# maybe not the first one to complain but not the last



## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

after too many...but too many times of try it, virtualmachines..etc...etc..fuck#t
and fu$# you netflix


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## ralphbsz (Nov 12, 2020)

You do understand that Netflix is probably the largest publicly known user of FreeBSD for internet-facing servers, and contributes a lot (both money and manpower) to FreeBSD? So don't be too harsh on them.

(Obnoxious remark: Deep underneath this observation is the age-old question whether FreeBSD is primarily a server or a desktop OS.)


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## Jose (Nov 12, 2020)

I worked at a place where we relied on running Netflix in Linux. We messed with the user-agent, etc., but it was a cold war. They were constantly finding ways of breaking Firefox on Linux, maybe not just because of us. I remember they even used HSTS super cookies at one point.


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> You do understand that Netflix is probably the largest publicly known user of FreeBSD for internet-facing servers, and contributes a lot (both money and manpower) to FreeBSD? So don't be too harsh on them.
> 
> (Obnoxious remark: Deep underneath this observation is the age-old question whether FreeBSD is primarily a server or a desktop OS.)


yes,but work en every platform except on FreeBSD


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## a6h (Nov 12, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> yes,but work en every platform except on FreeBSD


Why?


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

vigole said:


> Why?


if I know the secret…I tell you


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## Jose (Nov 12, 2020)

vigole said:


> Why?


Lawyers?


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## a6h (Nov 12, 2020)

Jose said:


> Lawyers


I rephrase my question: What's the technical reason?


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

vigole said:


> I rephrase my question": What's the technical reason?


my mistake,I think that was a ironic question, because of the drm library of netflix


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## ralphbsz (Nov 12, 2020)

Here's the funny thing: For the last ~25 years, I've worked in very big computer companies, including cloud ones. Because of where I live, I know a lot of people who work for Netflix and for Apple. The headquarters of Netflix is the closest big computer company to our house (closer than both the middle school and high school our son went to, matter-of-fact you drive by Netflix on the way to middle school); the headquarters of Apple is about 10-15 minutes further away, but still closer than the daily commute anyone in our family does. The headquarters of Intel, HP, Google, Facebook, NVidia, LinkedIn, Twitter, VMWare, Oracle (formerly known as Sun) are all within another half hour. As is Amazon's biggest software development department outside of Seattle. Among our neighbors and friends are people who have weekly meetings with Tom Cook (and used to go to Steve Jobs office uninvited to complain about things), the head of AWS, the person in charge of all content distribution and storage at Netflix, a founder of NVidia, one of the fathers of microprocessor architecture, and so on. You'd think that I'm plugged into the Silicon Valley lifestyle, and consume all manners of digital products.

Yet I've never in my life watched a Netflix movie. My son has a Netflix subscription, but I'm not interested. I'm not a movie person, except for older stuff which is available on DVD (I can probably quote much of the text of "Blazing Saddles" or "Casablanca"). I've only watched exactly one "on the internet only" movie or series, and that was "Good Omens" on Amazon Prime Video (because I love the book so much). I've only read one e-book on Kindle (because it was written by a friend, and no paper copies are sold). I do not use the Internet to consume entertainment. It's not because I have something against the internet, or the big companies that dominate it - within the last week, I received two music CDs and one book that I ordered over the Internet. I just don't like my entertainment to be delivered over a wire.

Weird, isn't it?


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> I'm sure all 50 FreeBSD desktop users worldwide will surely prompt Netflix to contribute the resources and money to make their client work on FreeBSD.


I think that they know how and I am pay in for the membresy...is not enough "contribute"?


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## ralphbsz (Nov 12, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> You hear repeatedly here that Netflix chose FreeBSD for content delivery. Yes, but it is the license. Not because FreeBSD is better than Linux.


Sorry, that is false. Netflix could use Linux and GPL-licensed software just as easily. Remember, you don't need to release your source just because you *USE* Linux. You only need to release your source code if you *DISTRIBUTE* software that is *BASED ON* GPL'ed software such as Linux. But Netflix doesn't distribute software. All the other big cloud companies (the "FAAG" in "FAANG") use Linux, and they have no problem with the GPL.

I'm sure Netflix has good reasons to use FreeBSD that are technical in nature.


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## Jose (Nov 12, 2020)

vigole said:


> I rephrase my question: What's the technical reason?


You mean Widevine?




__





						Google Widevine CDM?
					





					lists.freebsd.org


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## Jose (Nov 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> I've only watched exactly one "on the internet only" movie or series, and that was "Good Omens" on Amazon Prime Video (because I love the book so much).


Great book and great series.

We kicked Comcast to the curb years ago, and are now a Netflix-and-Prime only family. Well, except for my kids who only watch Youtube.


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## ralphbsz (Nov 12, 2020)

I have to confess, I lied above: I do "watch" a lot of Youtube. But in a funny sense: I don't actually use it for short movies, but to listen to classical music, mostly while at work. So you'll frequently see a youtube tab in a browser in a corner, and me with headphones, listening to something obscure like Taneyev piano quintet.

I also use a lot of iTunes, except I've never spent a penny on it. Instead I use it to rip and store my CD collection. In the old days I used to use cdparanoia and lame on my server in the basement to rip CDs, but these days I find that a Mac laptop is so much more convenient.


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## shkhln (Nov 12, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> and fu$# you netflix


Shitposting much? We already have a Linux Chrome how-to as well the dedicated Netflix/Widevine complaint thread. Please use one of those.


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## ralphbsz (Nov 12, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> I think that they know how and I am pay in for the membresy...is not enough "contribute"?


