From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Aug 31 00:47:20 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0A42116A4DA for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:47:20 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from andy.ball@earthlink.net) Received: from elasmtp-spurfowl.atl.sa.earthlink.net (elasmtp-spurfowl.atl.sa.earthlink.net [209.86.89.66]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 65C9543D67 for ; Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:47:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from andy.ball@earthlink.net) DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=dk20050327; d=earthlink.net; b=HH6WGD+XHEYIRi9SuI/yUgLYDA7I2V/GdJriQzofxjH4wKkEnWToJDUiWiHaq7DZ; h=Message-ID:Date:From:Reply-To:To:Subject:Cc:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:X-Mailer:X-ELNK-Trace:X-Originating-IP; Received: from [209.86.224.49] (helo=elwamui-sweet.atl.sa.earthlink.net) by elasmtp-spurfowl.atl.sa.earthlink.net with asmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1GIai7-0000U5-4n; Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:47:11 -0400 Received: from 207.230.16.44 by webmail.pas.earthlink.net with HTTP; Wed, 30 Aug 2006 20:47:11 -0400 Message-ID: <32560229.1156985231112.JavaMail.root@elwamui-sweet.atl.sa.earthlink.net> Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2006 19:47:11 -0500 (GMT-05:00) From: Andy Ball To: "Charles M. Hannum" , netbsd-users@netbsd.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: EarthLink Zoo Mail 1.0 X-ELNK-Trace: f0109e4bd6a35484e9ef466adc09f07e7e972de0d01da9409be034463af6708a2df8816d57094c17350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c350badd9bab72f9c X-Originating-IP: 209.86.224.49 Cc: misc@openbsd.org, freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: The future of NetBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Andy Ball List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:47:20 -0000 Hello Charles, Some parts of your message seemed to be flames resulting from some past personality conflict that I know nothing about, so I won't comment further on those. Clearly you are more familiar with BSD internals than I am. I imagine others will pickup various technical points such as LFS and threading. I can only write from my own personal perspective as just one ordinary user of NetBSD. CMH> The NetBSD Project has stagnated to the point of irrelevance. Relevance to whom? It's relevant to me because I use it every day. CMH> As one of the 4 originators of NetBSD, I am in a fairly unique > position. I am the only one who has continuously participated > and/or watched the project over its entire history. Sincere thanks for the contributions you have made to my favorite operating system. CMH> Power management is very primitive. Etc. I'm not sure what this means. All I can say is that it works for me: suspend and resume work on my laptop. I know that work is being done on PowerNow! for AMD K6-2+, Athlon etc. I don't presently use Intel chips, so I don't know about SpeedStep. Hopefully someone who knows will clarify this point. You make several references to a "flash-friendly file system", which I assume means one that somehow spreads out data to avoid wearing the carpet too thin. NetBSD works well with my flash cards and JumpDrive, but I would not want to use either for something heavy like swap because the nature of the technology (its finite number of write/erase cycles) does not suit that. That's not NetBSD's fault and does not pose a problem for me in any case. CMH> terrible support for kernel modules; I understand that other operating systems have loadable kernel modules. Perhaps NetBSD has them too. I don't know because I have never needed one. If I need a special device driver, I compile a new custom kernel. It's quick, easy (once you know how) and in my experience both painless and beneficial. NetBSD works very well for my modest server-side needs: it's fast, light, absolutely rock solid, consistent and does not make assumptions about the work that I need to do or the software that I will choose to install. As a desktop operating system it's not quite there yet (depending on the application). I understand that support for hardware accelleration of things like MPEG decode and 3D graphics are not yet working. I will be happy if someone corrects me on this point. One very underestimated assett of NetBSD is its user and developer community. The mailing lists and #netbsd on the freenode.net IRC network have provided me with far superior support than I have received from any proprietary software vendor and also better than other open-source products that I use. I have found the people there friendly, patient and very, very helpful. This is just my inital reaction to your post, which I fealt like sharing. - Andy Ball