FuryBSD is dead..

This is an interesting question because there are no such 'guys' who can answer this. Many people have done a great job developing different parts of this Operating System, but obviously they have no resources and maybe even skills to work on (yet)another Window Manager. Different WM communities have also done a great job, but they are not directly linked to the FreeBSD project.

Personally I think that it is better to have good building blocks (read OS, WM, browser, etc.), rather than everything glued together and forced on user (like in Windows). I think this is the weakest and most annoying point in Windows that OS is inseparable of User Interface. I like the freedom that I can select the UI I like, but not to be married with it.
The fact of the matter is that FBSD rejects this notion because the community thinks that it's command line installer is good enough. Decades ago, it WAS good enough. Today, it's crap. It's been crap for a very long time. Graphical installers have been created, but FBSD couldn't be bothered to use them. PC-BSD had one. GhostBSD has one.
 
On usage statistics, i.e. (Linux > FreeBSD):
A group of people love to ask this question: why Linux went up, and FreeBSD didn't, 80s I suppose!
Then, there's another group, trying to rationalise the situation. I've heard the stories. court, UNIX, phone number, etc.
I prefer to go with Black Swan theory (Nicholas Taleb). I think Linux happened, because things happen. Random things happen. A mini/semi version of Black Swan.
It's already been documented why Linux happened. Linux specifically said that if the AT&T vs BSD court case hadn't happened, he would've never written Linux. That's straight from the horse's mouth. It's not a random thing. Even the court case wasn't a random thing. The BSDs did nothing to get themselves over the stench that the court case cast upon them. None of them did anything to improve their image. Even simple things, such as improve their installer. They did nothing to make their system welcoming to new users. As a result, new users went to Linux -which actively recruited users.
 
Actually, I've been a FBSD user since the late 1990s. I've literally watched it happen. These aren't assumptions, & I already know why things are the way they are.
If you've been watching it's development since the 90's, you would understand the status quo with regards to the desktop. You have no one to blame but yourself. Your disappointment is simply misplaced.
 
If you've been watching it's development since the 90's, you would understand the status quo with regards to the desktop. You have no one to blame but yourself. Your disappointment is simply misplaced.
"Status quo" isn't synonymous with "correct path forward". And just so you know, the community wasn't always this blockheaded. Try again.
 
There seems to be no shortage of such individuals to work on the Linux kernel. The fact of the matter is that such people are actively choosing to work on various aspects of Linux instead of various aspects of FreeBSD.
The vast majority of people contributing to Linux are employees who do so as their job. Intel, IBM, Oracle, RedHat, Microsoft, Samsung, Suse, and so on. Which makes sense: they all use huge quantities of Linux (mostly servers, but some companies use Linux machines as desktops too), so both large users and companies in the computer industry contribute to Linux. Not out of charity, but to develop the things they need, or which enables their sales. Several of these companies have hundreds of people working on nothing other than Linux development (it might be thousands at the largest ones).

In contrast, FreeBSD is mostly developed by volunteers who are not paid; I think the total number of fulltime paid FreeBSD developers can be counted on fingers. The rest is done by volunteers. And volunteers will work on whatever volunteers want to work on. If you order a volunteer who is interested in kernel code or low-level utilities to work on GUI or DE instead, they'll probably just stop working on FreeBSD.

Given the small number of developers, it makes sense to focus on the core: the base OS (kernel and core utilities), and easy/convenient configurability.
 
"Status quo" isn't synonymous with "correct path forward". And just so you know, the community wasn't always this blockheaded. Try again.
My point is that you're sticking your head in the sand as to why FreeBSD hasn't been on "the correct path" in terms of using the desktop. It's simply willful naivety at best. Do you realize how incredibly hard it is to write graphics drivers? Or how difficult it is incorporate API/ABI stability if the committers were to ship X11 by default? Or how much work is involved with providing a usable toolkit that's not filled without Linuxisms? Considering FreeBSD's historical target audience; it would be a zero sum game.

