From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Aug 19 23:07:14 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ADC37106564A for ; Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:07:14 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rmacklem@uoguelph.ca) Received: from esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca (esa-jnhn.mail.uoguelph.ca [131.104.91.44]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A9FF8FC14 for ; Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:07:14 +0000 (UTC) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: AooGALfkTk6DaFvO/2dsb2JhbABBhEuUJpAUgUABAQQBI1YFFhgCAg0ZAlmICqc2kS6BLIQMgRAEkxOREQ X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.68,253,1312171200"; d="scan'208";a="134979033" Received: from erie.cs.uoguelph.ca (HELO zcs3.mail.uoguelph.ca) ([131.104.91.206]) by esa-jnhn-pri.mail.uoguelph.ca with ESMTP; 19 Aug 2011 18:38:35 -0400 Received: from zcs3.mail.uoguelph.ca (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by zcs3.mail.uoguelph.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6C929B3F24; Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:38:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 18:38:35 -0400 (EDT) From: Rick Macklem To: giffunip@tutopia.com Message-ID: <175270279.98941.1313793515391.JavaMail.root@erie.cs.uoguelph.ca> In-Reply-To: <1313785806.56747.YahooMailClassic@web113503.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-Originating-IP: [172.17.91.202] X-Mailer: Zimbra 6.0.10_GA_2692 (ZimbraWebClient - FF3.0 (Win)/6.0.10_GA_2692) Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD problems and preliminary ways to solve X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2011 23:07:14 -0000 Pedro F. Giffuni wrote: > First of all, thanks to Vadim for his initial post: it's > evident he spend a lot of time preparing it. >=20 Yes, I'll second that. Being fairly new to FreeBSD, I've found the discussion interesting. One thing I thought I'd bring up (since I haven't seen it mentioned yet) is Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. I haven't tried it, so I'm talking through my hat a bunch, but... It seems to me that FreeBSD should do what it can to support this effort. Why? Well, I suspect a lot of why organizations running servers might choose Linux over FreeBSD has to do with the distros/applications and not the kernels. If they like the style of a typical Linux distro and don't mind the GPL, this could be a nice alternative for them. In saying this, I don't mean to belittle the good work being done on ports and packages and it sounds like more good things are coming down the pipe. It's just that someone that is familiar with a typical Linux distro may find Debian GNU/kFreeBSD less of a transition for them. (And lets face it, everyone is biased towards what they know vs what they don't know.) > I just want to give my 0.02$ to this discussion: >=20 > FreeBSD 9.0 is a huge step in the right direction in many > ways. Perhaps what I like most is getting done with the > last GNU toolchain and ZFS updates and maintaining the well > known stability and performance along with the new features. >=20 > Unfortunately some necessary updates didn't make it in time, > in particular pkgng and the X.Org drivers. The new installer > is promising but lately installing and configuring XOrg has > become a nightmare so I find myself suggesting people to use > PC-BSD instead. >=20 > Some rather important changes that seem critical for the future > like ARM-EABI and a new toolchain seem to be lacking developers > and perhaps are going on too slowly to expect them to work in > the near future but, all in all, I should mention that FreeBSD > is still very influential and competitive. I've seen posts not > too long ago where linux developers praise FreeBSD for keeping > the development pace despite having a much smaller group. >=20 > What I think is that perhaps FreeBSD shouldn=C2=B4t be expecting > to be a better linux than linux, simply because there is no > company related to any BSD in capacity to compete with, say, > Redhat. We still can do pretty much everything linux does > with a little extras, but we are a actually niche market and > it actually hasn't worked bad at all for us. >=20 One of the reasons I brought up GNU/kFreeBSD is that I think it would be nice if folks could easily compare kernels without having to deal with all the userland differences. However, I have no idea how similar GNU/kFreeBSD can come to their Linux distro and whether it will allow users to switch between them easily? Just my $0.00 (not worth 2 cents), rick