From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jul 9 10:32:46 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2A2C91065680 for ; Wed, 9 Jul 2008 10:32:46 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rsidd120@gmail.com) Received: from ug-out-1314.google.com (ug-out-1314.google.com [66.249.92.173]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B1F608FC18 for ; Wed, 9 Jul 2008 10:32:45 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rsidd120@gmail.com) Received: by ug-out-1314.google.com with SMTP id q2so55107uge.37 for ; Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:32:44 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=domainkey-signature:received:received:message-id:date:from:reply-to :to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding :content-disposition; bh=PuZdHb05mZemE6S2Ij5KKmfA2nE/3pCR31a3JjvdB6Y=; b=Q07ASvrL7Rwj3/nfVa82E4MYARlv9SU6Pz14rt+KZh+lmeCR/7l6vijrei4RNF3Ez2 X9Y3lu7abe51UKAo+D/m5SkyBtJ7v/luTuwfmVjbngQw3BAtFzhXw1JRtL5m8GWaeDui 3zoOpYeyn2nh9YpaGxm+pcytXBPUK4C4Cayu4= DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws; d=gmail.com; s=gamma; h=message-id:date:from:reply-to:to:subject:mime-version:content-type :content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=WE2EYhnaLglQXaFm+582HfQjrNlXPnwI/f5Rq8mZ4JV1UZHtF6SJQX1HMA0bsZkGJE UvSXRkpovdi4vcr10Mj/X/EdyBshnzJilKEtZVsWuppnD3bRlT2iFqfQMvSwG0Azly85 +m/2x8hiyEd5YyaLWVcWo/d33jb4OmoSmcShU= Received: by 10.125.123.15 with SMTP id a15mr1824506mkn.35.1215597882391; Wed, 09 Jul 2008 03:04:42 -0700 (PDT) Received: by 10.125.87.18 with HTTP; Wed, 9 Jul 2008 03:04:42 -0700 (PDT) Message-ID: <6a506d980807090304i1b7bde5ah66fcc9690b7b0f1e@mail.gmail.com> Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2008 15:34:42 +0530 From: "Rahul Siddharthan" To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Subject: Questions on FreeBSD today X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: rsidd120@gmail.com List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 09 Jul 2008 10:32:46 -0000 I've been away from FreeBSD for a few years -- I briefly gave 7.0-CURRENT a spin last year, on an old laptop, but didn't stick with it. However, I'll likely be getting a new laptop soon and I'm tired of linux (and especially tired of Ubuntu, which thinks it's smarter than me.) So I'm seriously considering FreeBSD 7. On the plus side, I've done quite a lot of C programming (though not system-level) since I last used FreeBSD, so I can try some hackery if I need to. On the minus side, I don't want to spend all my time fixing ports or patching device drivers -- I'd rather have a system that just works, and lets me focus on my work. Anyway, I have a few questions: 1. My biggest peeve was the tendency to crash when pulling out USB memory sticks (especially if they were mounted, but sometimes even if they were unmounted). Kris Kennaway told me in a private mail that this has been fixed in 8-CURRENT. Is that so, and has it been MFC'd? 2. Can I run 32-bit linux binaries (like Adobe Reader) on a 64-bit FreeBSD setup? 3. How good is Wine on FreeBSD? Can I expect it to be almost as good as Wine on Linux? 4. Is UFS/gjournal at least as reliable as, say, ext3? I don't want long fsck's every time I shutdown uncleanly. 5. Do linux binaries that require ALSA (eg, flash plugin 9/10) work? 6. Can I run Windows Vista (likely to be preinstalled -- no choice) under Xen or qemu? 7. How good is power management, in particular cpufreq and ACPI suspend-to-RAM? (I suppose the answer depends on the laptop model.) Thanks, Rahul