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Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

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Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#31

Post by foldr »

olavgg wrote: post #11

For the last 5 years, I have replaced FreeBSD on servers with Linux. The main reason is that Linux, is a lot less work. The time spent on upgrading for example Debian is significantly less than FreeBSD which has a cumbersome process which requires some manual human interaction a few times during the process. Another thing is that behaviour of some applications I write are different on FreeBSD compared to Linux. One p…

Agreed. I used to run FreeBSD as a desktop OS way back when (early 2000s), but there's really no reason other than cachet to use it instead of Linux. It is a nicely coherent system with good documentation, but it also has its share of bonkers idiosyncrasies (e.g. root and other users having a different shell by default, and both of these defaults being awful).

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#32

Post by markjdb »

foldr wrote: post #31
olavgg wrote: post #11

For the last 5 years, I have replaced FreeBSD on servers with Linux. The main reason is that Linux, is a lot less work. The time spent on upgrading for example Debian is significantly less than FreeBSD which has a cumbersome process which requires some manual human interaction a few times during the process. Another thing is that behaviour of some applications I write are different on FreeBSD compared to Linux. One p…

Agreed. I used to run FreeBSD as a desktop OS way back when (early 2000s), but there's really no reason other than cachet to use it instead of Linux. It is a nicely coherent system with good documentation, but it also has its share of bonkers idiosyncrasies (e.g. root and other users having a different shell by default, and both of these defaults being awful).

For what it's worth, the default root shell is now /bin/sh instead of csh. I think that's true as of 14.0. /bin/sh is also a better interactive shell than it used to be, though yeah, I don't use it to do anything other than install my preferred shell.

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#33

Post by whizzter »

_paulc wrote: post #9

As a long term FreeBSD user (since 2.0) and advocate, my view is that FreeBSD should focus on its niche as a rock-solid server operating system. For most developers buying a MacBook and SSH-ing into a server is probably the right answer (or running a VM if you really need something local). The level of effort to match the MacBook user experience feels like a lost cause (Linux has been trying to do this for decades wi…

I'm so much on the cliff on this, whilst they should focus it's becoming more painful by the year to run stuff on FreeBSD since there is so may Linux:isms in most opensource projects today that it's almost as hard to compile on FreeBSD as it was to compile on Windows 20 years ago.

Only a month or two back I gave up on compiling Samba myself (mostly worked w/o issues in the past just with ./configure && make), relying on package/ports instead.

Modern dotnet versions are finally available (but the compilation instructions looked headache inducing), node.js filesystem watching seems broken/nonexistant (using webpack -w i had to enable some polling mode).

I love FreeBSD but Linux has EEE'd the OSS ecosystem. (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish)

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#34

Post by whizzter »

pjmlp wrote: post #28

Laptops are the new desktops for many organisations, so this is actually quite relevant.

Apart from some console/game dev, I haven't had my main computer be anything other than a laptop for almost 25 years at this point.

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#35

Post by foldr »

markjdb wrote: post #32
foldr wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I used to run FreeBSD as a desktop OS way back when (early 2000s), but there's really no reason other than cachet to use it instead of Linux. It is a nicely coherent system with good documentation, but it also has its share of bonkers idiosyncrasies (e.g. root and other users having a different shell by default, and both of these defaults being awful).

For what it's worth, the default root shell is now /bin/sh instead of csh. I think that's true as of 14.0. /bin/sh is also a better interactive shell than it used to be, though yeah, I don't use it to do anything other than install my preferred shell.

Right, but isn't the default non-root shell still tcsh? Zsh and ksh are both under BSD(-compatible) licenses, and it would be a huge usability upgrade if they could just set one of those as the default shell for everyone.

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#36

Post by whizzter »

kortilla wrote: post #15
pmlnr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FreeBSD has jails if you need lightweight vms. The kubernetes monoculture is a horrible thing for long term.

Jails are akin to containers, not kubernetes. The value of k8s over just docker or whatever container runtime is in the lifecycle management, service mesh, scaling, monitoring, etc.

