FreeBSD to rethink target audience? [Archive]

Weinter

November 17th, 2008, 14:48

I think FreeBSD has to rethink their objectives in order to expand their marketshare

As a server i think FreeBSD is very successful
However the fact is globally the increase in number of servers < increase in number of personal computers
And in the personal computer field Laptops form the majority

To expand their market share better support for PC system hardware has to be provided

Linux has already noticed this hence the emergence of support of laptop hardware and features (sleep/hibernation)

This is just my 2 cents I hope it is noted :)

kamikaze

November 17th, 2008, 15:03

These things already work under FreeBSD as long as you stick to i386. I agree that it's an issue with amd64, though.

Weinter

November 17th, 2008, 15:08

These things already work under FreeBSD as long as you stick to i386. I agree that it's an issue with amd64, though.

Not sure about you but FreeBSD barely support PUMA laptops :( yet they chose to support EEEPCS EEEW

Many of the EEEPC users don't even want Linux they just want Windows

I think only advance users will try FreeBSD and advance users usually don't buy atom processors ?

oliverh

November 17th, 2008, 15:43

>yet they chose to support EEEPCS EEEW

If I'm correct Netbooks do have a world wide market share of almost 20%.

>Many of the EEEPC users don't even want Linux they just want Windows

They don't want it because the Netbook manufacturers did a lousy job on it (Linux).

So if there is a dev who wants to support some feature then you'll see it. In the end it's open source not a product of company you're paying for.

>And in the personal computer field Laptops form the majority

Is this really so? If yes, then go to the laptop manufactures and tell them to do a better job on the bios or the adoption of exotic hardware. Even with Linux you need a lot of luck to use the full potential of your laptop. It's easier with the latter but in the end it stays a gamble.

Itodaen

November 17th, 2008, 16:07

calande

November 17th, 2008, 18:51

FreeBSD works on some laptops, but granted it's a system for power users who aren't afraid of using the shell.

ninjaslim

November 17th, 2008, 19:14

none

November 17th, 2008, 22:01

I think the PC-BSD developers should work on laptops, rather than the FreeBSD developers. After all, PC-BSD does aim for the home marketshare. Since, PC-BSD does contribute its work back to FreeBSD and holds FreeBSD's longstanding devotion to quality very dearly, it's best to let them work on providing better support for laptops while FreeBSD continues on as an excellent server system.

as there is this way back to FreeBSD, this is what makes more sense to me :)

I do like FBSD on desktop, but some things makes me not use it. but as soon as these problems quit existing, I'll have FBSD on it :)

none

ninjaslim

November 17th, 2008, 22:20

My laptop is a MacBook Pro running Mac OS X and my desktop is a Dell Optiplex GX620 running FreeBSD 7-STABLE. I have not had a single problem with the latter. In fact, it is practically the best system I've used in years.

estrabd

November 17th, 2008, 23:12

FreeBSD works on some laptops, but granted it's a system for power users who aren't afraid of using the shell.

Amen.

cracauer@

November 17th, 2008, 23:15

Last I checked suspend/hybernation wouldn't work with SMP kernels.

I don't support the view that FreeBSD should support random laptops. FreeBSD people usually buy hardware selected with FreeBSD in mind. But some issues such as this one you just can't do anything about (except not using the second core).

ninjaslim

November 17th, 2008, 23:21

Actually, that's the way people should buy hardware. Supporting random hardware with poor drivers is worse than supporting quality hardware with quality drivers, as the BSDs do.

cracauer@

November 17th, 2008, 23:33

Bad hardware usually also has lousy Windoze drivers. I don't think that buyers of literally random hardware can be target audience for FreeBSD at this stage.

Picking between universally broken things like no suspension on SMP and supporting some random obscure piece of notebook hardware I vote for the former.

Weinter

November 18th, 2008, 03:11

Weinter

November 18th, 2008, 03:14

Hi,

Just looking at the logo of this site, which says "FreeBSD, The Power To Serve", and thinking I wouldn't encourage giving a priority to conquer the huge laptop world.

FreeBSD's strong side is servers, this is where it really shines with top quality, start making more attention to desktops, laptops, etc, and the strong part will eventually start fading away, like in a game, you only have 20 starting points, so where would you prefer to distribute it: power, dexterity or force ? ;)

I think Linux is conquering the server side as well :(
Last time I checked Netcraft lets just say Linux keep showing up

Almindor

November 18th, 2008, 14:40

They don't want it because the Netbook manufacturers did a lousy job on it (Linux).

That's a very close minded thing to say. Just because certain front-ends chosen for the EEE are.. let's say "simpler" doesn't mean it has anything to do with Linux.

And if you constructed a "user's laptop with <linux|freeBSD>" you'd end up with same thing anyways. The user wouldn't even know what's under the hood, they'd just see KDE/Gnome/Xfce.

NOTE: I'm currently running FreeBSD/amd64 on 1 year old laptop with no problems. But I wouldn't recommend it to most people.

none

November 18th, 2008, 16:26

chrcol

November 19th, 2008, 07:40

I have felt since 5.x FreeBSD have spent too much time focusing on the desktop and thats why linux has made ground on the server side.

The 2 top complaints I heard from datacentres as to why they dont/stopped supporting FreeBSD.

1 - Hard to use installer.
2 - Fussy on hardware, hangs on bootloader are common.

My view on hardware compatability and drivers, well for a long time on realtek cards linux was better, the reason I got from FreeBSD when I queuried was its poor hardware so tough luck, rather than ok we will try and get our driver as good as linux driver. Too often the response is go out and buy Y hardware and drop X hardware and at times I feel as if FreeBSD dev's are sales men for companies like intel. Since 7.x tho things seem to be getting better again. In all honesty I think 5.x and 6.x should have all been beta releases and 7.x should have been the 5.x. The main mistake seems to be the insistance on releasing a new major version on a timescale rather than when its ready. Windows has a new major version every 4 years or so, and how long has it been since linux 2.6.x was launched?

Examples of my reasoning behind major versions been launched too quickly?

New features since 4.x

Proper SMP scaling
ULE scheduler
libthr threading library
PF firewall

All these throughout 5.x and 6.x were essentially beta, we had the debug.mpsafenet switch, ULE wasnt properly done until 7.x, libthr agan not default till 7.x , PF the only thing considered production ready before 7.x out that list. Uniprocessor support in 5.x and 6.x has been substandard, the reasons given were its not the future however I will say back uniprocessor is still the mainstream, multi processor machines are still the minority believe it or not and when 6.0 was released uniprocssor was over 80% of the hardware in use. In 7.x uniprocessor is at least better than 5.x and 6.x so glad some work has been done there.

What I would like to see is 7.x become a proper workhorse like 4.x was, lets have a long gap before 8.0 and 10 or so minor releases of 7.x refining the release branch so it gets rock solid and able to handle large ddos attacks like 4.11 could.

FreeBSD core strength was stability not features.

james89

November 19th, 2008, 07:53

I think FreeBSD has to rethink their objectives in order to expand their marketshare

I don't think FreeBSD should be concerned about marketshare, they should just keep doing what they've been doing, building a solid OS.

Ico

November 19th, 2008, 08:32

Hi,

Just looking at the logo of this site, which says "FreeBSD, The Power To Serve", and thinking I wouldn't encourage giving a priority to conquer the huge laptop world.

FreeBSD's strong side is servers, this is where it really shines with top quality, start making more attention to desktops, laptops, etc, and the strong part will eventually start fading away, like in a game, you only have 20 starting points, so where would you prefer to distribute it: power, dexterity or force ? ;)

I can't agree more here. I recently purchased a machine I wanted to make into a server, and in my mind I had no doubt it would be running FreeBSD even though my laptop has a Linux distro on it. FreeBSD is an excellent server OS! Keep up the good work.

That's my 2 cents of course.. ;)

Weinter

November 19th, 2008, 13:07

From what I know Linux is making big progess in BOTH SERVER AND WORKSTATION what you are saying FreeBSD can only progress one way...

Another thing is I am not advocating feature improvement
A new feature is not going to bring about 50% increase in performance
And features are usually unseen 10 seconds improvement in performance are not going to convince people to use FreeBSD but proper hardware support will that is where Linux shines
What I am hoping is better hardware support...
Sometimes due to cost and availability finding suitable hardware is not easy
Also new system (servers too) will purchase new hardware so FreeBSD has to support new hardware to stay competitive

PS:When are they going to change the boot menu screen i saw the prototype in FreeBSD wiki (http://wiki.freebsd.org/OliverFromme/BootLoader) Look great but when are they going to integrate into stable (Well looks are superficial but humans are superficial too)�e

Weinter

November 19th, 2008, 13:18

I don't think FreeBSD should be concerned about marketshare, they should just keep doing what they've been doing, building a solid OS.

That is were you are wrong

Market share give controlling power so companies have to consider FreeBSD as a platform to roll out their ports

Look at Linux the reason flash was supported for Linux is the NAME and Marketshare
I mean if there was only 10 Linux user worldwide would any company make Linux Drivers?
It will only make Linux a defunct OS which nobody cares.

It is the same for FreeBSD if marketshare keeps dropping many companies will soon drop support
The reality is that SUPPORT is not Free only when you have marketshare you will gain support

The above is the same reason you don't see anymore new OS popping out because nobody bothers to support them

No Marketshare -> No Support -> Less Improvement -> No Marketshare

Microsoft actually "forces" companies to make drivers because Windows has a large Desktop marketshare...

