Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
Mike. the.li...@mgm51.com, 2011-07-19 20:52 (+0200): Perhaps the real question should be - how much longer will the desktop be relevant? I think it depends on what you mean by desktop. Traditional heavy PCs might begin to disappear but people using mobile devices such as smartphones might want to connect their devices to better monitors and (better) keyboards. That's sort of a desktop. In a business setting I can't see the desktop disappearing either. However, there are chances that we're moving towards even more thin client solutions. I think FreeBSD and Linux will power both ends, both clients and servers, in this scenario. -- http://hack.org/mc/ Use plain text e-mail, please. OpenPGP welcome, 0xE4C92FA5. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com, 2011-07-21 18:58 (+0200): Unless and until I get a full-power OS (preferably a real BSD Unix) on a tablet, no amount of peripherals, ubiquitous network connection, and internal power will make up for the simple fact it's just a damned toy. Same here. Not a tablet, but I've been eyeing Genesi's EFIKA MX Smartbook for a while: http://www.genesi-usa.com/products/smartbook Seems like more than a toy to me. I've read reports about someone trying to port FreeBSD to the thing. I don't know the status. Anyone? -- http://hack.org/mc/ Use plain text e-mail, please. OpenPGP welcome, 0xE4C92FA5. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 12:35:17PM +0200, Michael Cardell Widerkrantz wrote: Mike. the.li...@mgm51.com, 2011-07-19 20:52 (+0200): Perhaps the real question should be - how much longer will the desktop be relevant? I think it depends on what you mean by desktop. Traditional heavy PCs might begin to disappear but people using mobile devices such as smartphones might want to connect their devices to better monitors and (better) keyboards. That's sort of a desktop. Another interpretation: The desktop is not relevant to me. All my computers running general purpose OSes are laptops and servers these days. Some of them are both. None of them are desktops, in that they do not sit at or on a desk with external monitor, keyboard, and pointing device attached, ready to be used as workstations. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgp0WIAPBmiBP.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Android (Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?)
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 02:27:08AM +0200, Jerome Herman wrote: Most androids phone already do have a quite useful and complete shell, the main problem is that most phone are actually root locked. Namely you cannot get any access to nay interesting without getting an access denied. There are tools that will break this protection and grant you root access on the phone, but they are to be used with caution, and most of the time you must first degrade your OS to an older version in order for them to work. It's worse than that. Android does not, by default, give access to some very basic tools to which even non-root users are accustomed to having access. Consider cat, for instance. So the problem is not a missing app, it is more of the usual vendor lock stuff. There's that -- but there's also a lot of missing applications. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpqpqAQHv7qv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Android (Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?)
Op 25-7-2011 18:59 schreef Chad Perrin: So the problem is not a missing app, it is more of the usual vendor lock stuff. There's that -- but there's also a lot of missing applications. HTC is removing the root lock protection soon. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Android (Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?)
On Mon, Jul 25, 2011 at 07:30:08PM +0200, Dick Hoogendijk wrote: Op 25-7-2011 18:59 schreef Chad Perrin: So the problem is not a missing app, it is more of the usual vendor lock stuff. There's that -- but there's also a lot of missing applications. HTC is removing the root lock protection soon. I'd heard that about HTC -- and an HTC smartphone might be what I choose to replace my current device in another year or so. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpchqHBeTKPM.pgp Description: PGP signature
Android (Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?)
Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote: If Android actually exposed more of the Linux underpinnings it might be somewhat useful to me ... There _is_ a development kit. I have no idea what-all is involved in setting it up, but if someone were sufficiently motivated it would presumably be possible to develop an app to provide access to bash (and thence any other desired command-line tools). ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Android (Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?)
El día Sunday, July 24, 2011 a las 06:41:57AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com escribió: Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote: If Android actually exposed more of the Linux underpinnings it might be somewhat useful to me ... There _is_ a development kit. I have no idea what-all is involved in setting it up, but if someone were sufficiently motivated it would presumably be possible to develop an app to provide access to bash (and thence any other desired command-line tools). Why do you want to use the closed Android if there is an OpenSource, Linux based cellphone, having shell, X11, GPS, GPRS, Wifi, USB ethernet, x11vnc, ... etc. http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.unixarea.de/openmoko.txt HIH matthias -- Matthias Apitz t +49-89-61308 351 - f +49-89-61308 399 - m +49-170-4527211 e g...@unixarea.de - w http://www.unixarea.de/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Android (Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?)
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 09:48:46AM +0200, Matthias Apitz wrote: El día Sunday, July 24, 2011 a las 06:41:57AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com escribió: Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote: If Android actually exposed more of the Linux underpinnings it might be somewhat useful to me ... There _is_ a development kit. I have no idea what-all is involved in setting it up, but if someone were sufficiently motivated it would presumably be possible to develop an app to provide access to bash (and thence any other desired command-line tools). Why do you want to use the closed Android if there is an OpenSource, Linux based cellphone, having shell, X11, GPS, GPRS, Wifi, USB ethernet, x11vnc, ... etc. http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page http://www.unixarea.de/openmoko.txt I considered that. Unfortunately, it does not suffice. The OpenMoko project suffers some pretty significant hardware issues -- such as, in some cases, lack of necessary hardware to achieve anything close to functionality parity with common Android devices. It does not even provide G3 access, which is a minimal piece of functionality for a smartphone to be worth having, according to my preferences at least. I wish circumstances were different. I would much prefer something like OpenMoko if it provided what I needed. I would even accept a slightly slower processor, no accelerometer, no GPS, and several other shortcomings compared to the hardware in my current Android smartphone, but the lack of G3 support -- especially in combination to some hardware quality issues that have come up for several people I know who have OpenMoko devices mouldering in drawers right now -- ensures it is not worth my while to spend real money on one. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpwORf6ldLsV.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Android (Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?)
On Sun, Jul 24, 2011 at 06:41:57AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote: Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote: If Android actually exposed more of the Linux underpinnings it might be somewhat useful to me ... There _is_ a development kit. I have no idea what-all is involved in setting it up, but if someone were sufficiently motivated it would presumably be possible to develop an app to provide access to bash (and thence any other desired command-line tools). If I had more time, I might write an entire replacement userland for it and offer it in the Android Market, but I do not have that kind of time. If you want to pay me a living wage to work on it, though, I will happily find the time. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpuVEaWvTZ73.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: Android (Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?)
