Re: Leaving the Desktop Market

On Apr 1, 2014, at 10:46 AM, Eitan Adler <lists@eitanadler.com> wrote:

> 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?

The fact that this posting comes out on April 1st makes me wonder if it=92s=
 just an elaborate April Fool=92s joke, but then the notion of *BSD (or Lin=
ux, for that matter) on the Desktop is just another long-running April fool=
=92s joke, so I=92m willing to postulate that two April Fools jokes would s=
imply cancel each other out and make this posting a serious one again. :-)

I=92ll choose to be serious and say what I=92m about to say in spite of the=
 fact that I work for the primary sponsor of PC-BSD and actually like the f=
act that it has created some interesting technologies like PBIs, the Jail W=
arden, Life-preserver and a ZFS boot environment menu.

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 =93the power =
to serve=94 as FreeBSD=92s first marketing slogan?  It makes a fine server =
OS and it=92s easy to defend its role in the server room.  It=92s also beco=
ming easier to defend its role as an embedded OS, which is another excellen=
t niche to pursue and I am happy to see all the recent developments there.

A desktop?  Unless you consider Mac OS X to be =93BSD on the desktop=94 (an=
d while they share some common technologies, it=92s increasingly a stretch =
to say that), it=92s just never going to happen for (at least) the followin=
g reasons:

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 id=
le the processor whenever possible to achieve that.  You need to optimize a=
ll of the hot-spot routines in the system for power efficiency (which actua=
lly involves a fair amount of micro architecture knowledge), you need a ker=
nel scheduler that is power management aware, you need a process management=
 system that runs as few things as possible and knows how to schedule thing=
s 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=92=
s 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.

2. Multimedia.  A real end-user=92s desktop is basically one big UI for wat=
ching things, listening to things, and running apps.  A decent audio / vide=
o subsystem is just one part of the picture, and one that has always been r=
eally weak - entire engineering teams can spend years working on codecs, pe=
rformance optimizations, low and guaranteed latency support for audio I/O, =
etc.  What=92s 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 vide=
o standard?  Not on FreeBSD or Linux, you=92re not.

3. Applications.  A desktop without real and useful applications is not a d=
esktop, it=92s just an empty display surface.  Sure, there are users out th=
ere who are happy with just a mail client, a web browser and maybe a calend=
aring app, but those users are also arguably even better candidates for Chr=
ome or other simplified environments where all of that simply happens in a =
fancy web browser and you get things like =93software updates=94 and cloud =
integration essentially for free since it=92s all just one cohesive picture=
 there.  The ability to solve those user=92s needs very simply makes them r=
ipe targets for the web application delivery platforms.

For the other folks who want to do fancier stuff like mix audio, edit video=
s or even just play mainstream 3D games that were actually published someti=
me in the last year, they=92ll use a real desktop OS and won't even bother =
looking at one of the free ones because guess what, the free ones just can=
=92t do those things, or do them badly enough that their users feel like th=
ey=92re perpetually living in a kind of self-selected ghetto.  Metaphorical=
ly speaking, sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag in your one-room apart=
ment is fine when you=92re young, but as you get older, you want to be more=
 comfortable and have a real bed in a real house!

Those are just three reasons.  There are lots more, not least of which amon=
g them is the fact that it=92s 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-=93vendor" bits wi=
ll sort of work together, which of course they rarely do because they were =
written by several hundred different people with no mandate to interoperate.

April fool=92s joke?  Yes, the desktop has always been one in the OSS space=
..  It=92s a lousy OSS problem to try and solve because all the hardest part=
s are things nobody wants to do for free, and there=92s no money to be made=
 just providing the OS (even Ubuntu, the current leader, seems to have =93p=
ledge drives=94 every other week).

- Jordan

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