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FreeBSD Vows to Compete with Desktop Linux
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat May 13, 2006 08:19 AM
from the moving-on-up dept.
from the moving-on-up dept.
AlanS2002 writes "FreeBSD developer Scott Long is being reported as saying that FreeBSD is quickly approaching feature parity with Linux. Apparently this is being achieved through efforts to more tightly integrate GNOME with FreeBSD, with one of the priorities being to 'GNOME's hardware abstraction layer--which handles hardware-specific code--working with FreeBSD'."
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didnt they have a completely goal? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:didnt they have a completely goal? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:didnt they have a completely goal? (Score:2)
Specially considering that what really matters for desktop is gnome, kde,x.org...not the kernel. The kernel is involved in things hardware support, device and power management (suspend) etc, but what really matters is gnome and kde, nothing else. Gnome is not more usable under freebsd than in linux, neither the reverse.
Re:didnt they have a completely goal? (Score:5, Informative)
X and a desktop environment matter the most for sure.. but I think you are quite seriously underestimating the role of a kernel in this..
The kernel is involved in things hardware support, device and power management (suspend) etc, but what really matters is gnome and kde, nothing else. Gnome is not more usable under freebsd than in linux, neither the reverse.
You see.. audio/video support sortof matters for desktop use.. so does plug and play hardware support (just plugin that camera and it works..), which are indeed hardware related but specifically, usb, drm/dri and sound support are extremely important for a desktop.
Then, the scheduler can make quite a difference (optimized for throiughput versus responsiveness for example makes a big difference in how 'snappy' your desktop feels)
Then, if you open a folder in say the kde or gnome file/directory browsers, there are 3 things you desktop can do:
1. not notice changes to the directory untill you manually refresh the view
2. poll the filesystem for changes and display them once they got noticed
3. ask the kernel to send a notification when a file changes
1. is no longer an acceptable option nowadays
2. becomes very expensive when you have a lot of files in said directory, and it is always 'too late'
3. requires kernel support (it is supported in slightly different ways in Linux and FreeBSD now) but is low overhead and virtually inmediate.
As you can see, the kernel does in fact play an important role in simple things like browsing a directory already...
So, yes, it does definitely matter for both gnome and kde what kernel they are running on. A year ago the difference between Linux and FreeBSD was substantial, esp. with regards to the scheduler and support for things like fam (without having to poll for changes).. nowadays the difference is far less big.
Parent
Re:didnt they have a completely goal?-Flake n' bak (Score:2)
Re:didnt they have a completely goal?-Flake n' bak (Score:3, Funny)
Re:didnt they have a completely goal? (Score:3, Informative)
There is no "goal of BSD." There are at least four major open source BSD-derived OSes and they all have different goals. Of course every operating system tries to be secure and reliable - even Windows - but you're probably thinking of OpenBSD, where they are willing to sacrifice just about anything for the sake of security.
FreeBSD and DragonflyBSD, to name two, have always had user-friendliness as a major goal (among many ot
Re:didnt they have a completely goal? (Score:3, Insightful)
By that measure Ethereal is well done, but that is clearly not true since it is filled with remote exploits and developed by a team that does not care about security. The Coverity scannings are useful for catching some types of bugs, but a low "Defect Reports/KLOC" does not imply that the software is safe nor that it is well designed.
Re:didnt they have a completely goal? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because security and reliability aren't sexy. They don't gain you new users like features do. Same reason Microsoft keeps adding features to Windows rather than fixing security problems, and keeps adding features to Word instead of making the interface better so the features it has become more useful.
Parent
This isn't about the FreeBSD base system. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This isn't about the FreeBSD base system. (Score:2)
Re:This isn't about the FreeBSD base system. (Score:5, Insightful)
The obvious problem for large projects like GNOME is of course that they need to make a good experience on a pretty wide variety of platforms. To use any platform-specific feature it will need to be either emulated, replicated, worked around or otherwise made available on all platforms; or it could only go in as an optional extra that nothing else is actually depending on. So, making advanced FS logging capabilities a cornerstone of the desktop, for example, would be out since far from all platforms will have the requisite framework. "You can only run desktop X if you also use filesystem Y" is likely to go over like a lead balloon.
