Is FreeBSD (already) ready for the new era of IT?

G

gqgunhed

First of all: I do not want to start a flame war and I do love my FreeBSD servers and admire the constant high-quality work of the FreeBSD community.
I am a vendor-independent senior technical consultant for big enterprises and public customers here in Germany, so I think I might have kind of an overview.

What my concern and question here is: I feel like FreeBSD does not get the awareness in the market that it deserves. One part may be the (IMHO extraordinary) BSD license the other part may be the Linux hype.

The "new era" I mentioned in the title of this post must read as: "cloud, big data, mobile and social computing". From an enterprise point of view, CIOs have to reduce cost while at the same time reduce their time-to-market aka deployment of systems and applications. This can and must be all achieved through a higher grade of automation, monitoring and management.
As far as I can see most admins nowadays are capable of Windows Server administration, but the number of UNIX/Linux admins is decreasing.

The big server vendors out there are more and more combining their hardware sections into one converged infrastructure with a more and more intelligent and simplifying management software layer, which I think is indeed needed to get the agility to respond to load and software requirement changes in the world of cloud and big data (I know these terms very well from my day-to-day work, so no marketing trash talk here).

How does FreeBSD integrate into these environments and how does the FreeBSD community/do we plan to avoid to become a lonesome silo for some left-over UNIX geeks? I think that FreeBSD is a tremendously powerful, consistent and stable platform but I have my doubts if it will have its place in the future software driven data centers. Some terms to throw in may be: VMware or e.g. HP CloudService self-service portals, software/patch mangement, OpenStack and OpenFlow, etc.

What are your opinions?
Thanks in advance.
 
gqgunhed said:
I think that FreeBSD is a tremendously powerful, consistent and stable platform but I have my doubts if it will have its place in the future software driven data centers.
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So it looks like you already answered your own question if there was ever a question. Move on pal and don't worry about us.
 
gqgunhed said:
I think that FreeBSD is a tremendously powerful, consistent and stable platform but I have my doubts if it will have its place in the future software driven data centers.
Some terms to throw in may be: VMware or e.g. HP CloudService self-service portals, software/patch mangement, OpenStack and OpenFlow, etc.

What are your opinions?
Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
My opinion is that there will always be a place for a consistent and stable platform; on the desk of me and many others here. If you want to call this a silo of old Unix geeks, I will accept that badge of honor. Once all the dust around the cloud business has settled, we will still be here and use this OS. Maybe FreeBSD does not have a place in these data centers of the cloud (I doubt that), but the question is if we really want that place. If HP et al want this, they know where the donation page is.

Also, I do not want to let these 'highly dynamic development processes' leave their finger prints all around one of the finest operating systems I use, so the question is "will FreeBSD still be the robust, well designed OS it is now when it is forced into this environment?
 
Hmm, seems like some people here got the intention of my question wrong. FreeBSD is by far my favorite operating system and I strongly believe in the principles of security, stability, open source etc. I love my commandline and an operating system I can totally rely on.

@Oko
Move on pal and don't worry about us.
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Sorry, I cannot leave "us" here as that includes me too :-)

@Crivens:
Ok, the part with
dust around cloud business has settled
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and
we will still be here
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is the point that I wanted to hear. So if the community is not worried about this development and we will always have our place to be I'm all fine.

I was just a little bit worried about our future :-) and wanted to collect some opinions. IMHO I think FreeBSD is in the category of the best hidden treasures of IT, where on the other side Linux gets all the show with all its distros and GNU mishmash... There's lots of turmoil in the industry nowadays (paradigm shift again: mainframes -> desktops aka fat clients -> mobile computing, cloud, big data) and most people just want to click some funny icons and don't care about the technology beneath it. They just want it to happen.
Recently I gave a talk at a high school to explain internet basics/network technology to students (TCP/IP, DNS, LAN, etc.) but some of them just wondered: "Why so complicated? Look at my smartphone, we have internet: always, everywhere." They don't get what is needed to get this "internet thingy" work :-( and even don't care. Maybe even worse, part of the next generation of "admins" can only click on buttons and must rely on some software stack written by some corporation to do all the magic.

