Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 20:44:39 -0500 From: Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx> To: Jason Victor <sloppyj123@yahoo.com> Cc: Andrew Hesford <ajh3@chmod.ath.cx>, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Should I switch? [was Re: A novel idea....] Message-ID: <20010404204439.A17787@cec.wustl.edu> In-Reply-To: <20010405004601.17621.qmail@web4302.mail.yahoo.com>; from sloppyj123@yahoo.com on Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 05:46:01PM -0700 References: <20010404160203.B17093@cec.wustl.edu> <20010405004601.17621.qmail@web4302.mail.yahoo.com>
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On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 05:46:01PM -0700, Jason Victor wrote: > Wow, thanks alot for all your advice. I just have a > couple (read: 412) questions about switching to > FreeBSD (if I should do it.) Please keep in mind that > I am a hobbyist developer, but am looking to get > better. > > 1. Can I work on the GNOME project under FreeBSD? Does > anyone have Ximian GNOME running? > 2. Is the FreeBSD project smaller than Debian's? Does > that mean that a certain individual has more or less > projects to choose from? Do you guys need lots of > help? > 3. Can I compile apps in GTK/GNOME? I don't think gcc > works in FreeBSD... > 4. Can I get involved in the part of FreeBSD involving > moving it to the home/desktop market? Competing with > Linux? > 5. How close is FreeBSD to Linux? > 6. Is there any logo cooler than the Daemon? > 7. Why isn't FreeBSD more popular than Linux? You say > it is so much better!!! How quickly is FreeBSD > developing? > 8. Can I work on an apt-get for FreeBSD? Does one > exist? > 9. Can FreeBSD run ALL Linux apps (including source > tarballs as well as binary installs like > StarOffice's?) > 10. Which is a better development/home user > environment? Honestly. Does Glade work? > 11. How steep will the learning curve be for a Linux > user? > 12. What are the reasons big companies like Yahoo! are > using FreeBSD over Linux. > 13. Does anyone think FreeBSD will be popular enough > to compete with Linux? Windows? > > Thanks alot to anyone who can answer any of these > questions!!! > --Jason 1. GNOME is in the ports, 1.2.<something>. Recently, GNOME announced official support for FreeBSD, which means the GNOME packages won't be released until they are guaranteed to run on FreeBSD. If you want 1.2, get it from the ports, if you want 1.4, grab the tarballs from GNOME themselves. 2. I'm not sure about the size of the Debian project. If I'm not mistaken, there are a couple hundred CVS committers for FreeBSD, who are regulated by 9 (now elected) core members. Each committer has full access to the entire FreeBSD repository. If you have patches to submit, you can give them to a committer. In the ports tree, each port is maintained by a certain individual. `3. GCC is the default compiler for FreeBSD. The current included version is 2.95.2, 2.95.3 should be out in a while (it needs to be certified as stable enough for FreeBSD -STABLE). Everything I've ever built on my system has been built with GCC. 4. You can do anything you want to get FreeBSD on the desktop, although I don't think the mentality is the same here. My impression, and certainly my opinion, is that it doesn't matter one bit whether or not FreeBSD is on every desktop. I use it for my 17+ reasons; I don't care who else uses it. Linux seems to be fighting a market-share war for religious purposes. Still, because the license FreeBSD is distributed under is so free (much more so than the GPL), you can even close up everything, add propriety code, and sell packaged FreeBSD for $1k per box. Basically, you do what you want with it. 5. Did you ever play Marble Madness for Nintendo? Remember the final stage? The message on the screen was "Everything you know is wrong." FreeBSD is like that level... things will seem backwards, almost counterintuitive. That's because you've wrapped your brain around the Linux way of doing things (often an ass-backwards way, too). Give it a few days of patient work, you'll get used to everything. Essentially, this involves relearning the device names, and figuring out where your favorite Linux programs are now located. Other things, like compiling new kernels, updating your system, and configuring the bootscripts, will need to be learned, too, but they aren't essential to getting a running test system going. 6. Does there need to be? I personally think the Daemon is a bad-ass logo, much cooler than a penguin. I mean, what the fuck is a penguin good for, anyway? 7. FreeBSD is developed very rapidly. Especially if you subscribe to mailing lists, you can see bugs fixed almost as soon as they are mentioned. New features are added more conservatively, however. New stuff is tried out in -CURRENT, where the heavy-duty FreeBSD hackers make it stable, then merge it into -STABLE. The reason Linux became more popular than FreeBSD is, as I've read: Linux development is helter-skelter--anybody can make changes to the system and redistribute them with ease. As a consequence, a wide range of people worked to develop the components on your Debian system. This distribution and encouragement led to confusion, but also popularity. FreeBSD, on the other hand, is maintained by a fixed group of committers. While you can still modify your system, it is more difficult to get random changes into the main code tree. The result is a more structured and sane development process, with an emphasis on stability rather than untested additions. 8. No you cannot. The analagous process in FreeBSD is to locate the program you wish to install in the ports tree, go to its directory, and do a `make install clean`. This fetches the source, configures it, builds it, installs it and removes the unnecessary build leftovers. If you don't have the time to compile, use `pkg_add -r <pkgname>`. This will fetch and install a prebuilt packaged. 9. A wide range of Linux apps can be run under FreeBSD. Examples include VMWare, Netscape (although there is a native port), StarOffice, Mathematica and many others. Source designed specifically for Linux may have trouble building, but if you can build it, chances are you can run it. 10. I don't see an advantage to either platform in terms of development. Both have the same compiler by default, both are open systems. People may disagree, but for building programs for yourself, it probably won't matter one way or another. I don't know about Glade, I´ve never tried to use it. 11. I used Linux for about a year, and was quite proficient with it. It took me about a week to move around comfortably in FreeBSD, but I'm still learning the little idiosyncracies (it's been 2 months now). Mind you, I know more about Linux than many people that have been using it for many years, and I put a lot of time into my system, so your results may vary. 12. Stability, I imagine. A better, fault-tolerant file system. A better license. Better networking, particularly the TCP/IP stack. Furthermore, FreeBSD is much more mature than Linux. 13. As I said before, I don't think FreeBSD users really care what happens in the desktop market. There's certainly no prominent person pushing hard to get FreeBSD everywhere. The thing is, to put it on the desktop, it would have to be mangled, and I like the way things are done now. For instance, take the partitioning process. If the average Windows user is too clueless to format a hard disk partition, imagine the same person trying to edit the master boot record using fdisk, and then creating a disklabel for a new slice. But I like how it's done now, I think disklabel and fdisk are powerful tools. If you want the Windows-replacement hopeful, stick with Linux. -- Andrew Hesford ajh3@chmod.ath.cx To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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