Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2020 17:36:45 +0200 From: Polytropon <freebsd@edvax.de> To: Vincent DEFERT <20.100@defert.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Openness vs. Comfort Message-ID: <20200612173645.22d774a9.freebsd@edvax.de> In-Reply-To: <c69e00e9-06a6-4b69-b081-846d46ed9530@defert.com> References: <c69e00e9-06a6-4b69-b081-846d46ed9530@defert.com>
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On Fri, 12 Jun 2020 15:37:42 +0200, Vincent DEFERT wrote: > My impression is that there are 2 sub-groups in the FreeBSD community, > those wanting FreeBSD to dominate over Windows and Linux, and those > wanting to keep every semi-colon in its set line and column forever. I don't know where you take that impression from, but in my experience, neither the FreeBSD community nor the mailing list participants seem to fit in one of those groups. In fact, I'd even say it's the exact opposite: Many FreeBSD users use Linux as well, or macOS, and some even use "Windows", and nobody insists on a non-changing world. The FreeBSD OS itself is proof for that. > [ Deliberate exaggeration here, but posts on this mailing-list and on > the forums seldom fall in the mid-range. ] Erm... no. :-) > 1. Why mailing lists? > > I assume all of you have perfectly healthy eyes. Great! I belong to the group of people whose eyes have seen better times. That's why I prefer mailing lists over web forums, for example, due to a simple fact: Any halfway decent MUA (and that applies for text-mode MUAs as well) can make the message text display so it's nice to read. Even a blind user can use the appropriate tools. Web forums tend to make it harder, because they either consist of CSS + JS that "knows better" (i. e., you increase the zoom in the browser, now the page doesn't render properly anymore), or they have such a bad look & feel that using them even with the aid of the settings in the web browser is a terrible experience. As mentioned many times, mailing lists offer the ability to use without registration. All you need is working mail. You don't have to be logged in (or even online) to read and write messages. I think this is a significant advantage over everything web-based. > Unfortunately, this is not my case. For me, reading plain text messages > is a torture. I made an effort in the beginning, but it is not possible > in the long term. What exactly is your problem? You know that X can (for decades!) zoom by pressing Ctrl+Alt+[+] and Ctrl+Alt+[-], and as I said, MUAs and even ye olden X terminals (xterm) have font size control. There are other tools that run on X to help, like screen magnifiers, and there are of course the application settings where you can choose a minimum font size and a preferred font size (and font face) for message text. That is a solved problem, I would say. > But what purpose do these mailing lists serve? > I've read several times they were the right place to meet developers, > but this is mostly true for freebsd-current@ an freebsd-stable@, not > this one. This is the "general questions" mailing list. It's often used as a first approach, because users here can direct you to a more appropriate list if needed. > So in the end, this mailing list (freebsd-questions@) is just to be used > when looking for help. > Which means that at the time you need help, you must face additional > difficulties, at least legibility and focus. Why are those _difficulties_? > I don't know what you do when you have to solve a problem, but the first > thing most people do is google for it. This is hard, because to a search engine, you cannot express a question. You can send strings, and more or less, weighted by relevance and money, the search engine returns "AND NEAR" results without understanding (!) what you're looking for. Terminology is another problem. When you write to a mailing list, the recipients are aware of the meaning of certain words, which in the broad context of a search engine, can mean much more, and the search engine takes that into mind and lists many false-positives (because the search matches "AND NEAR" for the words used). And now imagine program names that (by accident or by intention) match a "real life object". Sure, you will now say that people don't just search for one word, but again, the search engine "forces" them to form a query in a way that it leads to usable (!) results (which is different from "any results" - SRPs full of stuff with no value). > And what do you get when you google something? Links to web pages. > Which mean that if answers given on this list had some value, they will > be invisible to most people. There is an archive of the mailing lists, which can be searched through using any search engine, and in many cases, SRPs contain links to - guess what - web pages containing mailing list messages explaining how to solve a specific problem. There is no "the one source" for answers. Questions can be complex. Answers too. And as there is no "the one source", there is no "the one answer". A thing where mailing lists are great at is that you get answers or suggestions from real people in the same "time frame" as you are, not paid-for ad content that's already 5 years old and more or less says "buy our product". > So using a mailing list in 2020 is reserved to things of