On 24/07/2011 15:41, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote: There_is_ a development kit. I have no idea what-all is involved in setting it up, but if someone were sufficiently motivated it would presumably be possible to develop an app to provide access to bash (and thence any other desired command-line tools). Most androids phone already do have a quite useful and complete shell, the main problem is that most phone are actually root locked. Namely you cannot get any access to nay interesting without getting an access denied. There are tools that will break this protection and grant you root access on the phone, but they are to be used with caution, and most of the time you must first degrade your OS to an older version in order for them to work. So the problem is not a missing app, it is more of the usual vendor lock stuff. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, 21 Jul 2011 02:11:55 +0400, Subbsd wrote: Hi On 7/19/11, Konrad Heuer kheu...@gwdg.de wrote: To my mind we'll have to face a rapid change within the next years, and operating systems of the future might be Android or IOS or Windows Mobile or something similar which my base on Linux or BSD but are something different. For 2020 year here is nice sugesstions make HTML5/JS based DE for FreeBSD and Co: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=141286#post141286 ;) Those who develop for the upcoming Windows 8 will be pleased: Seems as MICROS~1 representatives made a scary comment that HTML5/CSS/JS will be _the_ development plaform, obsoleting all its many predecessors that already forced developers to learn something new - and now THIS! :-) Julie Larson-Green's comment caused panic: This is written with our new development platform, which is based on HTML5 and JavaScript [...] And so people can write new applications for Windows using the things that they, that they - are doing already on the internet. http://forums.silverlight.net/t/230502.aspx http://forums.silverlight.net/t/230725.aspx If you do further investigation, you'll see that it's not as scary as I pointed out here, but I simply love the pure imagination... :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 02:06:04PM -0400, Daniel Staal wrote: One of the people I know uses this as his work laptop, running Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Word, etc. (Of course, he's not running Android at that point...) The 'laptop' is a tablet in a case with a bluetooth keyboard. He uses this _at his desk in the office, next to a desktop computer._ (Because he can then take the work home with him, or bring it to a meeting.) With the exception of the spreadsheet and the MUA - and I use that description lightly - most of that functionality can be achieved with TeX and with a more professional appearance. Granted this approach requires a higher skill level but on balance it's worth it because the results are better. People in corporate environments seem to use this toy software a lot which I can only imaginge is for ease and because almost anyone can use it. It can't for cost benefit as the most popular version is so expensive. I would never pay that much for something put together so badly. I do appreciate, though, the conveniece bluetooth and the-like provide. At the moment it's just not something I care too much about. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Fri, Jul 22, 2011 at 09:52:10AM +0100, Jamie Paul Griffin wrote: On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 02:06:04PM -0400, Daniel Staal wrote: One of the people I know uses this as his work laptop, running Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Word, etc. (Of course, he's not running Android at that point...) The 'laptop' is a tablet in a case with a bluetooth keyboard. He uses this _at his desk in the office, next to a desktop computer._ (Because he can then take the work home with him, or bring it to a meeting.) With the exception of the spreadsheet and the MUA - and I use that description lightly - most of that functionality can be achieved with TeX and with a more professional appearance. Granted this approach requires a higher skill level but on balance it's worth it because the results are better. People in corporate environments seem to use this toy software a lot which I can only imaginge is for ease and because almost anyone can use it. It can't for cost benefit as the most popular version is so expensive. I would never pay that much for something put together so badly. I do appreciate, though, the conveniece bluetooth and the-like provide. At the moment it's just not something I care too much about. re: TeX and MS Word or OO.o Write TeX is a print formatting system. MS Word and OO.o Write are very poor text editors with some very poor facsimiles of print formatting systems built into them. They also have some very poor facsimiles of Web formatting systems built into them. There are other very poor facsimiles of various other things built into them, as well. I think there were originally halfway decent reasons to use word processor applications like MS Word, mostly because *good* print formatting systems, Web formatting systems, and so on, were not readily available in forms that could be reasonably acquired and used by mere mortals. This state of affairs has generally been rectified, but has not made a dent in the growing market for such poorly conceived applications. At this point, I think the market for such applications is essentially a mass case of Stockholm Syndrome. In the rare occasions where people actually choose such tools for a good reason, that reason is that other people keep sending them documents that can only properly be read with reasonable ease by those applications -- other people who suffer from this mass case of Stockholm Syndrome. When someone fires up MS Office or OpenOffice.org just to write the equivalent of a post-it note, there is something horribly, desperately wrong with the way people use software. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpQ2wNBy6NVv.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Fri, 22 Jul 2011 07:05:59 -0600, Chad Perrin wrote: re: TeX and MS Word or OO.o Write TeX is a print formatting system. MS Word and OO.o Write are very poor text editors with some very poor facsimiles of print formatting systems built into them. (La)TeX is a professional typesetting system with excellent typographical features. The other ones are text processors (often also called word processors). Those are BELOW a typesetting system on the evolutionary ladder. (Good text editors are typically on the same level as the typesetting system they feed.) Some aspects: http://ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu/~cottrell/wp.html (my favourite one!) http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/latex.html http://en.nothingisreal.com/wiki/Please_don't_send_me_Microsoft_Word_documents http://www.longleaf.net/ggrow/computerbad.html Sadly, most users don't even use those low habits program the wrong way... Microformatting, no difference between text functionality and layout (what it IS vs. what it LOOKS LIKE) and so on are just a few examples. Marco-bomb loaded files, binary blobs and outdated (and therefore incompatible) proprietary versions, as well as problems with interoperability are others. Welcome to digital medieval times. People now crying that LaTeX isn't a WYSIWYG: There's LyX for that. :-) Of course I don't want to enter a discussion of which tool is the best, as this is nonsense. But it's worth mentioning that traditional word processors are often the _worst_ tool for what people use them in reality. Those people _require_ software that allows them to do even the stupidest, most inefficient and exaggerated idiotic things, and finally that's _also_ an aspect of freedom. At this point, I think the market for such applications is essentially a mass case of Stockholm Syndrome. The market, often consisting of pirated copies, originates from the fact that users want the same pictures at home as they know them from work - and vice versa. When someone fires up MS Office or OpenOffice.org just to write the equivalent of a post-it note, there is something horribly, desperately wrong with the way people use software. Of course. For creating post-it notes, you have to use Powerpoint, and if it should have columns or boxes, use Excel, moron! :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 4:18 PM, Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 02:06:04PM -0400, Daniel Staal wrote: On Thu, July 21, 2011 1:11 pm, Chad Perrin wrote: If all they want is a toy with a Web browser and an email client, I guess that works for them. I don't know if they really count for purposes of discussing the possible replacement of desktops and laptops, though, because what they really need is not a general-purpose personal computer at all. One of the people I know uses this as his work laptop, running Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Word, etc. (Of course, he's not running Android at that point...) The 'laptop' is a tablet in a case with a bluetooth keyboard. He uses this _at his desk in the office, next to a desktop computer._ (Because he can then take the work home with him, or bring it to a meeting.) Frankly, I'm of the opinion that an office suite is just more toy software. It just happens to be toy software with ungodly resource requirements and a veneer of professionalism. Until I get the kind of development environment I have on my FreeBSD systems, ability to run test environments (Web servers, for instance), and so on, I don't call it a full-power OS. If all you're doing with it is email, making slides for another pointless presentation, and updating your resume, you're still using a toy, or maybe an appliance. I suppose others might disagree. