Date: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 04:57:09 -0700 From: Sean Bruno <seanbru@yahoo-inc.com> To: Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com> Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org, hackers@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Leaving the Desktop Market Message-ID: <1396353429.56465.7.camel@powernoodle.corp.yahoo.com> In-Reply-To: <CAF6rxgkeBozvfV-L0%2BrFZ6fWRn0=Gi3BNq1kPL=-HTq0TD6MkQ@mail.gmail.com> References: <CAF6rxgkeBozvfV-L0%2BrFZ6fWRn0=Gi3BNq1kPL=-HTq0TD6MkQ@mail.gmail.com>
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On Mon, 2014-03-31 at 22:46 -0700, Eitan Adler wrote: > Hi all, > > Some of you may have seen my posts entitled "Story of a Laptop User" > and "Story of a Desktop User". For those of you who did not, it can > be a worthwhile read to see what life is like when using FreeBSD as a > desktop. In short, it is an educational experience. While FreeBSD > can be coerced to do the right thing, it is rarely there by default > and often doesn't work as well as we would expect. > > The following are issues I haven't brought up in the past: > > Battery life sucks: it’s almost as if powerd wasn't running. Windows > can run for five hours on my laptop while FreeBSD can barely make it > two hours. I wonder what the key differences are? Likely it’s that > we focus so much on performance that no one considers power. ChromeOS > can run for 12 hours on some hardware; why can't we make FreeBSD run > for 16? > > Sound configuration lacks key documentation: how can I automatically > change between headphones and external speakers? You can't even do > that in middle of a song at all! Trust me that you never want to be > staring at an HDA pin configuration. I'll bet you couldn't even get > sound streaming to other machines working if you tried. > > FreeBSD lacks vendor credibility: CUDA is unsupported. Dropbox hasn't > released a client for FreeBSD. Nvidia Optimus doesn't function on > FreeBSD. Can you imagine telling someone to purchase a laptop with > the caveat: "but you won't be able to use your graphics card"? > > In any case, half of our desktop support is emulation: flash and opera > only works because of the linuxulator. There really isn't any reason > for vendors to bother supporting FreeBSD if we are just going to ape > Linux anyways. > > That is why on this date I propose that we cease competing on the > desktop market. FreeBSD should declare 2014 to be "year of the Linux > desktop" and start to rip out the pieces of the OS not needed for > server or embedded use. > > Some of you may point to PCBSD and say that we have a chance, but I > must ask you: how does one flavor stand up to the thousands in the > Linux world? > Why even bother? Its over, just embrace the future and be like this happy Mac user: http://people.freebsd.org/~sbruno/happy_desktop_user.jpg sean
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