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John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

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Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#231

Post by gonzo »

catblast wrote: post #209
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the "normal" BSDs just ship an X server out of the box; no need to port anything. (It remains curious to me that Apple bothered writing Quartz from the ground up, actually; seems like it would've been easier to build on top of X.)

Building on X gets you very little other than compatibility with the X ecosystem - something that had little to no value to Apple - they certainly didn't want to promote OSX as some kind of Xserver in place of writing quality Mac apps. Note that with current X, HiDPI and multi-monitor and tear-free experience still have problems and they are handled via a morass of legacy extensions of varying design quality (this is…

“X is rasterop on wheels” — wnj in Unix Today 6/25 page 5.

"..., Richie reminded the audience that Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that X was brain-dead and would soon die.

"He was half-right," Ritchie said. "Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22502125

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#232

Post by gonzo »

jquast wrote: post #162
dylanz wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I share your excitement! I've never contributed to OpenBSD but have been running and following the distro for ages. I have a few mugs and t-shirts and support when I can. I'm hoping this may bring some fans of his over to the distro who wouldn't have run into (or contributed to) it before.

I tried many source contributions to OPENBSD when I was in school, but only one was accepted—-to fix a “house purchase overflow bug” in the command-line monopoly game from the BSD games collection, lol :) I stopped hacking on it some years ago, but always contribute $$ when I’m well employed (currently not, sigh) I’ve yet to work at a $JOB with anyone else who wishes to use OpenBSD, even in the places it is most appr…

> my most recent employer had someone under qualified as the devops lead so we had to use pfSense, an endless source of frustration of issues that couldn’t be addressed, but that I knew exactly how to address with OpenBSD [...]

I, for one, think your employer and the “DevOps lead” were advocating for using the wrong technology. pfSense software is many things, to many people, but if it’s not written for a DevOps environment.

And you can tell your ex-employer that i said so. /s

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#233

Post by chupasaurus »

magic_quotes wrote: post #193
chupasaurus wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland support fiasco, changes in driver's EULA to deny the usage of consumer-grade GPUs in VMs are 2 things off the top of my head.

> changes in driver's EULA to deny the usage of consumer-grade GPUs in VMs Which changes? Where? I'm looking at said EULA right now and I don't see anything related.

My bad, it was a silently added "feature" in Windows driver[0].

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVM...

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#234

Post by ta17711771 »

philsnow wrote: post #142
HugoDaniel wrote: post #130

OpenBSD 6.7 is going to be released tomorrow https://www.openbsd.org/67.html Their release engineering is awesome!

Looks like there haven't been any new openbsd release songs since 6.2 :\ https://www.openbsd.org/lyrics.html Some of these are pretty great.

Fuck, that's cool.

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#235

Post by etaioinshrdlu »

asveikau wrote: post #215
thinkling wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Carmack ever worked for Apple. The XQuartz release notes say Carmack ported XFree86 (X server for x86 machines) to OS X; my guess would be that he did a limited port to get what he needed to run the Doom/Quake engine?

XFree86 wasn't x86 only, but the name does hint at how it did target PCs starting in a time when the norm for X would have been to run commercial Unix on non-PC hardware. Xorg forked from XFree86 circa 2003.

Wait a minute, Free86 is also a pun for 386.

It only took me almost 2 decades to notice.

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#236

Post by yuribro »

int_19h wrote: post #176
greggyb wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the parent is saying that "trying OpenBSD" is a "one evening project". The installation should be complete within just a couple minutes.

I don't see how one could try OpenBSD, and derive any conclusions other than, "oh great, yet another Unix", in a single evening.

In my experience, the first step in trying out a new system is installing it, configuring everything (from network connectivity to various peripherals), installing your favorite software and so on. This gives a good idea on how to work with the system, how good the documentation is (as another poster already mentioned), how simple and consistent everything is.

Installing in a VM is not the best differentiation, since in many OSs these experience was streamlined and everything usually works out of the box, but the customization part is still a good example.

Of course in the end, you might get to a setup similar to other OSs - running a browser in a windows manager and a buch of other common tools (IDEs, editors, productivity apps), but the way you get there, and the amount of problems you encounter along the way is a major part of using an OS.

I think you can get a good impression in a few hours, and see how it's different. (For example, I had a similar experience with NixOS: In a few hours you see how radically different it is and learn how it fits you)

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#237

Post by toyg »

hedora wrote: post #208
sgt101 wrote: post #52

Also he's had a look at the Imperial COVID19 model that has attracted so much bile in the last week: https://twitter.com/id_aa_carmack/status/1254872368763277313... I share his opinion on the code (though not his expertise!)

> I can’t vouch for the actual algorithms, but the software engineering seems fine. I also looked at the code a bit, and it seemed like typical bad natural sciences / electrical engineering grad student code that could have as easily been done the same way in matlab or python (or, as Carmak suggested, fortran). I guess I’m in good company in thinking it was ok-ish, so now I’ll ask. Why are people so upset with this c…

> why are people so upset

Politics. “Anything that supports a position I don’t like, should be attacked with full force. Anything less than perfect must disqualify the entire position.”

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#238

Post by toyg »

b0rsuk wrote: post #180
criddell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is OpenBSD considered to be an alternative OS?

With Linux, you get fewer officially supported games than Mac, but at least it's on people's radar. Few computer users know BSD is a thing, but most have heard of someone using Linux. It's strictly a techie/advanced hobbyist system.

That’s a very consumer-oriented statement.

OpenBSD powers a significant amount of internet infrastructure.

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#239

Post by toyg »

dntbnmpls wrote: post #221
criddell wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is OpenBSD considered to be an alternative OS?

Yes. Even in the smaller BSD world it's an "alternative OS" compared to FreeBSD or NetBSD.

My understanding is that OpenBSD is much more popular than NetBSD, at least currently.

Re: John Carmack is reading and contributing to OpenBSD source code

#240

Post by yuribro »

pwdisswordfish2 wrote: post #224
yuribro wrote: post #32

This is such a positive and wholesome example - both the mail itself (getting to know the preferences of the project), the proposed fixes (naming functions in a better way, adding explanatory comments), and on the higher level - the humility in which it was done, and the time being invested by him for a project he isn't part of.

The parent comment seems to suggest its author is not a frequent reader of NetBSD/OpenBSD mailing lists. This message is not at all atypical of what one would routinely see on these lists from regular contributors. Perhaps John Carmack spent some time reading the OpenBSD mailing lists before posting. It just shows that in more popular projects, or whatever the projects the comment's author is accustomed to, the expec…

I am actually subscribed to -tech, and an OpenBSD user for around 15 years.

Usually when mailing list messages or PR comments are posted to HN, they are about something very negative, either the attitude of the author (random examples - mails by Linus, mails by Poettering, and sometimes also mails by Theo) or the content of the request it replies to. And in the openbsd community does has some negative reputation about harsh communications.

Just wanted emphasize it, since seeing good examples is much more educating IMHO than seeing only negative ones.

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