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] I for one wholeheartedly agree. Office tasks and games are the realm of the appliance, the plug-in-and-go black box for the user that wants no interaction with the underlying architecture, which traditionally has never been the target audience for FreeBSD (and nor should it be, IMO). FreeBSD's strength is in its kernel, especially in its advanced features and early adoption of powerful tech like ZFS, and its liberal licensing that lends itself to embedded systems. It's third party software pool is exactly that of Linux, including Xorg, so from a user perspective FreeBSD has nothing to offer that the existing umpteen trillion linux distros can't in the desktop realm. It's really quite pointless to jump in that ring, unless FreeBSD miraculously got wholehearted vendor support overnight from all wireless and 3d vendors, and Microsoft gave up the fight to dominate office document standards. No, the server and the embedded system will continue to be important and that's where FreeBSD shines. Of course, I'm a nobody, but I really appreciate the unique properties of FreeBSD that make it not Linux, OS X, or Windows; though I use all four routinely. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 2:05 PM, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote: Gary Gatten ggat...@waddell.com wrote: ... can a HAL be developed that runs on BSD that emulates Winblow$ such that any driver written for Winblow$ will work on *BSD? ... Something in the back of my head says there was / is something along this line already available or in the works, but I can't recall for sure. I _think_ we may already have something along these lines for NDIS (network) drivers, but I don't know how well it works. Not using it today, but it helped me in the past for some exotic NICs. Regarding the Windowsulator, I'm wondering if such a compat layer would be possible. Don't Windows drivers all get created by some kind of DDK/WDK, against a stable kernel-ABI? I'm not familiar with Windows, but I don't think a typical windows driver as written by a hardware vendor would manipulate the windows kernel internals (data structures) directly, right? If that's correct, we merely need to catch the ABI up- and down-calls from and to the windows driver, and translate them into regular FreeBSD syscalls (maybe augmented by a compat helper library?). Since this is exactly the approach taken by the Linuxulator, I fail to see why a similar method hasn't been tried for those windows kernel driver (binary blobs). Maybe some artificial restrictions like, say, patents are standing in the way? Or a technical restriction like such binary blobs being encrypted with a public key, and only usable from Windows kernel with their own secret key? Only windows kernel hackers can tell. -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 05:06:27AM -0700, per...@pluto.rain.com wrote: Daniel Staal dst...@usa.net wrote: The perfect computing device would fit in a pocket, have a screen the size of your wall, have a full (and full-sized) keyboard, and your choice of pointing devices. It would be able to play any game you wanted to play, hold every movie and song ever recorded along with your entire lifetime's collection of documents, and be able to access the Internet from anywhere. It would only need to be recharged as often as you sleep. (And would be able to recharge anywhere.) It would also be fully encrypted and keyed to your fingerprint or retinal scan, so that no thief would be able to extract anything from it, . . . unless he took your thumb or eyeball. and the encrypted files would be backed up automatically whenever it was recharged to guard against data loss in case of loss, theft, damage, malfunction, etc. Ahhh, good call. Of course, I'd probably prefer near-realtime versioned backups via DVCS to an encrypted repository over the network. (Sorry about accidentally sending an email to you off-list first; I meant to send it to the list in the first place.) -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpaDiu003R8G.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:52:28AM +0200, C. P. Ghost wrote: I'm not familiar with Windows, but I don't think a typical windows driver as written by a hardware vendor would manipulate the windows kernel internals (data structures) directly, right? If that's correct, we merely need to catch the ABI up- and down-calls from and to the windows driver, and translate them into regular FreeBSD syscalls (maybe augmented by a compat helper library?). Since this is exactly the approach taken by the Linuxulator, I fail to see why a similar method hasn't been tried for those windows kernel driver (binary blobs). Maybe some artificial restrictions like, say, patents are standing in the way? Or a technical restriction like such binary blobs being encrypted with a public key, and only usable from Windows kernel with their own secret key? It may not be anything so exotic. On a per-release basis, the MS Windows ABIs and APIs change far more dramatically than the Linux kernel, and are far less transparent to developers; they must in many cases be discovered by experimentation, being closed source software. Over a given period of time, the changes to Linux may be greater in number and magnitude (I'm not a kernel hacker, so I wouldn't know for sure), but they're spread out over time rather than bundled in a major collection of changes with a new marketing campaign. This might make it much more difficult to target the MS Windows ABIs and APIs. I'm just speculating, though. As I said, I'm not a kernel hacker. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpMoc83iHAR2.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On 21/07/2011 15:15, Chad Perrin wrote: It may not be anything so exotic. On a per-release basis, the MS Windows ABIs and APIs change far more dramatically than the Linux kernel, and are far less transparent to developers; they must in many cases be discovered by experimentation, being closed source software. Over a given period of time, the changes to Linux may be greater in number and magnitude (I'm not a kernel hacker, so I wouldn't know for sure), but they're spread out over time rather than bundled in a major collection of changes with a new marketing campaign. This might make it much more difficult to target the MS Windows ABIs and APIs. I'm just speculating, though. As I said, I'm not a kernel hacker. On Windows, the APIs don't change that much (there are new functions for NUMA support in Windows 7 for example), but certain ABIs change with each service pack. However, since a lot of drivers built for Windows XP can still install on Windows 7, an effort appears to be made to maintain a stable public ABI - Microsoft recommends using the build environment for the earliest version of Windows that you want to target. On Linux, the API/ABI issue is far worse, since you have a different ABI between different builds of the same kernel. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 07:28:24PM -0400, Daniel Staal wrote: --As of July 20, 2011 5:45:49 PM -0400, David Jackson is alleged to have said: but you also have scanners, cameras, joysticks, capture devices for video, and so on that many common users love to use. A lot of people use computers for writing, home and office business work, and gaming, and given the choice between a 3 screen and a 20 screen, you want a 20 screen. Even facebook is better on a 20 screen. I stand by what i said, mobile is great for use on a subway, but when you get home, you really want a nice 20 screen to work on, and the bigger hard drive and faster CPU. --As for the rest, it is mine. *All* of which can be connected to a tablet just as easily as a desktop. (Well, except for a faster CPU.) I know people who do so. Current tablets have USB, Bluetooth, and HDMI/Displayport. Can you do everything on a tablet that you can on a dedicated desktop? No. But you can do most of it, especially if the people writing the software and designing the add-ons know that's the market they have to work with. Adding a variety of devices to a tablet still wouldn't make it an attractive option for me. I can't imagine doing my CS degree course-work on one of them, it would be a nightmare. I even found working on a laptop frustrating given the length of study sessions sometimes. Also, due to the nature of the course-work I absolutely could not work with anything other than UNIX and so I have to select my hardware around my choice of OS which of course is FreeBSD. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, 21 Jul 2011, Chad Perrin wrote: On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 10:52:28AM +0200, C. P. Ghost wrote: I'm not familiar with Windows, but I don't think a typical windows driver as written by a hardware vendor would manipulate the windows kernel internals (data structures) directly, right? If that's correct, we merely need to catch the ABI up- and down-calls from and to the windows driver, and translate them into regular FreeBSD syscalls (maybe augmented by a compat helper library?). Since this is exactly the approach taken by the Linuxulator, I fail to see why a similar method hasn't been tried for those windows kernel driver (binary blobs). Maybe some artificial restrictions like, say, patents are standing in the way? Or a technical restriction like such binary blobs being encrypted with a public key, and only usable from Windows kernel with their own secret key? It may not be anything so exotic. On a per-release basis, the MS Windows ABIs and APIs change far more dramatically than the Linux kernel, and are far less transparent to developers; they must in many cases be discovered by experimentation, being closed source software. Over a given period of time, the changes to Linux may be greater in number and magnitude (I'm not a kernel hacker, so I wouldn't know for sure), but they're spread out over time rather than bundled in a major collection of changes with a new marketing campaign. This might make it much more difficult to target the MS Windows ABIs and APIs. I'm just speculating, though. As I said, I'm not a kernel hacker. Doesn't the NDIS specification offer a reasonably stable ABI for wireless drivers? I have often thought that supporting NDIS would offer manufacturers a sort of halfway house to ease them into proper support for FreeBSD and Linux. While it is inferior to open source drivers, it would attract users, and with users manufacturers would feel pressure to have better support, which would best be achieved with open-source drivers. Daniel Feenberg -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, July 21, 2011 12:13 pm, Jamie Paul Griffin wrote: Adding a variety of devices to a tablet still wouldn't make it an attractive option for me. I can't imagine doing my CS degree course-work on one of them, it would be a nightmare. I even found working on a laptop frustrating given the length of study sessions sometimes. As I said elsewhere in that email, I don't expect everyone to do so. I just know several who have. As tablets and such get more powerful and the connection systems get better it will become a more appealing option for more and more users. But for a large number of non-technical users, I can see it being the most appealing option already. Also, due to the nature of the course-work I absolutely could not work with anything other than UNIX and so I have to select my hardware around my choice of OS which of course is FreeBSD. Which nicely brings us back to where this thread started: What needs to happen to make sure FreeBSD stays relevant as computing moves to these devices? ;) (Or should FreeBSD try to be relevant to the end-user at all? Part of what makes this an appealing option is increased 'cloud computing', and FreeBSD has an obviously relevant place in that, as a high-performance and high-reliability server platform.) Daniel T. Staal --- This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. --- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 05:13:56PM +0100, Jamie Paul Griffin wrote: Also, due to the nature of the course-work I absolutely could not work with anything other than UNIX and so I have to select my hardware around my choice of OS which of course is FreeBSD. This is a bigger deal than people might realize. If Android actually exposed more of the Linux underpinnings it might be somewhat useful to me, but as it stands it is essentially just a toy. Unless and until I get a full-power OS (preferably a real BSD Unix) on a tablet, no amount of peripherals, ubiquitous network connection, and internal power will make up for the simple fact it's just a damned toy. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpYy2RZart7H.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 01:11:12PM -0400, Daniel Staal wrote: On Thu, July 21, 2011 12:13 pm, Jamie Paul Griffin wrote: Adding a variety of devices to a tablet still wouldn't make it an attractive option for me. I can't imagine doing my CS degree course-work on one of them, it would be a nightmare. I even found working on a laptop frustrating given the length of study sessions sometimes. As I said elsewhere in that email, I don't expect everyone to do so. I just know several who have. As tablets and such get more powerful and the connection systems get better it will become a more appealing option for more and more users. But for a large number of non-technical users, I can see it being the most appealing option already. If all they want is a toy with a Web browser and an email client, I guess that works for them. I don't know if they really count for purposes of discussing the possible replacement of desktops and laptops, though, because what they really need is not a general-purpose personal computer at all. Also, due to the nature of the course-work I absolutely could not work with anything other than UNIX and so I have to select my hardware around my choice of OS which of course is FreeBSD. Which nicely brings us back to where this thread started: What needs to happen to make sure FreeBSD stays relevant as computing moves to these devices? ;) (Or should FreeBSD try to be relevant to the end-user at all? Part of what makes this an appealing option is increased 'cloud computing', and FreeBSD has an obviously relevant place in that, as a high-performance and high-reliability server platform.) Getting FreeBSD on my Android smartphone without losing basic functionality (support for all the hardware on the thing, essentially) would be a good start. I'd take NetBSD or OpenBSD, too. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpvttIGH4ECR.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, July 21, 2011 1:11 pm, Chad Perrin wrote: If all they want is a toy with a Web browser and an email client, I guess that works for them. I don't know if they really count for purposes of discussing the possible replacement of desktops and laptops, though, because what they really need is not a general-purpose personal computer at all. Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] One of the people I know uses this as his work laptop, running Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Word, etc. (Of course, he's not running Android at that point...) The 'laptop' is a tablet in a case with a bluetooth keyboard. He uses this _at his desk in the office, next to a desktop computer._ (Because he can then take the work home with him, or bring it to a meeting.) Whether of not it's sane, it's being done. ;) Daniel T. Staal --- This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. --- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
Which nicely brings us back to where this thread started: What needs to
happen to make sure FreeBSD stays relevant as computing moves to these
devices? ;) (Or should FreeBSD try to be relevant to the end-user at
all? Part of what makes this an appealing option is increased 'cloud
computing', and FreeBSD has an obviously relevant place in that, as a
high-performance and high-reliability server platform.)