And there will be some BSD professionals who know what is really happening down in the infrastructure.
 
Sorry, this may be longer than needed, but I have not the time to make it shorter.
Also, some ranting is fun sometimes :)

gqgunhed said:
Recently I gave a talk at a high school to explain internet basics/network technology to students (TCP/IP, DNS, LAN, etc.) but some of them just wondered: "Why so complicated? Look at my smartphone, we have internet: always, everywhere." They don't get what is needed to get this "internet thingy" work :-( and even don't care. Maybe even worse, part of the next generation of "admins" can only click on buttons and must rely on some software stack written by some corporation to do all the magic.

And there will be some BSD professionals who know what is really happening down in the infrastructure.
Better now?
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That is a scary scenario, but one that is up for some time. I was doing my PhD while the switch from "Diplom" to "Master" was done, and I saw what was cut out of the classes to make them fit the new time frame. The comments were all along the lines of "Those poor buggers...". A friend of me stated that this switch was the best that could happen to us "old Geeks" in terms of job security.

And that is the exact same thing I see in FreeBSD, it is old school engineering (as in, build to last) and does not even pretend to be the easy way. I could compare much of the software we see these days to some rodeo clown riding a tall unicycle while juggling shiny expensive things, and the cycle gets higher with each release. Some day, this is going to break. And then someone will notice those guys/gals sitting there on the fence in their deck chairs with some cool beverages while they rise the "told you so" boards.

I'm fine with this, but can not speak for all here. Let them drive their cash cows into the ground, they want not to listen to reason. They can wreck Linux for all I care (well, it would be sad, but that is their fight to go to, they have a big enough user base and do not need my help there), but do not want this to happen to things I care about. And I have given up on some of the software I see because the design is truely horrible inside and suggestions about this are not taken well. So I can choose to fight a loosing fight there, decide to like the "but it is shiny", or leave them alone.

Ultimately, a computer is an object which extends your abilities, for better or worse. I do not want to make that possible for anyone, that is why most places on earth have gun laws. Actually, a court in Munich once ruled that a computer is an object of danger comparable to a gun and needs to be locked away from those under age. Making it possible for any person of questionable morale to sift trough all data available to exploit people - well - it has led to persons of questionable morale doing exactly that. I am actually happy that FreeBSD has such a low public profile, that way it attracts far less trolls and limits the amout of "Dunning Kruger" going on here.

So, returning to the original question:
A good engineer not only thinks about if something is possible, but also about if that actually needs doing or should better not be done.
Going to the new smart cloud place? What would be the motivation? What is the danger? Do we want to go there? And if we want, we can see what our chances would be there.

And with that I depart for the night. Good evening to all of you.
 
Thanks @Crivens for your great answer.
Your paragraph about old school engineering, the rodeo clowns and "told you so" is exactly what I feel and what my motivation is. Not shiny and following the newest hype, but rock solid.
Ref big data: And throwing all my personal data to all those corporations and governments (and sometimes even pay for it) is something that makes me feel very uncomfortable. I try to reduce my "digital footprint" here as possible and want software where I can decide (look at code) what my computer does.
Happy days
 
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A few days ago, I was looking through some articles about all the new technologies for the web nowadays. About being able to establish communication across the net for programs and languages and so forth. Then it hit me. All of the things they do and talk about all come back to Unix and C. Everything! There is no difference!

For many years I would complain that I couldn't understand why these people were inventing all these workarounds, methods, programs, languages, etc, all to do what Unix and C could do decades ago. People would tell me that Unix and C were old and no one used them anymore yet Nodejs is written in C, compiles javascript to assembly, and has a C interface for your own code while wrapping its functions around standard Unix calls using the same syntax.
 
