Re: Leaving the Desktop Market
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On Tue, Apr 01, 2014 at 12:11:19PM +0500, Jordan Hubbard wrote:
>=20
> On Apr 1, 2014, at 10:46 AM, Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com> wrote:
>=20
> > 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.
> >=20
> > 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?
>=20
> The fact that this posting comes out on April 1st makes me wonder if
> it=E2=80=99s just an elaborate April Fool=E2=80=99s joke, but then the no=
tion of *BSD
> (or Linux, for that matter) on the Desktop is just another
> long-running April fool=E2=80=99s joke, so I=E2=80=99m willing to postula=
te that two
> April Fools jokes would simply cancel each other out and make this
> posting a serious one again. :-)
>=20
> I=E2=80=99ll choose to be serious and say what I=E2=80=99m about to say i=
n spite of
> the fact that I work for the primary sponsor of PC-BSD and actually
> like the fact that it has created some interesting technologies like
> PBIs, the Jail Warden, Life-preserver and a ZFS boot environment menu.
>=20
> There is no such thing as a desktop market for *BSD or Linux. There
> never has been and there never will be. Why do you think we chose
> =E2=80=9Cthe power to serve=E2=80=9D as FreeBSD=E2=80=99s first marketing=
slogan? It makes a
> fine server OS and it=E2=80=99s easy to defend its role in the server roo=
m.
> It=E2=80=99s also becoming easier to defend its role as an embedded OS, w=
hich
> is another excellent niche to pursue and I am happy to see all the
> recent developments there.
>=20
> A desktop? Unless you consider Mac OS X to be =E2=80=9CBSD on the deskto=
p=E2=80=9D
> (and while they share some common technologies, it=E2=80=99s increasingly=
a
> stretch to say that), it=E2=80=99s just never going to happen for (at lea=
st)
> the following reasons:
>=20
> 1. Power. As you point out, being truly power efficient is a complete
> top-to-bottom engineering effort and it takes a lot more than just
> trying to idle the processor whenever possible to achieve that. You
> need to optimize all of the hot-spot routines in the system for power
> efficiency (which actually involves a fair amount of micro
> architecture knowledge), you need a kernel scheduler that is power
> management aware, you need a process management system that runs as
> few things as possible and knows how to schedule things during package
> wake-up intervals, you need timers to be coalesced at the level where
> applications consume them, the list just goes on and on. It=E2=80=99s a =
lot
> of engineering work, and to drive that work you also need a lot of
> telemetry data and people with big sticks running around hitting
> people who write power-inefficient code. FreeBSD has neither.
>=20
> 2. Multimedia. A real end-user=E2=80=99s desktop is basically one big UI=
for
> watching things, listening to things, and running apps. A decent
> audio / video subsystem is just one part of the picture, and one that
> has always been really weak - entire engineering teams can spend years
> working on codecs, performance optimizations, low and guaranteed
> latency support for audio I/O, etc. What=E2=80=99s worse, the bar is only
> being raised. You want to be part of the next wave of folks who can
> author and edit content for the new 4K video standard? Not on FreeBSD
> or Linux, you=E2=80=99re not.
>=20
> 3. Applications. A desktop without real and useful applications is
> not a desktop, it=E2=80=99s just an empty display surface. Sure, there a=
re
> users out there who are happy with just a mail client, a web browser
> and maybe a calendaring app, but those users are also arguably even
> better candidates for Chrome or other simplified environments where
> all of that simply happens in a fancy web browser and you get things
> like =E2=80=9Csoftware updates=E2=80=9D and cloud integration essentially=
for free
> since it=E2=80=99s all just one cohesive picture there. The ability to s=
olve
> those user=E2=80=99s needs very simply makes them ripe targets for the web
> application delivery platforms.
>=20
> For the other folks who want to do fancier stuff like mix audio, edit
> videos or even just play mainstream 3D games that were actually
> published sometime in the last year, they=E2=80=99ll use a real desktop O=
S and
> won't even bother looking at one of the free ones because guess what,
> the free ones just can=E2=80=99t do those things, or do them badly enough=
that
> their users feel like they=E2=80=99re perpetually living in a kind of
> self-selected ghetto. Metaphorically speaking, sleeping on the floor
> in a sleeping bag in your one-room apartment is fine when you=E2=80=99re
> young, but as you get older, you want to be more comfortable and have
> a real bed in a real house!
>=20
> Those are just three reasons. There are lots more, not least of which
> among them is the fact that it=E2=80=99s damn hard even just to *create*
> significant applications with the weak-ass APIs that *BSD and Linux
> provide. You have to stitch together some Frankenstein collection of
> libraries out of ports (or linux packages) and then hope the whole
> pile of multi-=E2=80=9Cvendor" bits will sort of work together, which of
> course they rarely do because they were written by several hundred
> different people with no mandate to interoperate.
>=20
> April fool=E2=80=99s joke? Yes, the desktop has always been one in the O=
SS
> space. It=E2=80=99s a lousy OSS problem to try and solve because all the
> hardest parts are things nobody wants to do for free, and there=E2=80=99s=
no
> money to be made just providing the OS (even Ubuntu, the current
> leader, seems to have =E2=80=9Cpledge drives=E2=80=9D every other week).
>=20
> - Jordan
I'm a happy FreeBSD desktop user since 4.7. There are some edges, but I
really like that I can can create a desktop the way _I_ want it and my
mail client even allows me to break lines at 80 chars. Eat that, Apple
Mail! ;-)
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