Several years ago in 2004 approximately, I came across to LiveBSD a cd
made by Scott Ullrich known as Geek God in the forums. The livecd was
excellent but there were no longer releases. I liked the cd which had
kde 3.4.X or so, Now the picture has changed. With cloud computing,
there is a FreeBSD based one that I know at least by Scott :
http://scottullrich.posterous.com/
He was a cofounder of the pfsense project(did not know this). Not
only does MS, Linux distros (Ubuntu, Red Hat, ..., etc) have a cloud
based strategy, but thanks to folks like Scott, FreeBSD has one too!
Even with sarcastic comments(I get them from many folks many times,
about FreeBSD and also Linux) that we(users of FreeBSD/Linux) are
insignificant and nobody cares about our OSes, I certainly hope that
they survive and keep on churning. I am thankful for FreeBSD and wish
it continued success. I also use Linux and actually like both and
hate to side one over the other. I see advantages for both, and
instead of insulting one another, contribute wherever possible^{1}.
Hope that both projects defy the odds and live as long as they can and
for people to contribute whatever they can to achieve that goal.
Regards,
Antonio
{1} Except on licensing which is a pain in the *... GPL vs BSD licensing.
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Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On 21/07/2011 18:00, Chad Perrin wrote: I suspect those drivers are the drivers that have *survived*. I saw hardware suddenly stop working because of driver issues just between SP1 and SP2 of XP -- including, in one case, the hard drive that had the OS on it. The system would start booting, then unload the driver because it was not compatible, thus losing contact with the very hard drive from which it was loading the OS. Maybe I was just lucky, though. Obviously Microsoft does introduce new driver technologies with new OS releases: there was a new video architecture in Vista, for example. However, they do seem rather good at supporting older technologies such as TDI, and I suspect those drivers that fail aren't very well written. -- Bruce Cran ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 6:58 PM, Chad Perrin per...@apotheon.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 05:13:56PM +0100, Jamie Paul Griffin wrote: Also, due to the nature of the course-work I absolutely could not work with anything other than UNIX and so I have to select my hardware around my choice of OS which of course is FreeBSD. This is a bigger deal than people might realize. If Android actually exposed more of the Linux underpinnings it might be somewhat useful to me, but as it stands it is essentially just a toy. Unless and until I get a full-power OS (preferably a real BSD Unix) on a tablet, no amount of peripherals, ubiquitous network connection, and internal power will make up for the simple fact it's just a damned toy. Full ack! I was considering buying one of those new ARM-based ASUS tablets (1) to do some ARM assembly programming. Of course, I'd have liked to replace Android with FreeBSD/arm or another BSD (or even Linux), but I'm not sure it can be done already. So I'm holding off, because I don't need a toy, I need a fully working OS on that thing, an OS with a full suite of compilers etc... (1): http://www.amazon.com/Transformer-TF101-A1-10-1-Inch-Tablet-Computer/dp/B004U78J1G Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On 07/21/2011 01:02 PM, Chad Perrin wrote: On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 12:21:47PM -0400, Daniel Feenberg wrote: Doesn't the NDIS specification offer a reasonably stable ABI for wireless drivers? I have often thought that supporting NDIS would offer manufacturers a sort of halfway house to ease them into proper support for FreeBSD and Linux. While it is inferior to open source drivers, it would attract users, and with users manufacturers would feel pressure to have better support, which would best be achieved with open-source drivers. I agree that would probably be a productive approach to improving wireless support over time. I do not know the technical challenges associated with getting that working in FreeBSD, though, or how well it would actually work in practice. I have used the NDIS wrapper in FreeBSD and Linux few times for a couple of different systems. Generally for things I could not choose the hardware for for whatever reason. It does the job for the most part. I think in one particular case i got the impression that the driver had to remain closed due to some FCC restriction on the radio being used. With the exception of video(Intel), what other areas of hardware are lacking support in FreeBSD? And would the same approach make sense for those? I specifically excepted Intel video because this is an area that is currently under development and it requires significant changes to the kernel. From what I understand Intel wrote the open source GEM kernel module for Linux under an MIT type license. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 02:06:04PM -0400, Daniel Staal wrote: On Thu, July 21, 2011 1:11 pm, Chad Perrin wrote: If all they want is a toy with a Web browser and an email client, I guess that works for them. I don't know if they really count for purposes of discussing the possible replacement of desktops and laptops, though, because what they really need is not a general-purpose personal computer at all. One of the people I know uses this as his work laptop, running Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Word, etc. (Of course, he's not running Android at that point...) The 'laptop' is a tablet in a case with a bluetooth keyboard. He uses this _at his desk in the office, next to a desktop computer._ (Because he can then take the work home with him, or bring it to a meeting.) Frankly, I'm of the opinion that an office suite is just more toy software. It just happens to be toy software with ungodly resource requirements and a veneer of professionalism. Until I get the kind of development environment I have on my FreeBSD systems, ability to run test environments (Web servers, for instance), and so on, I don't call it a full-power OS. If all you're doing with it is email, making slides for another pointless presentation, and updating your resume, you're still using a toy, or maybe an appliance. I suppose others might disagree. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpGWQRtKkABh.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 07:18:21PM +0100, Bruce Cran wrote: On 21/07/2011 18:00, Chad Perrin wrote: I suspect those drivers are the drivers that have *survived*. I saw hardware suddenly stop working because of driver issues just between SP1 and SP2 of XP -- including, in one case, the hard drive that had the OS on it. The system would start booting, then unload the driver because it was not compatible, thus losing contact with the very hard drive from which it was loading the OS. Maybe I was just lucky, though. Obviously Microsoft does introduce new driver technologies with new OS releases: there was a new video architecture in Vista, for example. However, they do seem rather good at supporting older technologies such as TDI, and I suspect those drivers that fail aren't very well written. I have less faith in the correctness of MS Windows than you, evidently. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgpCxt6P9B6Fc.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
