8 ms·

The problem seems to be the desktop software...

by solarexplorer 14y ago

montecarl 14y ago
My microwave sucks at making toast. It's not a problem though.
- trentlott 14y ago
  I'm amazed by the number of people in this thread that think a desktop GUI is the end-all be-all of an operating system. 'Hacker' News, indeed.
ghshephard 14y ago
I've been involved in north of 50-60 servers running OpenBSD since 2001, and I've never seen, nor even heard, of anybody running OpenBSD on the desktop. It's never been relevant on that platform and serves no useful function as a Desktop Environment beyond the core developer and OpenBSD Hobbyist community. Not to suggest that they aren't an important community - but they are fully capable of taking care of their own needs. The rest of the world uses OpenBSD as a firewall/routing/networking/reliable-appliance platform.
- eksith 14y ago
  I must confess, my desktop adventure with OpenBSD was quite short. Not that I didn't appreciate the simplicity (and I think that's the key appeal), but just the bareness was a little too much for me. I'm sure others will feel differently; I've got a friend who keeps his desktop and server Puffy and he seems quite happy. Then again, he's also quite odd. I did get a kick out of seeing my old Celeron Windows 95 machine now running a modern OS, browser and chat client.
- sthen 14y ago
  Certainly it is used on the desktop outside of the developer/hobbyist community. See http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20110420080633 http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=201104200...
  - ghshephard 14y ago
    If you read the article, you'll see they aren't deploying OpenBSD to their users as a general desktop, but as an Appliance Environment - which makes total sense. Call Centers, Transaction Centers, NOCs, etc... - Anywhere you have a pre-set configuration/applications, OpenBSD is a great choice. Rock Solid stability and super secure. This is also an area where ChromeBooks will do well. By "Desktop" - though, I mean users who are planning on downloading/installing various productivity utilities, applications, etc... to do their job. Creating Reports, Slide Decks, PDFs, Spreadsheets, charts, diagrams, IM apps, Skype - whatever random app they want to use to do their Job. I've never seen an OpenBSD user in 20+ years of supporting Desktops in Engineering and Corporate environments - Windows obviously, but lots of Macintosh OS, A nice run of NextOS, Lots of FreeBSD, umpteen distros of Linux (for a while, that's all people seemed to be running), many versions of Solaris, tons of Irix, a handful of HPUX users, and even a couple AIX users. But, in that same time - I've seen OpenBSD squirreled away in all sorts of Appliance/Network/Firewall duties.
    - bulibuta 14y ago
      ``By "Desktop" - though, I mean users who are planning on downloading/installing various productivity utilities, applications, etc... to do their job.'' I think the average user could be satisfied with what's available on OpenBSD. The only bummer is flash. ``Creating Reports, Slide Decks, PDFs, Spreadsheets, charts, diagrams[...]'' LibreOffice is available on OpenBSD. ``IM apps'' Pidgin and a ton of other clients are available. ``Skype'' It used to work a few releases ago, I don't know if it still does now. `` - whatever random app they want to use to do their Job.'' Yes, if you compare it to Windows in that regard then it's at a loss. But if you compare it to Liunx I'd say it's up to par. The problem is that it's getting harder to keep up to date, which is what Marc is trying to explain in his email to tech@.
Wilya 14y ago
The BSD in general (I mostly know FreeBSD, but I doubt OpenBSD is much better) haven't been perfect for running desktop software, and especially the big desktop environments, for a long time. If they ever were adequate. It can be done, but with quite a bit of tweaking, battling strange inconsistencies, and in the end, missing some functionality compared to the same thing on linux. Possible, but not by any stretch a core value proposition or a major component direction of the projects (whatever they officially say). Or at least, not the successful projects. Sucks to see a lot of things becoming linux-specific, but in a ton of these cases, the impact on the BSDs will be minimal.
- iso-8859-1 14y ago
  Isn't this the goal of PC-BSD? As far as I know, it is no failure.
  - Wilya 14y ago
    I wouldn't call it a failure, but it's not really a success either. At least not yet. I don't know anyone who uses it, nor do I really hear about it apart from the people developing it. Sometimes, people mention it, in a "Maybe you should try PC-BSD, I've heard it's good" kind of way, but that's as far as it goes.
    - pconf 14y ago
      It's working for me, but KDE4 isn't nearly as user-friendly as KDE3
mpyne 14y ago
KDE 4 had, for a long time, a misfeature relating to pthread_mutex_t support on OpenBSD (which was my fault, I suppose). A couple of years later I heard from an OpenBSD dev who noted the issue and recommended a workaround, which I implemented and hopefully means KDE works in OpenBSD now. But other than that one dev I'm not aware of any OpenBSD users or devs noticing or complaining about that bug (which would have been quite noticeable from the terminal output at least). Drawn whatever conclusions you will from that. ;)
- tobiasu 14y ago
  My conclusion: Your typical KDE user is not in the position to do the non-trivial work of porting a large C++ code base. Nor does she know where to get started. Such bloatware needs at least one dedicated and interested developer on each target OS. We now have one, so there is quite some movement on this front in the recent months.
  - mpyne 14y ago
    > Such bloatware needs at least one dedicated and interested developer on each target OS. That's correct. Although I'm one of the few who actually seems to care about portability as a good practice I don't have the time to run 5 different OS'es to verify each of my volunteered contributions works on every feasible POSIX platform. In the end someone who is interested in each of those platforms needs to help take on the task of ensuring that the software they use works on the platform they use (that is, if they wish for the software to work). This can be as simple as reporting bugs, helping with integration into platform-specific libraries (which KDE is usually very good about using through adapter libraries to ensure portability), reporting platform-specific bugs that need worked around, etc. Some projects are already taking a WONTFIX attitude to portability bugs. I will push where I can to make sure that KDE isn't one of them, but I can't change the number of hours in a day... non-Linux developers need to contribute too if they want a great KDE on that platform.
- papsosouid 14y ago
  It is incredibly easy to have a buildfarm (entirely made up of virtual machines even) that can build and test your software across dozens of operating systems. When I install a large software package like KDE, and see that there are glaringly obvious bugs, I assume it is because the developers do not care enough to do the most trivial automated testing. So I simply uninstall it and use software that works. When you create an impression of "we don't care about you", people are much less likely to bother reporting issues.