The developers have actually made good strides to get pretty important things working; namely DRM in base, and Linuxulator improvements. Again, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you're not satisfied with how FreeBSD isn't following your ideological trajectory; YOU can start by contributing to the cause.
 
or have you not ever heard of Android?
That's like saying FreeBSD is used everywhere because it runs on the PS4.

These "bastardised" versions of a free OS do not benefit anyone and don't really have a bearing on what is good engineering.

And honestly, the fact that FreeBSD is now importing Linux code means that Linux has already surpassed FreeBSD. Its a harsh reality, but it's reality all the same.
It works both ways. Linux imports many things from the BSDs. sudo, openssh, zfs and a number of drivers. You will notice that Linux must display that classic Berkley license notice? (I know that must upset a lot of zealots!)

Linux does focus on graphics (much to the detriment of other areas). So FreeBSD is pulling that work in (with a lot of manpower and effort). However unlike Linux, graphics does not rule us. For many, it could be stripped out. Notice some of it is in ports and not even in the kernel? We have very few drivers that do that, showing low priority. Same reason why xorg isn't in base.

You may also know that drivers aren't something that can simply be "taken". They often need complete reengineering to integrate with a completely different kernel. Many drivers that people *think* FreeBSD takes are really just integer constants from Linux header files, originally reverse engineered due to lack of correct documentation. Lack of technical knowledge drives this silly Linux rumour. If Windows had a culture of open-source drivers, both Linux and FreeBSD would be "taking" drivers from Windows. Would that make Windows superior?

each of those projects failed for different reasons -none of which have anything to do with desktops & themes. Nice try, though.
Why do you think they always fail? If they provided anything meaningful (other than themes of course).

Markets can only hold 3 leaders. The desktop is no different. Right now, those 3 leaders are Windows, Mac, & Linux
3... why? Is that how many cats you have? Which hole did you pull that number from? Were you around in the UNIX wars? How many leaders were there then?

And Phones? Android, iOS.... What is the 3rd? Windows phone?

Also, modern users are users who aren't stuck in the 1970s, in terms of how to interact with computers.

So basically not a useful market for an alternative operating system. Windows and macOS are great products for them.
 
I'm on these forums to address issues.
Wrong place.

 
Nobody complains about Amazon, IBM, Microsoft servers and Oracle not making their machines and software easier for the casual user.
That's correct. In case of Microsoft, just take PowerShell for example. It's a heavenly nightmare. Good luck with finding your way through: regedit.exe, secpol.msc, gpedit.msc, etc.

To be correct, Linux did not start on 80's, but (according to Wikipedia) on 1991.
Thanks for correction.

Also, modern users are users who aren't stuck in the 1970s,
Fair enough.
 
It seems to be the FBSD community's position that rejecting the average user is a successful approach. This is a failed strategy that continues to fail each decade.
You seem to think that FreeBSD is failing. I very much disagree. I think it is succeeding spectacularly. It creates a reliable, well-built, easy-to-use OS, with some of the best file system technology (UFS and ZFS) out there. The system is stable from release to release, has good support for common hardware (x86 in 32- and 64-bit mode and common interfaces), and is super easy to maintain and upgrade. It makes for an excellent server.

Clearly, hardware support for display hardware is not something the volunteers are terribly interested in. And GUI/DE stuff gets minimal effort, fundamentally just lightweight porting of things that are developed on and for Linux. If that bothers you, then stop using it for GUI/DE purposes. Or volunteer to fix it: Quit your day job, and start working fulltime on it.
 
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The vast majority of people contributing to Linux are employees who do so as their job. Intel, IBM, Oracle, RedHat, Microsoft, Samsung, Suse, and so on. Which makes sense: they all use huge quantities of Linux (mostly servers, but some companies use Linux machines as desktops too), so both large users and companies in the computer industry contribute to Linux. Not out of charity, but to develop the things they need, or which enables their sales. Several of these companies have hundreds of people working on nothing other than Linux development (it might be thousands at the largest ones).

