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BSD vs. Linux (2005)

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Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#201

Post by na85 »

xkarga00 wrote: post #184
Klover wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are referring to the critique on television? Perhaps you can pay more attention to the last sentence of vertex-four's comment. That being "Just because you use your computer for a very minimal amount of tasks doesn't mean everyone else does." There are a million and one ways to use your graphics. Be it watching videos or gaming, which while you might have a problem with that, is actually done by people. I…

Wow, I am not sure how you managed to infer my lack of appreciation for people's freedom of choice merely from a title of a book. You may understand what I am trying to convey, if you ever read the book.

How about just coming out and saying it, instead of leaving smug hints about some niche book?

You're not adding anything to the discussion.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#202

Post by krylon »

cm3 wrote: post #150
nixos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too much. I've got a 700-800 MB system. It's unfortunate, as I'd love to have a versioned FS

HAMMER1 on DragonflyBSD runs well with little memory, including running dedup. It also has the binary pkg system just like FreeBSD. Also, the DRM drivers are up to date and support current Intel GPUs.

Huh. I had not really looked closely at DragonFly in a while. I had briefly looked at it when setting up my new server, but the fact that HAMMER does not deal with redundancy itself made me stick with FreeBSD/ZFS.

On a laptop, however (with an Intel GPU) that is not an issue, as there is only one disk, anyway. I might have to take a look over the summer.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#203

Post by xorcist »

roblabla wrote: post #163
_wdzx wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For summary - X is just as insecure as windows/macos - we know it: wayland, mir and snappy is coming. For your disclosure - don't be too lofty with me - I'm trying to understand your problems because I've a very different experience.

It's not a security problem really. That's just a side issue. The problem is, today, if I want to watch a movie, play a game, do anything that requires using some slightly advanced GPU stuff, I'll get tearing, artifacts, or downright crashes. This is mostly because X11 sucks. (It's also partly because the proprietary nvidia drivers sucks). Nowadays I reboot on windows to watch netflix or play games (even linux-compat…

Wayland is not going to make your Nvidia drivers more stable.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#205

Post by type0 »

lisivka wrote: post #128
m_mueller wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the GPL doing its job. It also makes it really hard to earn a living with actual software (not services) that depends on GPL.

Buy commercial licenses from authors of GPL code, so they will earn something too.

It is astonishing how many people don't know that they could do it.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#206

Post by krylon »

746F7475 wrote: post #47
aaron-lebo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not just a rationalization. BSDs control the kernel and the userland, meaning that file system layout is coherent. Check any Ubuntu installation and packages are all over the place. This is perhaps unavoidable. Also, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD, and FreeBSD can all be used as server or desktops without much fiddling. Their installers are better than anything in the Linux world. You can have one up and running w…

Whenever I hear "BSD" I always think: "if you want to use BSD you have to build a machine for it". This isn't really based on any real world experience, but whenever BSD comes up as a topic only thing that sticks with me is: "it only likes very specific hardware" which makes me very hesitant to ever consider trying it. I've had so many hardware incompatibility problems with Ubuntu, which is suppose to support almost…

It's strange, I have heard lots of people complain who wanted to give Linux a try (over Windows) and ran into hardware issues.

On the other hand, over the last ~15 years, I have almost never checked if a piece of hardware is supported by Linux (or BSD) before buying it, and I have only run into problems twice, really. One was an Aureal Vortex sound card for which a driver was maintained outside the Linux kernel tree, so I had to download it and build the module manually; the other was a really crappy HP scanner. Ironically, these days it does work on Linux much better (meaning: at all) than on Windows. (One key factor, though, seems to be not using brand-new hardware. After a year or so, chances are much* better it is supported properly.)

Apart from that, I have had no problems at all. Maybe I was just really lucky.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#207

Post by majewsky »

tempodox wrote: post #135

Disclaimer: I know this is a side issue. However, I'm really wondering what it is that makes people think using such a “creative” color scheme for publishing their texts would do any good. If it weren't for Safari's Reader view, I would be physically unable to decipher this text. Which would really be a shame, because this text deserves to be read. I guess, I'm still hoping that one of these days, I will reach one of…

Fun fact: I always use cyan as a "debug color", e.g. as "border: 1px solid cyan" to locate elements in the layout. Cyan jsut has no place in any proper color scheme (IMHO) and thus easily stands out against any background.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#208

Post by xorcist »

merijnv wrote: post #127
aaron-lebo wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on this thread, I'd say the problem is a lot of people haven't given them the time. If you select your hardware, they work pretty flawlessly. Certainly right there with Windows or OSX or anything else. In a lot of cases you don't even need to be very selective, you just need to have a modern machine.

> Based on this thread, I'd say the problem is a lot of people haven't given them the time. > If you select your hardware, they work pretty flawlessly. Maybe the fact that I have to give them time is one of the major problems? You know how much time I invested in getting my Windows and OSX desktops to work flawlessly? Zero.

If that's your anecdote, here's mine: _Every_ time I install Windows I need some third party driver just to make graphics and networking go. Then I need third party software just to get a development environment or a decent shell.

Upgrading these are hit and miss, and it's more common than not that third party drivers do not support newer versions of the operating system.

Linux, meanwhile, integrates all of these components. As long as you stay away from non-supported third party drivers it just works, and upgrades are painless. (Until some desktop developers change the GUI again, but that's another story.)

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#209

Post by Filligree »

eropple wrote: post #125
microtonal wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a start, X11's security model. Every X11 application can read all keystrokes, mouse events, do screengrabs of other window's contents, etc. In other words, your browser can snoop on what passwords you type into an X terminal if it wanted to or is compromised.

Yup yup. Like, I recall a blog post by a Docker core contributor and employee saying, "Run your desktop apps in Docker containers to sandbox them! Just volume the X socket into the container ." (Of course, the Dockerfiles were also running apps--like, say, Chrome--as root, with no user namespaces, so it wasn't exactly great anyway.)

Sure it's breakable, but that still isn't bad advice. In practice, an application run with the evil bit set won't know how to break out of such a container, nor how to abuse the X socket.

It's only bad advice if you're relying on Docker to provide security against targeted threats. Know your enemy.

Re: BSD vs. Linux (2005)

#210

Post by VLM »

vertex-four wrote: post #147
pimeys wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As for the DE experience on other platforms, Windows has had a kinda-tiling WM that regular people do use in the form of AeroSnap, while macOS is now getting tabs-in-the-window-manager, and Exposé+Spaces that evolved into Mission Control has been a positively brilliant experience for years. > Meanwhile on Linux, the very fact that you have to massage it into something useful ever so slightly at every level is, to m…

Most people, otoh, enjoy playing games, watching videos, that sort of thing. Some people even do work that's dependent on the graphics card. Just because you use your computer for a very minimal amount of tasks doesn't mean everyone else does.

Everybody does that stuff in the browser now a days, which works fine in freebsd.
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