeBSD innovation now present in Mozilla Firefox. A small article about this can be read over here:
http://freebsd.stokely.org/2008/06/f...h-freebsd.html
There are many who do not agree, OpenBSD makes a lot of sacrifices to providing the highest security, at the cost of performance. But each of the BSDs have their own strengths and weaknesses; FreeBSD just happens to be the biggest and mostly used. The most balanced I would say.
Well if you talk about stealing, there was quite some code borrowed from BSD to GNU/Linux, and in some cases the copyright notices were even removed (a violation of the license)[citation needed]. I don't recall the details and I don't really care.[then don't make claims like that] But the fact is: GPL/Linux can 'steal' or borrow anything from BSD, while they are not giving anything back which BSD can use. Apple on the other hand, did give back to BSD. Not much, but better than nothing.
GPL does indeed guarantee that the code (and code changes) remain free. But it also limits the use of that code. If you as a volunteer spent your time on something, but release it under a free yet restrictive license, that means somebody else has to do the same work over again to make it 'really free' - meaning without the restrictions. As I see it, from worst to best: Commercial / proprietary -> GPL -> LGPL -> BSD -> Public Domain. The more free the code is, the better the chance it can be reused often and benefit as many people/projects as possible.
Also, with dual licensing, you could have your GPL version and your BSD version at the same time. I've seen this done a lot. The entire Direct Rendering Manager for the Linux kernel is dual licensed GPL and MIT X11, and DRI 2 extension for the X server is MIT X11 licensed. If FreeBSD can't be bothered to port something to their system which is already under one of their preferred licenses and would enable an entire class of hardware to work, why are they bitching about the odd network driver that got wrapped under the GPL? Something to complain about as their list of supported video cards grows exponentially smaller while they do nothing about that?
I'm no lawyer, and never would want to be one. But isn't this primarily a US problem? Where the USA allows software 'idea' patents? I believe the EU has killed those a while back. Could be wrong here. But patents are evil, of course. A major threat to anything open source.
Please, enlighten me how Btrfs is designed to be better?
From my understanding, it's designed such that it does or will do everything ZFS does, with lower RAM and CPU requirements. My personal favorite is subvolumes as snapshots. BtrFS handles snapshots far more elegantly than ZFS does. I'm sure if you dig you will find that each does something the other doesn't, but overall I think of BtrFS as a sort of ZFS 2.0 which is licensed better. (Stays free, no frivolous patent troll concerns from Oracle, etc.)
fsck tool is old-fashioned. An advanced filesystem should repair any damage as it is detected, like ZFS does.
ZFS being a transactional filesystem provides alot more protection to your data than other filesystems, including Btrfs.
Oh and if you have 32GB RAM and do some I/O, virtually all filesystem will consume most of the RAM by design. UFS, NTFS, Ext2/3/4. Why leave memory unused and wasted when it can be effectively utilized? The filecache is designed to be available should applications require the memory. Same goes for ZFS, which is why it calls its filecache the ARC - Adaptive Replacement Cache.
DDR3 memory is very cheap these days. 16GiB RAM can be bought for just 75 euro, a steal I think.
That much is clear, DaemonFC. And I guess that was the whole point of my reply. You view FreeBSD in the eyes of the desktop user, while I view (and appreciate) FreeBSD through the eyes of a server admin.Last edited by DaemonFC; 19 November 2011, 09:32 AM.
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Daemon, I'm not about to get into a lengthy drawn out debate on the pro's/cons of BSD. I will say, however, your ramblings are a great collection of half-truths with a strong hint of over-zealous passion for your 'ideal' OS.
Sounds eerily familiar to the arguments thrown at Linux years ago oddly enough. It sucked on the desktop...remember?
Truth is there are different tools for different jobs. BSD might not be perfect for one situation but it just might be ideal for another. As is the case with pretty much any OS out there right now including Linux, Windows, OSX, FreeBSD, OpenBSD...etc. etc. Nice to have choices, eh? For me, BSD is just fine. Sorry it 'sux' for you. But don't fret...you have plenty of distro's out there to toy with. Win/Win situation!
And yes, FreeBSD is just fine on desktop for general computing. I run it on 'modern' hardware just fine. Fortunately Nvidia provides me a driver to do just that.
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Regarding the theft of code by Linux kernel developers ("citation needed"):
But I'm quite sure that wasn't the only case where this had happened. Anyway, you seem to have a strong opinion about licenses. I just prefer open source code to be really open; usable by anyone who can use it, to benefit as many people. If I had a bike and you stole my bike, I would not have a bike anymore. But if you made a copy of my bike, and could produce it your own, while I still could keep my own bike; then what's the problem? Perhaps you'll thank me or reward me in some way; perhaps not. But I'm not getting poorer because of reusing it. Same principle applies to open source licensing, I think. GPL licenses are restrictive meaning they have to be rewritten using a more open license.
Now regarding ZFS and Btrfs, you linked to a google search. Wow! Now that's really enlightening. Perhaps Btrfs will one day grow into something usable so Linux users at least get some ZFS-like functionality, but for now Btrfs is little more than a toy, while ZFS is a usable advanced filesystem. There still is hope though; the kFreeBSD project allows 'Linux' distributions to be equipped with a FreeBSD kernel. So it would be GNU/kFreeBSD instead. That would allow native kernel-level ZFS to work on a 'linux' (actually: GNU) operating system. Isn't that neat? ;-)
Furthermore you talk about 10.000 dollar systems. Buying a ZFS suitable system costs little over 150 euro or 200 dollars or so. A simple AMD Zacate system paired with 8GiB memory and a PicoPSU power supply could provide you with a very low-power ZFS capable server suitable for home users. Power usage can be as low as 7W idle, but 15W with harddrives is more realistic. So I'm not sure what you're talking about with 10.000 dollar equipment.
There's actually no reliable way to automatically repair a file system while it's online, much less without asking the user what to do and merely assuming a set of defaults which is likely to destroy data behind his back.
Anyone not using ZFS or equivalent filesystem could have corrupt data without even knowing about it. ZFS would never let corruption spread to applications, thanks to ZFS' end-to-end data protection. ZFS simply offers formidable protection to your files, which both enterprise as well as home users and small business should appreciate. Except you, probably, but I'll forgive your ignorance.
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