Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 09:34:19 -0700 From: Studded <Studded@san.rr.com> To: sfarrell+lists@farrell.org Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Andreessen: Linux use growing Message-ID: <3544B38A.702805B8@san.rr.com> References: <199804261854.MAA25063@const.> <354393DC.2781E494@asme.org> <8767jwrse0.fsf@phaedrus.uchicago.edu> <35440534.167EB0E7@asme.org> <35440DBD.82A8A7AE@san.rr.com> <87emyjrh5y.fsf@phaedrus.uchicago.edu>
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I realize that you're not being argumentative, I just want to provide some more details here. sfarrell+lists@farrell.org wrote: > > Studded <Studded@san.rr.com> writes: > > > WINE is a good case of an app that doesn't work in freebsd because the > > developers all use linux and don't care about cross-platform > > portability. > > Well... the problem there which I'm aware of is that they want to > support win32 threading, and they're doing it on top of clone(). I"m > not sure whether they're could/should/are doing this on > pthreads... but I do know (a) threading in freebsd needs more work (b) > clone() is one of the things that will be implemented in freebsd. I used to follow the WINE newsgroup quite closely and saw the "do we care about portability" convo happen many times. They don't. In fact it's so bad at times that Linus actually scolds them about it. I asked several times if ANYONE was interested in making the thing work on FreeBSD, offered my assistance, as have several others. There is never any response to these offers. > I've run into another linux app--a neat mp3 player--that also needed > threads and so didn't run well under freebsd. > > So I could be wrong, but it sounds like they need a feature which > freebsd doesn't *yet* provide. I'm not sure this is their fault. Many people who develop apps on linux are blissfully ignorant about portability issues. Others state explicitly that they don't care because it runs for them. I'm not trying to place blame, I'm simply trying to describe the current landscape. > > Several of the apps that are packaged with afterstep > > are examples of authors that are proud to be linux only. > > You mean like cpu meters? those are always os dependant (at least > partially). No, I mean like the cd player, the mixer, the trashcan... I have a list somewhere but less than half of the "toys" that are included with the package build. [snip] > Anyway, I'm not sure that this discussion has any point (at least the > side I'm arguing ;-). what should we do? What's the goal? If we're going to work towards the goal of increasing awareness and popularity for FreeBSD we have to know where we stand in comparison to our competition. Knowing WHY linux has such a strong following in spite of being technically inferior would help us with that goal. Doug -- *** Chief Operations Officer, DALnet IRC network *** *** Proud designer and maintainer of the world's largest Internet *** Relay Chat server with 5,328 simultaneous connections. *** Try spider.dal.net on ports 6662-4 (Powered by FreeBSD) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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