No offense intended but I get the feeling the OP doesn't have the overview of the market which he claims to have. Because quite frankly; what you're describing isn't something happening only to FreeBSD, the decline of knowledge and expertise within the ICT industry is something you see happening all over the place. Including, and I know we're not in the offtopic section but I'm going to mention it anyway, including Microsoft Windows.

The reason I mention this is because of the remark of people being able to click buttons and do stuff like that, I immediately associate that with Windows because of obvious reasons.

Here's the thing, without going too much offtopic here I do like to state that in general there's more to Windows than just the desktop where you can click stuff. There's a whole infrastructure beneath it which allows an administrator to basically do whatever he wants without having to mess with interface too much. Referring, for example, to the MMC structure; the console which powers most administrative tasks. From enhanced firewall settings right down to services management or viewing your logfiles. That's MMC. Yet there's the exact same thing going on in "the other camp" if you will. A lot of administrators these days know exactly how to reach the event viewer (to view the logfiles) by using the control panel, but their mouth will drop open when you simply open a command line (cmd.exe) and fire up eventvwr.msc.

And you know what you sometimes hear in "the other camp"? People get a feeling that tools such as mmc.exe or more technical stuff such as PowerShell don't get the attention it deserves.

You know what? They're right.

But in my opinion they forget a key fundamental part. At least, that's what I think it is. In my opinion the existence of that 'gap' if you will is exactly what protects those environments from getting dumbed down in the first place. Yes, there's a learning curve before you'll understand and master stuff such as FreeBSD, MMC and the likes. But that learning curve also makes sure that once you did manage to make yourself familiar with the environment you'll also understand more of the environment itself and know what it takes to use it.

I'd rather have 3 people using a tool and understanding exactly what it is they're doing than making it possible for a majority of people to use it while all they know is "If I click this then that happens". Because the very moment that tool doesn't work all of a sudden those 3 people will most likely know exactly what to do to fix it. Whereas the 'masses' would become lost.

FreeBSD doesn't need more attention, the Windows administrative tools don't need the extra attention. All it needs is people willing to learn how to use it.

And when looking at the history of FreeBSD I get the impression that's also exactly the approach being used here.
 
What we're seeing is just the ultimate effect of the unyielding, implacable long term gorilla weight of monopoly, pressing relentlessly against the alternatives, as a hurricane lashes against the woobly stilts of the lonely cottage, wiping it away along with (eventually) the little peninsula it stood on.

When a force dominates the market for generations, the most recent generation sees the lack of choice as normal, and thinks of the alternatives (if they are known even) as being not worth any consideration. So, many students have never had any ideas about using anything other than the "standard" monopolized system. When monopolies reach a domination level approaching 100 percent, they are able to prey on a basic psychological instinct, which is to go with the flow, albeit at the expense of the narrowing/closing of the mind.

Many schools have dropped Unix ... and the extrapolation of that seems pretty simple to conceive.

But hey - there's still room within the arena of those small, ubiquitous devices - increasingly pervading our every space (some may say "unfortunately"). There's some play in alternative architectures (not yet dominated for any purpose). MS surely does not yet dominate this latest computing frontier. There is still hope in the realm ...

An alternative system must have more than 2% penetration. At the 2% level, we're just the oddballs sitting in our silos. We have more fun, tho...
 
I may be wrong, but it sounds like you want FreeBSD to chase after Linux and/or other 'hot trends'. Personally and professionally, I don't see the value in FreeBSD becoming a 'me-too' platform. Wiping over all that differentiates FreeBSD would only serve to alienate all the people who for those reasons choose it over Linux, OpenSolaris, what-have-you. Moreover, it implies (to me at least), that the strength of the BSD community is not enough to keep FreeBSD alive and thriving.

