Re: Leaving the Desktop Market

Hi,

On 04/01/14 07:46, 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.

Can this be translated that "the green is always better on the other side" ?

>
> 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.

I agree that there are usability issues with the sound framework in 
FreeBSD. I've seen this myself, for example trying to get sound using 
firefox, you now need pulseaudio and it must be configured correctly.

I'm pretty sure there are people around in the FreeBSD project that are 
quite capable and could easily fix these issues, given some coordination 
and funding. Probably you should ask the FreeBSD foundation to fund a 
developer for a year or two to work on the desktop issues.

Desktop is complicated. You need to understand that many device 
frameworks are designed entirely for other platforms, and I think that 
the current approach to compile Linux oriented code like "HAL" under 
FreeBSD is not always the right approach. We need to make our own "HAL" 
that is compatible with the "Linux" Applications, that need to know 
where the scanner or webcam is attached.

Speaking about sound again, I think we need a tiny library and daemon 
that sits between /dev/dspX.X and the applications, that pulls together 
the most common audio libraries, like portaudio, pulseaudio and the KDE 
one, into a single and brand new solution. I did propose something at 
EuroBSDcon last year, that we can use character device emulation in 
user-space, cuse4bsd, to achieve this.

>
> 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.

Did FreeBSD ever compete on the Desktop market? While touching this 
topic, I must say that I'm very grateful to all you port-guys that keep 
stuff compiling and working on the Desktop front. I've asked myself a 
few times during the last couple of years, who are the people really 
making my FreeBSD Desktop work? Did they receive enough thanks or funds 
for their work?

>
> 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?

Because something does not work in FreeBSD it can prove an excellent 
opportunity for someone to fix it! Don't underestimate that!

--HPS