My educated guess is that the cost of maintaining the Netflix stack for each desktop client operating system is a few M$ per year (you need a team of two or three software engineers, a handful QA people, documentation writer, marketing, customer support, and a project manager). For concreteness, let me assume 1.8M$ per year. How much does a Netflix subscription cost? I think $15 per month, which is $180 per year. We know that nearly all of that goes to content production and content owners; let's optimistically assume that Netflix has a 20% profit margin on that. And now let's also optimistically assume that Netflix is willing to make no profit whatsoever on its FreeBSD customers, and fundamentally becomes a charity, but it doesn't want to lose money on selling to FreeBSD users. If you multiply that out, each FreeBSD-using customer contributes $36 per year, and it would take 50,000 FreeBSD users who are unwilling to watch Netflix on any platform other than FreeBSD to make this economically viable. Sorry, but that is completely unrealistic. Are there even 50,000 desktop FreeBSD users in the world total?

Have you tried calling Reed Hastings, and offered to write him a check for FreeBSD support? It would be a VERY BIG check. If each person who is so passionate about this issue would write a check for an extra $10K, then it would take only 180 people to make it viable. And lots of people donate $10K per year to charitable causes.


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

shkhln said:


> Shitposting much? We already have a Linux Chrome how-to as well the dedicated Netflix/Widevine complaint thread. Please use one of those.


yes, already read it, and that user make a great tutorial, but I want to keep my FreeBSD pure


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> My educated guess is that the cost of maintaining the Netflix stack for each desktop client operating system is a few M$ per year (you need a team of two or three software engineers, a handful QA people, documentation writer, marketing, customer support, and a project manager). For concreteness, let me assume 1.8M$ per year. How much does a Netflix subscription cost? I think $15 per month, which is $180 per year. We know that nearly all of that goes to content production and content owners; let's optimistically assume that Netflix has a 20% profit margin on that. And now let's also optimistically assume that Netflix is willing to make no profit whatsoever on its FreeBSD customers, and fundamentally becomes a charity, but it doesn't want to lose money on selling to FreeBSD users. If you multiply that out, each FreeBSD-using customer contributes $36 per year, and it would take 50,000 FreeBSD users who are unwilling to watch Netflix on any platform other than FreeBSD to make this economically viable. Sorry, but that is completely unrealistic. Are there even 50,000 desktop FreeBSD users in the world total?
> 
> Have you tried calling Reed Hastings, and offered to write him a check for FreeBSD support? It would be a VERY BIG check. If each person who is so passionate about this issue would write a check for an extra $10K, then it would take only 180 people to make it viable. And lots of people donate $10K per year to charitable causes.


but why not make it compatible with FreeBSD?


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## shkhln (Nov 12, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> yes, already read it, and that user make a great tutorial, but I want to keep my FreeBSD pure


Well, with that kind of demands you'll fit right in into the OpenBSD community.


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## shkhln (Nov 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> My educated guess is that the cost of maintaining the Netflix stack for each desktop client operating system is a few M$ per year (you need a team of two or three software engineers, a handful QA people, documentation writer, marketing, customer support, and a project manager).
> …


It's a bit simpler than that, Widevine is owned by Google. Not even Netflix can force Google to release it for FreeBSD.


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

shkhln said:


> It's a bit simpler than that, Widevine is owned by Google. Not even Netflix can force Google to release it for FreeBSD.


that is a good explanation,and netbsd…na..just i dont want a LinBsd


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## richardtoohey2 (Nov 12, 2020)

shkhln said:


> you'll fit right in into the OpenBSD community.


Hey, some of us swing both ways!  (Does that sound right?!)  Actually I also use Mac, iOS, Android, Windows, and Linux, so I'm confused.  And 8-bit and 16-bit.


ralphbsz said:


> I just don't like my entertainment to be delivered over a wire.


I've got a lot of "old" physical media and a lot of "modern" digital "purchases".  But my digital "purchases" seem to be licences-to-use while the providers can be bothered, can get the content, and I stay alive.

So I'm starting to think I should get physical copies of any favorite music, books and movies so they can't be taken away from me at a company's whim.

Got Netflix but I find it hard to watch anything that goes on for more than 5 minutes these days.   Too fidgety.


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## ralphbsz (Nov 12, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> but why not make it compatible with FreeBSD?


Because it costs money. Bit $$$, not little $.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 12, 2020)

shkhln That's what I was going to post. This isn't a Netflix issue entirely. We can't even get Google to support Chromium on FreeBSD and you would think it would be easy for them to do. Or at least give technical aid and comfort to the maintainers of that port.


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## ralphbsz (Nov 12, 2020)

richardtoohey2 said:


> I've got a lot of "old" physical media and a lot of "modern" digital "purchases".  But my digital "purchases" seem to be licences-to-use while the providers can be bothered, can get the content, and I stay alive.


When you buy CDs from Amazon, you also get a copy of the same music as a download. I think you can also buy the downloadable version only for a discount, yet to try that. Anyway, once time I actually ended up using this, because I was in a great hurry: I needed a copy of some very uncommon classical music within a few hours, and the only options were to either download it from Amazon (the CD showed up a few days later), or to drive to the county library and borrow the CD there, and here in the Bay Area, you don't voluntary drive places during rush hour, it would be suicidal with our traffic.

So anyway, the downloadable copy you get from Amazon is simply a good-quality MP3, ripped with high bit rate, and no DRM at all. Very convenient, and very libertarian with the omission of DRM.

Now, I'm not claiming that this automatically means that Amazon is a good company. Nor would I claim that they are a bad company because of that "1984 on the kindle" drama. As usual, things are complex, and not black and white.



> So I'm starting to think I should get physical copies of any favorite music, books and movies ...


I agree. Most recent one was yesterday's mail, a CD with Schumann's two Introduction and ... for piano and orchestra. But here comes the funny thing: the moment the CD shows up in the mail, I put it into my computer to rip it and store it on disk, I run the booklet through the scanner and put it on disk, and most likely, I'll never touch the physical CD again. I'm not sure I can explain why I buy the physical copy, but I do.


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

So, after all Netflix is not the bad guy here,thanks for the opinions


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## ralphbsz (Nov 12, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> We can't even get Google to support Chromium on FreeBSD and you would think it would be easy for them to do.