Fortunately, good ideas in the OS space tends to be picked up by everybody sooner or later. Over time there just aren't that many good ideas that will not be available everywhere as time goes on.
Parent
Re:This isn't about the FreeBSD base system. (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately a lot of developers do think like this. For a long time a certain program wouldn't work under FreeBSD, because it only supported ALSA. Every bug report on the problem was summarily closed with a message on the order of "we can't fix this until FreeBSD follows the ALSA audio standard."
Re:This isn't about the FreeBSD base system. (Score:3, Informative)
In the example I gave, they considered "Unix" to be their platform. They supported Solaris, and had no problem with the lack of ALSA on Solaris. But when it came to FreeBSD they kept trying to treat it like a mutant Linux distro.
I could have accepted an answer in the form of "we don't have any FreeBSD developers...", but that wasn't their reason. Instead they bitched about not adhering to a Linux-only non-standard.
Compete for Market Share? (Score:5, Funny)
Forgive Me I May Know Not What I Do (Score:5, Interesting)
In 1908, the Ford company released the Ford Model T [wikipedia.org]. The first Model Ts were built at the Piquette Manufacturing Plant. The company moved production to the much larger Highland Park Plant to keep up with the demand for the Model T, and by 1913 had developed all of the basic techniques of the assembly line and mass production. Ford introduced the world's first moving assembly line that year, which reduced chassis assembly time from 12½ hours in October to 2 hours, 40 minutes. However these innovations were not popular and turnover of workers was very high. Turnover meant delays and extra costs of training, and use of slow workers. In January 1914 solved the problem by doubling pay to $5 a day, cutting shifts from nine hours to an eight hour day, and instituting hiring practices that identified the best workers. Productivity soared and employee turnover plunged, as the cost per vehicle plummeted. Ford cut prices again and again and invented the system of franchised dealers who were loyal to his brand name.
By the end of 1913, Ford was producing 50% of all cars in the United States, and by 1918 half of all cars in the country were Model T's. Henry Ford is reported to have said that "any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black." This was because black paint was quickest to dry; earlier models had been available in a variety of colors. But most were black."
What the Model T was to the automobile DOS/Windows is to computer software. People faced with new technology that manages to takeoff tend to choice a brand that they gravitate toward in order to provide them with a base from which a general learning curve can be traced. As with the Model T, once a general concensus is arrived at as to what the new technology can do for the masses then competing models come into play and bells and whistles are taken in hand after the basics have been learnt. The computer industry has achieved a saturation level and the basics have been put in place. Now there is a chance for more competition. It's likely that Linux on the desktop is coming soon.
That freeBSD has chosen to announce its competition with Linux is more supplemental support to show that the basics of the desktop have been put in place. Competition between Linux and freeBSD is great and will foster competition between F/OSS alternatives that will soon provide greater incentive for the general computer population to move from Windows to alternatives.
I suspect the initial gauge of this movement will be a greater market share taken by Apple.
Just my loose change
FreeBSD VS's GNU/Linux on the desktop (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a good thing. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand! (Score:5, Funny)
Major Problems from a FreeBSD User (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Major Problems from a FreeBSD User (Score:5, Informative)
From the FreeBSD web site:
The FreeBSD Foundation has negotiated a license with Sun Microsystems to distribute FreeBSD binaries for the Java Runtime Environment (JRE(TM)) and Java Development Kit (JDK(TM)).
Enjoy!
Parent
Re:Major Problems from a FreeBSD User (Score:3, Informative)
Laptops Laptops Laptops! (Score:3, Interesting)
What I would like to see is a small core list of laptop models that are essentially "certified" to work. Pick the most popular lines, get them working 100% then add more and more models without breaking support for the laptops that worked previously. Ubuntu in particular seems to have a shockgun whack-a-mole approach to supporting laptops and it's maddening.