The problem seems to be the desktop software...

montecarl 14y ago

My microwave sucks at making toast. It's not a problem though.

trentlott 14y ago
I'm amazed by the number of people in this thread that think a desktop GUI is the end-all be-all of an operating system. 'Hacker' News, indeed.

ghshephard 14y ago

I've been involved in north of 50-60 servers running OpenBSD since 2001, and I've never seen, nor even heard, of anybody running OpenBSD on the desktop. It's never been relevant on that platform and serves no useful function as a Desktop Environment beyond the core developer and OpenBSD Hobbyist community. Not to suggest that they aren't an important community - but they are fully capable of taking care of their own needs. The rest of the world uses OpenBSD as a firewall/routing/networking/reliable-appliance platform.

eksith 14y ago
I must confess, my desktop adventure with OpenBSD was quite short. Not that I didn't appreciate the simplicity (and I think that's the key appeal), but just the bareness was a little too much for me. I'm sure others will feel differently; I've got a friend who keeps his desktop and server Puffy and he seems quite happy. Then again, he's also quite odd. I did get a kick out of seeing my old Celeron Windows 95 machine now running a modern OS, browser and chat client.
sthen 14y ago
Certainly it is used on the desktop outside of the developer/hobbyist community. See http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20110420080633 http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=201104200...
- ghshephard 14y ago
  If you read the article, you'll see they aren't deploying OpenBSD to their users as a general desktop, but as an Appliance Environment - which makes total sense. Call Centers, Transaction Centers, NOCs, etc... - Anywhere you have a pre-set configuration/applications, OpenBSD is a great choice. Rock Solid stability and super secure. This is also an area where ChromeBooks will do well. By "Desktop" - though, I mean users who are planning on downloading/installing various productivity utilities, applications, etc... to do their job. Creating Reports, Slide Decks, PDFs, Spreadsheets, charts, diagrams, IM apps, Skype - whatever random app they want to use to do their Job. I've never seen an OpenBSD user in 20+ years of supporting Desktops in Engineering and Corporate environments - Windows obviously, but lots of Macintosh OS, A nice run of NextOS, Lots of FreeBSD, umpteen distros of Linux (for a while, that's all people seemed to be running), many versions of Solaris, tons of Irix, a handful of HPUX users, and even a couple AIX users. But, in that same time - I've seen OpenBSD squirreled away in all sorts of Appliance/Network/Firewall duties.
  - bulibuta 14y ago
    ``By "Desktop" - though, I mean users who are planning on downloading/installing various productivity utilities, applications, etc... to do their job.'' I think the average user could be satisfied with what's available on OpenBSD. The only bummer is flash. ``Creating Reports, Slide Decks, PDFs, Spreadsheets, charts, diagrams[...]'' LibreOffice is available on OpenBSD. ``IM apps'' Pidgin and a ton of other clients are available. ``Skype'' It used to work a few releases ago, I don't know if it still does now. `` - whatever random app they want to use to do their Job.'' Yes, if you compare it to Windows in that regard then it's at a loss. But if you compare it to Liunx I'd say it's up to par. The problem is that it's getting harder to keep up to date, which is what Marc is trying to explain in his email to tech@.