Have you tried making an estimate how many M$ per year it would cost?


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## Abraham79 (Nov 12, 2020)

There is no answer: https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/78492552


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## sidetone (Nov 12, 2020)

They would probably have a harder time preventing piracy of their content.


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## ShelLuser (Nov 12, 2020)

Now, pardon my ignorance but as far as I know you can also watch Netflix using a browser. So why not use that? And if _that_ doesn't work isn't it more fair to conclude that this fault lies more with whatever browser you're using rather than Netflix?

Sure, I can see how having a little program which gets things set up instantly can be useful. But when looking at my Windows 10 & Android Netflix apps I hope you _do_ realize that these are basically web based clients? And if I recall correctly some browsers already allow you to set up and use a bookmark entry as if it were an application which you start, surely this also works on FreeBSD?


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## PMc (Nov 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> Have you tried calling Reed Hastings, and offered to write him a check for FreeBSD support? It would be a VERY BIG check. If each person who is so passionate about this issue would write a check for an extra $10K, then it would take only 180 people to make it viable. And lots of people donate $10K per year to charitable causes.



Now You are getting really tasteless. The point is: Netflix are not a charitable operation of any kind. They are the opposite; their only agenda is to make money. They have no passion, no vision except for making money. And they already got so far with that, so they belong to the richest entities in the world.

I find it more interesting, and more troublesome, that they make their money from an infra they did not provide. They didn't build the computers. They didn't build the network. They're a kind of parasites.

And this is true for the whole FAANG business scheme. One should occasionally wonder what has happend to our economy, how come that a couple of new-economy shops now are richer than the old economy. And this is the reason: they didn't have to build their stuff. The work they depend on was already done - they only needed to make it big enough for their purposes. And in contrast to e.g. airplanes, where it needs real skill to make bigger ones, computing scales rather well.

Maybe in silicon valley the opinion is prevalent that this wealth comes "naturally", because people are so "advanced", or whatever. But is this in any way different from the sovereigns of old, who also thought that their wealth would come naturally to them because of "divine right"?

I'm not envious in any way, but I see an imbalance here. A split between those who manage the machines, and those who are only needed to consume and pay, and are not expected to understand how things work behind the scene. I'm no fan of socialist ideas, but suggesting that those who participated in building the whole thing should now give their little money to those who became already trillionaires from parasiting it, for the mere sake of being accepted, that is insulting. And You are forgetting that most people cannot simply "write a check for 10k" - there are lots of people who have only 5k to get their food for a whole year.


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## getopt (Nov 12, 2020)

Actually Netflix is a pain in the ass for those not using it but suffering from reduced bandwidth when consumer masses get their brainwash.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> Have you tried making an estimate how many M$ per year it would cost?


I would bet that a chat with a FreeBSD developer would cost them less than a thousand dollars and would fix several major issues in one sitting.

The issues with getting Chrome to work on Linux are going to be almost the same as on FreeBSD. It will be thisclose. It shouldn't take much.


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## SirDice (Nov 12, 2020)

ShelLuser said:


> Now, pardon my ignorance but as far as I know you can also watch Netflix using a browser. So why not use that?


That browser is required to have support for Widevine. It doesn't matter what application you use, no Widevine DRM support, no Netflix. Or Hulu, Spotify, Disney+, Amazon Prime and a handful of others. 






						Widevine - Wikipedia
					






					en.wikipedia.org


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## SirDice (Nov 12, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> Because it costs money. Bit $$$, not little $.


Actually, it doesn't cost anything. 



> Perhaps one of the most important points to note about Widevine is that *it doesn’t charge a license fee in order to implement its protection technology*. So there’s no financial reason why some smartphones are missing out.











						What is Widevine digital rights management (DRM) and why does it matter?
					

Google's Widevine DRM is used to check if your phone can stream HD content from services like Netflix. Here's what you need to know.




					www.androidauthority.com
				




This is a problem though:


> Instead, hardware manufacturers only need to pass a certification process. This includes the completion of various legal agreements, implementation of some software libraries, and client integration testing to verify support, among other steps.


I'm not sure how this process works for browsers (in essence software-based) but this certification process is probably the biggest reason why there is no Widevine for FreeBSD.


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## Mjölnir (Nov 12, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> You hear repeatedly here that Netflix chose FreeBSD for content delivery. Yes, but it is the license. Not because FreeBSD is better than Linux.


Netflix runs on FreeBSD simply because the founder knew FreeBSD much better than any other Unix-like OS?


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 12, 2020)

mjollnir I think everything else Netflix runs uses Windows and Linux. FreeBSD came later with the content delivery boxes. Netflix engineers have more access to kernel developers and networking with FreeBSD as well as the ability to modify and contribute back which is more difficult with Linux. Licensing might have played a part in this but I don't know that it's any major reason.


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## SirDice (Nov 12, 2020)

I recently watched a presentation on Youtube about Netflix. Netflix uses a multitude of different systems because homogeneous environments are rather prone to catastrophic failures. I can't find that video again though, my play history on youtube is rather large.


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## a6h (Nov 12, 2020)

wolffnx:
I think it's a good time to put it down to experience. There are six weeks to go until next Christmas Day. Don't consume digital media for next six weeks.
Listening to music and reading books are quite helpful. Then come back and tell us about "changes in quality of your life".


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## Alain De Vos (Nov 12, 2020)

For DRM windows is the platform. That explains the focus. It's about binding content.


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## wolffnx (Nov 12, 2020)

vigole said:


> wolffnx:
> I think it's a good time to put it down to experience. There are six weeks to go until next Christmas Day. Don't consume digital media for next six weeks.
> Listening to music and reading books are quite helpful. Then come back and tell us about "changes in quality of your life".


