Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 18:26:33 -0700 From: Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org> To: Garrett Wollman <wollman@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> Cc: freebsd-current <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, michael@rancid.berkeley.edu Subject: Re: Leaving the Desktop Market Message-ID: <CAJ-VmonW3LWMgZc4UZo8sC=-L4fiRMfZ%2B25ye836z8SJbHZe3A@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <201404012240.s31MeIe4073267@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> References: <CAF6rxgkeBozvfV-L0%2BrFZ6fWRn0=Gi3BNq1kPL=-HTq0TD6MkQ@mail.gmail.com> <082a01cf4db9$240d3e90$6c27bbb0$@FreeBSD.org> <533B3903.7030307@rancid.berkeley.edu> <201404012240.s31MeIe4073267@hergotha.csail.mit.edu>
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On 1 April 2014 15:40, Garrett Wollman <wollman@hergotha.csail.mit.edu> wrote: > In article <533B3903.7030307@rancid.berkeley.edu>, > michael@rancid.berkeley.edu writes: > >>I have been using FreeBSD on the desktop since 1997, > > Hmmm. I'm a bit biased here, but I've been using FreeBSD on the > desktop since, well, before it was called FreeBSD. It's still my > primary platform for nearly everything (except photo management, which > drove me to a Mac laptop so I could run Lightroom, and those few > remaining Web sites that still bury all their content inside Flash). > > But let's be clear that different people have different requirements > for a "desktop". My requirements are relatively simple: twm, xterm, > XEmacs, vlc, LaTeX, xpdf, a Jabber client (psi), $VCS_OF_CHOICE, > gnucash, and at least two Web browsers (I use Opera for most stuff and > Firefox for "promiscuous-mode browsing"). Once in a while, I even > need to run a remote X application over an SSH tunnel. A Web server > (Apache) and a mail server with local delivery and spam filtering > (sendmail+spamass-milter+crm114) round out the requirements. I do not > ever need or even want translucent windows, Zeroconf, 3-D games, or > nonlinear video editing. Audio playback only matters to the extent > that it's smooth and the settings stick. I write documents and code; > my desktop is a productivity tool, not a gaming platform, and it > performs that function quite well, thank you very much. > > Other people have rather different requirements, and that's OK. But > let's please not break the applications for which FreeBSD is very good > now (and has actually gotten substantially better). The problem (among many) is that you don't have those requirements but the Xorg desktop developers and the graphics driver / layer developers have those requirements and they're sure sticking to them. So, you're going to end up getting 3D/hardware accelerated graphics and crazy audio integration requirements for your web browsers soon, which drag in libdri_<chipset>.so and all of the bugs that keep popping up with that. It's no longer "xorg just speaks to the graphics chip." -a
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