It is a vicious cycle

For FreeBSD to succeed it MUST WIN MARKET SHARE not only on Servers (too little) but on DESKTOP and LAPTOPS as well

I know saying this is unreasonable because I am doing NOTHING for FreeBSD because my skills are not there...

bsddaemon

November 19th, 2008, 13:28

Look at Linux the reason flash was supported for Linux is the NAME and Marketshare

If you are unhappy with FreeBSD because of Flash, you should have used Linux, or even Windows. Seriously!

Flash is evil and nothing about Flash suits Unix philosophy. The point about Unix is, we want our job done, and done very well, not about entertaining. If you want entertaining, Unix is a wrong choice. Linux or windows are waiting for you.

Btw, popularity doesnt usually address quality

And stop the *beep**beep**beep**beep*ing whinning, you really start being annoying

Weinter

November 19th, 2008, 13:46

If you are unhappy with FreeBSD because of Flash, you should have used Linux, or even Windows. Seriously!

Flash is evil and nothing about Flash suits Unix philosophy. The point about Unix is, we want our job done, and done very well, not about entertaining. If you want entertaining, Unix is a wrong choice. Linux or windows are waiting for you.

Btw, popularity doesnt usually address quality

And stop the *beep**beep**beep**beep*ing whinning, you really start being annoying

I am not complaining about flash
It is that FreeBSD doesn't support a lot of the hardware of my new AMD Puma platform laptop
It didn't support anything at all...

bsddaemon

November 19th, 2008, 14:01

Pass your complaint to the vendors. Its your vendor who doesnt care to release/write your hardware's drivers. It is not FreeBSD's fault. Full stop!

graudeejs

November 19th, 2008, 14:41

One thing we (FreeBSD community) need to do, is

We need to create FreeBSD art!!!

It must be smart and creative.

There are very few FreeBSD wallpapers, banners, pictures... etc available online....., most of them are pretty (if not very) old

It's mot enough just to take Beastie put it on some wallpaper and rename it to FreeBSD_Rocks.jpg

I believe FreeBSD art would help making FreeBSD more popular.

[but that's my thoughts, to bad my hands grow from wrong place, and i can make any art. That's why i'm learning C, in hope then soon i will start programming app for FreeBSD]

none

November 19th, 2008, 14:46

thortos

November 19th, 2008, 16:36

It is that FreeBSD doesn't support a lot of the hardware of my new AMD Puma platform laptop
It didn't support anything at all...

So, your screen stayed black, the HDD wasn't spinning up and your USB peripherals weren't accessible?

Yeah, I thought so.

FreeBSD is a server OS. Servers don't do hibernation. They serve stuff. Part of this is staying available 99.9% of the time or more.

There's a proverb in the BSD community. I had it as a signature for a while. It goes like this:

Linux is for people who hate Windows. BSD is for people who love UNIX.

So, if you expect a desktop OS with bells and whistles, install Ubuntu on your AMD whatever notebook. That will also spare you of the troubles you're going to discover next, such as getting sound to work and finding out how to get write permissions on your DVD writer without being root.

I don't think you will get any sympathy for your notebook troubles here, as you wouldn't get tuning tips for your Honda Accord on a BMW M5 forum. So if you like BSD, go install PC-BSD (http://www.pcbsd.org) and ask about your hibernation in their forums/mailing list. Someone might even care over there.

graudeejs

November 19th, 2008, 16:52

FreeBSD is a server OS. Servers don't do hibernation. They serve stuff. Part of this is staying available 99.9% of the time or more.

Let's not start flame wars
FreeBSD is not ServerOS, it's General purpose os, used VERY MUCH as server os

The goal of the FreeBSD Project is to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/introduction.html#FREEBSD-GOALS)

bsddaemon

November 19th, 2008, 16:57

Let's not start flame wars
FreeBSD is not ServerOS, it's General purpose os, used VERY MUCH as server os

The goal of the FreeBSD Project is to provide software that may be used for any purpose and without strings attached. (http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/introduction.html#FREEBSD-GOALS)

Note from your citation: ...may be...

FreeBSD is a server OS. It just happens to run as a workstation OS rather well

thortos

November 19th, 2008, 16:59

I didn't remember that part of the handbook. :) I do, however, remember that the tagline on the FreeBSD website is "The Power To Serve", as I do remember my own attempts at running FreeBSD (5 at that time) as my main desktop OS. It's not unfriendly, but it's picky at who its friends are. ;)

Notebook use obviously is very low priority, and that's good. While nothing like it existed back then, nowadays there's PC-BSD and DesktopBSD (http://www.desktopbsd.net/) for those who want a rock-solid desktop OS that doesn't have kernel updates every two weeks. Personally, I don't understand the need for this PBI stuff as FreeBSD has excellent software management via ports and packages, but hey, to each his own. (And as I hear, you can still use the FreeBSD standard tools in PC-BSD.)

graudeejs

November 19th, 2008, 17:06

Anyway....
Laptops are next hot thing....
Once there were mainframes....
then PC and kind was introduced....

Why did ppl switched to desktop PC's? Why didn't they use mainframes...

about same thing is happening now.
Users are migrating from Destop PC's to laptops

I would love to run FreeBSD on my plaptop, but i can't
Well, thank god i have old box, that is still pretty capable :D

[my thoughts]

EDIT:

btw before that there were calculators and typewriters...
why not to stick to them?

Jeff

November 19th, 2008, 17:14

FreeBSD is a server OS. It just happens to run as a workstation OS rather well

http://www.mustangmods.com/ims/u/154/1304/39832.gif

I've always viewed and used FBSD as a Server OS but Humoured myself a few years ago by putting it on a desktop but at the time it didn't suit my "Desktop" purpose because it was behind the times IRT hardware compared to linux (Video 3D,etc).

Weinter

November 19th, 2008, 18:56

You already stated why i didn't want PC-BSD
Personally, I don't understand the need for this PBI stuff as FreeBSD has excellent software management via ports and packages, but hey, to each his own. (And as I hear, you can still use the FreeBSD standard tools in PC-BSD.)

I like FreeBSD better because my aim is compile from source and add the juicy optimizations :e

And PC-BSD forums seriously don't really do hardware support...
It is like for people who don't read the FreeBSD handbook...
You should go take a look...then you know...

And ok I am sorry it works as in bootable but the following is not supported because it is new chipset
-Ethernet Card & Wifi Card the new Griffin RM-72 Processor also behave weirdly
The older laptop which got spoiled by the Acer tech works (almost everything including wifi)
But the new replacement laptop doesn't =(

I think for FreeBSD to act as a server OS will be like stabbing your foot afterall most server purchased comes with their own OS Pre-install
HP Servers = HP-UX
IBM Servers = AIX
Sun Blade Servers = SunOS
Assembled Servers = GNU\Linux & FreeBSD( Most people only know what is Linux never heard of freebsd =( )
Unless you buy the iXsystem servers ...FreeBSD

Oko

November 19th, 2008, 20:54

From what I know Linux is making big progess in BOTH SERVER AND WORKSTATION what you are saying FreeBSD can only progress one way...

Could you please elaborate on that progress.

I see failure in both area. On the desktop side after all that mambo-jambo crap Linux is holding less than 1% of the market share. Is that success for you? I can hear the laughs from Redmond about that one. They are million time more scared from piracy than from Linux. At least BSDs have never been advertised
as a desktop OS for wide masses. Even if you think of OS X as a
BSD derivative (despite Mach kernel) Apple computers have always
been a choice of a small elite (maybe as technically ignorant as Windows users) but never the less self proclaimed elite.
OS X market share has never exceeded 5% in my life time.

Lets go now to the Server market. Even though Linux has become
somewhat popular solution on the entry server level (file or mail server for a small academic department comes to mind) it completely unable to penetrate mid and high server range.
There are several reasons for it. I will state some.

1. Lack of proper enterprise support due to the too many distros. Yes, people who use OS for work are willing to pay and expect support. Even though RedHat and Novel have established as
the market leaders that fact that RedHat lost 80% of its market share in the past five years since it went proprietary. That could be hardly ensuring for a business that looks to last more that 5-10 years.

2. Interoperability. Different Linux distros are so different
that it is extremely difficult to deploy more than one distro at the time and take advantage of their most advanced features.
No Linux distro is good across the board.

3. Lack of trained Linux system admins. Jumping from one to another Linux distro hardly makes for the good system admin.
You have to stick with your guns for a long time to be good at
something.

Lets go now about more serious technical issues.

1. With the exception of SGI port of Linux, Linuxes in general are in terms of multithreading and 64 bits support on about the same level as proprietary Unixes of early 90s if not late eighties (of the last century).

2. Serious lack of support for time proven non i386 architectures. Linux support for both sparc64 and ppc is .
mediocre. Even though nobody denies popularity of the cheap
crappy i386 hardware the fact is that various RISKs architecture
still rule mission critical parts of network and wider computational infrastructure.

When it comes to serious game read my lips (Solaris, AIX, HP Unix).

ninjaslim

November 19th, 2008, 21:16

Oko, it depends on the metric. Several sources estimate OS X marketshare to be nearing 10%. It was around 8% last time I checked in the summer.