I do not believe that these phones or tablets will replace desktop but there is a lot of room for these two types of devices basically to communicate, giving people access to their data and environment from both. The reason I dont see the desktop going anywhere is that, basically people dont want to work on a spreadsheet, play a game, write a letter or do many other things on a 3 screen. Students wont want to use them to do their reports, etc. Phones and tablets are handy when on the go due to the portability, but their portability makes them impractical for use at home when a larger screen is more desirable. The growth of tablets is due to there simply not being the market there before and more people buying them for mobile use. But desktops will remain popular for home and work use. Also users want upgradeability, they dont want to be stuck with the same amount of hard disk space and may want to add a new camera to the system, a capture device, scanner, etc. Desktop systems provide much more upgrade flexibility. Linking the desktop to the tablet will be an important thing so people can access data and so on from their tablet. Problems with Linux and BSD user share relate to the lack of useability. One of the useability issues relates to hardware driver issues. I am convinced the only way to make Linux or BSD user friendly is to acknowledge that we need to make it so that 3rd party hardware provider drivers can be used easily on these operating systems and there is backwards compatability, allowing the drivers for an older version of the kernel to be continued to be used. Its not that I love the idea of 3rd party binary drivers, but that by putting up with the necessary evil we can greatly increase usage of BSD by greatly improving hardware compatability by getting hardware vendors to write drivers for their hardware. This of course still means open source drivers can be developed and then used instead of the hardware provider drivers, however, the hardware provider drivers would be avialable for many devices where open source drivers may not be available for months or years, if ever. Increasing available of hardware drivers for FreeBSD will also mean increasing numbers of FreeBSD/PCBSD users and that would mean more potential sources of donations, which could be requested by a pop up after installation. It is clear that hardware companies can provide hardware drivers more quickly and better tested and implemented for the hardware than kernel developers can. For instance, they can port their Windows drivers. People do not want to wait years for their hardware to be supported or having to not be able to use many kinds of hardware just so they can use BSD or LInux. People want to use hardware, and also they do not want a huge hassle with getting hardware to work. Basically users need to be able to plug in the device, throw the CD in the drive, and the hardware driver should install itself and work. Users are not going to use an OS that wont support hardware when Windows will. They are not going to wait months when hardware will work on windows right away. They wont give up on being able to use some hardware because it wont work on BSD, they will just use Windows. Hardware companies are not going to always provide open source drivers, but are willng to provide binary ones. And as well, Hardware companies need to have a well documented API, so they dont have to spend months trying to figure an undocumented API in the BSD kernel to figure out how to write a driver, and a stable ABI so they can release one copy of the driver and have it continue to work with many different versions of the kernel well into the future. The User may buy a printer that has a driver CD in it, this may be sitting on a store shelf for months or a year, and as well, the user may need to use this CD for years down the road to use their printer. The OS needs to support that binary driver for years following. We need hardware manufacturers to develop drivers and support their own drivers. The case with drivers developed by BSD people is the drivers may take months to appear, or for lesser known or more exotic software, might not be available ever. By putting up with a few pieces of binary 3rd party driver modules the deployment and popularity of BSD can be increased as it will begin to be useable with far more hardware. I think the hardware support problem is really the stumbling block now. Hardware support has to be avialable for hardware immediately. Users having a BSD OS install process bomb because their hardware is not supported is not acceptable, things have to work out of the box. Here BSD has advantages over Linux. There is no legal question that binary drivers can be used with BSD, there is no legal ambiguity here. BSD does have a potential really to compete with Windows for hardware support. provided, we make it easy for companies to develop drivers by providing for good documentation and facilities for quick, rapid
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Wed, July 20, 2011 1:52 pm, David Jackson wrote: I do not believe that these phones or tablets will replace desktop but there is a lot of room for these two types of devices basically to communicate, giving people access to their data and environment from both. The reason I dont see the desktop going anywhere is that, basically people dont want to work on a spreadsheet, play a game, write a letter or do many other things on a 3 screen. Students wont want to use them to do their reports, etc. Phones and tablets are handy when on the go due to the portability, but their portability makes them impractical for use at home when a larger screen is more desirable. The growth of tablets is due to there simply not being the market there before and more people buying them for mobile use. But desktops will remain popular for home and work use. Also users want upgradeability, they dont want to be stuck with the same amount of hard disk space and may want to add a new camera to the system, a capture device, scanner, etc. Desktop systems provide much more upgrade flexibility. Linking the desktop to the tablet will be an important thing so people can access data and so on from their tablet. I'll disagree, somewhat: I know several people who are using a tablet as a desktop-replacement laptop. They have a Bluetooth keyboard, and can use the tablet as a full computer or not. Most *consumers,* in my experience, also don't typically care about upgradablity. Either the machine works when they get it, or it doesn't (which is a warranty issue), and after that if it breaks in few years, well, time to get a new one. A few will add RAM or a HD when they get it, but that's about it. Other additions, if any, are done as USB/Bluetooth, etc, and can be done on a tablet just as easily as a desktop. As for binary drivers... They work ok *if* and *while* the company wants to support the hardware/OS. Once they decide they don't want to, that's it. This tends to cause problems down the road. Also, they may do no more than the minimum necessary to support a certain version of the OS, unless that OS is a major source for their customers. So while they *can* make better drivers than the core team, they often *don't.* Best is an open driver by the manufacturer. Second is open docs, third is binary blob. My opinion. Daniel T. Staal --- This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. --- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
upgradability is not just about about ram and hard drives. But i would beg to differ that people dont want to add hard drives considering how fast they can be filled with movies, or they wouldnt want to use their old hard drives on a newer system considering how much data is on the older hard drive. but you also have scanners, cameras, joysticks, capture devices for video, and so on that many common users love to use. A lot of people use computers for writing, home and office business work, and gaming, and given the choice between a 3 screen and a 20 screen, you want a 20 screen. Even facebook is better on a 20 screen. I stand by what i said, mobile is great for use on a subway, but when you get home, you really want a nice 20 screen to work on, and the bigger hard drive and faster CPU. I do want FreeBSD on both my handheld and the desktop. Now, notice its very difficult to near impossible to change the operating system on handhelds. Thats one reason I dont like most handhelds made today. They are designed to control you. On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 2:46 PM, Daniel Staal dst...