GPL vs. BSD License (Score:3, Funny)
No one wants this (Score:5, Insightful)
* 6.x came out shockingly fast after 5.x
* 4.x was orphaned correspondingly quickly (despite being arguably the only stable freebsd branch left)
* vinum (software raid) support, among other things, was broken thanks to the introduction of geom around 5.1, and gvinum is finally beginning to approach stability as of 6.1
* The new scheduler, ULE, was introduced in one 5.x release and then abandoned when it proved to be completely unstable.
* As a reaction, one of the lead developers forked dragonflybsd off of the last truly stable freebsd release, the 4.x branch. Others have just given up.
* Bugfixes are getting left on the floor in favor of adding features ( just look at a relatively old release such as freebsd 5.3's TODO list: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/todo.html [freebsd.org] - note that most of these problems are *still* not fixed in 6.1 )
People choose the BSD's for stability - or at least, they used to. FreeBSD has been going down a features at all cost route in some kind of effort to play catchup with their perceived rival linux for some time. In doing so, it is losing what makes it unique, and it needs to stop, or else people will abandon FreeBSD for other BSDs, linux (which is now more stable IMO), and even mac os.
-DH
KSE was not implemented to design (Score:4, Insightful)
When I first proposed KSE, my proposal was that all system calls become asynchronous - you dispatch the system call. Then, if you wanted POSIX semantics, you suspended yourself until the result was available.
The intent was to implement all of the POSIX blocking semantics at the Libc layer, and all the operational semantics at the kernel layer, and to permit any number of dispatches to occur concurrently.
The way you implement multithreading in this environment is to use call-conversion scheduling: you trade a normally blocking system call for a non-blocking system call plus a context switch. This basically gets you multithreading for free.
The intent of this approach is to utilize your full process quantum, rather than giving it away and suffering an unnecessary context switch overhead, while you still had work pending that could be done in user space within the same process.
In one posting, I put it like this: "If a kernel gives me a quantum, it's *my* damn quantum, and I'll use as much of it as I can, and if I can't use any more,*then* I will yield to a voluntary context switch".
The way you obtain SMP scalability (which was *NOT* the original reason threads were invented in the first place, BTW, since they predated commercially viable SMP system by a long ways) is by permitting multiple processors to return to user space on completed async system calls.
Intelligent readers will not that by not giving away the quantum you were given, you basically get a form of CPU affinity thrown in for free, without any modification to the kernel scheduler, up to the point where you would context switch to a process other than yourself, and cache-bust/TLB-shootdown anyway. This was not a bad idea.
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What happened instead was an implementation of SA (Scheduler Activations). They kept the KSE name. I came up with it initially - "Kernel Schedulable Entitites" - because I didn't want people to be thinking about solving the problems we intended to solve in a way that was constrained by the ideas that would carry over from using words like "activations" or "threads" or whatever. Semantic loading constrains free thought on technical issues a heck of a lot more than people give it credit for.
But SAs fell far short of my intended vision for the original implementation, a vision I could not implement on my own without buy in from the rest of the FreeBSD community.
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Once we got buy-in that we were going to do *something* in this area, we had a big meeting. It was hosted at Whistle Communications, where Julian and I and others worked, and where we tended to host BAFUG meetings. Jason Evans and others attended.
I was unfortunately unable to sell my async call gate approach to the problem ("too many changes"), and a compromise was worked on scheduler activations, and a user space thread scheduler that would cooperate with the kernel scheduler.
Compared to what we ended up with, the changes required for the async call gates would have been a lot less code. But I fully admit: my suggested approach would have been impossible to implement incrementally - it would have been all or nothing, and stepping over that threshold would have cost a lot. I failed to sell it adequately, and can only fault myself.
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Realize that this was not a bad compromise, given the technology at the time: context switches were murder, and crossing the user/kernel protection domain was a heck of a lot more expensive than it is on todays hardware. Also, the vast majority of SMP Intel boxes available in 1996/1997 were at best 2 processor boxes (I still have my dual P90 ASUS box).
Later, the expense of scheduler activations became plain, but it was still not too bad, until things like TLS - "Thread Local Storage" - and other POSIX semantics changes started to make things more painful.
