Re: Leaving the Desktop Market

On 4/1/2014 1:46 AM, 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=92s 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=92s 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?

I don't know much about BSD on the desktop, but it's somewhere I'd like to =
go eventually. This comment caught me off, however. The fact that there are=
 thousands of flavors of Linux vs one flavor of a BSD desktop is sort of ir=
relivant--it could be applied, by that same method to BSD as a server. ther=
e are hundreds of Linux distributions that can be used as a server, so by y=
our logic, "how do hundreds of Linux servers stand up to 3 flavors of BSD?"

I switched to BSD for a few reasons:
1) The documentation is amazing. As with any project, it can be improved as=
 was mentioned in the most recent BSDNow, but the only other close call I c=
an see is maybe Archlinux, and I don't want that on a server.
2) The ports and PKGNG system is beyond amazing.
3) The organization is more amazing. Everything is incredibly intuitive. I =
love the customization, flexability and organization of BSD.
4) I didn't care until rather recently, but anything that lets me rely less=
 and less on GNU and the GPL is a bonus.

Given this, I commend everyone who has put hundreds of hours of work into m=
aking BSD a desktop system. Rather than suggest that BSD stays merely a ser=
ver OS, why not pose these issues as problems or milestones. Perhaps sound =
has some drawbacks, but when the day arrives when it is up to par, I can al=
most guarantee if the BSD ideals remain the same that it'll be so much easi=
er and cleaner to use than pulse/alsa, etc.

  Eitan Adler
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-- =

Take care,
Ty
http://tds-solutions.net
He that will not reason is a bigot; he that cannot reason is a fool; he tha=
t dares not reason is a slave.

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