I would like to know what relevance this thread poses to FreeBSD. Marketshare is not even a remotely decent metric of quality. Unix tradition stresses strong commitment to quality and stability. So, what does it matter if FreeBSD has a 5% marketshare in the server arena, but that it has never disappointed its users. I, for one, have never been disappointed, and I came from Linux. I've only ever liked Debian, Fedora, and Red Hat. Migrating from Gentoo after three years to FreeBSD was a welcome breath of fresh air! Also, I don't by the hardware bit. FreeBSD should support quality hardware with quality drivers as it is doing, not crappy hardware with crappier drivers. Also, if you're a FreeBSD user, then build systems with FreeBSD in mind. After all, Unixes have been historically tied to hardware, which is a relatively good strategy for limiting bugs. Also, remember that Sun and Apple have done great things for FreeBSD and BSD in general by helping out with development and such. Mac OS X is a derivative of FreeBSD that's synced with FreeBSD from time to time. So long as Mac OS X lives, FreeBSD will live too. If any of this comes out of fear of BSD dying, then think again.

Oko, I agree with you about the proprietary Unixes. Majority of mainframes still run Unix. Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and Tru64 and OpenServer to a lesser extent are kings in that segment. Technological innovation doesn't happen on Linux, it happens on Unix. A lot of companies that tried to migrate from Solaris to Linux ended up reverting because of maintenance problems. So, Unix is holding up well and BSD still has its place in all of that.

mousaka

November 19th, 2008, 21:44

PC-BSD and DesktopBSD both have FreeBSD under their hood (both 7.1-PRERELEASE). I like the idea of a more simple desktop-OS with a "real" FreeBSD underneath and the possibility to use it's advantages if I'd like to.
Both variants mainly reduce configuration effort and complexity, which is for sure a big advantage for desktop-users.

For the success of PC-BSD and DesktopBSD the hardware support for new "consumer" hardware is crucial, and there both systems rely on the hardware support of FreeBSD. So delegating the hardware support to them is wrong.

I would love to see FreeBSD (or its descendants) getting stronger on the desktop while staying strong on the server.

How many of us earn money with FreeBSD (I'm not)? I guess that most of them use FreeBSD on servers and only secondary as desktop-OS. IMHO this where the effort should go.

mousaka

tingo

November 19th, 2008, 22:32

I think FreeBSD has to rethink their objectives in order to expand their marketshare

Marketshare is only important if you are a commercial entity.
Even though FreeBSD is used in many commercial products, the FreeBSD Project isn't a commercial entity.

The FreeBSD Project exists only to scratch the itches of the FreeBSD developers, and the companies who uses FreeBSD in their products.

Therefore, the goals of the FreeBSD Project will not necessarily be aligned to the goals of the rest of the world, or whatever any potential users wants or think is "right".

Also, FreeBSD has too few developers to fulfil the users' wishlist for new features.
And all the current developers are busy already.

If you, as a user / potential user of FreeBSD really care about any missing features in FreeBSD, only one course of action remains for you; learn how the develop and become a FreeBSD developer too.

I do not write this to be mean - this is just the way things are.
Whatever your decision is, I wish you good luck and happiness in your future.

lme@

November 19th, 2008, 22:43

Guys, FreeBSD is what you make out of it!

hitest

November 20th, 2008, 02:19

I do like FBSD on desktop, but some things makes me not use it. but as soon as these problems quit existing, I'll have FBSD on it :)

none

I dual boot Slackware and FreeBSD because at this point in my learning curve I can't make FreeBSD do everything that I can make Slackware do. This is not a criticism of FreeBSD! I've dabbled with FreeBSD since 5.x, but, have not given my full attention to it.
I'm continuing to learn about FreeBSD and am enjoying the journey immensely. I am excited that FreeBSD 7.1 has better Flash support than 7.0. :-) I love FreeBSD 7.0 with KDE 3.5.8. :-)

Sundj

November 20th, 2008, 03:13

Pass your complaint to the vendors. Its your vendor who doesnt care to release/write your hardware's drivers. It is not FreeBSD's fault. Full stop!

I agree.
I purchased thinkpad T61, because it is well compatibility... Drivers support FreeBSD perfectly

james89

November 20th, 2008, 03:59

That is were you are wrong
For FreeBSD to succeed it MUST WIN MARKET SHARE not only on Servers (too little) but on DESKTOP and LAPTOPS as well

How do you define success? Do you define it as where an OS becomes mainstream? Like Windows?

Really, if marketshare is that important to you, just use Windows so you can brag about how successful it is because it has over 80% marketshare.

Weinter

November 20th, 2008, 06:33

How do you define success? Do you define it as where an OS becomes mainstream? Like Windows?

Really, if marketshare is that important to you, just use Windows so you can brag about how successful it is because it has over 80% marketshare.

I am not talking about marketshare to brag
Marketshare is high when more percentage of the world's desktop using freebsd
I am talking about market share gives freebsd developers some commanding power and advantage
Hardware manufacturers will have to consider them before rolling out new stuff
Hardware manufacturers will have to develop drivers for FreeBSD not the other way round
This will cut them some slack and give them time to do other stuff like code optimization
They will also be more willing to reveal their chipset codes
Isn't that a win-win situation?

Unless you feel BSD is a "elite" os that should be available to some special few only

As much as I would like to say PC-BSD is helping the development but sadly no...
They only supporting user-interface they are not helping driver development they are dependent on FreeBSD for new drivers =(

Weinter

November 20th, 2008, 06:51

I agree.
I purchased thinkpad T61, because it is well compatibility... Drivers support FreeBSD perfectly

ThinkPads and Latitudes are expensive...:\

If I am working i would buy them too...

Weinter

November 20th, 2008, 06:57

Could you please elaborate on that progress.

I see failure in both area. On the desktop side after all that mambo-jambo crap Linux is holding less than 1% of the market share. Is that success for you? I can hear the laughs from Redmond about that one. They are million time more scared from piracy than from Linux. At least BSDs have never been advertised
as a desktop OS for wide masses. Even if you think of OS X as a
BSD derivative (despite Mach kernel) Apple computers have always
been a choice of a small elite (maybe as technically ignorant as Windows users) but never the less self proclaimed elite.
OS X market share has never exceeded 5% in my life time.

Lets go now to the Server market. Even though Linux has become
somewhat popular solution on the entry server level (file or mail server for a small academic department comes to mind) it completely unable to penetrate mid and high server range.
There are several reasons for it. I will state some.

1. Lack of proper enterprise support due to the too many distros. Yes, people who use OS for work are willing to pay and expect support. Even though RedHat and Novel have established as
the market leaders that fact that RedHat lost 80% of its market share in the past five years since it went proprietary. That could be hardly ensuring for a business that looks to last more that 5-10 years.

2. Interoperability. Different Linux distros are so different
that it is extremely difficult to deploy more than one distro at the time and take advantage of their most advanced features.
No Linux distro is good across the board.

3. Lack of trained Linux system admins. Jumping from one to another Linux distro hardly makes for the good system admin.
You have to stick with your guns for a long time to be good at
something.

Lets go now about more serious technical issues.

1. With the exception of SGI port of Linux, Linuxes in general are in terms of multithreading and 64 bits support on about the same level as proprietary Unixes of early 90s if not late eighties (of the last century).

2. Serious lack of support for time proven non i386 architectures. Linux support for both sparc64 and ppc is .
mediocre. Even though nobody denies popularity of the cheap
crappy i386 hardware the fact is that various RISKs architecture
still rule mission critical parts of network and wider computational infrastructure.

When it comes to serious game read my lips (Solaris, AIX, HP Unix).

I don't mean to be offensive or anything but if you refer to this (http://www.top500.org/stats/list/32/os)
You will find a whooping 77% running LINUX
I mean like would they run their ultra expensive super computer on a lousy OS?

Weinter

November 20th, 2008, 07:03

If you, as a user / potential user of FreeBSD really care about any missing features in FreeBSD, only one course of action remains for you; learn how the develop and become a FreeBSD developer too.

Cannot agree more

SPlissken

November 20th, 2008, 07:47

Personnally i m using FreeBSD as a Desktop OS on my Laptop wich is a Toshiba , i achieve to do same thing i was doing on Linux Debian and Windows XP before , even playing Warcraft III (thank to wine and nvidia driver)
I don't see where is the problem.

thortos

November 20th, 2008, 10:02

For the success of PC-BSD and DesktopBSD the hardware support for new "consumer" hardware is crucial, and there both systems rely on the hardware support of FreeBSD. So delegating the hardware support to them is wrong.

No, quite the opposite. If they come along and say "here, we provide you with a desktop variant of FreeBSD", they cannot lean back and go "OK, FreeBSD devs, now you give our users what they want". After all, those users who *are* interested in running FreeBSD on modern notebooks and with cheap hardware are *right there in the DesktopBSD/PC-BSD support channels* and can contribute, and if only through giving feedback on what they want and testing of modifications.

As somebody else said, there's few FBSD developers, and they're busy as it is. The very least the PC-BSD and DesktopBSD people can do is contribute to the FreeBSD code base, making it more desktop/notebook-friendly. I don't know if they do, but I sure know they should. Otherwise they're just leeches.