Is a good plan, really I dont even was watching netflix,and dont watch tv,only some shows but few,
yes,is good to disconect from digital media(except the music)


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## dd_ff_bb (Nov 13, 2020)

Main question is why FreeBSD foundation doesn't have more income to support necessary projects & why doesn't FreeBSD community growing faster. 

These questions' answer depends on many points but to highlight couple of them ;

Freebsd is server OS:

First of all this notion of "freebsd is server OS not a desktop OS" is completely nonsense and old fashioned thinking from 70s

There is no desktop or server OS in sense of 70s anymore, a developer/company has to develop, test and run their software on a OS

Is Mysql a server software or desktop, should nginx considered as a desktop software or server software. Is ZFS server file system?????

Most of us develop test and publish our products from a single system at the same time we also make skype calls, zoom meetings etc from the same system...

People CAN NOT use FreeBSD as desktop effectively is a lot different than people DO NOT use FreeBSD as desktop

Growing Community:

This brings us to second point FreeBSD is developed/maintained by community and growing community is essential for future of the project.

To involve in FreeBSD community & possibly become a future developer/contributor, a person should be able to do simple tasks on a computer. 

Because once you start using a OS daily as your main system chances of involving in the project and possibly become future developer/contributor grow substantially

And in this age either you like it or not computer users spending ~80 percent of their time for browsing (includes netflix, youtube etc...) and communication (email, chat, video conferencing etc...)

So to attract more users any OS should be providing these basic functionality.

FreeBSD foundation:

Linux certified hardware: Major linux distributions (and even Qubes OS) have certification income from computer/hardware vendors including: lenovo, dell, insurgo etc....

As far as i know there is no FreeBSD certified computer vendors. This should be a main focus for freebsd foundation as it might bring substantial income

But more importantly FreeBSD Certified Computers will also result in masses to move to Freebsd without hassle

Also this income could support additional developers to work on FreeBSD desktop experience, and this can become self sufficient development process (in terms of funding)

There is a huge wave of linux users looking for alternative OS but FreeBSD fails to fulfill this desire because of reasons explained in this post

Android developer requires Android studio to run on his/her OS, can FreeBSD foundation push google in this direction? 

(you can replace android studio with skype, zoom etc...)

We don't need and/or want linux/microsoft users should not be the attitude

You can answer all above questions "No" but desired intention should be how can we make it possible 

Another example Microsoft made donation to FreeBSD foundation in 2018 but not in 2019 and 2020 or Intel made donation in 2019 but not in 2020 etc....

Is there a specific reason and can it be addressed so Microsoft (or any other company) continues to make donations each year.

"Microsoft Teams Suite" working on linux, android and macos but not FreeBSD even on Microsoft Tech Community website Microsoft developer (Nikitha Palli Konda) answers to request as follow:

"This isn't currently considered for an extension of our Linux roadmap, but we will definitely keep an eye on it to see if interest grows on the market."

Same for "Visual Studio Code" running on linux,mac but not FreeBSD. Can FreeBSD foundation involve and possibly find a solution???

Microsoft and many other companies getting involved in open source, so can FreeBSD also benefit from this trend?

Note: This post by no means intended to undermine FreeBSD foundations work. Just opinions of a FreeBSD user.


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## richardtoohey2 (Nov 13, 2020)

dd_ff_bb said:


> There is no desktop or server OS in sense of 70s anymore, a developer/company has to develop, test and run their software on a OS


Ummm, some of us LIKE FreeBSD (and OpenBSD etc) where we can start from a very simple base OS and with a few commands it can be focussed on being a server.

I don't want a GUI or hundreds of libraries I don't need.  I want 100% of the machine's resources going to serving database queries and web pages.

I like that I can also choose to make a desktop machine based on the same OS, but I _like_ having that choice.  With Linux I can choose one of the cut-down versions if I want a GUI-less installation, or go for full-fat like Mint (on which I can install the DRM stuff and watch Netflix!)


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 13, 2020)

dd_ff_bb I've had it as my sig for years and I'll repeat it again. FreeBSD is a professional operating system for professionals and serious computer enthusiasts. It's designed for people who want to get serious work done. Watching movies and playing games is fine but that's what Windows is for. And Linux now for that matter. You want to watch movies? Pull up your Windows box. You want to make movies? Pull up a serious Unix box. 

When a construction crew wants to move big rocks, they get a MAC truck. Does MAC concern itself that soccer mom's van is more popular? No. FreeBSD is in the business of moving big rocks.


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## a6h (Nov 13, 2020)

dd_ff_bb said:


> FreeBSD is developed/maintained by community and growing community is essential for future of the project.


More users? Yes.
More unskilled developers?  Absolutely not!



dd_ff_bb said:


> To involve in FreeBSD community & possibly become a future developer/contributor, a person should be able to do simple tasks on a computer.


Involvement needs passion and commitment, not to mention skill and experience. Very rare combination!
By the way, we're already able to perform simple tasks on the FreeBSD. From directory listing to building customised kernel.



dd_ff_bb said:


> Because once you start using a OS daily as your main system chances of involving in the project and possibly become future developer/contributor grow substantially


Not necessarily. You don't have to live on the platform you're working on it. Examples: APK, RPi, AVR, PIC, etc.



dd_ff_bb said:


> users spending ~80 percent of their time for browsing (includes netflix, youtube etc...) and communication (email, chat, video conferencing etc...) So to attract more users any OS should be providing these basic functionality.


I don't think such crowd has enough time to read man pages, source codes and related textbooks.



dd_ff_bb said:


> We don't need and/or want linux/microsoft users should not be the attitude


That's the mindset of FSF/GNU and neophytes. As far as I know FreeBSD users are normal people.



dd_ff_bb said:


> "Microsoft Teams Suite" working on linux, android and macos but not FreeBSD [...]


Team, Skype, WhatsApp and Telegram are working fine on the Chromium.
There's a problem with Signal messenger, but Mr. Antranig Vartanian is working on it: Signal-cli with scli on FreeBSD



dd_ff_bb said:


> Same for "Visual Studio Code" running on linux,mac but not FreeBSD. Can FreeBSD foundation involve and possibly find a solution???


