From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 5 20:17:43 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: chat@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B950616A40F for ; Tue, 5 Dec 2006 20:17:43 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from nick@van-laarhoven.org) Received: from smtp-1.orange.nl (smtp-1.orange.nl [193.252.22.241]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 26AA243CA8 for ; Tue, 5 Dec 2006 20:17:02 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nick@van-laarhoven.org) Received: from uitsmijter.van-laarhoven.org (ap-zvhz-13f05.adsl.wanadoo.nl [81.69.93.5]) by mwinf6009.orange.nl (SMTP Server) with ESMTP id 820E970000AC for ; Tue, 5 Dec 2006 21:17:41 +0100 (CET) X-ME-UUID: 20061205201741532.820E970000AC@mwinf6009.orange.nl Received: (qmail 1401 invoked from network); 5 Dec 2006 20:17:41 -0000 Received: from 10.66.0.143 by uitsmijter.van-laarhoven.org (envelope-from , uid 82) with qmail-scanner-1.25 (clamdscan: 0.88.4/2187. f-prot: 4.6.6/3.16.14. spamassassin: 3.1.7. Clear:RC:1(10.66.0.143):. Processed in 0.406225 secs); 05 Dec 2006 20:17:41 -0000 X-Qmail-Scanner-Mail-From: nick@van-laarhoven.org via uitsmijter.van-laarhoven.org X-Qmail-Scanner: 1.25 (Clear:RC:1(10.66.0.143):. Processed in 0.406225 secs) Received: from unknown (HELO van-laarhoven.org) (nick@10.66.0.143) by uitsmijter.van-laarhoven.org with SMTP; 5 Dec 2006 20:17:40 -0000 Received: (nullmailer pid 1594 invoked by uid 1001); Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:19:52 -0000 Date: Tue, 5 Dec 2006 18:19:52 +0100 (CET) From: Nick Hibma X-X-Sender: nick@localhost To: Josh Paetzel In-Reply-To: <200612041443.15154.josh@tcbug.org> Message-ID: <20061205180450.F1089@localhost> References: <200612041443.15154.josh@tcbug.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Venting my frustration with FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:17:43 -0000 > 1) SMP scalability. 4-way boxes are relatively common, and hardware > with higher CPU counts is only going to get more and more common. > I'm no industry expert, but 5 years from now will my clients be > considering buying 32 and 64 way boxes? Possibly. Will FreeBSD be > in a positiion to compete favorably vs. the alternatives on such > hardware? People have been working on this for years. It's a difficult thing to get right. Sun has been spending a *LOT* of time doing this for Solaris, and I bet that even Linux isn't there yet. > 2) RAID controller support. This is a huge one that affects me > directly even today. Lack of in OS management tools for RAID > controllers. I have some options if I can pick the hardware, but if > a client brings me something and says this is the hardware you have > to deal with a lot of times putting FBSD on it means living without > management tools for the RAID controller in the OS. What good is > hot-swappable drives if I have to take down the OS to rebuild the > array? YES! Well said. Actually, user front-end support for hardware is lacking in general. WiFi network handling, USB devices appearing and disappearing (stop pointing at me!), RAID controllers, environment stuff like fans, temperature sensors, I2C busses, etc. > 3) Lack of direction in the project. Sort of true. I like monopolies for this reason. > days I'm not so sure. Is FBSD targetted at network servers, at > desktops, at embedded devices? What architectures do we target? Network devices nowadays become more and more based on architectures like Xscale and MIPS. Perhaps you've seen recent articles on TheRegister.co.uk about small desktop boxes with VGA and USB, non-i386 based systems running Linux. I'm working on an embedded system which is AMD Geode with special hardware and very useful when you want 3 wifi cards + 2 ethernet interfaces plus a modem in a box. The things that I like FreeBSD for is the sometimes incredible stuff that appears in the sources: - GEOM based RAID filesystems. See Engelschalls 15 step process of converting a *running* system to a mirrored root filesystem with just one reboot for downtime. - Network related improvements. BSD still shows the way in many ways (IPSec for one). - The source quality is much,much,much better than in other OSes. Check out the USB drivers for one. We support 80% of the devices, with about 25% of the code (most of it was not written by me). Nick