For example all the manpower that went into the pointless PBI infrastructure could as well have been used to implement a graphical ports/packages manager and contribute it back to FreeBSD. This way everyone would have benefitted. As it is, only PC-BSD users "benefit", and how starting a parallel software universe is a benefit to anyone is still up for discussion. For all I know they could be distributing trojans with all applications, because I cannot verify those proprietary binary files one way or the other.

I would love to see FreeBSD (or its descendants) getting stronger on the desktop while staying strong on the server.

Yes, me too. I also was delighted when DesktopBSD and PC-BSD started their work, but the lack of manpower shows. I'm not contributing to them myself, so I won't complain, but I observe that given more love, they could really give Ubuntu a serious beating.

darkshadow

November 20th, 2008, 10:34

..!

oliverh

November 20th, 2008, 10:41

That's a very close minded thing to say. Just because certain front-ends chosen for the EEE are.. let's say "simpler" doesn't mean it has anything to do with Linux.

And if you constructed a "user's laptop with <linux|freeBSD>" you'd end up with same thing anyways. The user wouldn't even know what's under the hood, they'd just see KDE/Gnome/Xfce.

NOTE: I'm currently running FreeBSD/amd64 on 1 year old laptop with no problems. But I wouldn't recommend it to most people.

Wrong, I'm not badmouthing Linux per se or the simple desktop but they did a lousy job in implementing Linux on the hardware. Xandros e.g. is PITA, UbuntuEEE/DebianEEE is far better and easy upgradable even with a simple interface (UbuntuEEE) by beginners (btw. where did I mention the interface??). By the way, I'm using such a nice mobile device (Asus EEE900A). So in the end for most buyers Windows on top of those devices is the better choice than the delivered Linux (Xandros - old and barely upgradable).

oliverh

November 20th, 2008, 10:50

No, quite the opposite. If they come along and say "here, we provide you with a desktop variant of FreeBSD", they cannot lean back and go "OK, FreeBSD devs, now you give our users what they want". After all, those users who *are* interested in running FreeBSD on modern notebooks and with cheap hardware are *right there in the DesktopBSD/PC-BSD support channels* and can contribute, and if only through giving feedback on what they want and testing of modifications.

As somebody else said, there's few FBSD developers, and they're busy as it is. The very least the PC-BSD and DesktopBSD people can do is contribute to the FreeBSD code base, making it more desktop/notebook-friendly. I don't know if they do, but I sure know they should. Otherwise they're just leeches.

For example all the manpower that went into the pointless PBI infrastructure could as well have been used to implement a graphical ports/packages manager and contribute it back to FreeBSD. This way everyone would have benefitted. As it is, only PC-BSD users "benefit", and how starting a parallel software universe is a benefit to anyone is still up for discussion. For all I know they could be distributing trojans with all applications, because I cannot verify those proprietary binary files one way or the other.

Yes, me too. I also was delighted when DesktopBSD and PC-BSD started their work, but the lack of manpower shows. I'm not contributing to them myself, so I won't complain, but I observe that given more love, they could really give Ubuntu a serious beating.

Do you think so? I was for some years an active member of the DesktopBSD-Team - a couple of people. There is no money, there is a shortage of time etc.pp. and there is almost no interest by the media to see another alternative on the desktop. It's different with PCBSD, they have some money but it's not comparable to the ressources of Ubuntu. So some love will not help at all.

susanth

November 20th, 2008, 11:20

Let the full focus of FreeBSD be on Servers (Like@present). Especially on SMP capability, Networking, Security, Speed ...etc that are related to servers.

I fear, Satisfying the Desktop n Lap top users will reduce the power and strength that FreeBSD Enjoy @ present.

After all FreeBSD is a POWER OS which have the "Power to Serve" for all Power User.

bsddaemon

November 20th, 2008, 11:35

I fear, Satisfying the Desktop n Lap top users will reduce the power and strength that FreeBSD Enjoy @ present.

I think its a valid point, in this case, popularity would spoil quality

thortos

November 20th, 2008, 15:27

I was for some years an active member of the DesktopBSD-Team - a couple of people. There is no money, there is a shortage of time etc.pp. and there is almost no interest by the media to see another alternative on the desktop.

The media shouldn't bother you; they don't know anything about FreeBSD, yet Netcraft still lists it a lot among the longest-lasting sites.

I just fear as long as Linux has such strong momentum, you can't score with a FreeBSD based desktop distro unless it's absolutely amazing from the layman's point of view. You might enjoy the fact that I always thought that *if* one "distro" can do it, then it's DesktopBSD, because it aims to make FreeBSD usable, not create something similar to all those Linux distros.

It's different with PCBSD, they have some money but it's not comparable to the ressources of Ubuntu. So some love will not help at all.

And what does that money buy them? They've got no credibility at all because they insist on using their proprietary way of installing software instead of using the awesome mechanisms already in place.

With "love" I actually meant manpower. If DesktopBSD could only get 1% of the people working on Ubuntu to work on DesktopBSD instead, that would make a huge difference. However, we probably won't see this until Linux keepts getting raped badly over all those superfluous kernel modules it has in the default configuration. Then the security of a well-architected system environment such as FreeBSD will gain mindshare.

Yeah, one can dream. OTOH, I like the FreeBSD comunity as it is, small and full of hackers in the original meaning of the term.

overmind

November 20th, 2008, 17:30

I noticed lately in the news that Canonical is porting Ubuntu to ARM, and that ARM notebooks will be produced soon (maybe are already on the market).

It would be a good idea to have FreeBSD on ARM laptops as a Workstation distro.

graudeejs

November 20th, 2008, 17:54

uh, he, i dream for long time to try some architecture other than x86, but i won't buy other arch, if FreeBSD ain't supported on it. as there is no OS other than FreeBSD for me :D

I love FreeBSD.

and if it stays as good as it is, i'm ready to buy real server just to use FreeBSD as my desktop (i'm dam serious)

none

November 20th, 2008, 18:19

The media shouldn't bother you; they don't know anything about FreeBSD, yet Netcraft still lists it a lot among the longest-lasting sites.

I just fear as long as Linux has such strong momentum, you can't score with a FreeBSD based desktop distro unless it's absolutely amazing from the layman's point of view. You might enjoy the fact that I always thought that *if* one "distro" can do it, then it's DesktopBSD, because it aims to make FreeBSD usable, not create something similar to all those Linux distros.

And what does that money buy them? They've got no credibility at all because they insist on using their proprietary way of installing software instead of using the awesome mechanisms already in place.

With "love" I actually meant manpower. If DesktopBSD could only get 1% of the people working on Ubuntu to work on DesktopBSD instead, that would make a huge difference. However, we probably won't see this until Linux keepts getting raped badly over all those superfluous kernel modules it has in the default configuration. Then the security of a well-architected system environment such as FreeBSD will gain mindshare.

I just used FreeBSD as is, no Desktop one. How Can I help them ? I'll see the site and begin to use (at least try :] ). I'm no developer so my help is limited.

Yeah, one can dream. OTOH, I like the FreeBSD comunity as it is, small and full of hackers in the original meaning of the term.

it really feels great this way :)

none

ps: just saw that DesktopBSD is KDE based ... is there a gnome sibling ?! I like most Windowmaker, but between KDE and Gnome I prefer the latter.

snes-addict

November 20th, 2008, 18:48

There is nothing wrong with the FreeBSD Project focusing on servers. Looking at the recent improvements that the team has made, we see lots of talk about SMP and the new scheduler. Performance improvements such as these are absolutely vital for FreeBSD to remain a top contender for the best server OS, and with many desktop users on multi-processor machines, they also happen to benefit the desktop as well.

Also, one of the aspects of FreeBSD which I have always liked has been the cleanliness of the system on an initial install: the included software is simple and doesn't bloat. Seeing as how desktop users typically have everything from word processors to web browsers to video games, the addition of extra software to meet those requirements would make the FreeBSD cumbersome and particularly unusable for the server and cluster guys.

FreeBSD is already the best OS; perfect for servers, and (with the help of ports) is a great choice for the desktop.

Oko

November 21st, 2008, 01:45

I don't mean to be offensive or anything but if you refer to this (http://www.top500.org/stats/list/32/os)
You will find a whooping 77% running LINUX
I mean like would they run their ultra expensive super computer on a lousy OS?

No offense is taken :) but there is something very fishy about
your link and the list. Last time I checked RedHat the same as Cent OS or SuSE were all Linux-es. Why are they listed separately
on your list from the Linux share of 77%? If you add all the Linux-es then according to your list Linux-es run 95% of all supper computers. I have used supper computers twice in my life and I can assure you none of them run Linux. Just those two are
0.4% market share of the top 500 supper computers which is according to your list is entire market share of Solaris.

Lets be realistic. All those lists are non-sense to begin with.
Probably 80% of supper computers are not even listed on any lists as they are used for Weapons design or for other classified purposes. Probably half of those are illegally smuggled into the countries in which they are used.

