Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:41:44 +0000 From: Kaya Saman <kayasaman@gmail.com> To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Cc: dougb@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD has serious problems with focus, longevity, and lifecycle Message-ID: <4F1839B8.3090700@gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <4F17FC19.3040408@FreeBSD.org> References: <iwnlzjkfomlarmtwnxdp@dbyr> <vouizjmsitytcxxslori@esas> <4F17FC19.3040408@FreeBSD.org>
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On 19/01/12 11:18, Doug Barton wrote: > On 01/18/2012 23:07, vermaden wrote: >> Lets talk about Ports maintainers for a while, ftp/vsftpd maintainer >> for example, one of the options of this port is to provide a RC script >> so one will be able to start this FTP server with /usr/local/etc/rc.d >> script, but ... ITS NOT ENABLED BY DEFAULT, wtf people? > I don't see any reason why it should be an option at all, never mind off > by default. Perhaps the maintainer can elaborate on his reasoning? > > > Doug > Hi, not sure where this thread started as searching my mail archives yielded nothing apart from this excerpt. If this is an attack on FreeBSD as the title suggests; there are lots of polls taken in the decision making process over where to go and what to do.... I am not really qualified to give an in-depth account on things as have only been using FreeBSD for about 3+ years now but the one thing I can say is that the lifecycle and longevity is waaaay more then any other OS I've had experience with. I mean as an example - I built a home 'mainframe' for myself round 3 years ago and at the same time I built Fedora 11 on PPC as a web server on my old Apple G4. Well until recently 8.x was the current version while a recent install of Fedora on my laptop gave me version 15 which is soon to be superseeded by version 16. I had Ubuntu previously of which's lifecycle lasts for round 3 months after that it's defunct pretty much. Additionally try dist-upgrading any Linux and see what happens. Almost the entire system gets wiped and config files in /etc get reset to the new package defaults. Focus wise there is so much inconsistancy and incoherence with Linux that one distro uses ALSA then in the next release switches to Pulse audio which is horrible as it gives you no or limited control over the sound card. init.d. scripts get tied into service system management and then with very limited documentation no one knows what's going on. Regarding focus I beleive that FreeBSD is a viable alternative to Linux as ever package (almost) is in the ports repo and it's my personal opinion that the only thing that let's FreeBSD down is the hardware support and some multimedia support otherwise I would have switched to using FBSD on my notebooks and desktops long ago. For servers however, it is the only option in my opinion as it will do everything that Linux can but be increadibly stable and have small footprint to boot. Additionally version and package upgrades as mentioned are increadibly easy and painless. The following of FreeBSD may not be very large in most areas which let's it down as in my understanding if one is not in the North Americas FreeBSD is seldom used especially on a professional level. I mean as an out of work UNIX engineer for almost a year now, while telling recruiters or companies that 'I'm a UNIX engineer' the reply is generally 'oh ok so you're a Linux engineer'... erm ???? Actually as a big fan of Solaris as well, the reason I'm not mentioning it is because natively there is no package support for it and everything must come from 3rd party managed repositories such as OpenCSW or Blastwave. To turn it into a 'Linux' beater - which FBSD does natively anyway and compiles directly to the CPU architecture further streamlining things. Against corporate OS's like OSX and Windows, there is no comparison as both treat the users like idiots but then again most of 'those' operating systems users don't actually understand much about what they're doing hence the layer of abstraction. But it is really easy to critisize; to get round those critisisims is the hard part. Or to understand a viable work around or working solution. Just as it is with any body! People can attack each other and say that another person is useless or hasn't got a clue but the issue is how to better that person or how that person will better themselves (which is a position I fall into currently with companies telling me that I don't have enough experience or other faults etc....). I guess here what I'm trying to say is don't moan and help by integrating and working on a fix or a solution. Moaning and winging takes time and energy and works in a negative way while being pro-active within the project can have a significant positive affect. - like the other day when I got rushed to hospital by ambulance, I got sent home and directly as I was (actually being carried) through the door started working on my shell scripting abilites. Anyway, just my 2cents worth. Regards, Kaya
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