5 ms·

The most intriguing part of FreeBSD (any BSD really) from an outsider's perspective I find the fact that "the FreeBSD project" has a bigger, more directed scope

by DCKing 12y ago

The most intriguing part of FreeBSD (any BSD really) from an outsider's perspective I find the fact that "the FreeBSD project" has a bigger, more directed scope than "the Linux project" or "the GNU project". It's a kernel and userland all in one, and they can actually decide to focus more on unity of configuration files and mobility. I get the impression that you cannot decide that as efficiently on Linux at all. People often say "Linux is all about choice" as if it's a good thing [1]. I think this overwhelming focus on choice really is what's so frustrating about Linux and its community. If needs aren't being catered to, or if there are disagreements, the amount of vitriol that gets thrown around is despicable. The systemd controversy is so terribly shameful, but lo and behold: FreeBSD now seems to be envious of it (or at least some of its aspects). Gnome 3 is widely regarded [2] as the best, well-integrated desktop environment Linux has ever had, and look at the amount of vitriol that got for having a direction and making choices for the user. I personally think that the level of integration systemd and Gnome 3 are attempting to pioneer make Linux far more attractive than ever, but the Linux community really alienates me with its attitude towards that. With this attitude, desktop Linux mostly remains a patched together collection of software. The rough edges of this patchwork are still far more apparent on even the best regarded distros when compared to OS X or Windows or even Android. It's a shame FreeBSD doesn't maintain an integrated or official graphical interface. Since it uses the same not-so-well integrated desktops as Linux does, it unfortunately means that using FreeBSD is only a minor improvement over Linux for me in daily use [3]. That means I'll just leave it to Apple to build me a well-working and well-integrated operating system. If an operating system project or vendor makes choices for me, I consider that a big advantage most of the time. If a project can actually take on a proper direction like this presentation suggests, that is a big selling point to me. [1]: I know what the good things about choice are, I'm trying to make a point. [2]: Widely regarded does not mean "universally regarded" or even "regarded as such by the majority". [3]: Ignoring the problem that FreeBSD doesn't have the level of driver or application support that Linux has.