Let me give you one more realistic link. It is from 2005 and talks about domination of MS Windows on the server market.

http://news.cnet.com/Windows-bumps-Unix-as-top-server-OS/2100-1016_3-6041804.html

One has to be very careful about reading the list and understand its meaning. List is completely accurate in its claim that more than 50% of sold servers are sold with pre-installed Windows.
That leaves old poor Unix with less than 50% of market share.

what the table is not telling you is how many of those servers which are sold with pre-installed with Windows still run Windows. One think is sure. Even if all those server are installed with Linux the Linux market share will not be 77%. I have a hunch that the server sold with pre-installed Unix still run pre-installed Unix. I know I would not remove AIX or Solaris from my servers.

To make long story short. It is nice to live in the fantasy land. In my fantasy land 100% of computers run OpenBSD. I know I do run OpenBSD on
all 8 computers I have. In reality, actually I have met only handful of people in person who run OpenBSD.

Please do not put me now another list with the domain names and OS which they run. Bank of America where I bank has only one domain name and thousands of SUN servers. I on the another hand have 3 domain names and have OpenBSD on all three of them. Does it mean that the OpenBSD market share is bigger than Solaris;)

Weinter

November 21st, 2008, 04:36

How about this (http://www.top500.org/stats/list/32/osfam)
The reason thy do not group under linux is all is probably because the group Red Hat as a separate OS because i filtered under OS instead of OS Family the link above should be better

If you don't like it how about i rephrase it Top 10
1)IBM Road Runner (Linux)
2)Cray Jaguar (CNL)Compute Node Linux
3)Pleiades (SLES10 + SGI ProPack 5) SUSE Linux 10
4)BlueGene/L (CNK/SLES 9) SUSE Linux 9
5)Blue Gene/P Solution (CNK/SLES 9) SUSE Linux 9
All the rest also Linuxes

The only Non-Linux top 10 is
10)Dawning 5000A (Windows HPC 2008)

Doesn't this statistic mean anything?
Also even if there is more powerful supercomputers out there the fact that they place Linux on a PETAFLOPS capable machine means something

Don't worry i never trusted anything from CNET they are commercial of course they promote Windows (Rich Rich)
But if you look at netcraft it is different

Longest uptime
1 tgpsubmit.persiankitty.com 327 1603 1648 1066 FreeBSD Apache/1.3.9(Unix) PHP/3.0.11 ViaNet Communications
It is a porn site what a publicity =P

Jokes aside although FreeBSD are top among longest uptime more major companies are using Linux
Google is using Linux
I don't know about you but i think the Linux hype is driving the usage up
So who says marketshare don't matter
Marketshare -> Hype -> Free publicity -> More Usage

graudeejs

November 21st, 2008, 06:08

adds.... man, adds...
probably the only reason i'v ever hear of FreeBSD is Gnetoo/FreeBSD project.
I didn't want to try some eta-beta which was hard to set up, so i tried the real thing.
If i never hear of Gentoo/FreeBSD.... id's still be on linux

susanth

November 21st, 2008, 06:47

Yes; I join your view

ninjaslim

November 21st, 2008, 08:13

Yahoo uses FreeBSD for everything. If anything, they should do some advocacy.

Weinter

November 21st, 2008, 09:50

Yahoo uses FreeBSD for everything. If anything, they should do some advocacy.

Yea Netcraft shows yahoo almost runs totally on FreeBSD

but that is the only Commercial Giant using FreeBSD i can think of

susanth

November 21st, 2008, 10:31

Yeah, one can dream. OTOH, I like the FreeBSD comunity as it is, small and full of hackers in the original meaning of the term.

Yes; ME too join your view about FreeBSD

Mel_Flynn

November 21st, 2008, 10:48

Longest uptime
1 tgpsubmit.persiankitty.com 327 1603 1648 1066 FreeBSD Apache/1.3.9(Unix) PHP/3.0.11 ViaNet Communications
It is a porn site what a publicity =P

No, it's a security disaster. Uptime actually means you didn't patch, it doesn't have any real relation to stability.

The only way FreeBSD would make a good desktop/laptop OS, is if kernel parts are split using a KERNCONF tuneable. Especially within the scheduler.
Server workloads are different from desktops. You want network throughput, forking and pipes to work as fast it can and interrupts from human interface devices are secondary. On the desktop you value responsiveness of the mouse and keyboard over disk IO.

Right now, the biggest problem FreeBSD is facing, is hardware support (mostly ACPI, sata) for "off-the-shelf" servers. This is the core audience, because FreeBSD has been made big through "fast serving with standard hardware".

I'd rather have them focus on that, then add more kludges for desktops/laptops. It's nice if it works, but it shouldn't have focus. Since they're personal computers, you can decide for yourself what you are going to buy and users should learn that it works that way, not the other way around ("I bought this el cheapo hardware, why FreeBSD not work?").
For servers, the decision to buy what hardware depends on many factors, not just cost and is usually not a single person's decision, so the broader the support, the better it will be for FreeBSD and a side-effect of fixes in that area, I'm sure some desktop hardware will start working as well.

bsddaemon

November 21st, 2008, 10:58

Right now, the biggest problem FreeBSD is facing, is hardware support (mostly ACPI, sata) for "off-the-shelf" servers. This is the core audience, because FreeBSD has been made big through "fast serving with standard hardware".

I beg to differ. I think 64bit and the virtualisation field would have higher priority, afaik, FreeBSD doesnt support virtualisation applications that can access real hardware. That is also reason why ISP, hosting companies...choose Linux over FreeBSD

DutchDaemon

November 21st, 2008, 11:05

No, it's a security disaster. Uptime actually means you didn't patch, it doesn't have any real relation to stability.

Hear hear. I wish more people would get this into their thick skulls! I may be at the other end of the spectrum (I rebuild my STABLE operating systems every month, just for the fun of it), but just leaving a machine up for uptime or treating it as a measurement of quality is madness. All it says is: "It didn't just crash". Well, since XP, even Windows hasn't done that anymore.

DutchDaemon

November 21st, 2008, 11:07

Yea Netcraft shows yahoo almost runs totally on FreeBSD

but that is the only Commercial Giant using FreeBSD i can think of

Yahoo! hosts FreeBSD ;)

Name: www.freebsd.org
Address: 69.147.83.33

$ whois 69.147.83.33

OrgName: Yahoo
OrgID: YHOO
Address: 701 First Ave
City: Sunnyvale
StateProv: CA
PostalCode: 94089
Country: US

Mel_Flynn

November 21st, 2008, 11:46

I beg to differ. I think 64bit and the virtualisation field would have higher priority, afaik, FreeBSD doesnt support virtualisation applications that can access real hardware. That is also reason why ISP, hosting companies...choose Linux over FreeBSD

64 bit, is hardware, though I'm not aware of any true 64-bit related problems, other then x11/nvidia-driver.

Virtualisation won't work anyway, if the machine can't boot, or can only access SATA drives in IDE mode, or when ACPI configures a controller in a way that doesn't make sense to FreeBSD.

Personally, I don't find virtualisation anything more then hype, that allows people to run propriety software on open systems and as a result, operating systems all adopt the same sometimes broken interfaces, rather then do things in a way that's the best for the OS in question.
But as with many hypes, it takes a few years for people to adopt the next hype.

oliverh

November 21st, 2008, 12:36

Guys, FreeBSD is what you make out of it!

Exactly it's not one of the dying dinosaurs of the 80s - the so-called server os, and it's not the shiny desktop os full of glimmer for some bucks. It just serves _me_ and does a good job on _my_ desktop and server ;-)

I don't think there is anything different between a server and a non-server machine. If there has started to be -- and by that I mean that we secure our desktop machines less -- then we have got a serious problem. We must try better then.

Theo de Raadt, http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200603/theo_interview.html

oliverh

November 21st, 2008, 12:48

Yahoo uses FreeBSD for everything. If anything, they should do some advocacy.

They are supporting FreeBSD with servers etc. since years. Nokia,Juniper, etc. pp. are using FreeBSD too and they are supporting it with code and sponsorship. But who cares about Yahoo anymore? It's a dying giant from the dot-com bubble. For most companies Linux is a strategy, so advertising something BSD would be more or less futile. Most server environments are heterogenous, so you will see even OpenBSD once in a while e.g. as firewall between lots of Suns. Most of the time i don't see something like "Linux only" in professional environments, but I see it in advertising.

Barnie

November 21st, 2008, 14:47

If FreeBSD is not a desktop OS, then they should delete most or all desktop-related applications from the three CD-ROMs that every user can download. So it's clear for everyone that it is a server OS only. But if the distribution has every piece of desktop and multimedia software as standard, you must think it's also a desktop OS.

This thread is a little bit painful because it looks like the freebsd doesn't know what it want to be. The commitment is... Wischi-waschi (inexact).

Barnie

November 21st, 2008, 15:24

Please let me say something about supported hardware: I don't think that a good desktop OS must support every available hardware. Of course it is important to support categories of hardware e.g. a couple of webcams, a couple of video cards etc.

If I know that I can use a webcam and the freebsd-documentation says which model I must buy, then it's OK! I can go to the shop and buy this special model which works in FreeBSD. I don't need to run every webcam model on the planet.

Notebook: I don't own a notebook but I know from user forums that it runs on some models.

Just look the Apple Mac: they support only special mainboards - there own Mac-PC-mainboards! And not more. But is MacOS X not a desktop OS? It is! If you want use MacOS X then you have only 2 or 3 noteboooks as a choice. Less than FreeBSD supports!

