From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Apr 1 05:47:16 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D9498245 for ; Tue, 1 Apr 2014 05:47:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-qa0-x232.google.com (mail-qa0-x232.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:400d:c00::232]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client CN "smtp.gmail.com", Issuer "Google Internet Authority G2" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 94C91F65 for ; Tue, 1 Apr 2014 05:47:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-qa0-f50.google.com with SMTP id o15so9210547qap.9 for ; Mon, 31 Mar 2014 22:47:15 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=eitanadler.com; s=0xdeadbeef; h=mime-version:from:date:message-id:subject:to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; bh=dfQb8old8D4xyTlX0L15CGf1sS2aFeaArma9A46r60M=; b=fPUlBZ6JfLki0L1QwwFohZUr8Ye0P6CUCFw3Tos8TGyRC4H27X4i3OmuwH1s9jUTKK 6PRIfjzXb8BAva4yv79BZxoZCOhsxDySa++iTbNRCPQ2uUmgX9Up5Gjus4Q+iVWeRvmI 5zN5WeEeT3rjeJN3X5knfYAG44oyqVM9N0/T8= X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20130820; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:from:date:message-id:subject:to :content-type:content-transfer-encoding; bh=dfQb8old8D4xyTlX0L15CGf1sS2aFeaArma9A46r60M=; b=UdtNdur1LmsTPWXvcvItAULeyI1U1m86285JqMX1CQ7QvuQpj2it2nLL4Squa0u6/x MmWBedRo1/T5IGuU51TPW8Bl6C7K7cA60Un4OSSmz9rwcfhI9lSVDzwJU8pvaX7qkais Zw7iQsANU8NbvQ3s1gsLIS0s/HazA1lXXMSIhZ+wMpMtWQFLNg5mjFnfjJH7gMDEM23e l8Ky9h4jYMlGYO2gVYjwBL20kvdePKuHmM1TlqLIULy91qAUG4evhMsKyJl89COYVd+8 eILd0YAiYXDtOvzi0zUFjEMjqfmjM8+DOeKi5LZJ/gvJ7e6XynKjusz063OBIi4mSb6P sl5Q== X-Gm-Message-State: ALoCoQm4PoKvp544mPp0tJb3jAXIcTIE0CMx3B9TjL8IQut7DjW41nWYjh8qIywMgEGwC8kCKd4d X-Received: by 10.224.151.130 with SMTP id c2mr12897432qaw.67.1396331235700; Mon, 31 Mar 2014 22:47:15 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.96.147.225 with HTTP; Mon, 31 Mar 2014 22:46:45 -0700 (PDT) From: Eitan Adler Date: Mon, 31 Mar 2014 22:46:45 -0700 Message-ID: Subject: Leaving the Desktop Market To: hackers@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.17 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 05:47:17 -0000 Hi all, Some of you may have seen my posts entitled "Story of a Laptop User" and "Story of a Desktop User". For those of you who did not, it can be a worthwhile read to see what life is like when using FreeBSD as a desktop. In short, it is an educational experience. While FreeBSD can be coerced to do the right thing, it is rarely there by default and often doesn't work as well as we would expect. The following are issues I haven't brought up in the past: Battery life sucks: it=E2=80=99s almost as if powerd wasn't running. Wind= ows can run for five hours on my laptop while FreeBSD can barely make it two hours. I wonder what the key differences are? Likely it=E2=80=99s tha= t we focus so much on performance that no one considers power. ChromeOS can run for 12 hours on some hardware; why can't we make FreeBSD run for 16? Sound configuration lacks key documentation: how can I automatically change between headphones and external speakers? You can't even do that in middle of a song at all! Trust me that you never want to be staring at an HDA pin configuration. I'll bet you couldn't even get sound streaming to other machines working if you tried. FreeBSD lacks vendor credibility: CUDA is unsupported. Dropbox hasn't released a client for FreeBSD. Nvidia Optimus doesn't function on FreeBSD. Can you imagine telling someone to purchase a laptop with the caveat: "but you won't be able to use your graphics card"? In any case, half of our desktop support is emulation: flash and opera only works because of the linuxulator. There really isn't any reason for vendors to bother supporting FreeBSD if we are just going to ape Linux anyways. That is why on this date I propose that we cease competing on the desktop market. FreeBSD should declare 2014 to be "year of the Linux desktop" and start to rip out the pieces of the OS not needed for server or embedded use. Some of you may point to PCBSD and say that we have a chance, but I must ask you: how does one flavor stand up to the thousands in the Linux world? Eitan Adler