FreeBSD development seems lost

RetroComputingCollector

RetroComputingCollector

With the upcoming changes in 15.0, and some of the major changes before, FreeBSD development seems lost. There are solutions being applied and thrown around, without a problem. I think that the rust-in-base, deprecation of longstanding base utilities, and the push for more "toe-in-the-water" types is alienating most of the FreeBSD community, and causing a detrement to server uses. The switch to pkgbase, removal of ftpd and various other long-standing, utilities for a server enviroment, and transition in philosophy from general-purpose to desktop-first is making me consider NetBSD for my server. It has already been rolled out on my test machine, and I am shocked at how philosophically consistent it is. You could say the same for FreeBSD, up until recently. FreeBSD also seems to be chasing Linux. I will not be surprised if 16.0 adds some sort of Flatpak-type system, or Wayland, or a systemd-style init nightmare. I am very concerned about the future of FreeBSD. I think, before any developer makes any change, they should try to think of a reason that is not "desktop" or "Linux did it". I tried pkgbase in a VM, it sucks beastie horns. I will always remain a FreeBSD user, but I will likely have many more Net/Open machines in my house if FreeBSD starts going down the Linux route. I also see an impending crisis in how pkg(8) is not in base, but is now necessary for everything, but that is a discussion for a different time.
 
cracauer@ said:
I think I had it with your Rust in FreeBSD claims. What are you doing?
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I hate rust and I love to yell ;) In all seriousness, I am concerned that the "what-ifs" that are floating around will turn into "possible plans", and then into "planned implementations", and then into things actually put in FreeBSD. As kent_dorfman766 said, " Drown the seed in glyphosate before it has a change to sprout. When you sit back and "let things happen" stupid decisions get made, and then it's too late to halt the momentum in many cases."
 
I have to say I disagree with the whole premise that FreeBSD Xorg is bloated. So that was the kinda thread I had to stay out of.
Some inflammatory remarks I understand. I am working with 16GB SSD and I don't see the problem. Run a light desktop.
 
Phishfry said:
I have to say I disagree with the whole premise that FreeBSD Xorg is bloated. So that was the kinda thread I had to stay out of.
Some inflammatory remarks I understand. I am working with 16GB SSD and I don't see the problem. Right a light desktop.
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It is bloated in terms of what is bundled with it. It does not need Python, Wayland, glibc, and other random pieces of cruft, and it should build and run without GNU components, just like NetBSD xorg.
 
I am not a purist. Other applications in my world need python.
My ideal stack is less than 3GB and around 300 packages.
pkg install xorg openbox obconf tint2 xfe xdpf mplayer dillo drm-61-kmod
It would still comfortably fit on a CompactFlash Card.
 
Phishfry said:
I am not a purist. Other applications in my world need python.
My ideal stack is less than 3GB and around 300 packages.
pkg install xorg openbox obconf tint2 xfe xdpf mplayer dillo drm-61-kmod]
It would still comfortably fit on a CompactFlash Card.
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Unnecessary stuff that adds nothing for the user is still bloat. A new C library and Make implementation just duplicates what is in base without enhancing anything. I am not saying it is a big usage of storage, just that it shouldn't be there.
 
RetroComputingCollector said:
As kent_dorfman766 said, " Drown the seed in glyphosate before it has a change to sprout. When you sit back and "let things happen" stupid decisions get made, and then it's too late to halt the momentum in many cases."
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Agreed. You can see a good example of that on this recent OpenBSD mail list thread.

(some idiot wanted to start removing stuff because "they didn't need it and its old")

There are a couple of companies currently trying to monetize FreeBSD, so naturally they need to push the idea that "everyone is welcome, even twits" to generate a consumerbase. Unfortunately this means that much of the primary community moves away to get away from twits. The internet is becoming a lonely place recently; I can feel it. Many forums are becoming barren and communities are fragmenting.
 
kpedersen said:
Why stop there? Remove the entire computer. The concept of a computer is pretty old right ;)
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Sadly, this attitude seems to be what they seriously believe in. Incase it's unclear, I absolutely believe that this purge of things without even thinking twice is idiotic. Hopefully these corporate twits don't come for Net/Open/Dragonfly BSD next once (hopefully if) they break FreeBSD like they did to Linux.
 
In any long lived software project, say longer than 6 months, code should probably go through an audit.
Technical debt that accumulates, old code that is not used but still must be maintained. Someone needs to decide what to do with it.
Maintaining it has a cost. Testing, updating if interfaces change, security concerns.
I think that is one of the argument/discussions around Xorg: interfaces that have been there since the beginning, have been proven security risks, and has less than 1% usage in the real world: what should be done? It costs to maintain, very low real world usage (need to find out why, most of the time inertia).

So just removing things "because" is stupid, but removing things "because it is a huge security risk, the manpower to keep it up to date for less than 1% real world use" is another question/thought process.

anyway my opinion do with it what it cost you.
 
mer said:
So just removing things "because" is stupid, but removing things "because it is a huge security risk, the manpower to keep it up to date for less than 1% real world use" is another question/thought process.
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They are removing things "because" though. Look at the mailing lists. And some of the stuff they are removing actually has a use. ftpd as an example has no known vulnerabilities, and is used by anyone on FreeBSD that wants an ftp server. What the hell was wrong with fdisk? The foundation hates it, but it is useful for those of us who use MBR. And when they purge all of this useful software, they want to offset it with KDE in the installer. Linux is constantly deprecating and replacing things in this same way. The Foundation && Top Developers are following the Linux philosophy, not the FreeBSD one. And the new focus on Laptop use is alienating people who use it on their servers. FreeBSD was supposed to be a general-purpose OS, not a Laptop OS.
 
blackbird9 said:
I mean... this is a unix system... perl has been a fixture since the 80s...
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And they kicked it out because they want a "small base". What they should actually kick out if they want a small base is ipf. No-one uses it, and there would still be two more firewalls left over. Two is still too much, but I like pf enough that I don't think it should be tossed out.
 
RetroComputingCollector said:
I think that the rust-in-base, deprecation of longstanding base utilities, and the push for more "toe-in-the-water" types is alienating most of the FreeBSD community, and causing a determent to server uses. The switch to pkgbase, removal of ftpd and various other long-standing, utilities for a server environment, and transition in philosophy from general-purpose to desktop-first is making me consider NetBSD for my server.
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So *BSD has always had a GUI component to it? Not sure why you think FreeBSD is solely a "server" O/S? I was running *BSD on GUI based workstations for many many years -- and even today on my PCs. Literally the best "X Windows" experiences in the past were on workstations that were on *BSD hosts.

So I think you might be ... wrong :-).

But good luck with NetBSD !
 
CShell said:
So *BSD has always had a GUI component to it? Not sure why you think FreeBSD is solely a "server" O/S? I was running *BSD on GUI based workstations for many many years -- and even today on my PCs. Literally the best "X Windows" experiences in the past were on workstations that were on *BSD hosts.

So I think you might be ... wrong :-).

But good luck with NetBSD !
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NetBSD has a GUI. It is a lightweight one suitable for servers. KDE is in no way a good server GUI. It is way too bloated. There is a reason why commerical UNIX still uses CDE, and NetBSD uses (c)twm. If they announced that the optional GUI would be twm, cde, or whatever lightweight UI, I wouldn't care and actually would like it. If they announce KDE, it pisses me off.
 
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