But what would make FreeBSD a better desktop OS? I'm a desktop user and the most unhappy thing is, that I must setup to much to use the OS as a typical desktop OS. It's not the quality! It's only the work that I must do. It would be much easier if I can say in the SysInstall "X-User Desktop installation"... and then I can mount Data-CDs as a user. Of course I can do this with FreeBSD, but I must setup to much. This could be automated by installation. This thread is a nice example:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=409

I think that FreeBSD has all components, tools, drivers and quality for desktop use! It's only the last step that is missing... setup/configuration for desktops.

Mel_Flynn

November 21st, 2008, 19:15

If I know that I can use a webcam and the freebsd-documentation says which model I must buy, then it's OK! I can go to the shop and buy this special model which works in FreeBSD. I don't need to run every webcam model on the planet.

You have the right mindset. Plenty of users don't.
Example (http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-multimedia/2008-May/008550.html)

I think that FreeBSD has all components, tools, drivers and quality for desktop use! It's only the last step that is missing... setup/configuration for desktops.

This is why putting the effort in PC-BSD is a good idea. This thread is about changing focus of FreeBSD itself and I don't think it's good for the project. Let the PC-BSD developers continue their good work. They have users that will give them feedback and if
base or kernel needs patching, they can put together patches that end up in FreeBSD.

FYI: I'm running RELENG_6 on a Dell laptop, RELENG_7 on a newer HP Pavillion, have an old Gateway desktop that runs servers and compiles ports and a gateway-firewall-wireless AP-multimedia station with tv-out and uber bass speakers that mostly plays Happy Feet for the kids.
So it's not like I don't know what can be done, I just don't think developer focus should change or even that world-domination should be a goal.

Barnie

November 21st, 2008, 23:25

Mel_Flynn! Yes, I have tried PC-BSD and it's a great desktop-setup of FreeBSD. Every thing works out of the box! But it uses KDE and I don't like KDE. :e And I think I'm not the only one. So I try setup my own FreeBSD with Gnome. Not easy but I have no choice. ;)

ninjaslim

November 21st, 2008, 23:39

If you setup your desktop the same way every time, then write a script. I have a post-install script that installs on my programs on FreeBSD and restores my configuration files. It runs beautifully.

tomh009

November 22nd, 2008, 00:03

The 2 top complaints I heard from datacentres as to why they dont/stopped supporting FreeBSD.

1 - Hard to use installer.
2 - Fussy on hardware, hangs on bootloader are common.

My view on hardware compatability and drivers, well for a long time on realtek cards linux was better, the reason I got from FreeBSD when I queuried was its poor hardware so tough luck, rather than ok we will try and get our driver as good as linux driver. (...)

Hmmm. I have had my issues with Linux, and much of it related to installation. First, with Linux, none of the distros I tried (SuSE, Fedora etc) documented what hardware was actually supported -- the only way you would find out is by installing and then noticing that Linux didn't recognize your RAID card. Yes, there were other drivers out there, but the Linux installers didn't give you the option of inserting a floppy or CD with additional drivers. A day of messing about with this stuff, and I was already fed up with Linux.

Later ... the redundancy of the RAID array was foiled by the much-vaunted EXT3 filesystem corrupting its journals twice. (I since downgraded to EXT2, and it seems to have been OK.)

This server will shortly return home, with a clean install of FreeBSD 7.0 (I was hoping for 7.1, but it seems not imminent), and I will most definitely not miss Linux. Otherwise all our servers run FreeBSD (though some of them really do need to migrate from 4.x to something more current).

But 100 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, can they? :\

thortos

November 24th, 2008, 09:40

No, it's a security disaster. Uptime actually means you didn't patch, it doesn't have any real relation to stability.

If we were talking about Windows (which needs a reboot with almost every security update) or Linux (which has lots of kernel updates requiring reboots because they cramp everything into the kernel), I'd agree. But actually I cannot remember any vulnerability in the FreeBSD kernel that's affected us in the last five years or so. Edit: Of course, our machines all run on customized (read: stripped-down) kernels, so YMMV.

Some packages such as Apache, MySQL, OpenSSH, Ruby, Rails and so on need continuous updating, but that doesn't require a reboot, only a SIGHUP.

So I don't see the long uptime for FreeBSD boxen as a statement on their security. They're not Windows or Linux after all.

Out of curiosity, for which security update did you last reboot your FreeBSD boxen?

tecer

November 24th, 2008, 10:18

That is were you are wrong

Market share give controlling power so companies have to consider FreeBSD as a platform to roll out their ports

...

I can't agree with u more

Mel_Flynn

November 24th, 2008, 10:50

If we were talking about Windows (which needs a reboot with almost every security update) or Linux (which has lots of kernel updates requiring reboots because they cramp everything into the kernel), I'd agree. But actually I cannot remember any vulnerability in the FreeBSD kernel that's affected us in the last five years or so. Edit: Of course, our machines all run on customized (read: stripped-down) kernels, so YMMV.

http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-08:03.sendfile.asc
http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-08:04.ipsec.asc
http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-08:07.amd64.asc
http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-08:08.nmount.asc
http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-07:01.jail.asc

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

thortos

November 24th, 2008, 12:18

http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-08:03.sendfile.asc
http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-08:04.ipsec.asc
http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-08:07.amd64.asc
http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-08:08.nmount.asc
http://security.freebsd.org/advisories/FreeBSD-SA-07:01.jail.asc

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

I do, but I also see that there aren't many systems which are affected by any of those vulnerabilites, and most of them require local access of some kind. (If somebody has local access, you're fscked anyway. And what is that about a vulnerability that only affects systems with writable-only files *and* the attacker having local access? There must be more people with three legs than machines vulnerable to this.)

If you compare the scope of those things with the scope of the average Windows vulnerability, you'll notice a difference. The same is even more true for the total number of vulnerabilities, just look at the archives of the FreeBSD security mailing list and count the incidents there.

I'll admit that the IPSEC DoS is nasty, but that only affects VPN gateways and the three people using IPv6.

I'm preaching to the choir, but to sum it up, in the years I've been using FreeBSD (since the 4.x days), security of the base system has been a non-issue. It helps that FreeBSD both is very secure already in the standard configuration, and is pretty easy to lock down even further.

In that light, your statement that long uptimes say something about the security of FreeBSD systems is really wrong. If you have sufficiently locked-down boxes, rebooting for updates simply isn't needed.

You haven't answered my question, though. For which vulnerability have *you* had to reboot a system, and how often have reboots occurred at all for you?

Weinter

November 24th, 2008, 12:26

That is were you are wrong

Market share give controlling power so companies have to consider FreeBSD as a platform to roll out their ports

...
I can't agree with u more

Some of them disagree with me...

I do admit dumbing FreeBSD down may be detrimental to the quality
But i feel support for latest hardware should always be a priority
To increase marketshare new system will always have new hardware
Maybe the dumbing it down maybe PC-BSD's job
But ultimately hardware support will still fall flat on FreeBSD shoulders as PC-BSD is not doing anything about it...

Mel_Flynn

November 24th, 2008, 12:39

I kicked my addiction to uptime long ago. I don't even attend AA meetings anymore.
I reboot whenever I feel it's necessary. This can range from kernel patches to "making sure the boot sequence is still working correctly after adding a new service to the mix". I also went to single user mode, after the libc update earlier this year.
My approach to the problem is just different then yours. You assess kernel patches based on the workload and software of the machine. If I'd do that, I would feel compelled to run a syscall check each update of all software, to make sure they don't use the known broken kernel interface in the way that it's broken. This isn't very economical to me.
So, I make sure my syscalls (and userland) are "working as they should, to the best of my knowledge". Then I only have to deal with the software, within the context of a jail as I've limited the risk of kernel panics or hangs to a minimum.
As you've probably figured out now, the last security induced reboot was the nd6 patch, even though I don't route ip6 anywhere (yet).

rliegh

November 24th, 2008, 12:46

...

Maybe the dumbing it down maybe PC-BSD's job
But ultimately hardware support will still fall flat on FreeBSD shoulders as PC-BSD is not doing anything about it...

Well, as you said -that's not PC-BSD's job.

PC-BSD is FreeBSD with a fresh coat of paint. You wouldn't ask a house painter to fix your roof or work on your pipes.

chrcol

November 24th, 2008, 18:53

chrcol

November 24th, 2008, 18:58

Hmmm. I have had my issues with Linux, and much of it related to installation. First, with Linux, none of the distros I tried (SuSE, Fedora etc) documented what hardware was actually supported -- the only way you would find out is by installing and then noticing that Linux didn't recognize your RAID card. Yes, there were other drivers out there, but the Linux installers didn't give you the option of inserting a floppy or CD with additional drivers. A day of messing about with this stuff, and I was already fed up with Linux.

Later ... the redundancy of the RAID array was foiled by the much-vaunted EXT3 filesystem corrupting its journals twice. (I since downgraded to EXT2, and it seems to have been OK.)

This server will shortly return home, with a clean install of FreeBSD 7.0 (I was hoping for 7.1, but it seems not imminent), and I will most definitely not miss Linux. Otherwise all our servers run FreeBSD (though some of them really do need to migrate from 4.x to something more current).

