7 ms·
> the "FreeBSD Desktop" is even more so. The funny thing is that there's a reason for that: up until recently, the focus of FreeBSD has been on being a server
by talideon 10y ago
> the "FreeBSD Desktop" is even more so.
The funny thing is that there's a reason for that: up until recently, the focus of FreeBSD has been on being a server OS. There's a push recently on improving the graphics situation, but it's only relatively recent, and is mainly focussed on getting integrated graphics on more modern hardware working. There are also some efforts to expand the driver compatibility layer so that Linux drivers can be run as kernel modules with minimal change.
Moreover, FreeBSD types aren't quite so fixated on making a "FreeBSD desktop" as the Linux community is. Sure, there are desktop spins like PC-BSD, but the project as a whole has never really had desktops as a focus.
FreeBSD as a project is pragmatic, and tries to focus effort on where the greatest benefit lies.
Of course, there's the larger issue of Linux being insular, with a tendency to reinvent the wheel (epoll vs. kevent/kqueue being a nice example) rather than looking at what the state of the art is elsewhere and adopting that. You just have to look at containerisation: Solaris and FreeBSD have long had this in the form of Zones and Jails[1], but containerisation on Linux is largely an independent effort that didn't look to learn lessons from those efforts or adopt them.
[1] And I remember containerisation being mocked when hypervisors and VMs were all the rage. How things change...
- throwaway7767 10y agoIIRC FreeBSD was making some decent progress on the workstation experience before Apple released OSX. Once that happened, a lot of the people working on that switched over and the efforts kind of died down for a while. I haven't used FreeBSD on a desktop for years, but I've been told it's getting a lot better recently.
- talideon 10y agoAll very true. Part of the reason why the effort flagged was that suddenly there were these high-quality machines with a BSD userland around. Un/fortunately (depending on your perspective), Apple haven't put a tonne of effort into keeping that side of things as up to date as they might, so improving the desktop experience on FreeBSD again. Up until 7.0 came out, the desktop experience was pretty decent, and things like audio and video (anecdote ahead) worked out of the box better than Linux. After that, things started to slip in comparison. The work put into PC-BSD has helped with the out-of-the-box experience, assuming your have the right hardware, but it's good to see more effort being put into improving the general driver situation. I certainly wouldn't be at all against ditching Ubuntu and switching back to FreeBSD as my desktop OS.
- caf 10y agoThe containerisation approach on Linux isn't because of insularity or NIH - it's because the Linux kernel development process does not accept large, far-reaching "big bang" code drops. Instead, changes that have wide impact across the core kernel are expected to be made in a series of smaller incremental improvements, each of which is more limited in impact and more easily reviewed.
- talideon 10y agoWhy would borrowing the APIs enabling existing containerisation approaches have lead to large, far-reaching big bang code drops?
- pcvarmint 10y agoSuch as systemd? :-)
- cbd1984 10y agoPlease stop flaming with irrelevant comments.
- caf 10y agosystemd isn't part of the kernel at all.
- legooolas 10y agoYet. (Does kdbus count?)
- digi_owl 10y agoGiven that they seem to have given up on kdbus, and is instead developing something called bus1 that appears they are not even planning to submit for inclusion, i find myself thinking that the systemd devs are these days working on enveloping the kernel. Meaning that you no longer use kernel syscalls, but instead program with systemd in mind and then systemd talks to the kernel as it sees fit. Just observe their actions regarding session tracking, where they are basically ignoring all data from the kernel about sessions.