From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jun 26 08:58:31 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 40FD0106564A for ; Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:58:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from tim.des.no (tim.des.no [194.63.250.121]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EFDBE8FC27 for ; Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:58:30 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from des@des.no) Received: from ds4.des.no (des.no [84.49.246.2]) by smtp.des.no (Postfix) with ESMTP id B70692083; Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:58:29 +0200 (CEST) From: =?utf-8?Q?Dag-Erling_Sm=C3=B8rgrav?= To: unga888@yahoo.com References: <657952.52146.qm@web57008.mail.re3.yahoo.com> Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:58:28 +0200 In-Reply-To: <657952.52146.qm@web57008.mail.re3.yahoo.com> (Unga's message of "Wed\, 25 Jun 2008 21\:25\:47 -0700 \(PDT\)") Message-ID: <86prq41sjv.fsf@ds4.des.no> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110006 (No Gnus v0.6) Emacs/23.0.60 (berkeley-unix) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Supercomputing 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: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:58:31 -0000 Unga writes: > At a time Linux is either fading or struggling on desktop, and at a > time Linux developers have to beg for OEMs for open source drivers > that they never get, [...] Linux is neither failing nor struggling on the desktop, nor do the major distributions have any trouble running vendor-provided binary drivers. > Success of the FreeBSD based desktop depends on the availability of > drivers direct from OEMs, ie, from those who have the specs for it. > Its up to the OEMs to decide whether to open source the drivers or > not. Its only the BSDs can offer this freedom of choice to OEMs, not > definitely Linux, which legally demands them to open source only. Linux does not "legally demand" open source drivers. In fact, since Linux's kernel API and ABI are far more stable than FreeBSD's, it is much easier to maintain binary drivers for Linux than it is for FreeBSD. > Another importance of this is, gaming developers are increasingly > voice for 64-bit operating systems. Top end game developers find > maximum 4GB RAM is a thing of the past, they need very much more. Name one example... Some game publishers have released 64-bit versions of selected games, but nobody would even dream of releasing a 64-bit-only game. It would be suicide. Even though > 90% of computers sold today are 64-bit capable, most of them ship with a 32-bit operating system. Considering the expense of shipping and supporting two versions of the same game, I doubt 64-bit games will really take off until a sizeable portion of mid-range computers ship with a 64-bit operating system. I suspect this won't happen for at least another two years. DES --=20 Dag-Erling Sm=C3=B8rgrav - des@des.no