But 100 million Elvis fans can't be wrong, can they? :\

I also use FreeBSD on all my servers :) even when I have to pay for a remote KVM to install it myself.

softblur

November 24th, 2008, 21:15

I think that FreeBSD has all components, tools, drivers and quality for desktop use! It's only the last step that is missing... setup/configuration for desktops.
This is why putting the effort in PC-BSD is a good idea.
It is a good idea in some ways, but it may give people the impression that KDE is a sort of default desktop for FreeBSD. Some of you are apparently comfortable with that idea, but many of us are not.
This thread is about changing focus of FreeBSD itself and I don't think it's good for the project.
I don't see how providing a canned desktop setup would change the focus of the project. Practically all users of FreeBSD - even those who complain about the silliness of GUI - use at least X with one of the simple window managers. So let us make a canned desktop setup with one of those window managers. This approach might even attract the interest of many of the real experts, who for the most part use simple window managers themselves. Such a setup done right would also be a neat way to answer a number of questions that keep recurring on forums and mailing lists.

Mel_Flynn

November 25th, 2008, 04:39

It is a good idea in some ways, but it may give people the impression that KDE is a sort of default desktop for FreeBSD. Some of you are apparently comfortable with that idea, but many of us are not.

No. It's the desktop that is easier to make and keep working correctly. Donate resources if you wish another desktop.

I don't see how providing a canned desktop setup would change the focus of the project.

I don't see that either. Especially since I never said that. Read the original post of the thread. That's what I commented about. Providing a solid desktop and mobile OS requires much more then a few scripts that install a desktop after OS installation.

sremick

November 25th, 2008, 17:35

PBIs and the choice of KDE is what keeps me off PC-BSD. Heck, I'd prefer xfce over KDE, although I'm a Gnome person myself.

And correct: FreeBSD is not Windows (http://vtbsd.net/index.php?name=Sections&req=viewarticle&artid=4&page=1). ;)

Barnie

November 25th, 2008, 18:39

PBIs and the choice of KDE is what keeps me off PC-BSD.

Hem... PBIs are not a must. You can furthermore use the original ports and packages. So this is not a real argument against PC-BSD.

Of course the KDE is a must... and this could be a contra argument.

sremick

November 25th, 2008, 19:17

PBIs are not a must. You can furthermore use the original ports and packages.I'm aware. But a lot of the value-add of PC-BSD are the GUI tools for PBI management. My point is, I would've preferred the same tools, interface, and infrastructure built up around a standard ports/packages type configuration, versus a wholly separate method that runs contrary against standard Unix-style software installation philosophy.

ninjaslim

November 26th, 2008, 01:52

What is a canned desktop setup? I'm in favor of FreeBSD adding additional common sets to make desktop setup faster (I did not say easier for a reason).

Mel_Flynn

November 26th, 2008, 09:17

What is a canned desktop setup? I'm in favor of FreeBSD adding additional common sets to make desktop setup faster (I did not say easier for a reason).

In short, that if you choose the "X-*" distribution set from the installer, that you'd get a menu where you have to pick a desktop and that the display manager would be configured on ttyv8 on the next boot.

With a DVD install, this would be possible, from CD-ROM there isn't enough room on the primary disk.
The problem is where does it stop:

Should cam be configured so that GUI dvd writers work out of the box?
Should devfs.rules be modified with a designated group for desktop use, that gives group permissions to removable media?
Should nv driver be used or nvidia, if so detected? Same for radeon?

Eponasoft

November 27th, 2008, 06:34

Uptime counts are just pecker contests anyways.

But in all reality, folks...would you really WANT FreeBSD to be a "mainstream" OS? Look at all the Linux communities across cyberspace, full of half-wits who jump on the Linux bandwagon because "M$ IZ TEH 3V1L!". The bigger your base grows, the more of these kinds of people you attract. It's one of the major reasons I can't stand to run Linux locally; looking for help on something requires me running into about an 8:1 noise:signal ratio on forums and websites.

I honestly do not like the prepackaged versions of BSD, namely PC-BSD and DesktopBSD. They sound like great ideas at first, but they seem to really limit the system. Sure you can make major changes to the system, but if you do that, you might as well just use the original system they're based on.

And that thing about techs saying FreeBSD is "too hard to install" is just plain laziness. Even my wife knows her way around sysinstall and can configure just about anything in FreeBSD, and she's in public relations.

Barnie

November 27th, 2008, 11:57

But in all reality, folks...would you really WANT FreeBSD to be a "mainstream" OS?
Yes.

DutchDaemon

November 27th, 2008, 12:25

I think PHK once said something like: "I don't care if FreeBSD has only 1% market share, as long as we have the best 1%".

I liked that.

Weinter

November 27th, 2008, 14:07

I don't care if FreeBSD became mainstream
BUT if mainstream will make manufacturers program native drivers for their new hardware for FreeBSD
I say go mainstream

Mel_Flynn

November 27th, 2008, 15:23

Crappy vendor provided drivers is not better then crappy OS provided drivers. If there's one thing to learn from Windows it's that.
Granted, good drivers from vendors are better then good drivers from OS, because they can focus on other things.
But let's turn it around, isn't it better to have OEM's like iXsystems (http://www.ixsystems.com/) and Freedom Technologies (http://www.freedomtc.com/) providing quality hardware for a quality OS?

sremick

November 27th, 2008, 16:00

But in all reality, folks...would you really WANT FreeBSD to be a "mainstream" OS?

Yes. The more "mainstream", the more exposure and interest. The more interest, the more vendor support, and the more people hacking away at it and making improvements.

As long as those "half-wits" don't have commit bits, I don't really care about them. Any OS is going to have them.

graudeejs

November 27th, 2008, 17:13

Yes. The more "mainstream", the more exposure and interest. The more interest, the more vendor support, and the more people hacking away at it and making improvements.

As long as those "half-wits" don't have commit bits, I don't really care about them. Any OS is going to have them.

and also more interest for bad, bad hackers

sremick

November 27th, 2008, 17:51

and also more interest for bad, bad hackersinterest != success.

And so what if the number of people testing the security of FreeBSD increases? The overall security will only improve if they expose otherwise unknown issues. FreeBSD's track record for fixing security issues promptly and effectively is excellent.

Or are you under the impression that popularity = more security flaws? Like Apache compared to IIS? ;)

Mel_Flynn

November 27th, 2008, 17:52

Yes. The more "mainstream", the more exposure and interest. The more interest, the more vendor support, and the more people hacking away at it and making improvements.

This isn't a synonym. It's an assumption. Examples:

ZFS: a god-sent for some, bloat memory hog for others
LDAP backed nsswitch: manageability for large user bases, totally unneeded for a vast ammount of standard 1u webservers
Thread pre-emption: necessary in this millenium or DOS risk?
MAC security labels: needed for the enterprise, useless for most common workloads

For mainstream (especially desktop/mobile) the feature list will go on and on, requiring one to disable more and more from a default install.
And the features mentioned are in it's own right, good implementations and features. Assuming that "more people" equals "more improvements" is dangerous. You will get a generalist OS, that is "decent at everything and good at nothing".

Weinter

November 28th, 2008, 02:04

When i mean mainstream i only wanted the additional device drivers for new hardware
New hardware will emerge whether you like it or not
Example is the new Wireless N standards
I think ZFS isn't as bad as you put it out to be and it is suppose to be the last filesystem ever need due to the support for virtually unlimited filesystem size

And if you mean this drops support for older hardware you have to consider that progression is constant

Mel_Flynn

November 28th, 2008, 08:03

When i mean mainstream i only wanted the additional device drivers for new hardware

That's pretty naive. You will get the morons, groupies and abundance of feature requests for free when targeting mainstream.

New hardware will emerge whether you like it or not
Example is the new Wireless N standards

Last I checked (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11N#Timeline), these aren't standards yet. Yes, there's hardware out there claiming to be "wireless N". Probably forced into release by the same people who push the wireless office dream into many small business, conveniently leaving out that 54Mbps is shared accross all workstations.
Dealing with mainstream hardware means a lot of noise, cause it's bad hardware, that is made to look better through the driver.
If there are a handful of OEMs that cherry pick hardware in various price ranges and donate time and resources to make them work optimally with FreeBSD, then FreeBSD can focus on features, performance and new hardware standards, rather then fixing driver bugs in known bad hardware.

I think ZFS isn't as bad as you put it out to be and it is suppose to be the last filesystem ever need due to the support for virtually unlimited filesystem size

I listed two ends of the spectrum, based on various threads in -questions and -hackers. My own opinion is somewhere in the middle. I will know more when my test machine is ready and I put a ZFS+PostgreSQL installation through my basement of torture.

Weinter

November 28th, 2008, 10:10

Developers have the final say so I think this is somewhat under control...
Useful features can be filtered out of all the requests

Yes but my opinion is wireless N is here to stay so why not a headstart?

A feature(ZFS) from Sun Micro can't be that bad afterall one of SUN Micro's cofounder is the original UNIX Programmer
Of course there will be bugs you can't expect porting to take place instanteously with superb stability

morbit

February 6th, 2009, 01:52

I'm aware. But a lot of the value-add of PC-BSD are the GUI tools for PBI management. My point is, I would've preferred the same tools, interface, and infrastructure built up around a standard ports/packages type configuration, versus a wholly separate method that runs contrary against standard Unix-style software installation philosophy.

http://www.freshports.org/sysutils/desktopbsd-tools/

GUI for managing ports/packages, portaudit and portsnap in one package.