This one is not on Foundation. But the Project can and they did. Here's the result:
`pkg install editors/vscode`



dd_ff_bb said:


> Microsoft and many other companies getting involved in open source, so can FreeBSD also benefit from this trend?


I'll quote Theo de Raadt (to the ITWire):


> I fully understand that Red Hat and Canonical won't be doing the right thing, they are traitors to the cause, mostly in it for the money and power. They want to be the new Microsoft


Now not only I agree with him, but also I believe the main aim and ultimate goal of such entities (Microsoft, Google and alike) is total destruction of libre and open source software.
These big corporations hate liberty. They have totalitarian psyche.


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## richardtoohey2 (Nov 13, 2020)

I never understand the "one true OS to rule them all" argument.  Or "one true database" or "one true programming language" or the "one true anything".

If I want to run Microsoft stuff like Visual Studio - I'll use Windows (it will probably work better on there anyway).  Android development - probably better on Linux or something else?

Do you tell musicians that they should do rap as well as heavy metal and mix in some classical music so that you only have to follow one band?

Do you have one vehicle that you take off-roading, motorway driving, race-track driving, etc.?  Or if you go to a rack track to compete, do you drive there in your old car, and have a different car for the race?

I agree it would be _nice _if I didn't have to switch OS to get _some_ jobs done but it's not the end of the world to fire up something else that works better in a different environment.  

If trying to be the "one true OS" means that MySQL support suffers, or the developers are focussed on keeping Microsoft happy (or whatever!) I'd rather they didn't.

Anyway, I think this is turning into one of those "why doesn't FreeBSD do X" threads again ...


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## Crivens (Nov 13, 2020)

All this "we need to grow" is missing the point: Grow into _what_?
We need to be big enough not to wink out of existence easily, and small enough for agility (insert tap dancing elefant).

And for reference: today more people are making flint tools and arrow points then in the stone age. Time didn't stop that.


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## shkhln (Nov 13, 2020)

FWIW, we are already pretty close to getting Widevine working without much hassle. What this "discussion" is about again?


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## dd_ff_bb (Nov 13, 2020)

There is no discussion just some thoughts shared with the forum (at least my post) and getting feedback


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## shkhln (Nov 13, 2020)

It's a long and poorly formatted post, so I skipped it, as usual.


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## cynwulf (Nov 13, 2020)

Any attempt to do everything any other OS does, also means repeating all of the same mistakes.

Many typical desktop Linux users demanded for years that all of their hardware was supported instantly, that they could do everything that they were doing on MS Windows, that all configuration be effortless and automagic.

The end result to that was systemd, huge corporate involvement - and a lot of discontent, influx of a lot of users who don't necessarily go on to contribute anything in the way of code, but fill messageboards with a lot of useless chatter and are a drain on others for free volunteer tech support.

There are now thousands of distributions, many of which are short lived, many of which have a political activist slant... or are just, for example, Debian with a different default desktop environment, logo and theme.  Ultimately the biggest Linux based OS is Android and the other most significant sectors are server/cloud, embedded, etc.  Most Linux users don't even know they're Linux users - just as most FreeBSD users don't actually know they're FreeBSD users.  The desktop distribution hobbyist users are just a tiny minority who don't matter.

What tends to be a common theme with these kind of "why can't FreeBSD be more like..." threads is that those making the suggestions often lack the skills or intentions to do anything about any perceived problems.


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## kpedersen (Nov 13, 2020)

wolffnx said:


> yes, already read it, and that user make a great tutorial, but I want to keep my FreeBSD pure


Why not rent the license via Netflix and then torrent the video? So long as you delete it when your Netflix expires I believe you are compliant with current copyright laws. This is also the "purest" way in that you don't need any DRM or opaque software running on your machine.


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## SirDice (Nov 13, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> So long as you delete it when your Netflix expires I believe you are compliant with current copyright laws.


Not in the Netherlands (and probably the rest of the EU too). Make sure you verify with your local laws.


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## kpedersen (Nov 13, 2020)

SirDice said:


> Not in the Netherlands (and probably the rest of the EU too). Make sure you verify with your local laws.


Really? How do these laws decipher between unencrypted video in memory and raw video on disk?

I should probably check this because even though the UK is the clown of Europe, we still share many dumb copyright laws. I don't suppose you can point me towards any info for this? I cant find anything that explicitly disallows it.


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## SirDice (Nov 13, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> Really? How do these laws decipher between unencrypted video in memory and raw video on disk?


It's the (torrented) download that's illegal. It's even illegal if nothing is stored locally (streaming from illegal sources is also prohibited by law).



kpedersen said:


> I should probably check this because even though the UK is the clown of Europe, we still have dumb copyright laws.


Dutch (and by extension EU) law is fairly arcane too. Although there does seem to be some movement toward more modern copyright laws  being discussed in the EU. But so far they seem to favor the production companies, not the customers.






						The EU copyright legislation
					

The EU copyright law consists of 11 directives and 2 regulations, harmonising the essential rights of authors, performers, producers and broadcasters.




					ec.europa.eu


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## Jose (Nov 13, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> The BSDs have a market share of 0.95% which is all the BSDs.  Something needs to drive adoption of FreeBSD or people won't use it.  But before people can use it they have to know about it.


What if I don't care if people use it? As the universe of people who use operating systems grows, the number of people using Freebsd increases even if the relative proportion stays constant or even falls.

This is one of the great things the Internet has made possible for us. Niches can thrive because their reach is global. It's sometimes called the "long tail" in reference to the 1/x distribution that describes so many things in nature and human society.




anonymous9 said:


> Eiffel may have been the greatest object oriented programming language, but Java won.  Sun poured a lot of marketing resources into it, and it gathered steam.  But it also is more of a hybrid language than a pure object oriented language, too, whereas Eiffel was pure object oriented.  So Java has more bloat, but isn't stuck with OO only.