In contrast, FreeBSD is mostly developed by volunteers who are not paid; I think the total number of fulltime paid FreeBSD developers can be counted on fingers. The rest is done by volunteers. And volunteers will work on whatever volunteers want to work on. If you order a volunteer who is interested in kernel code or low-level utilities to work on GUI or DE instead, they'll probably just stop working on FreeBSD.

Given the small number of developers, it makes sense to focus on the core: the base OS (kernel and core utilities), and easy/convenient configurability.
Which further disproves your assertion of the lack of such developers. The problem is exactly what I said it was -the FBSD community is running off such people, instead of recruiting & welcoming them.
 
My point is that you're sticking your head in the sand as to why FreeBSD hasn't been on "the correct path" in terms of using the desktop. It's simply willful naivety at best. Do you realize how incredibly hard it is to write graphics drivers? Or how difficult it is incorporate API/ABI stability if the committers were to ship X11 by default? Or how much work is involved with providing a usable toolkit that's not filled without Linuxisms? Considering FreeBSD's historical target audience; it would be a zero sum game.
No, my head isn't in the sand. You're merely making excuses for poor execution. And yes, I know how hard it is to write those drivers. I also know that there was a point where the Linux & FBSD communities shared a common DRM tree. What happened? The FBSD part of the tree fell behind. And now, years later, the OS is behind & is playing catch up...rather unsuccessfully.
The developers have actually made good strides to get pretty important things working; namely DRM in base, and Linuxulator improvements. Again, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you're not satisfied with how FreeBSD isn't following your ideological trajectory; YOU can start by contributing to the cause.
In reality, what they've done is import Linux code & started trying to duct tape it into working. Considering what the FBSD community has turned into, I'd honestly rather contribute to GhostBSD.
 
The amount of disrespect towards the developers is astonishing.
The disrespect isn't for the developers, its for the rest of the community. It's not the developers who're trying to shut down any form of discussion about GUIs, it's the community. So, no I'm not blaming the developers -I'm explicitly blaming the community.
 
I'd honestly rather contribute to GhostBSD.
You realize GhostBSD IS FreeBSD, right? What they do rests on the hands and work of the FreeBSD committers. Saying FreeBSD is dead because they're not following your idea of where the project should go; you're shitting on the hard work they've put in. I don't think anyone here is advocating against an OOTB experiene with FreeBSD. We're simply telling you why that hasn't been the case, and why it's a difficult task to execute. You can start showing some respect by congradulating the developers on getting DRM et. al. into base, then make your contributions.
 
It's already been documented why Linux happened. Linux specifically said that if the AT&T vs BSD court case hadn't happened, he would've never written Linux. That's straight from the horse's mouth.
Yes, we've heard that. I went drinking beer with Linus a few times in the mid- and late 90s (before he moved to the US, before he had kids, matter-of-fact before he even had a steady girlfriend). Just like many others, Linus had hardware that was capable of running a real operating system (a 386), and couldn't find a good free operating system. I was in the same situation in the early 90s; I tried buying BSDi (386BSD was not ready to be installed yet), but there was a series of problems that prevented me getting BSD (biggest one: incompatibility with hardware, both networking and display). So I installed Linux on my server at home around 93 or so.

But you seem to think that the current decision of what direction Linux proceeds in is made by Linus. Nothing could be further from the truth. Linus himself is a minor contributor to the source code. There is 1 Linus Torvalds, and there are thousands of Linux developers who work for Intel or IBM.

