Date: Tue, 6 Jan 2004 23:13:07 -0500 From: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> To: Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be> Cc: chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Where is FreeBSD going? Message-ID: <20040107041307.GA1674@online.fr> In-Reply-To: <p06002027bc20fbfa66b6@[10.0.1.4]>
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Brad Knowles wrote: [... linux vs freebsd stuff from Brad and Paul ... ] I've only had FreeBSD experience on the desktop lately, but I think FreeBSD 5.0 was already more "stable" than Linux 2.4.x for x<10 at least. Even with the present lot of 2.4 linux kernels, one runs into all sorts of little non-reproducible problems (unkillable processes due to I/O problems, problems under heavy load, etc) that I've never seen in FreeBSD. Linus has now released 2.6.0 when it's clearly not ready, because bugs won't get fixed unless people use it widely, he says. So maybe FreeBSD is more conservative in numbering than Linux (2.6.0 corresponds to 5.0-DP1 at best) but that's not a bad thing. [ ... Matt Dillon ... ] > > OK, I've never run into that. Over on the DragonFly stuff, he seems > > pleasant enough and his ideas are innovative, strong, if sometimes... > > *cough*... eccentric (e.g. replacing sysinstall with an Apache server > > and a load of PHP...), but I'll accept I haven't seen that, and I > > know others have had their problems there. > > Well, since it's his project, I'm sure he feels a lot more > secure. No, I have exactly the same impression from his FreeBSD mailing list postings too, and many others said the same thing when he was chucked out. He was always willing to help inexperienced people and his mails were a pleasure to read for their technical detail. The impression given out then (eg, by Greg Lehey in DaemonNews) was that he had two faces to his personality: the friendly help-newbies one, and an aggressive behind-the-scenes one that only showed up when dealing with other developers. So Matt was easy with newbies and aggressive with other developers. Somehow (being from an academic background) I can sympathise with that. On the other hand, many of FreeBSD's key developers are rather curt and abrasive with newbies, while being (apparently) gentle with other developers. Is that a good thing? From the project management point of view (get 5-STABLE out the door quick) I don't know, but from the advocacy point of view (convert new users), I certainly fear the answer is no. I have to agree with many people that the internal issues and half-truths pointed out by the troll haven't been great PR for FreeBSD lately. I've not advocated FreeBSD lately, not because of worries about the quality of 5.x but because of unease about its future and the attitude of its leaders, and the turning point in my feelings towards FreeBSD was probably the chucking-out of Matt Dillon. Rahul
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