freehunter 12y ago
That's why Ubuntu became so popular, and Mint after it. There was a cohesive vision that a Linux OS can be more than a collection of text processing utilities. That's also why Ubuntu is so reviled in some Linux circles, because they dared to make a choice for their users, dared to try something new, dared to implement something that wasn't a direct continuation of decades-old software. Once they proved it was possible, others started jumping on board, giving Linux the freshest coat of paint it had ever seen. It was a serious contender for the year of the Linux desktop, especially with the rise of netbooks. But then politics happened. If it doesn't work the same way it did in 1968, it's not allowed in the OS that was the child of the 90's. Pulse Audio, Unity, Gnome 3, systemd (along with anything else Poettering has touched) are evil because they're new. Unix never did it, so Linux can't. GNU's Not Unix (yet... we'll get there someday though!).
- chestnut-tree 12y ago
  "That's also why Ubuntu is so reviled in some Linux circles..." I sometimes wonder if good visual and interaction design can succeed in the open source model. In software development, tasks can be parcelled out in a modular way to many developers. But this model doesn't work well for visual and interaction design. If you want all the parts of an Operating System or piece of software to feel consistent and cohesive, you need a more focused approach. And that means handing design tasks to a designated design team and entrusting them to make the UX decisions. But with open source projects, we all want a say in the UX (me included); thus the endless (and often bitter) discussions about how a piece of software should behave. The model of open source code has influenced and inspired countless companies. But who can point to examples of visual and interaction design from open source software that has had a similar effect? I see the influence going much more the other way i.e. open source software often follows ideas or conventions from commercial companies. I'd love to see this change. But how?
  - smoe 12y ago
    In my opinion, parcelling out software development in a modular way doesn't work that great neither if you don't have guidelines, api definitions – community enforced styles of doing things. I think, the same thing works with visual and interaction design. But you'd need a small group of people to make the basic UX decisions and write concise guidelines others can follow. Like Apples «Human Interface Guidelines»[0]. This isn't really purely democratic, but I think it's almost impossible to find the "one way of doing things" if everyone has their say in every micro decision. For me its much more important to have consistent user experience than the details of it. Its like tab vs spaces in programming or semicolon vs no semicolon in Javascript. I have my personal preferences, but i'm fine with either one as long as it is consistent at least within the project. [0] https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/Documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/Documentation/UserEx...
    - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
      I would suggest it is democratic - there is and always has been a tension between our elected officials bein our representatives and our delegates. The same goes for any democratically appointed UX team.
Nelson69 12y ago
You need to take a few steps back to fully understand the so called systemd controversy. 1) A number major commercial UNIX vendors have moved in the direction dumping the old startup scripts in favor of something more explicit and declarative. This isn't just engineering for engineering's sake, major corporations have customers with needs. Redhat and company are no different. 2) It's incredibly easy to be vocal. What's really lacking is a compelling alternative. The most vocal opposition have made anonymous web sites, have made tons of noise but done very very little in the way of actually solving the problem, many even refuse to acknowledge them. It's really easy to think it's a civil war of sorts but the reality is it's mostly just a very vocal group that are against it, and FWIW, they don't seem to contribute that much. The BSD world has had it's share of these too, it's just a more dramatic fork when you startup OpenBSD project or NetBSD or DragonFly or one of the more minor forks. Openness means you get to see the bad as well as the good, the decision. A very vocal group of folks were crapping on GNOME 3 when it came out, now it's good. If you think systemd was contentious, while I love the idea of unifying configurations, just wait until that debate starts... It's probably not possible to represent all of the different things that the "tower of bable" has without a nightmarish XML schema, if it can be done. I welcome the ideas though, especially if FreeBSD get's serious about mobile and power, there will certainly be some interesting stuff.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  Explicit, declarative? Sounds nothing like what i have seen so far.
  - not_with_retard 12y ago
    You should start with getting your head out of your ass, and actually doing some research, then.
- pekk 12y ago
  There are already several alternatives to systemd, starting with the systems that systemd is replacing that have worked well for years.
asveikau 12y ago
We must remember that the BSDs in particular exist in a reality where you can issue a single source control checkout command and you have the whole tree literally to do anything you want with, most of it even with a license amenable to anything. Linux isn't quite in this world in such a dramatic way as the BSDs, but it exists very close to it. So "choice" isn't some abstract concept that comes later as an afterthought, it's kind of the whole point in a very concrete and literal sense, in a way that other systems do not offer. Naturally you will see people with their workflows based on that, or some indirect form of that. And these people have working systems, no matter how much people wax philosophical and longingly on forums for "missing" features that are irrelevant to people with already working systems. So from a certain perspective it's a bit weird to see something like a slide here say that such a system needs to address 99% of people. Who says? It's working fine in its niche. I think there is also a very simple difference of opinion and difference in personality types here, in a way that I don't often see people acknowledge. On one side you have people who crave authority, order, centralization. One component to manage boot and hardware. One UI toolkit. Choice is bad, freedom is slavery. (OK, just joking on that last one.) Then there are people who just happen to like it the other way. I'm glad that some systems don't bring up a GUI until I ask for one, and even then, it can be whatever I say it is. I find it pleasingly simple that the OpenBSD upgrade instructions basically tell you to run tar and patch. These things are an anathema to those whose personality types are more aligned with, say, OS X, but they work well for me.
- DCKing 12y ago
  As an additional point: in the spectrum between centralization and decentralization, there's a clear difference between Linux and FreeBSD. This is what I highlighted in my post: FreeBSD's greater degree of centralization seems to me to be more efficient and leading to a better integration. That much is a correct observation. But I did not want to imply that "decentralization equals less choice". As an example: Android is as centralized as you can get for an open source project. That does not stop people from customizing it to bits, so much that it's barely recognizable as Android anymore. The beauty however is that people can do that without influencing the direction of the original project (although that happens to a limited and uncredited degree), or bitching and moaning about it.
hiphopyo 12y ago
> It's a shame FreeBSD doesn't maintain an integrated or official graphical interface. Coming from an OpenBSD background (hey - it's the only OS in the world allowing you run Xorg as an unprivileged user [1]) -- what I'd like to see is an intra-BSD desktop environment based on Google's Material Design guidelines: http://google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html http://google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.h... And for ol' times sake, the IRIX® Interactive Desktop User Interface Guidelines: http://menehune.opt.wfu.edu/Kokua/Irix_6.5.21_doc_cd/usr/share/Insight/library/SGI_bookshelves/SGI_Developer/books/UI_Glines/sgi_html/index.html http://menehune.opt.wfu.edu/Kokua/Irix_6.5.21_doc_cd/usr/sha... Similar to Quantum OS (Linux): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8645504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8645504 -- [1] http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426 http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426
- zanny 12y ago
  > hey - it's the only OS in the world allowing you run Xorg as an unprivileged user Wait, what? https://imgur.com/ZrdgN1H https://imgur.com/ZrdgN1H This isn't some custom repo or anything, I'm just running stock Arch and have startx in my bash profile. It runs in user mode, and has for about the last half year.
  - hiphopyo 12y ago
    I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that that wasn't the case? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User#Xorg_as_a_systemd_user_service https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User#Xorg_as_a_... Unfortunately, to be able to run xorg in unprivileged mode, it needs to run inside a session. So, right now the handicap of running xorg as user service is that it must be run with root privileges [...snip...] It seems likely that xorg could be modified [...snip...], and then it could run unprivileged from a user service outside a session.
    - zanny 12y ago
      Thats in the context of using xorg as a systemd user service. You can run startx as a normal user and have the server run unprivileged just fine.

