4 ms·

Just a word of warning, Jordan Hubbard and Kip Macy work for iXsystems and are pushing for both PC-BSD and FreeNAS to move to NextBSD, which is basically bringi

by byuu 11y ago

Just a word of warning, Jordan Hubbard and Kip Macy work for iXsystems and are pushing for both PC-BSD and FreeNAS to move to NextBSD, which is basically bringing half of OS X into FreeBSD. (Probably inspired by Jordan's days of working at Apple.) Which many people, including myself, feel is a disastrously bad idea (ex http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/08/26/0/ http://blog.darknedgy.net/technology/2015/08/26/0/). It has a lot of similarities to Linux and systemd. As such, I've switched to recommending people just go with FreeBSD lately. It's a bit of work, but with some helpful guides, you can help people avoid most of the pitfalls (ex http://files.byuu.org/temp/os/freebsd-10.html http://files.byuu.org/temp/os/freebsd-10.html). And once you learn the basics, you'll be in a great position to administer your system going forward.

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Thanks for the shout-out. Thankfully, the FreeBSD Foundation itself doesn't seem particularly receptive to the NextBSD effort (judging from their most recent quarterly status), so there's no danger of it being merged soon.
- JdeBP 11y ago
  On that subject, see http://marc.info/?t=144763538600004&r=1&w=2 http://marc.info/?t=144763538600004&r=1&w=2 .
  - protomyth 11y ago
    nice, relaunchd looks interesting and I was not aware of svc from DragonFlyBSD https://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=svc&section=ANY https://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=svc&section...
protomyth 11y ago
I think its a little premature to worry about NextBSD in the context of PC-BSD. PC-BSD has brought some stuff from OpenBSD over, but I it doesn't sound like they do stuff without proof of working. I guess Linux has SystemD and the BSDs have NextBSD to be fearful of.
- byuu 11y ago
  > I guess Linux has SystemD and the BSDs have NextBSD to be fearful of. Pretty much. But the FreeBSD developers have a history of being much more conservative on these types of changes. But then again, Debian used to as well. So you never know. I'm all for people experimenting and trying out new types of init systems and the like. I just don't like having them forced upon me when they're clearly not ready for production. I'm also really worried about the lock-in effects. The BSDs are already feeling the pain of software growing dependencies on the unportable systemd (the most egregious was Brasero, a CD-burning tool, recently having an argument over a systemd dependency.) I don't want to see the BSDs repeat the same mistake. It's enough "fun" dealing with networking idiosyncrasies like SO_NOSIGPIPE vs MSG_NOSIGNAL, kqueue vs epoll; audio idiosyncrasies like OSS vs ALSA; input idiosyncrasies like devd vs udev; etc as it is. Let's not add another one with init system dependencies. Desktop applications have done fine for the past 50 years without init system dependencies, why start now?
  - protomyth 11y ago
    I'll watch. LaunchD isn't bad on the OS X boxes we have[1] and I guess coming from NeXTSTEP, Mach isn't something I have a problem with. I will see how it works, but I'm an OpenBSD user these days so I will wait and see what they think. 1) my main complain has already been addressed with the switch from XML
    - floatboth 11y ago
      I've actually listened to the BSD Now podcast episode where they discussed NextBSD… IIRC, launchd is a simple process manager, and it never had anything to do with XML. XML/plists are used in Apple's implementation of launchCTL, the command line client. http://www.nextbsd.org/welcome-to-ghost/ http://www.nextbsd.org/welcome-to-ghost/ NextBSD is explicitly a "science project" – they don't want upstream FreeBSD to become NeXTSTEP :)
      - JdeBP 11y ago
        > IIRC, launchd is a simple process manager, and it never had anything to do with XML. Everyone thought that, until someone came along and wrote a launchd attempt that put an XML parser into the process #1 program. It was publicized back in 2014. * http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/launchd-on-bsd.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/la...

by byuu 11y ago

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Thanks for the shout-out. Thankfully, the FreeBSD Foundation itself doesn't seem particularly receptive to the NextBSD effort (judging from their most recent quarterly status), so there's no danger of it being merged soon.

JdeBP 11y ago
On that subject, see http://marc.info/?t=144763538600004&r=1&w=2 http://marc.info/?t=144763538600004&r=1&w=2 .
- protomyth 11y ago
  nice, relaunchd looks interesting and I was not aware of svc from DragonFlyBSD https://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=svc&section=ANY https://www.dragonflybsd.org/cgi/web-man?command=svc&section...

protomyth 11y ago

I think its a little premature to worry about NextBSD in the context of PC-BSD. PC-BSD has brought some stuff from OpenBSD over, but I it doesn't sound like they do stuff without proof of working. I guess Linux has SystemD and the BSDs have NextBSD to be fearful of.

byuu 11y ago
> I guess Linux has SystemD and the BSDs have NextBSD to be fearful of. Pretty much. But the FreeBSD developers have a history of being much more conservative on these types of changes. But then again, Debian used to as well. So you never know. I'm all for people experimenting and trying out new types of init systems and the like. I just don't like having them forced upon me when they're clearly not ready for production. I'm also really worried about the lock-in effects. The BSDs are already feeling the pain of software growing dependencies on the unportable systemd (the most egregious was Brasero, a CD-burning tool, recently having an argument over a systemd dependency.) I don't want to see the BSDs repeat the same mistake. It's enough "fun" dealing with networking idiosyncrasies like SO_NOSIGPIPE vs MSG_NOSIGNAL, kqueue vs epoll; audio idiosyncrasies like OSS vs ALSA; input idiosyncrasies like devd vs udev; etc as it is. Let's not add another one with init system dependencies. Desktop applications have done fine for the past 50 years without init system dependencies, why start now?
- protomyth 11y ago
  I'll watch. LaunchD isn't bad on the OS X boxes we have[1] and I guess coming from NeXTSTEP, Mach isn't something I have a problem with. I will see how it works, but I'm an OpenBSD user these days so I will wait and see what they think. 1) my main complain has already been addressed with the switch from XML
  - floatboth 11y ago
    I've actually listened to the BSD Now podcast episode where they discussed NextBSD… IIRC, launchd is a simple process manager, and it never had anything to do with XML. XML/plists are used in Apple's implementation of launchCTL, the command line client. http://www.nextbsd.org/welcome-to-ghost/ http://www.nextbsd.org/welcome-to-ghost/ NextBSD is explicitly a "science project" – they don't want upstream FreeBSD to become NeXTSTEP :)
    - JdeBP 11y ago
      > IIRC, launchd is a simple process manager, and it never had anything to do with XML. Everyone thought that, until someone came along and wrote a launchd attempt that put an XML parser into the process #1 program. It was publicized back in 2014. * http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/launchd-on-bsd.html http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/la...