Is there a real interest in pushing FreeBSD on the desktop space?

freezr

freezr

Hi there,

this is something that I have never dared to ask... But I couldn't resist anymore...

Is there a real interest in pushing FreeBSD on the desktop space?
I have the impression the answer is: not really!

And perhaps the project is hoping that someone else would bring this chance seriously, and we saw and there are a bunch of OSs built on top of FreeBSD but too small to have any gravitational attraction.

I saw that in the Linux realm the desktop has been the leverage and force to gain traction over the market and to get attention by the hardware manufacturers, for example Ubuntu built a small empire just because made Debian easy to install.

What I am trying to say is that Desktop space is not just a playground for nerds and geeks, it has the benefits to populate internet searches and to leverage a common and positive shared vision, so eventually for Linux this constant exposure let hardware manufacturers start considering it as platform to dedicate at least a bloated driver.

I wonder why the FreeBSD Foundation is voluntary avoiding the opportunity to improve the own perception and to get better hardware support directly from the manufacturers for instance.

Perhaps this decision was made years ago and I missed it because I arrived late…

Long story short a dedicated Spin-off Desktop version can be considered a showcase and an easy approach to show the benefits of using FreeBSD on the server side, but this must a project with same effort the foundation put on the current FreeBSD.

Anyway, just curiosity... 🙏
 
freezr said:
Is there a real interest in pushing FreeBSD on the desktop space?
Click to expand...
What is there to push? FreeBSD works well as a desktop for many of us here (and elsewhere).

freezr said:
I have the impression the answer is: not really!
Click to expand...
Really? KDE seems to have a different opinion: https://freebsd.kde.org/
If you have a look at the handbook and the ports you'll find that there are plenty of desktop options available to choose from.
There are also out-of-the-box desktop "distributions" built around FreeBSD such as:
  • GhostBSD
  • NomadBSD
  • HelloSystem

freezr said:
I saw that in the Linux realm the desktop
Click to expand...
In my opinion, there is no such thing as "the desktop" you use an operating system of your choosing to build a desktop. FreeBSD works well for that too (depending your needs & requirements).

I for one switched to FreeBSD as my desktop about a year and half ago after a decade of satisfying server experiences and I have not looked back a single time.
 
The "desktop" is dead, at least when looking at the "mainstream" user interface. It once was mainstream, nowadays it's a niche.

That said, I really don't see what's there to "push". I want/need a desktop (partially because of my job). FreeBSD fulfills my needs best right now.

Yep, that's it. And this thread feels like the gazillion-th deja-vu.
 
freezr said:
I wonder why the FreeBSD is voluntary avoiding the opportunity
Click to expand...
FreeBSD is not avoiding anything. Canonical, RedHat, etc. are companies that pay people to develop whatever product they want to offer or sell. FreeBSD is not a company, it can't just hire developers and tell them "now please work on desktop software". FreeBSD is the result of voluntary work from its community. If people want to do some work to improve it or add useful new features, they are welcome. By the way, the FreeBSD Foundation regularly offers financial support for projects that benefit lots of users but can't find the needed volunteers to do the work otherwise, for example currently the new WiFi drivers: https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-work/projects/

When it comes to interest: I, like many other people, am certainly interested in efforts to improve desktop usability. This includes better support for recent hardware (GPUs, WiFi cards...), better suspend/resume capabilities including suspend to disk, porting and developing new applications, etc.

However, while I would certainly like to see FreeBSD more widely used on desktop computers, I'm not interested in "pushing" it into the hands of users that have no interest in computers and don't know what they are doing (like the majority of Windows and Mac users are), otherwise it will become the same dumbed-down walled garden the mainstream OS have become today.
 
bsduck yes, the problem is that when people destroy their system its the fault of the system for letting them, so they think. There is a reason why huge parts of these "end-user friendly" systems hide a lot from even the "admin". You have to dumb down the interfaces to keep these users from shooting their own feet, and then blaming you for it. Sorry, when you shoot your own foot and blame the gun, I'll happily give you a bigger one which may or may not do the same thing... Wether it does is for us to know and for you to find out.
 
zirias@ said:
The "desktop" is dead, ...
Click to expand...
... and the future is the FreeBSD-Smartphone. :)

forums.freebsd.org

Let's start a new project : let's create a new mobile device powered by FreeBSD.