Eiffel was also not free, and not by a long shot. This absolutely kills adoption among the population you want to attract the most: students and people early in their career. This was certainly the case for me. I could download a full Java compiler and a rich set of runtime libraries for free. I didn't have however many thousands of dollars Eiffel Software wanted for their tools.

This probably didn't contribute to their failure as much, but I had occasion to test out their expensive Java-to-native compiler because my large employer was paying for it. It led to one of the most frustrating debugging experiences of my life.


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## ralphbsz (Nov 13, 2020)

dd_ff_bb said:


> Main question is why FreeBSD foundation doesn't have more income to support necessary projects ...


You do understand that there are large (server) FreeBSD users who donate 1/4 million or 1 million $ per year to the foundation?



> ...why doesn't FreeBSD community growing faster.


For FreeBSD to develop, it needs a community of developers. Growing the community of FreeBSD users doesn't help. It might even hurt, as more developer time will have to be spent doing tech support and dealing with complaints.



> There is no desktop or server OS in sense of 70s anymore, a developer/company has to develop, test and run their software on a OS
> ...
> Most of us develop test and publish our products from a single system at the same time we also make skype calls, zoom meetings etc from the same system...


Sorry, nonsense. I've worked for some of the largest computer companies in the world (largest by the number of software engineers they employ) in the last 25 years. Every day I use hundreds or thousands of computers, and I write software that is run by those hundreds or thousands, and once it is deployed, by millions more. The last time I actually compiled and ran production-level code on my own desktop/laptop machine was ... let me think back ... 1999 or 2000. Another example: At the companies I work for, nearly all servers use Linux (a few run AIX or HP-UX or Solaris). Yet, the desktop/laptop machines that people use are hardly ever Linux, they are typically Mac, Chromebook, and Windows. Yes, I sometimes keep some small experimental coding projects on the laptop; that's useful when I'm in an airplane, or sitting in the waiting room at the doctor's office, and want to get a few hours of work done. But mainstream development happens via remote login to data centers.



> Linux certified hardware: Major linux distributions (and even Qubes OS) have certification income from computer/hardware vendors including: lenovo, dell, insurgo etc....


Are you seriously telling me that Lenovo and Dell give money to RedHat and Suse to certify? You know who owns RedHat, right? And you know what Suse's income is from? It's from selling service contracts.



> There is a huge wave of linux users looking for


Sorry, that statement is also nonsense. The market share of Linux among desktop/laptop users is in the small single digit percent. About 97% of all desktops are Windows and Mac and Chromebook. It might be that of the 3% that run Linux, some are looking for ... something else. But given that this is a tiny group to begin with, it is not relevant.



> "This isn't currently considered for an extension of our Linux roadmap, but we will definitely keep an eye on it to see if interest grows on the market."


The fraction of desktop/laptop users who use FreeBSD is minuscule. I don't know whether it is 10^-3 or 10^-4 of the market, but it is no longer sensible to even measure it in percent. Asking companies (such as Netflix or Microsoft) to invest significantly into a nearly non-existing user base is just silly.



> Microsoft and many other companies getting involved in open source, so can FreeBSD also benefit from this trend?


Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, IBM, Google, Oracle, ... are all using massive quantities of open source software. A very large fraction of all servers in the world run Linux, and most of the servers in the world are owned by the Internet giants. That's why they have been supporting it, not only with donations to the various foundations, but much more importantly with developers. I don't remember how many Linux developers worked at IBM (before they acquired RedHat), but the number is at least many hundred, perhaps low thousands. The situation is not significantly different at other big companies. FreeBSD is much more of a niche product, but the way it is used by a variety of companies (such as Netflix, Jupiter, NetApp) is as a server OS or embeddable component. Asking them to waste their time and money on desktop usage of FreeBSD is just unrealistic.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 13, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> Something needs to drive adoption of FreeBSD or people won't use it. But before people can use it they have to know about it.


Plenty of people use FreeBSD. Who are these 0.95% of BSD users? I'm betting 80% of the rest are Mom, Pop and kids who, if it weren't for games, wouldn't even own a computer. In fact, Google is now favoring mobile devices over desktop for search results because that's where the most usage is.

Technical people know about the BSDs just fine. They often choose other OSes due to familiarity. Those who choose BSD are more likely to do so for technical reasons. I often read online of people who switched because Linux was driving them crazy and FreeBSD just made sense.

In my case it was technical. I was familiar with UNIX but was trying to start a company and had a relative who was a project manager at a Microsoft shop. Windows was not doing it for me so he suggested switching to Linux. The fragmentation involved with Linux was costing me time trying to put a system together. I had some FreeBSD 4.0 floppies in a box and the installation reminded me of Unix when I was at SGI. I bought FreeBSD Unleashed book which came with the 5.0-RELEASE and off I went.

There is a fear of not buying IBM. Or Linux either for that matter. It would be interesting to hear the story of Netflix' decision to use FreeBSD. Was there pushback and why? Or did the technical guys say, "Well, of course we'll use FreeBSD!"?


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## kpedersen (Nov 13, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> I like FreeBSD, but the foundation needs to plan where they are taking it, because the world is going to leave it behind.


In your honest opinion, do you really think that the "cloud", Docker and distractions like that truly are the future of computers and that FreeBSD will be lost without it?
My guess is that if FreeBSD remains strong and focused on just being a clean, maintainable OS, once these gimmicks have disappeared, FreeBSD will be a potential market leader as these older neglected platforms try to regain lost ground.


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## PMc (Nov 13, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> FreeBSD needs to look at their long-term strategy and where they want to go because it is a rapidly shrinking market for operating systems with the web and mobile.


So what? Is FreeBSD a commercial operation that has promised to their shareholders to make money for them, no matter what the crap?

