Re: Leaving the Desktop Market

From: Chris H <bsd-lists_at_bsdforge.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Apr 2014 09:41:16 -0700 (PDT)
>
> On Mon, March 31, 2014 10:46 pm, 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�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.
>>
>> 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?
>>
>> Eitan Adler
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>
> Hi,
>
> I don't understand the gripe about sound. OSS works well. If you install
> the verson in ports, audio/oss, you get a more elaborate set of tools.
---8<---
>
> The thing about sound, the card is a digital-to-analog converter, and
> vice-versa. It uses PCM data. (PCM was actually first 'invented' in the
> 1800's - no fools joke). Digital audio/Sound has never really gotten
> better, it has only gotten cheaper.

WOW. That an interesting bit of historical information.
Thanks for sharing it!

--Chris

>
>
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Received on Tue Apr 01 2014 - 14:38:49 UTC

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