Erratus

February 8th, 2009, 15:40

FreeBSD people usually buy hardware selected with FreeBSD in mind.

Sounds elitist to me, suitable for people who can afford the expenses.

What I see is that people new to FreeBSD just want to install on the hardware they already own. Once these people new to FreeBSD become "FreeBSD people" they might consider buying new hardware with suffered headaches in mind.

DutchDaemon

February 8th, 2009, 18:28

Elitist? Any recent denials?

kamikaze

February 9th, 2009, 09:34

Yes but my opinion is wireless N is here to stay so why not a headstart?Well, simply because it doesn't exist, yet?

In my opinion an N-Standard would long have been agreed upon if there weren't all these draft-n things around. They really hinder the progress of wireless standards and thus should not be supported by anyone or anything.

oliverh

February 9th, 2009, 11:26

Sounds elitist to me, suitable for people who can afford the expenses.

What I see is that people new to FreeBSD just want to install on the hardware they already own. Once these people new to FreeBSD become "FreeBSD people" they might consider buying new hardware with suffered headaches in mind.

You have to do this as Linux user too, don't call it elitist just call it common sense.

epoxy

February 11th, 2009, 16:30

Wow, reading this thread I feel lucky! I have used FreeBSD on my desktops (main os) for ~7-8 years and been on my laptops (only os) for about 4 (late to get a laptop ;] )

Granted, the releng_7 branch fixed A LOT of nagging issues with FreeBSD on a lappy, but overall I have not had many glitches as far as hardware support (minus when the Intel 3945ABG just came out...devil) and hope to get it on my MSI Wind next week.

It might even sound selfish, but I just don't think freebsd will have the same powerful/unique feel if someone starting out in Ubuntu just throws in a fbsd disk and boots into a desktop loaded with OO.org and all the bloat. bleh.

I also agree with others...Desktop FreeBSD would be an awesome niche distro, as PC-BSD has picked up on (although I have not used it). That way, the people concerned mostly with Desktop-ness can concentrate on their end and the server/power crowd can continue on the path that has made FreeBSD a world class operating system...that people like me shamlessly promote to anyone :-P

Glad to see an "official forum" and can't wait to see it grow!

nuintari

February 12th, 2009, 03:44

Trying to be the everything OS for everyone is what turned Linux into the great big pile of <insert bad word here> that it is today.

fronclynne

February 12th, 2009, 07:07

Well, server operating systems make better general purpose operating systems for us retro grouches. I mean, so long as the hardware is at least partially supported.

SR_Ind

February 12th, 2009, 12:43

I don't see any problem with current state of FreeBSD vis-a-vis the needs of average users.

All the bits and pieces for a good desktop environment lie there in the ports. One needs to spend a good time browsing the ports to pick out software of choice.

Is there a case for having a desktop configured official release? I think so.

I also think KDE based DesktopBSD and PC-BSD do not fit the bill.

What really needed are

1. Extentions to the sysinstall. It should configure X, take the user choice for a desktop environment or if drill down options exist then user choice for a login manager, and a window manager.

2. Desktop independent tools: DesktopBSD project has some cool tools, but they have the drawback...tied to KDE. I wish their dependency was limited to Qt libraries.

I've to disagree with lot of flash fans in the forum. My firefox2 and firefox3 seems to work perfectly with swfdec-plugin port.

As a matter of fact all bits and pieces of my laptop work under freebsd, except the webcam (had to build kernel with snapshot from madwifi site to get the Atheros wifi working).
That's a good deal for a free OS.

PS: I'm working on few Gtk+ based utilities: A package/ports frontend, a disk mount utility, a wifi configuration utility.

hitest

February 12th, 2009, 15:13

I've to disagree with lot of flash fans in the forum. My firefox2 and firefox3 seems to work perfectly with swfdec-plugin port.

Interesting. I haven't tried the swfdec-plugin.
Are you running that on the native BSD version of FF 2 and 3?

SR_Ind

February 12th, 2009, 17:31

Interesting. I haven't tried the swfdec-plugin.
Are you running that on the native BSD version of FF 2 and 3?
Yes.

none

February 12th, 2009, 19:07

Interesting. I haven't tried the swfdec-plugin.
Are you running that on the native BSD version of FF 2 and 3?

never ever heard about it :)

chances of it running on amd64 8-CURRENT ? ;)

none

SR_Ind

February 12th, 2009, 19:19

never ever heard about it :)

chances of it running on amd64 8-CURRENT ? ;)

none

There you go

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/amd64/7.1-RELEASE/packages/www/swfdec-plugin-0.6.0_1.tbz

SR_Ind

February 12th, 2009, 19:22

^^
Sorry...not yet for 8 current

none

February 12th, 2009, 19:36

^^
Sorry...not yet for 8 current

just distributed as binary ?

I'll look for in ports :)

thanks,

none

SR_Ind

February 12th, 2009, 19:46

People installing swfdec-plugin need to type these two commands as root to have the plugin picked up by firefox

WATCH OUT FOR THE WORD WRAP IN THE SECOND COMMAND

1.
ln -s /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins ~/.mozilla/plugins

2.
ln -s /usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/swfdec-plugin/libswfdecmozilla.so
/usr/local/lib/browser_plugins/swfdec

jb_fvwm2

February 12th, 2009, 20:02

flash works here in "portupgrade -P seamonkey", I think
because of gnash-devel. ((( Though the swfdec, a
few wrapper ports, (other stuff probably), is installed,
but I do not think configured yet as above. )))
...........
BTW in regards to "target audience".
I've run postgresql-8 for years, without the knowledge
to properly set it up. I was initially schooled by
onlamp, etc... I have no motivation
to configure the ports which rely on it (about 5- 8 so far)
without some guide. I think that would be
a plus, to have firm documentation somewhere, in a
newbie - friendly style...
.........
/end newbie wishlist/

Mel_Flynn

February 13th, 2009, 20:31

I've run postgresql-8 for years, without the knowledge
to properly set it up. I was initially schooled by
onlamp, etc... I have no motivation
to configure the ports which rely on it (about 5- 8 so far)
without some guide. I think that would be
a plus, to have firm documentation somewhere, in a
newbie - friendly style...

That's beyond the scope of FreeBSD (and practically impossible). To illustrate:
- Linux takes responsiblity only for the kernel
- Linux distros take responsibility for the base tools and 3rd party applications
- FreeBSD takes responsiblity for the kernel and base tools

The 3rd party tools (ports) are only FreeBSD's responsibility in the sense that they are supposed to compile and run as intended.

As for the practical side, considering 19000 ports of which a multitude can be made to work together, it would require enormous amounts of documentation.

However, there's a nice section building up here:
http://forums.freebsd.org/forumdisplay.php?f=39

Maybe you can request a howto there.

donallen

February 14th, 2009, 21:17

I won't pretend to have read this entire thread -- it's huge -- so forgive me if I'm repeating something that's already been said. In addition to support of desktop/laptop systems in the sense of applications and driver availability, there's the issue of correctness of the code. Desktop/laptop systems get used in different ways than servers do, not a deep insight. I tried to migrate my four systems (three IBM/Lenovo laptops varying from very old to very new, plus a Lenovo workstation) from Linux to FreeBSD and while the system looks very nice (there's a professional feel to it that's missing from the rather chaotic Linux world), I quickly ran into kernel bugs that killed my systems, multiple times. One was in the ext2 support (my USB backup disks were, and now are, ext2 filesystems), another other I *believe* was in the USB stack (I had a system crash copying one backup disk that had been converted to UFS2 to another that had a freshly newfs-ed UFS2 filesystem on it). Despite my generally very favorable impression of the system (and familiarity with BSD going back to the 4.x systems on Vaxen), the unreliability was unacceptable and I retreated to Linux (this was fairly recently and involved FreeBSD 7.1).

I attribute this to my using corners of the system that are little-used by the mainstream FreeBSD audience, and thus have simply not been adequately debugged.

I would *love* to see FreeBSD try to compete for the desktop/client-side market. I think it has some great things going for it, but it's just not in good enough shape right now to challenge Linux on that ground, in my opinion. And I do understand that this is a huge effort and a bit of a Catch-22 (it's hard to make it reliable without a user community of critical mass and it's hard to get that community unless the system is reliable).

/Don Allen

ale

February 14th, 2009, 21:40

Despite my generally very favorable impression of the system (and familiarity with BSD going back to the 4.x systems on Vaxen), the unreliability was unacceptable and I retreated to Linux (this was fairly recently and involved FreeBSD 7.1).

I attribute this to my using corners of the system that are little-used by the mainstream FreeBSD audience, and thus have simply not been adequately debugged.Did you tried filing a pr and providing backtraces?

donallen

February 15th, 2009, 00:25

I filed a PR for the ext2 problem and received a quick response from one of the developers, pointing me at a patch. I would have had to build a kernel, obviously, to install that patch. I worked around it by converting the backup disks to UFS2 on an i386 system I have (the ext2 bug affected amd64 only).

The second bug is only a theory. I got no evidence at all from that crash. The system restarted itself while it was doing the disk copy and I was out of the room. Nothing in the logs and no dump. I didn't file a report on that one because it would have been a complete guess with no supporting evidence.

/Don Allen