Date: Wed, 6 Dec 2000 18:37:22 +0000 From: Steve Roome <steve@sse0691.bri.hp.com> To: doc@freebsd.org Subject: Cutting Edge Features Message-ID: <20001206183722.I29680@moose.bri.hp.com>
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Summary: The www.freebsd.org/features.html page is way out of date even if it did apparently get updated 2000/04/03! Okay, no patch included, sorry, here's some comments anyway. The features highlighted are : 1) bounce buffers 2) merged vm and fs buffer cache. 3) compatibility modules 4) loadable kernel modules 5) shared libraries I'm sure this is going to be considered flamebait, and no doubt I'll get flamed for this, but surely these are not the best features of FreeBSD! Can I suggest as additions/improvements : 1) Should bounce buffers really be top of the list of selling points, how many punters really care about ISA DMA these days ? (Maybe they *should*, but I bet very few really do.) 2) vm + fs buffer cache. Good point, but is it really our next top selling point? I'm thought other OS's had this too by now ? 3) How about replacing the lkm statement with something along the lines of how kld works (lkm is a bit old hat now isn't it, we may do it better than other OS's, or worse or whatever, but do newbies to FreeBSD care ?) 5) shared libraries - This feature is common to every modern Unix and Windows (since w95 I think). Thoughts : A complete Linux emulation that can run things like Quake III or Oracle is probably more important than all of the original comments put together these days! Jail. Need I say more on that. Does any other OS have anything even half as good. You need to buy a Sun E10000 with domains for a few million to get this sort of feature any other way. (apart from cheats using emulators, e.g. vmaware etc.) We may not have the best amount of drivers, but I do beleive we probably have the most reliable drivers. SMP support ? It's just not mentioned that FreeBSD handles mutliple CPUs! There has to be more. I could have written a nice new webpage, but there's so much scope here is unbeleivable! Backwards compatibility might be worth commenting on, people new to FreeBSD would probably like the fact you can run binaries from 2.x on 4.2 without the Linux upgrade your glibc/ entire life first policy. Network performance. Security. Easier to upgrade than almost any other OS. More _methods_ of upgrading or installing than almost any other OS. Far more stuff. The quote at the bottom is pretty old now. Anyone seen a nice new bumper sticker for us ? Steve Roome (with comment from Keith Jones) P.S. Apologies if world war 3 breaks out on this list now. =) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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