Re: Leaving the Desktop Market

On Tue, April 1, 2014 11:59 am, Andreas Nilsson wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 7:11 PM, Matt Olander <matt_at_ixsystems.com> wrote:
>
>
>> On Tue, Apr 1, 2014 at 12:11 AM, Jordan Hubbard
>> <jkh_at_mail.turbofuzz.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Apr 1, 2014, at 10:46 AM, Eitan Adler <lists_at_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's just an elaborate April Fool's joke, but then the notion of *BSD
>> (or
>> Linux, for that matter) on the Desktop is just another long-running
>> April
>> fool's joke, so I'm willing to postulate that two April Fools jokes
>> would simply cancel each other out and make this posting a serious one
>> again. :-)
>>>
>>> I'll choose to be serious and say what I'm about to say in 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.
>>
>>>
>>> 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
>> "the
>> power to serve" as FreeBSD's first marketing slogan?  It makes a fine
>> server OS and it's easy to defend its role in the server room.  It's
>> also becoming easier to defend its role as an embedded OS, which is
>> another excellent niche to pursue and I am happy to see all the recent
>> developments there.
>>>
>>> A desktop?  Unless you consider Mac OS X to be "BSD on the desktop"
>>> (and
>>>
>> while they share some common technologies, it's increasingly a stretch
>> to say that), it's just never going to happen for (at least) the
>> following reasons:
>>
>>
>> As you may imagine, I completely disagree! The Internet just had it's
>> 20th birthday (it can't even drink yet!) and it's anyone's game.
>>
>>
>> This is like trying to predict automobile technology and dominant
>> car-makers by 1905. There's always room for competition. Take a look at
>> what's happening right now in the auto-industry. Tesla came out of
>> nowhere 125 years after the invention of the automobile and is doing
>> pretty well.
>>
>> I bet there were a lot of people at Apple saying they couldn't compete
>> in the music-player market, or the mobile-phone market, etc.
>>
>> In fact, if I look at the stats on freenas.org, we have about 350k
>> visitors each month, with nearly 2% of them running FreeBSD and clearly
>> using it to surf the internet. Sounds like a market to me!
>>
>
> Seeing this I could not resist:
> http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/which-operating-system
>
>
>
>>
>> Long live the FreeBSD desktop, long live PC-BSD :P
>>
>>
> Let them prosper!
>
>
> Seriously, though. There are shortcomings, sure. But I tend to prefer the
>  rock solid feature rich base with a somewhat  shaky desktop experience
> than the other alternatives.
>
> Sure I would like to see a FreeBSD pulseaudio compatible sound server.
> And
> perhaps a template library for pinout configs for snd-cards. And "native"
> flash, although I say "flash, no thank you"
>
> Perhaps companies such as Netflix could release FreeBSD clients ahead of
> linux clients ;)
>
> I can also say that I recently got a friend to migrate from linux on both
>  his home server as well as his laptop. He is very happy with the change.
>
>
> Cheers
> Andreas
>
>
>
>
>> Cheers,
>> -matt
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re pulseaudio: I've had luck reading the raw PCM data from the /dev/dsp*
devices, storing in postgres (bytea), then later playing back to
/dev/dsp.. 'streaming' to another system (maybe pgsql as el intermedio?)
would be pretty simple. In this scenario there is no Alsa requirement,
which works for me :)


-- 
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