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Meanwhile, FreeBSD got thread reentrancy work done in its kernel, and a separation of address spaces and contexts, that it would have needed to have, no matter what threading approach was used. So KSE's, even implements as the were, instead of how I had originally envisioned them, was well worth it.
-- Terry
Parent
FreeBSD would be better on desktop, if only... (Score:3, Insightful)
* Mix multiple audio inputs to
* Have better Java and Flash support. Ever try to get native Java working on FreeBSD? First you have to download the Linux Java distribution, install it, then download the FBSD patchset for native Java, build and install it. This takes a day, even on my 2.4GHz, 768MB laptop. And Flash? Don't make me laugh. Flash support is attemptedly enabled via a wrapper, but the Flash version that is currently stable is 5. I'm running 7 on the Gentoo install I'm typing this on, and that's behind the Windows world's Flash version 8.
* Similar to the Java problem, too many apps in FBSD require Linux support. If I'm going to run a Linux app on FBSD, why not just run Linux? Moreover, if parallel FBSD and Linux binaries are necessary (as with Java), then this is going to be a monster waste of HDD space.
* Make compiling the kernel easier. Yes, configuring the kernel is doable by hand, but as any newbie programmer should be able to tell you, the more opportunity you have for human input, the more opportunity there is for failure. More typing/manual config means a higher probability that some piece of kernel functionality goes missing in the build. Why not an ncurses interface with basic (but I must emphasize, also imperfect) dependency resolution, like Linux has?
Look, I love FreeBSD and prefer it to Linux. Its overall design is more sophisticated, saner, and better-organized than Linux, and I find the ports system to be better-designed and more-useful than Gentoo's portage (where are the descriptions of each port in portage guys? I want to know if what I'm about to install is really what I want, and I don't want to have to go google it first!). All that, and FBSD exists under a free-as-in-freedom, rather than free-as-in-communism license. I've run it on my server for years, and with the huge, disappointing exception of the 5.[01] days, it's very stable (current uptime with 6.0-RELEASE is 159 days).
But over various times in the last 6 years, I have tried it as a desktop, and every time I have, there has always been some FBSD-specific behavior that has caused me to switch back to Windows or Linux. FBSD 6.0 is certainly the most usable desktop release yet, and it's thisclose to there for me. But still, not quite. (Frankly, I want an OSX box, and my next laptop will almost undoubtedly be a dual-core MacBook. Then I can have the best of all worlds: a FBSD userland, compatibility with most OSS *nix apps, and commercial-ware app availability. But until then...)
So, I'm happy with FBSD maintaining its role as a rock-solid server OS. Let's not assume everything is a nail when holding a hammer here...
Re:FreeBSD would be better on desktop, if only... (Score:3, Insightful)
Kernels are too complicated to let the illiterate futz about with them. If you don't know what you're doing, then stay the hell out of there!
You can't abstract complexity away. That is a myth. A GUI does not simplify anything, all it does is g
I see a connection here: (Score:5, Funny)
20 Apr 2006 - Linus claims "that [...] FreeBSD [People] are incompetent idiots." [indiana.edu]
12 May 2006 - The FreeBSD folks announce a tightly integratin of GNOME with FreeBSD. [slashdot.org]*
* You didn't click that link, did you?
BSD is not ready for Business (Score:3, Interesting)
First, and I must say this, I don't "hate" FreeBSD. Life is too short to argue which operating system is the best overall (I still cringe that I did this sort of fanaticism with Atari and Amiga back in the day, and learned a valuable lesson about what really matters). FreeBSD is a great, tweakable, DIY hobbyist OS done for those who tinker with those sorts of things (which is how I learned it). But FreeBSD in the business enterprise is like hiring a bunch of guys who work out of their basement to do your IT work: may be good in some instances, but is a poor long-term strategy.
Why? Here are some of the problems:
- Hardware support. This is my #1 problem. You want FreeBSD to run on some of those new HP DL380 G4's with the dual Xeons? Oops... sorry. The special scsi blade won't run well with them when you need RAID5. But wait, there's a guy in the Netherlands who has a driver that sort of works... but his website hasn't been updated since 2002, and it's still considered alpha, and compiling it with the specialized kernel breaks...