The BSDs did nothing to get themselves over the stench that the court case cast upon them. None of them did anything to improve their image. Even simple things, such as improve their installer. They did nothing to make their system welcoming to new users.
Sorry, that's bullshit. You seem to think that the direction of Linux is set by individual users. That's utter nonsense. Users use the system, they don't develop it. Some users like it so much, they graduate to be developers and contributors. But those are not really relevant. What really matters is something like the CEO of IBM deciding that Linux is a strategic asset, and investing a few hundred people (a hundred developers and the various support roles) into making Linux more usable for IBM (feel free to substitute Intel or Oracle or ... for IBM in this example). Or a company like RedHat or Suse deciding to take a few dozen M$ of venture capital investment and making a go of being a Linux contributor and distributor. And you can be sure that the CEO of IBM (or Intel or a VC ...) will not be swayed by a more comfortable installer. They have staff, they look at numbers, they look at strategy and market.

Installer and the "stench of the lawsuit" (which BSD won overwhelmingly) have nothing to do with it. Your mistake is that you think that your personal experience (as an individual amateur desktop user) is relevant to the big picture. It is not. 99% of all computers in the world that run Linux do not have a desktop (they are servers!), and the vast majority of Linux desktops are being used in a corporate setting.
 
That's like saying FreeBSD is used everywhere because it runs on the PS4.
Not really. FreeBSD is an entire OS. Linux is only a kernel. Also, PS4 isn't used everywhere. But more importantly, I never made reference to ANYTHING being used everywhere -those were YOUR words. You're attempting to make an argument against something that I've never said. That's intellectually dishonest.
These "bastardised" versions of a free OS do not benefit anyone and don't really have a bearing on what is good engineering.
There's nothing bastardized about android. This isn't even remotely a good argument. Additionally, good engineering doesn't include importing supposedly bad engineering into your own repository.
It works both ways. Linux imports many things from the BSDs. sudo, openssh, zfs and a number of drivers. You will notice that Linux must display that classic Berkley license notice? (I know that must upset a lot of zealots!)
Is that your argument? Linux does it too? Well, how's that working out for Linux & how's it working out for FBSD?
Linux does focus on graphics (much to the detriment of other areas). So FreeBSD is pulling that work in (with a lot of manpower and effort). However unlike Linux, graphics does not rule us. For many, it could be stripped out. Notice some of it is in ports and not even in the kernel? We have very few drivers that do that, showing low priority. Same reason why xorg isn't in base.
On the desktop, graphics are far more important than on the server. So, in order to compete on the desktop, graphics are extremely necessary. So, it's not a matter of being "ruled". The fact of the matter is that stripping out graphics isn't going to fly on a desktop, for the same reason that DOS isn't popular on desktops.
You may also know that drivers aren't something that can simply be "taken". They often need complete reengineering to integrate with a completely different kernel. Many drivers that people *think* FreeBSD takes are really just integer constants from Linux header files, originally reverse engineered due to lack of correct documentation. Lack of technical knowledge drives this silly Linux rumour. If Windows had a culture of open-source drivers, both Linux and FreeBSD would be "taking" drivers from Windows. Would that make Windows superior?
Actually, the developers that first tried to report DRM attempted to re-engineer them. It didn't work...at all. In fact, the effort was tried numerous times, & subsequently scrapped numerous times. Eventually, the decision made was to change as little code as possible & just write a Linux-style wrapper around the DRM code. What's ironic is that none of them stopped to think about what type of driver architecture would make the most sense for FBSD, itself & just write that. DRM is precisely the result of deciding what type of driver architecture would be best for Linux.
Why do you think they always fail? If they provided anything meaningful (other than themes of course).
I know exactly why they failed. And they don't always fail, because there are other projects that are still going.
3... why? Is that how many cats you have? Which hole did you pull that number from? Were you around in the UNIX wars? How many leaders were there then?
I don't have any cats. It's 3 because market conditions will only allow 3. That's basic business knowledge. The fact that you don't know this is alarming. The Unix wars proves my point. Where are all of those Unix vendors at now? What you fail to realize is that only ONE Unix style system could come out on top. Linux killed them all, but the truth is that FreeBSD should've been left standing on top.
And Phones? Android, iOS.... What is the 3rd? Windows phone?
For a while, yes it was windows phone.
So basically not a useful market for an alternative operating system. Windows and macOS are great products for them.
The alternative OS that should be standing on the top is FBSD. For some reason, the community doesn't want to be on top.
 
