What is wrong with linux ?

Anyone can help with that. Find some software you like or pick an orphaned port and get hacking ;)
I was thinking the exact thing :) There is a software "Zekr" (we use in our research) which is present in AUR (Arch User Repository). I will try to port it to FreeBSD, but the question is: Can I port it without having proper programming knowledge? I know about shell scripting, but not familiar much with C, Java etc programming. Maybe I have to look into Porter's Handbook for my answer.
 
Can I port it without having proper programming knowledge?
Sure. I maintain emulators/fs-uae but I'm not much of a programmer. I can read documentation though, and I know how to build things following the instructions. I do have some C/C++ knowledge, so I do know how to patch the code if necessary. But sometimes I do run into some weird compiler error but then the community is helpful enough to provide pointers that allows me to solve the problem.
 
Find some software you like or pick an orphaned port and get hacking ;)
In theory. And yes, very often, this works well, thankfully ;)

But I wouldn't touch an electron app, for example. Back when the port of electron itself was still WIP, I found it on github and actually helped a little. That's where I got my opinion that electron is a major PITA and should be banned ;) And then, there's a constantly growing number of projects providing their software in the form of some docker stuff (scripts to create a container? whatever…)

I really hope all these ill-advised ideas vanish again soon. A lot of other "latest shit" stuff did. At least, I don't think this is something that's "wrong with Linux". The fact that these things happen on systems using a Linux kernel isn't exactly Linux' fault.
 
Trying the same thing on linux, i tried gentoo, it did not work, there was always a conflict. Meaning here I put option X there I must put option Y and you never get it right. So in some sense freebsd is doing something right what gentoo is doing wrong. But what is it ?

I've not used Gentoo in the last (about) 5 years but let me guess, you tried to install the system while doing all customization you wanted at the same time?

This is not a good idea if you don't have a working custom setup already. Install all the basics (of the profile) you need with the defaults, then modify it and go on.
 
Sure. I maintain emulators/fs-uae but I'm not much of a programmer. I can read documentation though, and I know how to build things following the instructions. I do have some C/C++ knowledge, so I do know how to patch the code if necessary. But sometimes I do run into some weird compiler error but then the community is helpful enough to provide pointers that allows me to solve the problem.
Thanks. I will definitely give it a try. What do you suggest to a beginner porter (like me), to start from Porters Handbook? or some other resource?
 
But I wouldn't touch an electron app, for example. Back when the port of electron itself was still WIP, I found it on github and actually helped a little. That's where I got my opinion that electron is a major PITA and should be banned ;) And then, there's a constantly growing number of projects providing their software in the form of some docker stuff (scripts to create a container? whatever…)
It just needs someone that's masochistic enough to grind their teeth on it. Speaking of masochistic, I don't know if you've ever create a MS-DOS/Windows batch file? Now that's some seriously convoluted scripting. Been there, done that, never doing that again. But I've seen people do amazing things with it.
 
What do you suggest to a beginner porter (like me), to start from Porters Handbook? or some other resource?
Start there, it has everything important covered. But, if you don't find something you need, have a look in the Mk and Mk/Uses subdirectories of the ports tree. A lot of stuff is documented there in comments.
 
Speaking of masochistic, I don't know if you've ever create a MS-DOS/Windows batch file? Now that's some seriously convoluted scripting.
Done that, of course. Also done: A little "C standard library" (incomplete, but with curses support) targeting MS-DOS in realmode. And some little tools in C using nothing but the naked win32 API for their GUI. It's horror, but entertaining ;) Sorry for the off-topic ;)

(edit: porting an electron app unfortunately isn't entertaining at all, so, yep, thanks for the masochists doing this stuff, hehe)
 
It just needs someone that's masochistic enough to grind their teeth on it. Speaking of masochistic, I don't know if you've ever create a MS-DOS/Windows batch file? Now that's some seriously convoluted scripting. Been there, done that, never doing that again. But I've seen people do amazing things with it.
.bat files are often used to automate a truckload of clicking around. These days, Powershell is supposed to be a modern replacement. My problem with Powershell is not even so much the command syntax or the programming structure, but rather the permissions - if I run it under the wrong 'system account', it doesn't matter if I have admin access on the machine - the script will fail anyway. I like the idea of scripting, but Linux and BSD's do it better than Windows, sorry. Beyond that - it doesn't matter THAT much if you use bash or basic sh.
 