- Software support. Almost neck and neck with #1. Let's leave out the scant vendors that support the BSD kernel, because FreeBSD fanatics always go, "Oh yeah... what about XXXX...?" For every example that some major vendor that supports FreeBSD that some gives me, I can give you ten examples of companies that don't. And those that do always patch or update their FreeBSD as an afterthought. "New FooPack 3.00 has been released! BSD? Um... yeah, in our FTP site the 1.24 version may still work, but it's EOL and unsupported." Then the stuff about ports is stupid. I don't want to keep my ports tree up-to-date and then have to recompile all the time.
- Finding anyone who knows about BSD is rare. Too rare. Last time I said this, some snide person commented that, "Well any person who worked on Sun systems should know FreeBSD." No. No, they don't. First, most Sun admins never worked on FreeBSD if they have even heard of it, and even if the "translation is easy," most Sun admins know they have Sun to support them when things go terribly wrong. FreeBSD is all community-based, except for a few small unheard-of enterprises, and neither one looks like a good strategy when mentioning them to management.
- FreeBSD community is very RTFM. Fine. There is nothing wrong with that at all. Except when people don't have time to RTFM. Your server is borked, and you don't know why, and you don't have the luxury of scanning bulletin boards, dealing with mailing lists, and snide FreeBSD gurus who say, "Look, we can't do this FOR you," like they have read, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" too many times.
The UNIX admins who forced FreeBSD on my company are gone. Most of them were considered foul-tempered and uncooperative zealots. Management had to go to the boards, and found much of the same reactions from the FreeBSD community. We had serious issues with these systems, and me and 2 other admins had to bail them out over the last year. Sure, we pay for Red Hat and Windows licenses, but FreeBSD gave us so much grief, that mentioning it to anyone is either done so as sarcastic humor or an insult:
Admin1: Hah! I totally fixed this.
Admin2: What did you do?
Admin1: Aw man, I don't have time to explain.
Admin2: Heh. Don't FreeBSD me, document it! Share the love.
Admin1: Ouch, man. Just was uncalled for.
Admin3: What did he say?
Admin1: He pulled the FreeBSD card on me.
Admin3: Dude, not cool. That was harsh.
Again, I don't hate FreeBSD as a concept. I just know it's not right for the business environment.
Re:BSD is not ready for Business (Score:3, Insightful)
What's your point?
Sounds like a project management problem to me, not an operating systems issue.
smash.
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what Linux distributions you've been using recently but I have recently installed Fedora Core 5 on my laptop and my experience was the opposite: that they must have been primarily focused on important features for desktop users. FC5 supported suspend and resuming my laptop, where FC4 didn't. FC5 supported my Centrino wireless with autodetection and configuration for both open access and WEP and WPA PSK protected networks right from the GNOME Desktop. FC5 automatically detected my USB-attached smart UPS on my desktop at work and can report the remaining run-time. It was the least-hassle desktop Linux install I've done yet.
As far as software installation, I don't use it but you can go to Applications->Add/Remove software and graphically browse thousands of software packages that are a click and a download away from being installed.
Parent
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you point out the study or survey which shows that most Linux devs spend their time on useless eye-candy? Because I don't think that is the case.
Parent
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wrong - Apple contributed code to FreeBSD (Score:3, Informative)
Read this:
Since Mac OS X v10.0 was released in 2001, Apple has been filtering BSD code in and out of their kernel, userland, and libraries. This code then makes its way back to FreeBSD.(...) By the time Apple released Panther, their contributions back into FreeBSD had amassed into a new FreeBSD milestone, the 5.x branch. http://osviews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=New s&file=ar [osviews.com]
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:5, Insightful)
History shows that the 'always' part in there is seriously wrong..
BSD gets a driver, linux will have in after a quick port.
Linux gets a driver, BSD has to wait and re-impliment.
That is how it seems to a person who has absolutely no idea about kernels and drivers and the different BSD distributions.
