Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2016 21:23:07 -0500 From: Brandon J. Wandersee <brandon.wandersee@gmail.com> To: CK <un_x@earthlink.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Building X11 Message-ID: <86wpidkik4.fsf@WorkBox.Home> In-Reply-To: <E1bk0t4-0005A4-Au@elasmtp-galgo.atl.sa.earthlink.net> References: <E1bk0t4-0005A4-Au@elasmtp-galgo.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
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CK writes:
> it's just a question on the future of BSDs. are they going
> to conform to Apple/Linux/Microsoft - or will any effort be made
> to remain true to Unix standards/sanity/roots?
While I sympathize with a lot of your message, this last bit falls
face-first into the fallacy of thinking that a graphical interface is in
any way a part of FreeBSD or Unix in general. It is not. Xorg is an
independent project led by people that do whatever they want. The
FreeBSD base system has no Xorg components in it; neither did the
classic Unix systems, and X was not the only windowing system conceived
for Unix or Unix-like systems over the decades. Moreover, that you might
need the occasional GNU utility to build some part of Xorg or another,
doesn't mean you need to keep them installed for X11 to run Xorg on a
*BSD system.[1]
Whatever you think of Xorg or the X Consortium, they in no way reflect
on the *BSDs. You can't discern what the intentions of the *BSD
developers are by looking at the direction Xorg is headed in. All it
tells you is ...well, the direction Xorg is headed in. And the fact is
that it's been headed straight down the road to suckville for along
time. It's stable and all, but it hasn't aged well and should be
replaced. But for now it's what we've got. You can also complain about
the tedium of ports, but if you find it so tedious to deal with things
actually required to, y'know, *port* the software to FreeBSD, then you
should just use the packages the ports team already went through the
trouble of making for everyone.
[1]: I'm can't tell if you thought downloading the source and building
it manually would somehow make the build dependencies disappear, so
I'll just assume you had something else in mind that I'm not
seeing/overlooked.
--
:: Brandon J. Wandersee
:: brandon.wandersee@gmail.com
:: --------------------------------------------------
:: 'The best design is as little design as possible.'
:: --- Dieter Rams ----------------------------------
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