Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 13:28:45 -0800 From: "Jeremiah Gowdy" <jeremiah@sherline.com> To: "John Baldwin" <jhb@FreeBSD.org> Cc: <advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG>, "Gilbert Gong" <ggong@cal.alumni.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: Microsoft Advocacy? Message-ID: <001501c1899d$4e36a780$03e2cbd8@server> References: <XFMail.011220121611.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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> > Apple's OS X is not what I would call a "unix". Certainly, the Mach based > > underlying kernel is unix-like, and the FreeBSD tools are unix-like. But > > the desktop is MacOS version 10. It may be the closest thing to Unix as a > > desktop, but I think they have more desktop and less Unix. Besides the fact > > that they are on a completely different hardware platform which costs 3 > > times as much. I disagree with Mac OS X being considered a > > unix-as-a-desktop in this conversation since we are mainly (for now) an i386 > > OS. > > Have you played with an OS X box? It is definitely a Unix box. :) It does > come with a pretty desktop environment though in the form of Aqua. However, > you can drop into the console and interact with the box on a pure text mode > basis if you want. I'll retract part of my Mac OS X statements and simply say this. Okay, we accept Mac OS X as an example of a successful Unix desktop OS. Then I simply say this. Another Mac OS X, FreeBSD is not. Not even close. > >> Let me give one more example. If we agree now that FreeBSD in certain > >> specific desktop environments makes a whole lot of sense > > > > I do not agree. > > How about the specific environment of working on software that runs on FreeBSD > whether it be the kernel, userland tools, or KDE. FreeBSD is an excellent > choose for those specific desktop environments. You are saying that FreeBSD is > not a valid desktop for _any_ desktop environment which is a bit strong I think. I didn't convey my opinion properly then. I don't mean to completely invalidate the usefulness of X, Gnome, KDE, etc. Certainly they are useful or they wouldn't exist. I just don't find them to be a complete desktop, and _even_if_they_were_, I don't believe that would make FreeBSD a "desktop OS". > This is very true. However, the kernel can be designed so as to not > needlessly hurt performance on desktop boxes and to help it when such doesn't > hurt server performance. This includes adding tweaks for uniprocessor boxes, > for example. In fact, the BSD scheduler actually prefers interactive user > interface processes to background CPU-intensive "server" processes. :) > Although some servers are fairly I/O intensive (think apache) and some user > interface programs are rather CPU intensive (X). If I remember from reading D&I of the BSD4.4 OS, I believe that design was implemented long before BSD had any kind of GUI. Perhaps I'm wrong, since I wasn't around back then, and my knowledge isn't too certain. > > Until then, let Gnome and KDE continue their hard work developing a desktop. > > Either of those were truly worthy of desktop use (IMO), then perhaps I would > > recommend FreeBSD as a backend for the Gnome or KDE desktop. Notice the > > phrasing. FreeBSD is no more a desktop than Darwin is. > > Hmm, someone should port Gnome or KDE to windows just for fun. The tricky bit > here is Windows ties its OS and desktop environment together a bit tightly so > that it can avoid competition, whereas Unix's philosophy of building solutions > from many speciailized tools has led to a cleaner separation between OS and > UI. Uhm, what would Windows tying their OS and desktop so tightly do to stop you from porting Gnome or KDE ? The most simple option would be to set the shell (normally explorer.exe) to your software, use DirectDraw to black the entire screen, and there you go. You have DirectDraw primatives which could be used for whatever you wanted to implement. I don't see how the "tightness" between the Windows kernel and the Windows UI is an issue, nor why it seems to be used to somehow detract from the OS. When an OS is ONLY or primarily a desktop OS, the kernel and the UI _should_ be tight. > If someone ported KDE to Windows/DOS, which OS would you recommend as the best > desktop-friendly OS to run it on? If someone ported the Windows UI to FreeBSD, > which UI would you then recommend to a FreeBSD user? Both of these questions would obviously depend on the implementation. Assuming all of the theoretical coding was up to par... I would say, obviously use FreeBSD as the kernel for KDE, over Windows, because I don't like Windows for it's kernel, I like Windows for it's UI. I like FreeBSD for it's kernel. Now if, in some magical way, the Windows UI could be ported to FreeBSD, and if there was binary application support for it, I would switch to Windows/FreeBSD. This all agrees with my original statement. Windows UI = good. FreeBSD kernel = good. Win32 kernel = well... it has alot of fun APIs to play with. :) You know what's going to be interesting is the company who my friend just got hired by. I don't know how many of you have heard of it, http://www.lindows.com Windows binary compatibility, Linux binary compatibility. I'm trying to get my friend to sneak a few hints in there that he might as well include FreeBSD binary compatibility. If it functioned as advertised, that's an OS I would run. Assuming the UI was worth looking at. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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