Wilya 14y ago

The BSD in general (I mostly know FreeBSD, but I doubt OpenBSD is much better) haven't been perfect for running desktop software, and especially the big desktop environments, for a long time. If they ever were adequate. It can be done, but with quite a bit of tweaking, battling strange inconsistencies, and in the end, missing some functionality compared to the same thing on linux. Possible, but not by any stretch a core value proposition or a major component direction of the projects (whatever they officially say). Or at least, not the successful projects. Sucks to see a lot of things becoming linux-specific, but in a ton of these cases, the impact on the BSDs will be minimal.

iso-8859-1 14y ago
Isn't this the goal of PC-BSD? As far as I know, it is no failure.
- Wilya 14y ago
  I wouldn't call it a failure, but it's not really a success either. At least not yet. I don't know anyone who uses it, nor do I really hear about it apart from the people developing it. Sometimes, people mention it, in a "Maybe you should try PC-BSD, I've heard it's good" kind of way, but that's as far as it goes.
  - pconf 14y ago
    It's working for me, but KDE4 isn't nearly as user-friendly as KDE3

mpyne 14y ago

KDE 4 had, for a long time, a misfeature relating to pthread_mutex_t support on OpenBSD (which was my fault, I suppose). A couple of years later I heard from an OpenBSD dev who noted the issue and recommended a workaround, which I implemented and hopefully means KDE works in OpenBSD now. But other than that one dev I'm not aware of any OpenBSD users or devs noticing or complaining about that bug (which would have been quite noticeable from the terminal output at least). Drawn whatever conclusions you will from that. ;)

tobiasu 14y ago
My conclusion: Your typical KDE user is not in the position to do the non-trivial work of porting a large C++ code base. Nor does she know where to get started. Such bloatware needs at least one dedicated and interested developer on each target OS. We now have one, so there is quite some movement on this front in the recent months.
- mpyne 14y ago
  > Such bloatware needs at least one dedicated and interested developer on each target OS. That's correct. Although I'm one of the few who actually seems to care about portability as a good practice I don't have the time to run 5 different OS'es to verify each of my volunteered contributions works on every feasible POSIX platform. In the end someone who is interested in each of those platforms needs to help take on the task of ensuring that the software they use works on the platform they use (that is, if they wish for the software to work). This can be as simple as reporting bugs, helping with integration into platform-specific libraries (which KDE is usually very good about using through adapter libraries to ensure portability), reporting platform-specific bugs that need worked around, etc. Some projects are already taking a WONTFIX attitude to portability bugs. I will push where I can to make sure that KDE isn't one of them, but I can't change the number of hours in a day... non-Linux developers need to contribute too if they want a great KDE on that platform.
papsosouid 14y ago
It is incredibly easy to have a buildfarm (entirely made up of virtual machines even) that can build and test your software across dozens of operating systems. When I install a large software package like KDE, and see that there are glaringly obvious bugs, I assume it is because the developers do not care enough to do the most trivial automated testing. So I simply uninstall it and use software that works. When you create an impression of "we don't care about you", people are much less likely to bother reporting issues.