@usa.net wrote: On Wed, July 20, 2011 1:52 pm, David Jackson wrote: I do not believe that these phones or tablets will replace desktop but there is a lot of room for these two types of devices basically to communicate, giving people access to their data and environment from both. The reason I dont see the desktop going anywhere is that, basically people dont want to work on a spreadsheet, play a game, write a letter or do many other things on a 3 screen. Students wont want to use them to do their reports, etc. Phones and tablets are handy when on the go due to the portability, but their portability makes them impractical for use at home when a larger screen is more desirable. The growth of tablets is due to there simply not being the market there before and more people buying them for mobile use. But desktops will remain popular for home and work use. Also users want upgradeability, they dont want to be stuck with the same amount of hard disk space and may want to add a new camera to the system, a capture device, scanner, etc. Desktop systems provide much more upgrade flexibility. Linking the desktop to the tablet will be an important thing so people can access data and so on from their tablet. I'll disagree, somewhat: I know several people who are using a tablet as a desktop-replacement laptop. They have a Bluetooth keyboard, and can use the tablet as a full computer or not. Most *consumers,* in my experience, also don't typically care about upgradablity. Either the machine works when they get it, or it doesn't (which is a warranty issue), and after that if it breaks in few years, well, time to get a new one. A few will add RAM or a HD when they get it, but that's about it. Other additions, if any, are done as USB/Bluetooth, etc, and can be done on a tablet just as easily as a desktop. As for binary drivers... They work ok *if* and *while* the company wants to support the hardware/OS. Once they decide they don't want to, that's it. This tends to cause problems down the road. Also, they may do no more than the minimum necessary to support a certain version of the OS, unless that OS is a major source for their customers. So while they *can* make better drivers than the core team, they often *don't.* Best is an open driver by the manufacturer. Second is open docs, third is binary blob. My opinion. Daniel T. Staal --- This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. --- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 4:45 PM, David Jackson djackson...@gmail.comwrote: I stand by what i said, mobile is great for use on a subway, but when you get home, you really want a nice 20 screen to work on, and the bigger hard drive and faster CPU. While I agree with your points, can please stop top posting? It's difficult to follow and violates list convention. Thanks, -- Adam Vande More ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
RE: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
snip Regarding drivers / hardware support... I'm not a huge fan of abstraction layers, in fact I hate them, BUT - does there exist or could an AL (HAL) be developed to hide the OS from the driver so hardware manufacturers can more easily write drivers? For example, can a HAL be developed that runs on BSD that emulates Winblow$ such that any driver written for Winblow$ will work on *BSD? Granted it may not be as efficient as a native driver but perhaps it would have these benefits: 1.) Would work good enough for most people in most circumstances. Perhaps it's slightly slower (insert metric of choice) than a native driver, but all but the most demanding users (top 10%?) won't care. The most demanding users will probably take the time / effort to acquire supported hardware and have the technical skills to accomplish what they need to. 2.) Would give BSD developers a starting place for reverse engineering / engineering a native driver. Instead of making the hardware people write drivers for BSD, they write for Winblow$ - but provide the source? The *BSD dudes (dudettes) can take that and tweak as necessary. The hope is no one would have to do 100% of the work, especially reverse engineering without much doc / etc - that must suck! Something in the back of my head says there was / is something along this line already available or in the works, but I can't recall for sure. Anyway... I think someone else mentioned dividing up the donations such that one could select which development area receives ones funds. I think this would be a good idea... If I'm more interested in ZFS than wireless NIC drivers - I can contribute to the filesystem/ZFS area. Perhaps this would also yield more donations - if one feels there funds will be going to support their specific needs... G font size=1 div style='border:none;border-bottom:double windowtext 2.25pt;padding:0in 0in 1.0pt 0in' /div This email is intended to be reviewed by only the intended recipient and may contain information that is privileged and/or confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any review, use, dissemination, disclosure or copying of this email and its attachments, if any, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this email in error, please immediately notify the sender by return email and delete this email from your system. /font ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
Hi On 7/19/11, Konrad Heuer kheu...@gwdg.de wrote: To my mind we'll have to face a rapid change within the next years, and operating systems of the future might be Android or IOS or Windows Mobile or something similar which my base on Linux or BSD but are something different. For 2020 year here is nice sugesstions make HTML5/JS based DE for FreeBSD and Co: http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=141286#post141286 ;) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
--As of July 20, 2011 5:45:49 PM -0400, David Jackson is alleged to have said: but you also have scanners, cameras, joysticks, capture devices for video, and so on that many common users love to use. A lot of people use computers for writing, home and office business work, and gaming, and given the choice between a 3 screen and a 20 screen, you want a 20 screen. Even facebook is better on a 20 screen. I stand by what i said, mobile is great for use on a subway, but when you get home, you really want a nice 20 screen to work on, and the bigger hard drive and faster CPU. --As for the rest, it is mine. *All* of which can be connected to a tablet just as easily as a desktop. (Well, except for a faster CPU.) I know people who do so. Current tablets have USB, Bluetooth, and HDMI/Displayport. Can you do everything on a tablet that you can on a dedicated desktop? No. But you can do most of it, especially if the people writing the software and designing the add-ons know that's the market they have to work with. I don't think everyone will go to tablets. But I think it's going to be a larger market than you think, and I think they *will* displace some desktops and laptops. The perfect computing device would fit in a pocket, have a screen the size of your wall, have a full (and full-sized) keyboard, and your choice of pointing devices. It would be able to play any game you wanted to play, hold every movie and song ever recorded along with your entire lifetime's collection of documents, and be able to access the Internet from anywhere. It would only need to be recharged as often as you sleep. (And would be able to recharge anywhere.) Today, a tablet is closer to that then a desktop is. It's short on CPU and storage, and it doesn't have the battery life. It's also a little too big and not quite mobile enough. Several of those constraints can be worked around with a docking station/case. Smartphones have the mobility and Internet access, and nearly the charging/battery life, but are even more constrained on other issues. Daniel T. Staal --- This email copyright the author. Unless otherwise noted, you are expressly allowed to retransmit, quote, or otherwise use the contents for non-commercial purposes. This copyright will expire 5 years after the author's death, or in 30 years, whichever is longer, unless such a period is in excess of local copyright law. --- ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
Daniel Staal dst...@usa.net wrote: The perfect computing device would fit in a pocket, have a screen the size of your wall, have a full (and full-sized) keyboard, and your choice of pointing devices. It would be able to play any game you wanted to play, hold every movie and song ever recorded along with your entire lifetime's collection of documents, and be able to access the Internet from anywhere. It would only need to be recharged as often as you sleep. (And would be able to recharge anywhere.) It would also be fully encrypted and keyed to your fingerprint or retinal scan, so that no thief would be able to extract anything from it, and the encrypted files would be backed up automatically whenever it was recharged to guard against data loss in case of loss, theft, damage, malfunction, etc. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
