Tag Archives: BSD

FreeBSD auf dem Desktop?

Ich halte nur einmal fest: mehr und mehr FreeBSD-Entwickler nutzen ein Apple-Gerät als Desktop[1], viele FreeBSD-Entwickler werden als Karteileichen geführt[2], ein Politikum ersetzt oftmals die Entwicklung[3]. Gegenteiliges Vorgehen: Linux natürlich, dort identifizieren sich die Entwickler mit ihrem Betriebssystem[4], wollen es überall sehen und fördern diesen Umstand auch aktiv. Anderer Schauplatz: OpenBSD. Selbst bei diesem freien Betriebssystem kann man mit 80+ Entwicklern erstaunliche Dinge bewirken, auch auf dem Desktop.

FreeBSD blieb in den 80er-Jahren stehen, glaubt an das “Alleinstellungsmerkmal” the power to serve und übersieht dabei geflissentlich, daß man einzig Mythen pflegt, jedoch kaum eine adäquate Entwicklung. Was hat man denn beispielsweise noch im Server-Bereich zu bieten? Stabilität? Klar, Linux läuft auf weitaus mehr Server-Hardware ohne Probleme, der “bleeding-edge”-Status der Ports ist eine ganz andere Geschichte in Server-Gefilden und dazu mangelt es an diversen inzwischen üblichen Technologien. Der sträflich vernachlässigte Desktop sorgt ganz nebenbei anderswo für den dringend benötigten Nachwuchs. Aber wie schon erwähnt, im Land der Mythen lebt es sich doch recht unbeschwert.

Letztens noch sah ich Bilder diverser Entwickler-Konferenzen … Apfel reiht sich an Apfel, mit nur seltenen Ausreißern in Form einiger BSD-Urgesteine. Schade drum, dieses System besaß einmal viel Potential, gab auch Anlaß zur Hoffnung[5], aber enttäuscht doch auf lange Sicht mehr und mehr. OpenBSD werde ich definitiv weiterhin meine Aufmerksamkeit widmen und dieses auch nutzen[6], daneben läuft Linux wo es eben paßt … FreeBSD erzeugt nur noch eine wohlige Erinnerung an einst glanzvolle Zeiten.

Shut up and code? Sicherlich, aber dort wo es eben Sinn macht und man kann heutzutage sicherlich seine Zeit sinnvoller vergeuden, als FreeBSD einen Iota seiner kostbaren Zeit zu opfern. Kein echter Abgesang, aber wer heutzutage mit FreeBSD glücklich werden möchte, der muß leidensfähig sein.

 

  1. schade um die Bemühungen der Mannen rund um PC-BSD [↩]
  2. man verfolge einmal die Mailingliste in Current regelmäßig und achte auf die selben Verdächtigen wieder und wieder [↩]
  3. siehe z.B. das Jahre andauernde Drama um das veraltete TeTeX in den Ports oder die bisherige Hemmschwelle bei WLan-Treiber-Entwicklung, usw. [↩]
  4. ebenfalls mit Vorsicht zu genießen, aber in der Regel kommt man zum Ziel [↩]
  5. neuer Scheduler, neuer USB-Stack, usw. [↩]
  6. ganz zu schweigen von DragonFlyBSD [↩]

ewww … NetBSD

Long time ago I started with NetBSD 1.x on my Amiga. It was a short-lived adventure, but a nice one. Once in a while I try a new release to get a glimpse on what’s going on in the “portable business”. But nowadays it’s more or less adventurous in terms of a major pain in the backside. I get on the same hardware, an Asus EEE900A, with different releases lots of different problems. Today I get no DRM with Intel GMA950 and no touchpad support, more precisely wsmouse doesn’t work, it uses pms elantech instead of pms synaptics. I don’t have any of those problems with Debian Squeeze, FreeBSD 8.2RC3 or OpenBSD 4.8, however it would be no problem on those operating systems to solve such a problem without compiling a new kernel. Is this really the only option in NetBSD, to compile a new kernel? Well I wouldn’t dare to try this task on my netbook with Intel Atom and its rather small SSD. For a portable operating system this is an epic fail in my opinion. NetBSD today is just far behind, even the so-called “firewall-OS” OpenBSD is superior in many aspects.

there are Daemons in your UNIX box

Many people equate the word ‘daemon’ with the word ‘demon,’ implying some kind of Satanic connection between Unix and the underworld. This is an egregious misunderstanding. ‘Daemon’ is actually a much older form of ‘demon’; daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person’s character or personality. The ancient Greeks’ concept of a ‘personal daemon’ was similar to the modern concept of a ‘guardian angel’ – ‘eudaemonia’ is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit. As a rule, Unix systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons.

–Evi Nemeth

And as you can see, they belong there.