Powershell is supposed to be a modern replacement.
Although this might be off-topic as well (more addressing "what is wrong with Windows?"), I just have to comment on that:

IMHO, Powershell isn't "bad". But it was developed in a time when MS still suffered hard from the NIH-syndrome. Otherwise, Powershell would have been an extension of a POSIX shell (like many good shells are). Instead, it's completely incompatible. Maybe the "object-oriented" nature of Powershell is a good idea, I'm not really sure about it. But for using it, you're forced to learn yet another completely different shell. Hm!
 
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if I run it under the wrong 'system account', it doesn't matter if I have admin access on the machine - the script will fail anyway.
That's RBAC and/or MAC. You can run into the same problems if you enable SELinux on Linux or MAC on FreeBSD. Security is both a boon and a bane.
 
...It's more that a userland command like ifconfig(8) can actually use the features of drivers...
Gawd, you're so old-fashioned! Don you know that ifconfig is known to behave inadequately in modern network environments? All the cool kids are using the "modern" ip tools.
...Speaking of masochistic, I don't know if you've ever create a MS-DOS/Windows batch file? Now that's some seriously convoluted scripting. Been there, done that, never doing that again. But I've seen people do amazing things with it.
I worked at a place where our build tool was a massive batch file that would pop off an argument, process it, and then invoke itself again with the shortened arg list. It was not easy to follow.
 
astyle said:
Red Hat is now another piece of commercial software under IBM's control

Which will make the support contracts with RH even more expensive. And if you ask people working with it how often they actually use that support, hardly ever. In most cases they find the solution to their problems on Stackoverflow in a matter of minutes, so why call RH? For many CIO's availability of support is one thing, fear for their collection of MS-Powerpoints and MS-spreadsheets is another.
 
I don't see anything wrong with commercial support contracts.
Everybody must make a living, including RH programmers.
 
I worked at a place where our build tool was a massive batch file that would pop off an argument, process it, and then invoke itself again with the shortened arg list. It was not easy to follow
Jose : Are you familiar with concept of recursion ? Sometimes, realizing that kind of thing makes a program easy to follow. As an example, GNU is a recusive acronym that can be expanded infinitely. or the FreeBSD ports tree compilation can be thought of as a directed graph, which makes backtracking and correcting mistakes on make config easier.
I don't see anything wrong with commercial support contracts.
Everybody must make a living, including RH programmers.
I agree... it's just that not everybody can easily afford a support contract with IBM. Most of the time, it's really minimal tasks that take 5 minutes to solve with a simple Google query or about an hour to hunt down someone with root permissions.
 
astyle what Jose described was a loop done by recursion. That happens when LISP hackers are old enough to target job security.
 
Reading lisp is a certain form of brain gymnastics, but car & cdr are really powerfull.
/bin/sh that everybody loves has also shift.
I find it ugly.
 
astyle what Jose described was a loop done by recursion. That happens when LISP hackers are old enough to target job security.
I think the Windows batch language of the day didn't have looping constructs.

I believe most if not all recursive algorithms have an iterative solution that is usually more efficient on real computer hardware because of the overhead of having to keep all the stack frames for the recursive calls. This has led to the invention of "proper tail recursion" which I still struggle to comprehend.

I've never liked the functional stuff. I figured I'm not smart enough to get it. I found out recently that I'm in good company:

No, I'm not saying that I'm as smart as Dennis Ritchie.
 
I don't see anything wrong with commercial support contracts.
Everybody must make a living, including RH programmers.
That's true, but as Tieks points out they are mainly a waste.
My experience with them is they're there to cover the proverbial behinds of management so that should the defecation hit the oscillation they have someone to blame.
 
I think the Windows batch language of the day didn't have looping constructs.

I believe most if not all recursive algorithms have an iterative solution that is usually more efficient on real computer hardware because of the overhead of having to keep all the stack frames for the recursive calls. This has led to the invention of "proper tail recursion" which I still struggle to comprehend.

I've never liked the functional stuff. I figured I'm not smart enough to get it. I found out recently that I'm in good company:

No, I'm not saying that I'm as smart as Dennis Ritchie.
When I was in college back at turn of the century, one of my Computer Science textbooks mentioned that recursion was simply an easier way to abstractly keep track of actual program execution on hardware. Compiler design was easier when program syntax was recursive.
 
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