Even without Kubernetes this kinda was indicative of the FreeBSD community missing the point, jails are neat but docker added a lot of ease of use above the how you basically managed jails manually (at least according to official instructions), people just kept mentioning that the capability had been there but missed that the ease of use was what charmed developers.

Also hurting it was that the Docker story on FreeBSD is had attempts to make it "native", through the Linux emulation layer with ZFS native functionality to handle the VFS parts and while that could have been elegant it required cutting edge and afaik never got really production ready (There's apparently docker port now via VirtualBox).

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#37

Post by pjmlp »

whizzter wrote: post #34
pjmlp wrote: post #28

Laptops are the new desktops for many organisations, so this is actually quite relevant.

Apart from some console/game dev, I haven't had my main computer be anything other than a laptop for almost 25 years at this point.

For me the transition took place in 2002 privately, and since 2006 at work.

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#38

Post by kkfx »

Microsoft triumphed back than because it try to conquer students, desktops, old big-iron Unix players fall because they ignore it, so the move is logic but the main issue for FreeBSD are not much laptop/wifi but mere modern iron generic support and power management just for the hw, for the software the issue is that maintaining a FreeBSD desktop means more work to keep the system up to date than Arch.

Since they have no license issues they should focused on:

- zfs crypto root (native or geli, does not matter) by default, supported in the installer;

- boot environments support with zfs clones, as normal way to update the system;

- zfs integrated jails for software development (like IllumOS zones) focused on exposing a controlled set of package in a local cloned FHS to offer the equivalent of NixOS/Guix shell;

- easy creation of custom images, as easy as NixOS;

- curated minimalistic desktop offer (Emacs/EXWM, i3 or another tiling WM, fluxbox with ALL relevant modern desktop stuff (like dunst already there for notifications, udiskie for manage removable storage, a nice network manager GUI of some kind, ...) and a good XFCE setup by default. There is no need for more, but there is a big need of sane defaults and meta-packages selections.

These would be the real "basic stuff we need to succeed" like the SUN OpenSolaris Indiana move back then, ditching from the old SXDE/SXCE model for a modern FLOSS familiar one, but with the best tools GNU/Linux do not have.

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#39

Post by BSDobelix »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #19
olavgg wrote: post #11

For the last 5 years, I have replaced FreeBSD on servers with Linux. The main reason is that Linux, is a lot less work. The time spent on upgrading for example Debian is significantly less than FreeBSD which has a cumbersome process which requires some manual human interaction a few times during the process. Another thing is that behaviour of some applications I write are different on FreeBSD compared to Linux. One p…

So true! My family have a secret holiday destination. It has unspoiled beaches, friendly locals, cheap beer, amazing restaurants. When people ask where we went for summer we lie. "Oh we went to Ibiza again". Some things are best kept for yourself, not to be popular. We don't want "those sorts" dragging the whole show down to the lowest common denominator. So listen to the parent poster, and trust me, BSD is a piece o…

>like Lennart Poettering hanging around your hotel.

Yeah or Ricard ask you to clean he's feet at the pool.

And absolutely with you, please Linux user don't try FreeBSD it's terrible, no device drivers, no docker and ZERO Linux compatibility, and as Linus himself said: ZFS is really not that special. Dear Fedoras and Arch-Fellas, just don't touch it ;)

Re: Why laptop support, why now: FreeBSD's strategic move toward broader adoption

#40

Post by Gud »

_paulc wrote: post #9

As a long term FreeBSD user (since 2.0) and advocate, my view is that FreeBSD should focus on its niche as a rock-solid server operating system. For most developers buying a MacBook and SSH-ing into a server is probably the right answer (or running a VM if you really need something local). The level of effort to match the MacBook user experience feels like a lost cause (Linux has been trying to do this for decades wi…

As another long term FreeBSD user(4.6), you can pry FreeBSD from my lap/desktops from my cold, dead, fingers.

What improvements are you looking for on the server side?

Seems to me this money will do wonders for the client side, while on the server side, FreeBSD is already miles ahead of the competition.

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