Picture: beetlebum

been there, done that

At least udev is strongly linked to Linux and as far as I know is not available on any of the BSD flavors. Unfortunately it is now the only good way to detect storage devices, cameras, printers, scanners and other devices using a single framework. That’s why we use it in Xfce now in situations where HAL provided us with device capabilities and information to distinguish between the different device types before. The consequence is that thunar-volman no longer works without udev and thus only compiles on Linux. In Thunar itself udev remains optional.

via

The usual hogwash about *BSD and its “compatiblity” to Linux. Especially FreeBSD has got different mechanisms like devd etc. So it’s no problem of *BSD itself, but developers unable to do a proper job. Well, in reality *BSD-devs cannot hop around to mimic everybodies darling. It’s just impossible, especially in the face of Linux chaotic development.

The correct “solution” here is for “desktop” devs to stop using the kernel features directly and having to continuously rewrite things for udev, HAL, *Kit, u*, etc and instead to write to a standardised abstraction layer with pluggable backends. Something the KDE devs figured out with 4.0 and the creation of Solid and Phonon and similar.

A comment of a FreeBSD-Admin

So nothing spectacular, just the usual loss of reality of the Linux-community. Being portable is different from “it works in Linux”.

Apple did it again …

They did it again: selling something very old as something new. What I’m talking about? The “App Store”. Apples “invention”, to make the life of the user easier. Well, free operating systems call this practice package management, since about more than a decade. You can use it in the console, you can use it together with a fancy frontend, finally it’s just superior compared to the “App Store” in iOS, Android and now Mac OS X. Apples invention? Apple “makes history”? They do indeed “think different”. Thanks God we don’t have to follow this bullcrap agenda.

What you really get from the “App Store”-marvel of Android, iOS, etc.? More control, censorship …

the sorry state of the “UNIX”-desktop

In case you wonder why I’ve been choosing this topic: see this talk. I’m refering to “UNIX” as alias for Linux/BSD and so on, at least in this very context.

“The mindset from the 1970s UNIX” … at the end of the talk your hear this “argument” of Lennart Poettering. He is some guy from Red Hat responsible for PulseAudio and systemd. You know, the company, that supports developers like Ulrich “libc” Drepper and others. Red Hat isn’t the easiest to cope with if it comes to changes to the Linux kernel or the system itself, it’s most of the time a crusade for them or similar to the search for the Holy Grail. Boiled down to their Linux-distro Fedora: they have got many bright people at their company, but their distro is just a huge mess. I was a huge fan of Red Hat in the 90s, well aside of my beloved Slackware, but today it’s just the testing ground for mostly hasty developed technologies. Their race for more glimmer on the desktop, together with Ubuntu and OpenSuse, destroyed in my opinion every attempt to gain momentum on the desktop for the non-administrators.

The new credo is “it’s just good enough” compared to the former “it’s just better”. “Plug’n pray” once a synonym to Microsofts crappy attempt for the detection of devices is nowadays the hallmark of Hal. The latter was for some time the “Holy Grail” for Linux and Nemesis to *BSD systems. A pain in the backside since the beginning and today just history. For good? No, “the king is dead, hail to the king”, Linux just gave birth to another experiment we have to cope with in future.

Today the desktop is still ruled by companies like Microsoft and Apple. Why? Because they do it right to some degree. Sure, Microsoft had lots of serious problems in the past and nowadays the company is just a shadow of their former self, but have a look at Windows 7. They did it, maybe too late, but you see real advancement. Or have a look at Apple, it just works out of the box — well, most of the time.

My desktop is a desktop of the 90s, maybe I have got the mindset of a UNIX of the 70s. But what’s wrong with it? UNIX is a child of the 60s/70s and most of the things you see in it aren’t compatible with the “mindset of 2010″. UNIX follows the K.I.S.S.-principle, keep it simple stupid, trying to attach something complex to something “simple” under the hood is prone to fail. It’s that easy!

Again, have a look at Apple and their Mac OS X. Mac OS X is a UNIX, it uses FreeBSD and portions of NetBSD to build the base, the things under the hood you usually don’t see, and attaches some GUI-mumbo-jumbo to it, to get the attention of the masses. Some people talk of a “GUI on roids” and similar to those anabolic steroids, you get “something”, but at what expense? In terms of Mac OS X you have to pay the price in form of many “layers” between the “glimmer” on the desktop and the UNIX in the cellar. If you e.g. mess with something under the hood, you’ll have sometimes unpredictable results at the desktop. Administrating Mac OS X like some UNIX is prone to fail, it’s not made for such tasks. Stick to the fixed desktop and you’ll be happy most of the time. Windows tries to get more power on the desktop, make it a less fixed experience than Apple, with the result of more problems.

Now the free “UNIX”-desktop again: don’t try to mimic Apple or Windows. We cannot win with this silly attempt. You have to choose between the power of a “UNIX” or the simplicity of a Mac OS X desktop. Try to mess with those attempts and you’ll get something like KDE, Gnome and lots of “layers” like PulseAudio etc. pp. to get Linux/BSD in shape. Maybe there is a path to more usability for Linux/BSD, but playing the copycat just renders those free operating systems less attractive for everyone. Free operating systems need a path of their own, compatible to this “UNIX mindset of the 70s”. If you want something different, then build something new.

As you can see one size to fit them all is just not possible. We have to say good bye to the masses, we have to find different paths, more suitable for the “UNIX-mindeset of the 70s”, ready for a “UNIX”-future with “UNIX”-usability.