little or no value. Well, I wouldn't say that. If someone told the same about searching with google, it would be "the same kind of true": you find results with answers that no longer apply... > Important things deserve a forum: they are visible (indexed by search > engines), legible (web browsers accessibility features) and well > structured (threads) so you can stay focused on what you're here for. Technically, the mailing lists have those features. Visible: mailing list archives are on the web Legible: the MUA can display messages much better than what a web-based forum uses as predefined settings (which the user cannot change and which sometimes even fights the browser's settings) Structured: that's what the references in the headers are for; the structure is preserved in the content as well (and any decent MUA can sort by date or in thread view) > 2. Linuxophobia / Linuxallergia > > If I were fully satisfied with Linux, I wouldn't be there. > However, there are also good things in the Linux world that could > inspire development decisions for FreeBSD. Again, this happens all the time. Keep in mind that, if I may say that, most of the FreeBSD ports collection's content is software ported from Linux. Maybe you're confusing something: Looking critically at how things are done over in Linux world are sometimes claimed to be hostile, which they're not, because in a technical context, it's not "I don't like it", but "it's a bad idea because of reasons". > So what do we get in 2020? > A ports collection with a huge dependency mess and unreliable package > repositories that remove your applications when a build has failed. If you experienced _that_, you obviously must have done something inappropriate. I cannot image a realistic scenario where something like this would happen... > When you report these issues, you're told "jail everything" or "use > poudriere". > Those who do so set strong barriers around FreeBSD. You don't _have to_, but for certain things, it's suggested because, yeah, that's the building process these days, and it is because it solves more problems than it creates. Don't get me wrong, I have my own problems with that, but it's the logical thing to happen. > Using jails means every new user must learn a whole lot of things to use > FreeBSD, even in irrelevant use cases. Depends. Jails have their place, but they are not mandatory. > Using poudriere means learning even more + dedicating a machine to build > your packages + waiting for as long as needed to build everything you > need + fixing bugs + rebuilding. Again, this is not true. You don't have to dedicate a machine for that. With today's power even in cheap laptops and home PCs it is no problem to use the "everyday desktop" as "build server", to make a simplified claim. And fixing bugs is, on most cases, not a matter of the novice user. > Linux distributions have fully addressed these issues 15 years ago and > it is the bare minimum expected from a distribution. And the problem is not solved yet. :-) > At least for this, Linux would be a good source of inspiration. And I > know at least one Linux package management system released under the BSD > license. As you know, Linux (here: all the distributions) use different package management tools, whereas FreeBSD uses one: pkg. It's not perfect, but what is? It's improving, and definitely can do more than its predecessors (pkg_*). The ability to use software from modified sources as well as software from precompiled packages has certain implications, that's for sure, but the handbook and the FAQ address those requirements and explain what to do. > 3. Comfort and Openness > > FreeBSD has a great base system and a great text mode installer, but > what's the point in installing it if managing applications is a mess and > asking for help a curse? Both statements are not true. Application management with pkg is, compared to what other OS platforms can offer, good. There are of course cases where problems occur, for example, if you want to install software that cannot legally be packaged, so you _need_ to build from source, or if you want nonstandard build-time options. The system keeps track of your installed software, and depending on how much "non-standard" stuff you have, either Poudriere (I still have problems with that word!) or "pkg lock" is the answer. > Being open (or opening up) doesn't mean giving up on what matters to you. > It just means you know quite well what matters to you and you feel safe > considering what surrounds you, and use whatever out there you deem > appropriate to take good and continued care of what matters to you. Again in my very individual experience and interpretation, the FreeBSD community is one of the most open (according to your description) ones. Many things have changed over the years. Not every change was a good one, and welcomed by the community, and some things haven't arrived in FreeBSD yet (especially WLAN drivers) but the overall development of the system and the software-building infrastructure can be seen as improvement. It is _different_ from how things are done in Linux world, of course, but using a different approach does not mean it is an inferior (!) approach. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
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