Regarding the Pinephone: 1. The first step would be to create a bootable image (Pinephone has an Allwinner 64, Pinephone pro has Rockckip RS 3399S). Arm mailing list may help with this. 3. Then get the image to the official website (freebsd.org/where). 4. Write a tutorial or make a youtube...
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

freezr thanks for this new thread as the latest popular one was closed by SirDice well before the weekend. :)

But let me give you this advice: If you want that your post does not get read completely, just put something in bold letters.
I'd have put this in bold:

freezr said:
I wonder why the FreeBSD is voluntary avoiding the opportunity to improve the own perception and to get better hardware support directly from the manufacturers for instance.
Click to expand...
This criticizes to the heart of the job of the FreeBSD-Foundation. Wow!
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Do people wonder why Torvalds and the Linux Foundation (whatever it's called) avoids the same opportunity? I don't see them developing or supporting any desktops of their own.
Click to expand...

I reply to you but this is intended for all...

Linux per it is only a component, but has been embraced by others, and the ones who understand to marketing their products through the desktop counterpart eventually had right.

Sure FreeBSD is governed by a non-profit foundation and base on volunteer work, for some extension Debian has a similar organization, however the latter often is claimed as "the universal operative system" while the slogan is "the power to serve"; which is quite declarative e and programmatic at the same time.

When I say a Desktop version I mean something that is more or less ready with all the right pieces right there, like Ubuntu for instance. MidnightBSD, GhostBSD, NomadBSD and HelloSystem, aren't related nor supported by the foundation, you can't not even ask about them.

Perhaps this thread is cyclic, I take my responsability, however how do you get interest in better hardware support if you don't offer a desktop alternative?

I'll say something like:

Hi, this is BeastieOS a Desktop operative system, ready to use, based on FreeBSD and promoted/endorsed by the FreeBSD Foundation; BeastieOS is meant for students, professionals and anyone else is interested in Unix-like operative systems... yada yada...
Click to expand...

It doesn't sound so bad, does it?
 
yuripv79 said:
Isn't this kind of threads exactly the "why is FreeBSD not like ..." that should be closed right from the start? And no, these threads (phone, desktop, etc.) do not help anything without doing the actual work.
Click to expand...

I updated the first post to avoid misunderstanding, I am talking more about something closer to "marketing strategies"...
 
Indeed, this kind of thread is pointless: We'll never get the answer here. Nor will we influence the universe much. So I'll just make a few minor comments:

freezr said:
Is there a real interest in pushing FreeBSD on the desktop space?
...
I wonder why the FreeBSD Foundation is ...
Click to expand...
You seem to think that there is a master plan, and an entity that is carefully planning what gets done. In the case of FreeBSD, that is mostly false. Much of the development is done by volunteers, who decide what they want to work on. The number of such volunteers is at least many dozen, probably low hundreds. There is a very small number of professional developers who get paid by their employers to improve FreeBSD. There is another very small number of professionals who are contracted by the FreeBSD foundation. The number of paid developers is probably single digits.

Now contrast that with Linux: Nearly all development there (both the kernel and GNU base, and the application and GUI work) is done by paid staff. They number in the thousands. Companies like Intel, Google, IBM, RedHat, and the Linux Foundation together probably pay the salary of thousands of developers. IBM alone had many hundreds even before it acquired RedHat.

To engineer, market and support a full desktop system takes lots and lots of manpower, which needs to be applied in a coherent and organized fashion. Such a thing doesn't exist in the FreeBSD world.

... and to get better hardware support directly from the manufacturers for instance.
Click to expand...
Are you suggesting that a company like Nvidia or Dell should invest dozens or hundreds of engineers into supporting FreeBSD GUIs? Look at the market share: Of all non-mobile devices (laptops and desktops), the market share of Windows is roughly 80-90%, nearly all of the rest is occupied by Mac OS, followed by Chromebooks. Total market share of other Unix-like operating systems (Linux and the BSDs) on the desktop market is about 2%. And of those 2%, the overwhelming fraction is Linux. My personal estimate is that the total market share of FreeBSD on the desktop is probably 0.01%, with a significant error margin. Looking at that, the number of engineers or $$$ that a company like Nvidia (or Dell or AMD or HP or Asus or ...) should put into FreeBSD is far too small to make any difference.

zirias@ said:
The "desktop" is dead, at least when looking at the "mainstream" user interface. It once was mainstream, nowadays it's a niche.
Click to expand...
And this is also true. Today, a very large fraction of all usage of the internet is via mobile platforms (phones, tablets). Of the desktop/laptop part, see above. But even there, many computers are mostly used for two things: (a) to run a web browser, and (b) to play games. Running other applications locally on a computer is far removed, and not done very often today.