Wrong place.

If you truly think that my argument is "FBSD isn't like Linux", then you are delusional. The point is that FBSD is supposed to be orders of magnitude BETTER than Linux. And in the past, it WAS. However, most of you are fighting progress -and have been doing so for decades.
 
the FBSD community is running off such people, instead of recruiting & welcoming them.
Do you seriously believe that big funders and power users of FreeBSD read these forums, before deciding whether to invest $50M into FreeBSD or into Linux?

No. They have their technical experts evaluate the system, they talk to the likes of Kirk and Debbie Goodkin. They don't look at your or my opinion on a chat group.
 
You seem to think that FreeBSD is failing. I very much disagree. I think it is succeeding spectacularly. It creates a reliable, well-built, easy-to-use OS, with some of the best file system technology (UFS and ZFS) out there. The system is stable from release to release, has good support for common hardware (x86 in 32- and 64-bit mode and common interfaces), and is super easy to maintain and upgrade. It makes for an excellent server.

Clearly, hardware support for display hardware is not something the volunteers are terribly interested in. And GUI/DE stuff gets minimal effort, fundamentally just lightweight porting of things that are developed on and for Linux. If that bothers you, then stop using it for GUI/DE purposes. Or volunteer to fix it: Quit your day job, and start working fulltime on it.
FBSD is now in the position of having to get ZFS updates from OpenZFS, which is actually a Linux-based ZFS tree. FBSD had the lead in ZFS. How did Linux usurp FBSD with the source code of a file system that it can't even keep in it's own kernel tree? How do we keep losing, & why are you so comfortable with it?
 
I often wonder what people who are furious about the market share of operating systems would be like if they had something real to be angry about. It’s a scary thought.
No one is actually furious. You're adding to the topic elements that aren't actually there. Just because a person participates in a conversation doesn't mean that they're furious. To even suggest it is being intellectually dishonest.
 
Do you seriously believe that big funders and power users of FreeBSD read these forums, before deciding whether to invest $50M into FreeBSD or into Linux?

No. They have their technical experts evaluate the system, they talk to the likes of Kirk and Debbie Goodkin. They don't look at your or my opinion on a chat group.
I never claimed that they did. Why would they have to? I'm sure that their technical experts are fully capable of seeing the same things. Considering the fact that they're mostly putting the money into Linux now, it's reasonable to assume that they're seeing FBSD as not being competitive against Linux these days. And that sucks, because FBSD used to be so far ahead of Linux.
 
OK, so FreeBSD is switching from its own ZFS source tree (which is all forked eventually from the core ZFS one) to a new one that is shared with Linux. I don't see that as a problem, I see that as progress.

And I don't care about someone having the lead. The developers know where to get the best quality and best efficiency source code for ZFS for, and I let them make that decision. This is not a race, and sharing source code with Linux is not necessarily a bad thing.

You seem to think that the import thing is "losing" or "not losing". Why do you care whether we los? I care that FreeBSD is a good OS for the purpose I use it for, and it is EXCELLENT. I don't hate Linux ... matter-of-fact, I use tens of thousands of Linux machines every day as part of my job, and I have a handful of them at home too. Linux is also an excellent solution, but for a different set of tasks than FreeBSD. And this is not a "we" thing: I am not a part of the FreeBSD tribe, and I don't see other tribes as the enemy. I am a happy user of FreeBSD (and a happy user of MacOS, and of Linux, and of Windows, and the other OSes have taken a back seat), and I try to help FreeBSD a little bit here and there.
 
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