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OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

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Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#121

Post by ggg3 »

dleslie wrote: post #43
knocte wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but lacking in sufficient charisma to create more than a small following. IMO it's not that Linus has more charisma than Theo, it's simply the network effect of one project over the other.

It wasn't Linus; it was RedHat, SuSE, and the rest of the early commercial Linux endeavours.

which makes the permissive BSD license even worse in hindsight.

it allowed microsoft and apple to profit hugely while giving nothing back. and in the end GPL produced much better product that was used by the industry despite the less permissive license.

...and today we are making the exact same mistake with AGPL.

Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#122

Post by toast0 »

notacoward wrote: post #49
mikece wrote: post #2

Why aren’t the *BSD operating systems more popular in the server and workstation spaces?

Because the large companies that deploy hundreds of thousands of servers need to hire lots and lots of people to make or maintain local enhancements, at all levels from the OS to libraries and utilities. In that environment it's not hard to make a local change that saves a million dollars in running-hardware costs, and it's also not hard to find Linux developers to make those changes. OpenBSD developers? Not so much.…

The kernel teams at most large companies, even large tech companies, are not that big.

Sure, the pool of currently experienced Linux kernel developers is large compared to the BSDs, but if you hire a smart person (like a Linux kernel developer), and provide them with means, opportunity, and motive you'll have a BSD kernel developer soon enough.

Commercial support and network effects and costs of running multiple operating systems are more likely to be a deciding factor than developer availability. If you need to run someone else's software, it probably runs on Linux or Windows. If you run a BSD for your stuff, and Linux for theirs, that means you'll probably need more people to understand both.

If you're going to run on other people's hardware, Linux is almost always supported, although there's been some movement on BSD in clouds. Like with other niche platforms, if it's not currently supported and you want to do it, you might need to do the work -- there's a lot less community to rely on to magically make things work.

Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#123

Post by 693471 »

spamizbad wrote: post #104
dwheeler wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux came after the BSDs, so you would think the BSDs would have won. There are many reasons Linux-based systems are generally much more popular than the BSDs in the server and workstation spaces. Here's why I think that happened: * GPL vs. BSD license. Repeatedly someone in the BSD community had the bright idea of creating a proprietary OS based on a BSD. All their work was then not shared with the OSS BSD communit…

An excellent summary. I think by the late 90s BSD could operate cleanly alongside Windows but by then Linux had become the default "free" *nix choice. For me, I ran FreeBSD for about a year around 1999. I lasted about a week before breaking down and installing a GNU userspace. Excellent CLI ergonomics for the day. Linux had quite a few "easy to install" distros where, if your critical hardware was fully supported, yo…

No, by the late 90s BSD had dominated the hosting world because the TCP/IP stack allowed better scaling on the same hardware. Tons of ISPs ran nothing but FreeBSD.

Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#124

Post by draw_down »

dleslie wrote: post #9

History will show that Theo was right in a manner similar to how Stalman was right: technically correct analysis and eerily accurate predictions, but lacking in sufficient charisma to create more than a small following. To some extent, you might say they are like Cassandra; speaking the truth but not believed or listened to.

A corollary is that our field is not as coldly rational and technical as we'd like to think.

Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#125

Post by voldacar »

dleslie wrote: post #9

History will show that Theo was right in a manner similar to how Stalman was right: technically correct analysis and eerily accurate predictions, but lacking in sufficient charisma to create more than a small following. To some extent, you might say they are like Cassandra; speaking the truth but not believed or listened to.

I think Stallman is more of a Tiresias

Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#126

Post by enriquto »

dleslie wrote: post #9

History will show that Theo was right in a manner similar to how Stalman was right: technically correct analysis and eerily accurate predictions, but lacking in sufficient charisma to create more than a small following. To some extent, you might say they are like Cassandra; speaking the truth but not believed or listened to.

> History will show that Theo was right in a manner similar to how Stalman was right: technically correct analysis and eerily accurate predictions, but lacking in sufficient charisma

Your assessment of charisma is foreign to me. I cannot imagine anybody who is more charismatic that these two men, theo and rms.

Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#127

Post by alxlaz »

dleslie wrote: post #9

History will show that Theo was right in a manner similar to how Stalman was right: technically correct analysis and eerily accurate predictions, but lacking in sufficient charisma to create more than a small following. To some extent, you might say they are like Cassandra; speaking the truth but not believed or listened to.

Lacking in charisma hardly describes a person like Theo de Raadt. I've never met the man, but I doubt that someone who lacks charisma could have lead a dedicated, opinionated team through more than 40 releases (counting OpenBSD releases alone!), over a period of almost 25 years now, a team which not only developed a sturdy (if equally opinionated) operating system but also a bunch of highly successful projects like, I dunno, Open-bloody-SSH.

I mean, maybe it's not too much charisma but I'd be glad if I had only like 10% of that...

Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#129

Post by chongli »

dwheeler wrote: post #84
mikece wrote: post #2

Why aren’t the *BSD operating systems more popular in the server and workstation spaces?

Linux came after the BSDs, so you would think the BSDs would have won. There are many reasons Linux-based systems are generally much more popular than the BSDs in the server and workstation spaces. Here's why I think that happened: * GPL vs. BSD license. Repeatedly someone in the BSD community had the bright idea of creating a proprietary OS based on a BSD. All their work was then not shared with the OSS BSD communit…

GNU + Linux were far more decentralized (bazaar)

That's the first time I've ever heard GNU associated with the bazaar. The original thesis of the book (CatB) is the observation that GNU is a cathedral (with saint rms at its head) and Linux (the kernel) is a bazaar.

Re: OpenBSD was right to disable hyperthreading [video]

#130

Post by [deleted] »

Crinus wrote: post #100
sharpneli wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One must consider the potential damages that can happen when the default is wrong, as it’s nigh certain that people are going to be careless and not change it. If the desktop PC has wrong default the performance is bad. Still functional though. If in case of VM the default is wrong we will read another headline about how N million customers of $company got their personal data leaked.

I think we'll read such headlines regardless of that setting :-P. I'm actually wondering if there should be some sort of premade "profiles" when it comes to default settings. Debian for example is used in a lot of contexts so perhaps it'd make sense to have a way to ask you what sort of usage you'll do when installing and provide different defaults based on that (not just at the initial installation time but also whe…

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