In any other regard, it is just perfect. The consulting house where I happened to be employed as a unix specialist, when they fired me (and hundreds of others), they explained that IT consultants have become superfluous, because their work is now done by The Cloud. And know what, they are right! Instead of getting consulting, the customers now buy Cloud. And, if then nothing works, they simply need to buy more Cloud! It's a perfect money making scheme, and no staff costs at all: the Great Zeroskill Endeavour!

I for my part have just prepared the soil for next years strawberries, potatoes and peas - that's a lot more fun than coping with morons.



anonymous9 said:


> Google's tensorflow, and last I saw it required a bunch of patches a couple of years ago, and still wasn't working.



So what have You done these years to make it work?


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## dd_ff_bb (Nov 13, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> You do understand that there are large (server) FreeBSD users who donate 1/4 million or 1 million $ per year to the foundation?


Not according to foundation donors list https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/ and foundation finances https://freebsdfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/2020-Q1-Q3-Profit-Loss.pdf . Highest was in 2019 with total donation of 2.2M (you can check 5 years). It doesn't seem like large users donating 1M p/y like you claim. But im sure you know better.



ralphbsz said:


> Every day I use hundreds or thousands of computers, and I write software that is run by those hundreds or thousands, and once it is deployed, by millions more. The last time I actually compiled and ran production-level code on my own desktop/laptop machine was ... let me think back ... 1999 or 2000.


I was referring to most of regular developers not experienced software engineers like yourself. Also i hope you realize production-level is very subjective term. 50 lines of c code can be production level and find its way to a OS base or become a important piece of software by itself but doesn't require data center to compile. I hope you dont need me to provide you with examples for this.


ralphbsz said:


> Are you seriously telling me that Lenovo and Dell give money to RedHat and Suse to certify?


Yes lenovo, dell and insurgo paying to ubuntu, fedora and qubesos for Linux Hardware Certification.


ralphbsz said:


> Sorry, that statement is also nonsense.


We can agree to disagree



ralphbsz said:


> Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, IBM, Google, Oracle, ... are all using massive quantities of open source software. A very large fraction of all servers in the world run Linux, and most of the servers in the world are owned by the Internet giants. That's why they have been supporting it, not only with donations to the various foundations, but much more importantly with developers. I don't remember how many Linux developers worked at IBM (before they acquired RedHat), but the number is at least many hundred, perhaps low thousands. The situation is not significantly different at other big companies.


So what you are saying is Linux was used on most of the servers (magically installed itself) so eventually giant companies were forced to support it but not the other way around. Good call!!

And why do you think these giant companies hired kernel hackers???? Because all servers were running Linux so they wanted to catch up ???



ralphbsz said:


> Asking them to waste their time and money on desktop usage of FreeBSD is just unrealistic.


You completely missed the point, I would suggest reading my post again.


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## PMc (Nov 13, 2020)

kpedersen said:


> In your honest opinion, do you really think that the "cloud", Docker and distractions like that truly are the future of computers and that FreeBSD will be lost without it?
> My guess is that if FreeBSD remains strong and focused on just being a clean, maintainable OS, once these gimmicks have disappeared, FreeBSD will be a potential market leader as these older neglected platforms try to regain lost ground.


I doubt that one also.

Way back, you know, early mainframe times, there was a stance that the world does only need two computers, one at the east coast and one at the west coast. This was later laughed at - but I believe, in the end it might become more or less true.

We have a move to mobile, that's obvious. And these mobile are more-or-less closed-shop, closed-source. You cannot do much with them, you can basically only watch your daily entertainment from big brother - not that people would want to do anything else. And they are not needed to do anything else anyway: they're not people, they're just products for the new economy to make money with. (Michael Bay movie, "The Island", is a perfect textbook how to make people products: to bring it to fruition, you only need to tell them there is a "dangerous disease" out there, and all will comply.) So that's ths consumer side - no computers there anymore.

And on the producer side we observe continuous concentration to the bigger. If some small shop develops something interesting, whole shop get's bought by one of the few big shops. There will be not many left in the end, and they will be the only place where programming is done. So they will determine entirely what is programmed, what are the standards, and what is allowed. And, for the safety of us all, everything else will be prohibited.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 13, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> And where an OS is needed, people are turning to the likes of Docker


Docker is dead


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## ralphbsz (Nov 13, 2020)

You are right, he doesn't donate every year: "In November 2014, Koum donated $1 million to The FreeBSD Foundation, and close to $556 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF) the same year.[22] In December 2016, Koum donated another $500,000 to The FreeBSD Foundation, followed by $250,000 donations in 2018 and 2019 [23]"


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## ralphbsz (Nov 14, 2020)

PMc said:


> Way back, you know, early mainframe times, there was a stance that the world does only need two computers, one at the east coast and one at the west coast.


Tom Watson (CEO of IBM) had has staff calculate how many computers one could sell. They thought the total demand was 7 world-wide, so it wasn't worth building them. The real money was in unit record equipment, which IBM continued to build, and dominate the market. Within a few years, they decided that making computers might be valuable after all. Remember, a few years after that calculation (which was correct at the time, just not a good forecast), IBM built the first "personal" computer: the 1401, the first computer that was so cheap that ten thousand could be sold, it was small and cheap enough that medium-sized companies could have one of their own. Today we laugh at the idea that a 1401 might be "personal" (it takes up a medium-sized room, like a large living room), but at the time it was revolutionary that something that was not on the Fortune 500 could do their data processing in-house. Its effect was exactly like the Ford Model T: Before that, to buy a car you had to be rich, you had one custom-made for you to your specifications. With the Model T, they weren't exactly dirt cheap, but a middle-class person could go to a store and simply pick one up.



> This was later laughed at - but I believe, in the end it might become more or less true.


The statistics I hear is: Today, over 90% (perhaps 98%) of all server class disk drives are sold to either 5 (perhaps 8) customers. Tom Watson was right, the world only needs 7 computers.