by DCKing 12y ago

freehunter 12y ago

That's why Ubuntu became so popular, and Mint after it. There was a cohesive vision that a Linux OS can be more than a collection of text processing utilities. That's also why Ubuntu is so reviled in some Linux circles, because they dared to make a choice for their users, dared to try something new, dared to implement something that wasn't a direct continuation of decades-old software. Once they proved it was possible, others started jumping on board, giving Linux the freshest coat of paint it had ever seen. It was a serious contender for the year of the Linux desktop, especially with the rise of netbooks. But then politics happened. If it doesn't work the same way it did in 1968, it's not allowed in the OS that was the child of the 90's. Pulse Audio, Unity, Gnome 3, systemd (along with anything else Poettering has touched) are evil because they're new. Unix never did it, so Linux can't. GNU's Not Unix (yet... we'll get there someday though!).

chestnut-tree 12y ago
"That's also why Ubuntu is so reviled in some Linux circles..." I sometimes wonder if good visual and interaction design can succeed in the open source model. In software development, tasks can be parcelled out in a modular way to many developers. But this model doesn't work well for visual and interaction design. If you want all the parts of an Operating System or piece of software to feel consistent and cohesive, you need a more focused approach. And that means handing design tasks to a designated design team and entrusting them to make the UX decisions. But with open source projects, we all want a say in the UX (me included); thus the endless (and often bitter) discussions about how a piece of software should behave. The model of open source code has influenced and inspired countless companies. But who can point to examples of visual and interaction design from open source software that has had a similar effect? I see the influence going much more the other way i.e. open source software often follows ideas or conventions from commercial companies. I'd love to see this change. But how?
- smoe 12y ago
  In my opinion, parcelling out software development in a modular way doesn't work that great neither if you don't have guidelines, api definitions – community enforced styles of doing things. I think, the same thing works with visual and interaction design. But you'd need a small group of people to make the basic UX decisions and write concise guidelines others can follow. Like Apples «Human Interface Guidelines»[0]. This isn't really purely democratic, but I think it's almost impossible to find the "one way of doing things" if everyone has their say in every micro decision. For me its much more important to have consistent user experience than the details of it. Its like tab vs spaces in programming or semicolon vs no semicolon in Javascript. I have my personal preferences, but i'm fine with either one as long as it is consistent at least within the project. [0] https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/Documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/OSXHIGuidelines/index.html https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/Documentation/UserEx...
  - lifeisstillgood 12y ago
    I would suggest it is democratic - there is and always has been a tension between our elected officials bein our representatives and our delegates. The same goes for any democratically appointed UX team.

Nelson69 12y ago

You need to take a few steps back to fully understand the so called systemd controversy. 1) A number major commercial UNIX vendors have moved in the direction dumping the old startup scripts in favor of something more explicit and declarative. This isn't just engineering for engineering's sake, major corporations have customers with needs. Redhat and company are no different. 2) It's incredibly easy to be vocal. What's really lacking is a compelling alternative. The most vocal opposition have made anonymous web sites, have made tons of noise but done very very little in the way of actually solving the problem, many even refuse to acknowledge them. It's really easy to think it's a civil war of sorts but the reality is it's mostly just a very vocal group that are against it, and FWIW, they don't seem to contribute that much. The BSD world has had it's share of these too, it's just a more dramatic fork when you startup OpenBSD project or NetBSD or DragonFly or one of the more minor forks. Openness means you get to see the bad as well as the good, the decision. A very vocal group of folks were crapping on GNOME 3 when it came out, now it's good. If you think systemd was contentious, while I love the idea of unifying configurations, just wait until that debate starts... It's probably not possible to represent all of the different things that the "tower of bable" has without a nightmarish XML schema, if it can be done. I welcome the ideas though, especially if FreeBSD get's serious about mobile and power, there will certainly be some interesting stuff.

