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FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

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Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#21

Post by cturner »

ineedtosleep wrote: post #16
profquail wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great idea! I think it would be a waste of time for FreeBSD to take the entire desktop market on -- Linux has been fighting that battle for years -- but it would be awesome if Dell/HP/Lenovo came out with a PC-BSD-based laptop with official support. (For those not familiar with FreeBSD, PC-BSD is the "Desktop" edition of FreeBSD.) Another feature I'd really like to see the FreeBSD Foundation focus on this y…

On that note, what are the best laptops/netbooks out there for *BSD in terms of hardware support? I was thinking of doing what the grandparent comment was suggesting, but had trouble finding a list of (near) 100% supported machines.

When I looked at this six months ago the answer was thinkpads. But there is still oddness. I got a X1 Carbon which is a fantastic system once you get rid of the awful Windows setup it ships with but I ran out of time to mess around getting FreeBSD right and moved to ubuntu which is adequate.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#22

Post by cturner »

profquail wrote: post #9
cturner wrote: post #7

Guys if you've got some spare cash I recommend putting a bit towards having FreeBSD working flawlessly on a single well-defined desktop platform (e.g. thinkpad). It doesn't need to be fancy, but the little things like suspend-and-resume need to work correctly without tinkering. That way if someone wants to run FreeBSD, you give them a straightforward starting point. At the moment some FreeBSD fans reluctantly turn to…

This is a great idea! I think it would be a waste of time for FreeBSD to take the entire desktop market on -- Linux has been fighting that battle for years -- but it would be awesome if Dell/HP/Lenovo came out with a PC-BSD-based laptop with official support. (For those not familiar with FreeBSD, PC-BSD is the "Desktop" edition of FreeBSD.) Another feature I'd really like to see the FreeBSD Foundation focus on this y…

Dell/HP/Lenovo won't do that - the most they're likely to do is half-assed support for Linux. That's why it would be neat if FreeBSD to get themselves working solidly on a single platform, because fans would have a reliable option.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#23

Post by profquail »

alekseyk wrote: post #14
r0s wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you recommend a BSD VM for web development? That's my use for linux, and would love to try something new, FBSD has a good reputation.

That's kind of a hard question to answer without knowing your definition and requirements for 'web development'. First, keep in mind that some of the packages will simply not run on FreeBSD because it's often overlooked by developers. Same logic applies for technical support for applications that are running on FreeBSD powered machine. You also will need to learn how port system works on FreeBSD and it might be a wei…

The learning curve isn't too bad for FreeBSD. I primarily develop F#/.NET apps on Windows; I've used Linux occasionally for research over the past few years, and more recently, to try out the F#/Mono combination.

I decided to try FreeBSD last year and was able to learn enough in a week to do some basic development work with it. In fact, I submitted patches for Mono 3.0 and F# 3.0 to the FreeBSD ports tree:

http://www.freshports.org/lang/fsharp/ http://www.freshports.org/lang/mono/

The folks on the FreeBSD forums are also very helpful (and patient!) so if you do run into trouble, you'll likely find the solution by asking there.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#25

Post by lifeisstillgood »

cturner wrote: post #7

Guys if you've got some spare cash I recommend putting a bit towards having FreeBSD working flawlessly on a single well-defined desktop platform (e.g. thinkpad). It doesn't need to be fancy, but the little things like suspend-and-resume need to work correctly without tinkering. That way if someone wants to run FreeBSD, you give them a straightforward starting point. At the moment some FreeBSD fans reluctantly turn to…

As a long time BSD user (laptop and server) who is always on the cusp of throwing in the towel, I have wanted this, chased for this and even posted on HN before.

The big issue for this is knowing that the chipsets will remain stable over time. My best guess is to piggy back on a big Fortune 500 purchasing department - that is the CTO for say Exxon wants the same damn chips in all his windows PCs for the next three years because it makes support a 1000 times easier. So he basically tells HP set aside enough chips and capacity for me and I will keep buying.

If we can piggy back on that - we can target a fixed platform.

So if there are any Fortune 500 CIOs here with a nice deal from HP, and anyone willing to pay in the range of 500 pa to keep a BSD developer in beer and roofing tiles please shout - I will do the admin if others show willing

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#27

Post by GalacticDomin8r »

pjmlp wrote: post #20
derleth wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those closed-source Unix variants run the applications Linux users are familiar with?

The complaint was about UNIX alternatives. Linux distributions are not even UNIX, just UNIX compatible.

"BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC"

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#29

Post by derleth »

pjmlp wrote: post #20
derleth wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many of those closed-source Unix variants run the applications Linux users are familiar with?

The complaint was about UNIX alternatives. Linux distributions are not even UNIX, just UNIX compatible.

> Linux distributions are not even UNIX, just UNIX compatible.

Depends on how you define "UNIX". If you define it as "Derived from the V6 codebase", then I'm pretty sure a number of the OSes you mentioned don't qualify. If you define it as "Legally able to use the trademark", then you miss a lot of OSes that work just fine with POSIX-compatible software, such as FreeBSD, and include z/OS, which is just perverse.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#30

Post by bitwize »

GalacticDomin8r wrote: post #27
pjmlp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaint was about UNIX alternatives. Linux distributions are not even UNIX, just UNIX compatible.

"BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC"

"BSD people do what they do because they love Unix. Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft." --Theo de Raadt
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