If you just want FreeBSD to be a bigger brand-name, so it's an easy sell to your coworkers, clients, etc. - then that's a different issue.
 
ronaldlees said:
When a force dominates the market for generations, the most recent generation sees the lack of choice as normal, and thinks of the alternatives (if they are known even) as being not worth any consideration. So, many students have never had any ideas about using anything other than the "standard" monopolized system. When monopolies reach a domination level approaching 100 percent, they are able to prey on a basic psychological instinct, which is to go with the flow, albeit at the expense of the narrowing/closing of the mind.

Many schools have dropped Unix ... and the extrapolation of that seems pretty simple to conceive.
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Reminds me of college. Once a greybeard professor told me to my face, "Unix is dead". Most people in the class seemed content with Windows and took no interest in anything else. Some would even get annoyed with me for using Linux/BSD. :P
 
@@ucsdboy,
I dont' want us to chase after Linux and be with all the 'new shiny things' :) It was more of a concern being overrun or just forgotten by the masses in the sense @ronaldlees stated. Over the last years I constantly try to convince or educate people to rethink their 'standard software' approach for specific systems.
Throughout the responses to my inital question I understood the community (represented by the different posters) is fine with being a operating system for the few, the knowing, the professionals. Not standard, not for the masses but for those willing to learn and understand.
I am definitely sure that the FreeBSD community is very strong but IMHO we must be careful not to get too far into the background. FreeBSD is such a great operating system and has such an extremely rich community but you know: "the unknown giant". :)

So I conclude that: Yes, we are definitely ready for this 'new era' but we'll do that our way. :beergrin Like we did in the past. Keep up the good work! Have fun and many thanks to the community.
 
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Seems like Michael W. Lucas gave a talk at NYCBSDCon 2014 that adds nicely to this thread: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buo5JlMnGPI
What makes the BSD operating systems special? Why should you deploy your applications on BSD? Why does the BSD community keep growing, and why do Linux sites like DistroWatch say that BSD is where the interesting development work is happening? We'll cover the not-so-obvious reasons why BSD still stands tall after almost 40 years.
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At least as far as I can tell after watching the first few minutes ;)
 
I still struggle to understand the rise of linux compared to BSD ( Linux, which I would consider a kind of a smart bogan's OS, ... i.e. tested & patched up working system with chaos underneath, ... true or not, .. my current impression ) .

From the outside looking, BSD seem less of a fancy trendy thing, but the much better base to build from.
"Concern" mainly is the large user base linux has ( and therefor a testing based approach leading to stability on top a essentially flawed platform, .. again imho)

So nowadays linux seems a viable option, though my heart tells me BSD is much better laid out. The conservative approach and small user base, cause it to lag behind. Even though due to the better system architecture it may lose the battle on the long run.
 
DeafFatalBruno said:
The conservative approach and small user base, cause it to lag behind. Even though due to the better system architecture it may lose the battle on the long run.
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That is, I should think, the reason. *BSD has a more 'traditional' approach, which limits the influence of world+dog on things. In Linux, you can yell loud enough and get some feedback or something moving in your direction. Enough followers will move things in your direction. In *BSD, you need to convince a small set of people that what you do is good. These are those who work in it anyway, so your arguments better be good. Saying that something is "cool" will most likely not cut it.

Reacting more on push that on plan will produce faster movement, but it will lead to problems and requires more efford to re-visit places and do them right later on. This can be done if you have a user base that accepts this (constant change), but I am not among that. Changing something because of "had to be done" is OK, but doing so because of "we did a rush job the first time, and the second time, and now we need to fix the fixes that fixed..." - you get the picture - that is not OK for me. It will be OK for those who do not know better. But for those, it is not neccesary that things stay as it should be - they are accustomed to changes. It does not bother them, they accept the answer. Maybe they do not care about the reasons or consequences. Maybe they do not understand it. But they are OK with Linux.

That would be an interesting research for some student. How is the skill set distribution in the population and which operating systems cover what bands in that distribution? And why?
 
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