digi_owl 12y ago
Explicit, declarative? Sounds nothing like what i have seen so far.
- not_with_retard 12y ago
  You should start with getting your head out of your ass, and actually doing some research, then.
pekk 12y ago
There are already several alternatives to systemd, starting with the systems that systemd is replacing that have worked well for years.

asveikau 12y ago

We must remember that the BSDs in particular exist in a reality where you can issue a single source control checkout command and you have the whole tree literally to do anything you want with, most of it even with a license amenable to anything. Linux isn't quite in this world in such a dramatic way as the BSDs, but it exists very close to it. So "choice" isn't some abstract concept that comes later as an afterthought, it's kind of the whole point in a very concrete and literal sense, in a way that other systems do not offer. Naturally you will see people with their workflows based on that, or some indirect form of that. And these people have working systems, no matter how much people wax philosophical and longingly on forums for "missing" features that are irrelevant to people with already working systems. So from a certain perspective it's a bit weird to see something like a slide here say that such a system needs to address 99% of people. Who says? It's working fine in its niche. I think there is also a very simple difference of opinion and difference in personality types here, in a way that I don't often see people acknowledge. On one side you have people who crave authority, order, centralization. One component to manage boot and hardware. One UI toolkit. Choice is bad, freedom is slavery. (OK, just joking on that last one.) Then there are people who just happen to like it the other way. I'm glad that some systems don't bring up a GUI until I ask for one, and even then, it can be whatever I say it is. I find it pleasingly simple that the OpenBSD upgrade instructions basically tell you to run tar and patch. These things are an anathema to those whose personality types are more aligned with, say, OS X, but they work well for me.

DCKing 12y ago
As an additional point: in the spectrum between centralization and decentralization, there's a clear difference between Linux and FreeBSD. This is what I highlighted in my post: FreeBSD's greater degree of centralization seems to me to be more efficient and leading to a better integration. That much is a correct observation. But I did not want to imply that "decentralization equals less choice". As an example: Android is as centralized as you can get for an open source project. That does not stop people from customizing it to bits, so much that it's barely recognizable as Android anymore. The beauty however is that people can do that without influencing the direction of the original project (although that happens to a limited and uncredited degree), or bitching and moaning about it.

hiphopyo 12y ago

> It's a shame FreeBSD doesn't maintain an integrated or official graphical interface. Coming from an OpenBSD background (hey - it's the only OS in the world allowing you run Xorg as an unprivileged user [1]) -- what I'd like to see is an intra-BSD desktop environment based on Google's Material Design guidelines: http://google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.html http://google.com/design/spec/material-design/introduction.h... And for ol' times sake, the IRIX® Interactive Desktop User Interface Guidelines: http://menehune.opt.wfu.edu/Kokua/Irix_6.5.21_doc_cd/usr/share/Insight/library/SGI_bookshelves/SGI_Developer/books/UI_Glines/sgi_html/index.html http://menehune.opt.wfu.edu/Kokua/Irix_6.5.21_doc_cd/usr/sha... Similar to Quantum OS (Linux): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8645504 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8645504 -- [1] http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426 http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20140223112426

zanny 12y ago
> hey - it's the only OS in the world allowing you run Xorg as an unprivileged user Wait, what? https://imgur.com/ZrdgN1H https://imgur.com/ZrdgN1H This isn't some custom repo or anything, I'm just running stock Arch and have startx in my bash profile. It runs in user mode, and has for about the last half year.
- hiphopyo 12y ago
  I could be wrong, but I was under the impression that that wasn't the case? https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User#Xorg_as_a_systemd_user_service https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Systemd/User#Xorg_as_a_... Unfortunately, to be able to run xorg in unprivileged mode, it needs to run inside a session. So, right now the handicap of running xorg as user service is that it must be run with root privileges [...snip...] It seems likely that xorg could be modified [...snip...], and then it could run unprivileged from a user service outside a session.
  - zanny 12y ago
    Thats in the context of using xorg as a systemd user service. You can run startx as a normal user and have the server run unprivileged just fine.