Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 21:52:38 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: jkh@zippy.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: brett@lariat.org, advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Linux to be deployed in Mexican schools; Where was FreeBSD? Message-ID: <199811272152.OAA19036@usr02.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <48004.911945650@zippy.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Nov 24, 98 02:14:10 pm
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> As is my usual gripe in advocacy, what we really need around here > aren't a bunch of firemen who arrive at the scene of the fire well > after it has already consumed the building and stand around saying > meaningful things like "This was a fire! It appears to have burned > down the building! Fires are bad, someone should do something." > > Such firemen are obviously of no use at all and should probably go > into less challenging professions like chicken inspection or lavatory > maintenance. What we need are firemen who actually arrive in time to > have a meaningful affect on fires *as they are happening* or can turn > practical expertise towards preventing fires in the first place. :-) Actually, the fire will be burning an awful long time; so long as Linux is in Mexican schools, there is a need for a FreeBSD fire brigade on the school grounds, hoses at ready. For a FreeBSD fireman to be effective, there is an aching need for firefighting equipment; FreeBSD has little. One thing that would go a long way towards this is to get a most recent RedHat Linux system installed, and figure out what software you need to write to "upgrade" it to FreeBSD without reinstalling everything. Here are some starting points: o FreeBSD is still third-party layered software unfriendly (some would call it antagonistic). There is no real method in FreeBSD for installing software that is supposed to start at system startup and shutdown gracefully at system shutdown. Fix: Change the FreeBSD "init" process. This is political suicide, but technological necessity. o FreeBSD EXT2FS support is less robust than it should be. Fix: Create a stress-test framework in which progress toward repairing EXT2FS can be made, and repair it. o FreeBSD kernels can not be booted with Linux boot code. Fix: Add support for booting Linux kernels to the FreeBSD multistage boot code, such that the Linux boot blocks can be replaced with FreeBSD boot blocks without losing Linux functionality. This means adding features to the FreeBSD boot blocks. Alternately, and more restrictive to future work, make FreeBSD capable of being booted using Linux boot blocks. o FreeBSD Linux emulation leaves something to be desired (something called "Linux emulation"). This is most apparent in the FreeBSD inability to run some kernel threaded applications, like Oracle 8 for Linux. Fix: Get a copy of Oracle 8 for Linux, install it on FreeBSD (in violation of the license) and Make It Work(tm). o FreeBSD can not install RPM packages. Fix: Port the RPM code, either from RedHat (I don't think this is actually available) or from one of the Linux camps that have reverse engineered the code (S.U.S.E. would be a good starting point, since they work heavily on RedHat Linux emulation themselves). o FreeBSD doesn't support the Linux libvga. Fix: Someone port the frigging thing, already. Oh, by the way, one could substitute "Solaris" for "Linux" in the above (and SVR4 UFS and BFS for EXT2FS, and SVR4 PKG for RPM...) and have a hell of a lot larger software base than the Linux software base. It's not a matter of figuring out what to do; that's easy. It's a matter of will, and it's a matter of prying things like the BSD init process out of the cold, dead hands of the powers that be. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199811272152.OAA19036>