First, there are quite a few BSD variations all with their own set of rules for integrating drivers, where some see no problem in using gpl code, others see no problem in using closed source drivers in cases, and yet others swear that everything must be free and open.
Second, differences between a BSD style kernel and the linux kernel are substantial enough that a 'quick port' is seldom an option for technical reasons alone.
Parent
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:5, Informative)
OS X, back when it was called NEXTSTEP, forked off of BSD 8 years before FreeBSD did, even before 4.4lite came on the scene. You can trace its lineage yourself, if you'd like. [levenez.com] Since then, there's been a lot of code borrowing but everyone borrows from FreeBSD and FreeBSD is far from the only OS whose code Darwin has borrowed. Using just that to say that Darwin is based on FreeBSD would make little more sense than using the same fact to claim that GNU/Linux and Windows XP are based on FreeBSD.
But as to your point about BSD in general beating Linux to the desktop with OS X, yeah, you're right. I think Apple showed how it really needs to be done, too. In my experience with trying to teach people to use Linux, the thing that consistently hurts Linux on the desktop is what I'd call its unixyness - stuff like complicated directory hierarchies based on abbreviated names only serves to intimidate the non-geek; even if you tell them they don't need to care about anything outside their home directory, they still know it's there. A lot of Linux's celebrated choices are bad; too. The moment a user ever has to care about QT vs GTK+ and figure out why they are behaving a bit differently, or what the heck CUPS is, or any of that, Linux starts to feel like a border town on the edge of the Wild.
Parent
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:5, Informative)
Referenced from the site you mention yourself is the BSD family tree [tribug.org].
If you had bothered to look at it, you'd have noticed that:
Darwin is based on Rhapsody, NetBSD 1.4 and FreeBSD 3.2
OS X 10.2 imported code from FreeBSD 4.4
OS X 10.3 imported code from FreeBSD 5.1
If you had ever bothered to use a FreeBSD 5.x machine for a while, and used a machine with OS X for a while from the shell, you'd have noticed how the userland is virtually identical, to a level way beyond how some linux distributions are similar..
Where OS X really did not derive from FreeBSD at all is at the kernel level and of course the gui.
Parent
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:4, Insightful)
They don't behave differently. At least, the differences are no worse than on the Mac or Windows where apps frequently reinvent the standard toolkit (*cough*Aperture).
or what the heck CUPS is
The only time a Linux user would have to care about this is if their printer isn't supported. And most are (albiet with varying degrees of driver quality).
Parent
Re:Did they alreay win? (Score:3, Insightful)
[x] easy hardware detection for a wide variety of hardware
[x] Brainless software installation
[x] excellent wireless support...
next list ?
Re:What about KDE? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Windows eats Linux and poops FreeBSD (Score:5, Funny)
I am confused - are you trying to depict Windows as a gourmet or rather as an entity with a magic colon?
Parent
Re:Windows eats Linux and poops FreeBSD (Score:3, Funny)
He's just tired of the car/OS analogy and
decided to introduce the bodily function/OS analogy.
Brilliant! I can't believe he posted AC!
Re:Unix is capable for desktop marketshare? (Score:2)
Re:How On Earth Is This Offtopic?? (Score:4, Informative)
Also, KDE is officially a cross-platform environment, with KDE4 being developed not only on Linux and FreeBSD but also on MS Windows. I don't know what the officiall position is for GNOME, but from what I hear they are a pretty Linux-centric project.
Parent
Re:How On Earth Is This Offtopic?? (Score:3, Insightful)
I would love to see that backed up with some actual facts? I'd say the users are pretty evenly divided (this is definitely what I see at work).
Re:That's just BULLSHIT! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:That's just BULLSHIT! (Score:4, Interesting)
Name a studio using Linux in any meaningful way for audio recording.
Parent
Re:Debian Apt Equivalent? (Score:3, Informative)
FreeBSD has ports, a system where the original code is downloaded from the original website, patches applied, dependencies downloaded the same way, and everything is installed all with one command. It also has pkg_add -r, a way to insta