I am actually a typical example of that trend. I have a very good laptop (an expensive Macbook Pro), and a pretty good desktop machine (a MacMini). On my laptop, I have only three applications installed locally: terminal emulator with ssh, emacs and python. Other than that, my laptop is used solely to run web browsers. Using the web and ssh to access remote computers accounts for 99% of the usage of my laptop; local emacs and python exist for editing my to-do list, and quickly testing python code snippets. On the desktop machine, there are two additional applications installed: Scan software for two scanners (one high-speed for normal document, one large format for sheet music). The only other application used locally on that machine is a minimal PDF editor (which comes free with the OS, called Preview). Really, I barely use the operating system at all, mostly to scan files, sometimes edit them, then upload them to a server.

The desktop is a battle from 15 or 20 years ago. Today it is mostly irrelevant.

Maybe we could suggest that FreeBSD become the best platform to run a web browser on (turning FreeBSD machines into de-facto Chromebooks). That is senseless, since that niche is already occupied by the OS that runs underneath Chrome (it's a Linux variant). Maybe we could suggest that FreeBSD become the perfect platform for high-end gaming. Again, that niche is occupied, by a combination of Windows and various dedicated game hardware platforms.

The place where FreeBSD shines is on small servers. And even there, it's market share is minuscule. I would guess that any of the hyperscalers (the FAANG + their chinese equivalent, and that list always ignores Microsoft) has more Linux servers (they each have many millions) than the total installed base of FreeBSD machines, by several orders of magnitude.
 
ralphbsz

My question was to understand if at a certain point has been decided if wasn't worth offering a desktop version, I am pretty sure at a certain there was some effort in that direction.

Project like Debian are entirely built up by volunteers perhaps the numbers differs, but I believe even from the contributors there is more interesting in the server space, and this makes sense too.

Anyway, thanks to all for your opinions! 👍
 
Why is there no real interest in pushing FreeBSD on servers? There is no out of the box official "server" version of FreeBSD - you have to configure from the base install manually to get the server you need.
Why is there no real interest in pushing FreeBSD on network appliances? There is no out of the box official "router/firewall" version of FreeBSD - you have to configure from the base install manually to get the network appliance you need.
Why is there no real interest in pushing FreeBSD in the desktop workstation space? There is no out of the box official "desktop" version of FreeBSD - you have to configure from the base install manually to get the desktop workstation you need.

Yet, you have pfSense, OpenSense, FreeNAS, GhostBSD, and many others who take the base FreeBSD, re-package it into those very products. This is how FreeBSD works. The base is there - it is up to you what you want to do with it. Quite frankly, those who want to "push" for a desktop FreeBSD should be looking at Nomad, Ghost, Midnight, Hello, etc., and join in the efforts those projects are doing.
 
ralphbsz said:
Running other applications locally on a computer is far removed, and not done very often today.
Click to expand...
I'll disagree with this. Sure, you hardly need more than a browser nowadays to receive/consume all kinds of content and interact with other people. But as soon as you want to produce something that isn't just text (or a web page), you'll do that in a dedicated application. Serious office work is not done in a web browser. Same with anything related to multimedia, be it graphic design, photo or video editing, music production, etc. Then come science/research, and all kinds of job-specific tasks that have their own dedicated software. These are definitely common use cases of desktop computers, which are all done in local applications.
 
ralphbsz said:
The place where FreeBSD shines is on small servers.
Click to expand...
Actually ... (ok, why just "small"? but that's a different topic) ... for me, it shines on a "desktop" just as well. All I wanted to say is that the concept of a desktop is a niche nowadays anyways 😉

As I already said, I need a desktop system for work. But that's not all, I also do a lot of "desktop stuff" as a hobbyist, like recording/transcoding video, creating print-quality documents (latex rules!), typesetting sheet music, composing music, emulating (and developing on) old 8bit machines, developing my own software, editing graphics (including own DSLR-photographs in raw formats), and so on. In fact, I think it's a shame and a loss that "desktops" were replaced by "weak" mobile/handheld stuff, but well ...

But then, why does FreeBSD "shine" here for me? In fact, very much the same reasons as for servers: It's well-designed, simple, respects POLA, if you take the time to learn how it works, this makes for super easy administration/maintenance and allows to really track down and analyze problems you might encounter. So, again, I really don't think it needs any "pushes". And most of the time, what people really want is adding some magic to "ease" installation/configuration as a desktop, which is exactly what I don't want, because any "magic" added will destroy the simple and clear design and therefore the ability to easily track down any issues.
 
jardows said:
Why is there no real interest in pushing FreeBSD on servers? [...]
Click to expand...

I respectfully disagree, there is full immersion in the server space, in fact:

The power to serve
Click to expand...

However FreeBSD is shaped to be quite agnostic even though, ZFS default settings, which is the most exposed feature, are design to handle a wide varieties of tasks.
 
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