Gary Gatten ggat...@waddell.com wrote: ... can a HAL be developed that runs on BSD that emulates Winblow$ such that any driver written for Winblow$ will work on *BSD? ... Something in the back of my head says there was / is something along this line already available or in the works, but I can't recall for sure. I _think_ we may already have something along these lines for NDIS (network) drivers, but I don't know how well it works. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:18:41 +0200 (CEST), Konrad Heuer wrote: But: Neither BSD nor Linux will ever have chance to conquere the desktop, despite of KDE, Gnome or anything else. On the other hand, the desktop as we understand it today won't be present in the future. More and more mobile devices will obsolete localized storage and processing, so in my opinion, systems will divide in (1st) those that run on client devices such as netbooks, smartphones and tablets, and (2nd) those that run on the big servers bringing storage, processing power and applications to the users. In business environments there is no alternative to Windows. Depends = debatable. An example is LVM insurances: They switched thousands of desktop to Linux recently. Another example is IBM using OpenOffice. Over the years, business environments will realize that in order to get costs down and productivity up, there is no alternative to abandoning Windows. But this process will take some time. I believe that it will happen, as the current path just means increasing costs in _any_ regards. Still, as long as this costs can be integrated into products and services that the customer finally will pay... Microsoft successfully created Active Directory from DNS, LDAP and Kerberos with an easy-to-manage interface and - meanwhile - a seasonable server operating system like Windows Server 2008R2. You can ask the admins of that environments what _they_ think. Increasing costs for IT installations and IT staff. Many of the Windows admins are tired of using outdated software, keeping dead applications on artificial life support and users being less and less able to do everday tasks (from their point of view, of course). Among my friends, I have few Windows admins, and some of them have a UNIX background. They often express the wish for things we take for granted in BSD - tools for automation, for diagnostics, tools to look into the black box that decides about decline and fall of a business, while being faced with problems that they can just solve by the well known wipe + install cycle. As long as everything seems to work - fine. But if it surprisingly stops working - big trouble. They also complain about less and less knowledge, experience, logic, understanding of fundamentals and even terminology, missing ability of deduction among young IT professionals. It was long way for them from horrible Windows NT, but they did it. I don't see any chance to manage a large client-server-cloud with BSD or Linux as you can do with Active Directory. The tools are there. What I assume you seem to miss is the front-end GUI that allows illiterate people to administrate such a complex conglomerate. Computers aren't easy, although advertising wants to make people believe the opposite. And as soon as the existence of a business depends on a working IT, less costs are better. And if less costs also bring less risk (from proprietary stuff and vendor lock-in), the better. But as long as money doesn't play an important role... Additionally, and especially in the personal environment, the market will more and more move away from the traditional PC or notebook -- except for games, but that's again not an area where Linux or BSD are strong -- to tablet PCs and other mobile devices. Well, I also assume this. And entertainment components will also undergo such a kind of migration, means that Internet functionality will be in the TV set, and gaming... hmmm... that's where consoles still hold an important market share, next to gaming PCs. To my mind we'll have to face a rapid change within the next years, and operating systems of the future might be Android or IOS or Windows Mobile or something similar which my base on Linux or BSD but are something different. Rapid? I don't think so. Business is lazy, and governments are lazier than lazy, so the transition to locally-centralized installations will take some time. Of course I can't be sure about the time required for this, 10, maybe 20 years? But the change _will_ happen, driven by industry primarily. Users will adopt, as always. BSD will have to keep in and find new niches on the server market. It will be among the systems keeping dead systems alive, and it will surely be important for running technically fundamental infrastructures on which the shiny boxes build their front. The number of installations is not the most important figure. Functionality is important -- ZFS, HAST, CARP, jails, as already mentioned -- would be nice to see a distributed file system. Hmmm... sounds familiar. Didn't VMS have that? Oh wait, things like VMS didn't even exist! :-) Linux and BSD will be there, in one form or another. Especially BSD will be part of systems you don't see, such as routing systems, firewalls, PBXs and so on - due to its licensing that allows free use (and even turning it into a proprietary product). Linux will also be the basis of the software used in
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 9:32 AM, Polytropon free...@edvax.de wrote: On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:18:41 +0200 (CEST), Konrad Heuer wrote: The number of installations is not the most important figure. Functionality is important -- ZFS, HAST, CARP, jails, as already mentioned -- would be nice to see a distributed file system. Hmmm... sounds familiar. Didn't VMS have that? Oh wait, things like VMS didn't even exist! :-) How about OpenAFS? http://www.openafs.org/ We've used original AFS at University on SunOS/Solaris in the 90ies, and it's still going strong. Maybe FreeBSD's support in 1.6.0pre* needs a bit of love (?), but we definitely don't need to reinvent the wheel. ;-) -cpghost. -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/ ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On 7/19/2011 at 8:18 AM Konrad Heuer wrote: |[snip] | |But: Neither BSD nor Linux will ever have chance to conquere the desktop, |despite of KDE, Gnome or anything else. |[snip] = Perhaps the real question should be - how much longer will the desktop be relevant? ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
--On July 19, 2011 8:18:41 AM +0200 Konrad Heuer kheu...@gwdg.de wrote: In 2020 *I* won't be relevant any more. :-) -- Paul Schmehl, Senior Infosec Analyst As if it wasn't already obvious, my opinions are my own and not those of my employer. *** It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use of reason as to administer medication to the dead. Thomas Jefferson There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them. George Orwell ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?
On Tuesday 19 July 2011 03:18:41 Konrad Heuer wrote: But: Neither BSD nor Linux will ever have chance to conquere the desktop, despite of KDE, Gnome or anything else. In business environments there is no alternative to Windows. Microsoft successfully created Active Directory from DNS, LDAP and Kerberos with an easy-to-manage interface Konrad Heuer Err ... just a little correction here. Microsoft copied its AD deck from Novell Directory Services - NDS, shuffled the cards, added a few bits and pieces here and there and called it its own, having some similarities with NDS, as MS has ALWAYS been doing since DOS 1.0. I remember very well when the ease of management with NDS was well estabilished by NETWARE 6.xx (it showed up first in 5.xx) and delighting network admins who managed Novell environments (as I was doing at the time), when MS announced its, ahaam, revolutionary active directory services. NDS - ADS. Like I said, just card shuffling. -- Mario Lobo http://www.mallavoodoo.com.br FreeBSD since 2.2.8 [not Pro-Audio YET!!] (99% winblows FREE) ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