> And these mobile are ... You cannot do much with them,


No, I very much disagree. To nearly all users of computers (which is what both an iPhone and and Android is), it is simply a machine to get at data: your data, and free data. You can read your personal e-mail with them, you can write e-mail, you can text or IM your friends, you can do your taxes with them (they run tax preparation software), you can use them as a camera, if you are a grandparent you can watch little movies of your grandkids that your kids just sent you, if you are young you can take indecent pictures of yourself and send them to your lover, you can read the news on the web, you can watch cute cat videos on youtube. Plus you can make phone calls with them, but today that's probably less than 1% of their use.

There is one thing that's pretty hard to do with them: program. Today, I define a computer as "something that is self-hosting", meaning it can compile its own software. But that is quite an arbitrary definition: While the Mac that I'm typing this on is theoretically capable of compiling MacOS and its apps (theoretically because I don't have their source code), it is not capable of compiling its own firmware or chip design, much less of creating its own hardware. So that "autonomy" definition is kind of silly. And you can actually develop software on an Android device (you can run a local shell, and an editor, and write Python software; I've heard that it is possible to run gcc on them too). And in practice it doesn't matter anyway, there are so many computers floating around that I no longer care which machine I'm logged into when I say "make world".


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## PMc (Nov 14, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> Guess what the company is moving into?  The cloud!  They are also moving quickly into Docker and Kubernetes.


[/QUOTE]

Yes, but "move into the cloud" is just a management buzzword. "move into docker" is just a management buzzword. There is no technical substance to it.

Here on FreeBSD (thankfully) there is no management moving buzzwords. Here it is all about solid technology.

Furthermore: when I put my hands on a web application, the documentation usually is crap - it only explains how to dump that application onto your machine and make it run, and I cannot figure out how to do a structurally clean modular integration into a professional server layout. But with some luck I then find a description on how to integrate it into docker stuff or such - and that might contain actually the info I need!

So what I conclude from this is, that the docker stuff is nothing else than a modular component layout, like we do it in server design for 30 years already, reinvented for the linux folks.


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## dd_ff_bb (Nov 14, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> IBM built the first "personal" computer: the 1401,


Unfortunately not according to IBM:

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/exhibits/pc25/pc25_birth.html 

Also if you need info about 1401 Mainframe here is a link:



			IBM100 - IBM 1401: The Mainframe


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 14, 2020)

anonymous9 said:


> In 5 years when 85% of the world is using a mobile device where does FreeBSD fit in to remain relevant?


Most mobile devices use custom OSes or, if it's Linux, those are highly customized versions that don't resemble anything else or anything you can use. See Android. See iOS. None of them are using any version of Linux or macOS and they command almost all the mobile devices. If Linux died tomorrow, little of the mobile world would notice.


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## PMc (Nov 14, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> There is one thing that's pretty hard to do with them: program.


Yes, and on that line there is another point that appears even more significant to me: what is also very difficult or impossible with these things is: run them as a server.

And that I feel as the critical point, because the Internet is naturally designed so that each participant can do every service, and there is no natural provider/consumer barrier: you no longer need to obtain a printing press.

You are right: one can do all those fancy and entertaining things with the gadgets, but what one can NOT do is things that might have an impact.


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## a6h (Nov 14, 2020)

I. Desktop, phone, cloud and supercomputer already have their own well-stablished frameworks and operating systems.
II. Because of its sane /usr/src, FreeBSD has a competitive advantage in "tiny device" market, i.e. embedded systems.


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## ralphbsz (Nov 14, 2020)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Most mobile devices use custom OSes or, if it's Linux, those are highly customized versions that don't resemble anything else or anything you can use. See Android.


Not so. Take an android phone, install a terminal emulator app (I use ConnectBot, there must be others), and when it starts, ask it to create a local shell (the default is to create a shell over ssh protocol). Log in, and you are in a normal Unix file system, running a normal shell, and the standard POSIX-style commands (ls, cat, more, mount, df) are all there. I know it is possible to install python (and the graphical toolkit kivy) on it, and program using that. A former colleague likes doing that. I would say that the user environment resembles standard Unix, with a very limited file system (duh) and a rather simple shell (seems to be an old-fashioned ksh).

The biggest problem with using a cell phone as a "desktop" machine is that the screen is tiny, and the keyboard even smaller. From an ergonomics point of view, for me (old, bad eyesight, some hand injury) would be torture. I have a colleague who uses his 6"cell phone all the time as a desktop CLI machine (he has very good eye sight, I guess). He recommends bluetooth external keyboards to get more screen real estate.



PMc said:


> Yes, and on that line there is another point that appears even more significant to me: what is also very difficult or impossible with these things is: run them as a server.


Also not correct. In the basement of my house is an Android machine that runs an ssh server (you can log in to it) and an http/https server. It is sold as a sprinkler controller, but it is simply a small 32-bit ARM microcontroller, running full Android, with all the servers (and a dozen small relays or transistors to turn garden watering off and on, but that's not important). You can also download and install ssh servers for generic Android and run that on phones, and log into your phone (honestly, why the heck you'd want to do that is beyond me, but whatever).


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## Jose (Nov 14, 2020)

ralphbsz said:


> ...and a rather simple shell (seems to be an old-fashioned ksh).


It's mksh — the MirBSD Korn Shell. I've just adopted it as my main shell. I got tired of tcsh(1). Mksh is...ok. I haven't warmed up to it, but I haven't kicked it to the curb yet.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 14, 2020)

ralphbsz What I meant is that Android phone's operating system isn't going to be Ubuntu or CentOS or any of the usual Linux versions one installs for themselves. They are all customized--or totally customized--versions of Linux.


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## kpedersen (Nov 14, 2020)

PMc said:


> There will be not many left in the end, and they will be the only place where programming is done. So they will determine entirely what is programmed, what are the standards, and what is allowed. And, for the safety of us all, everything else will be prohibited.


Whilst I certainly agree this is what our overlords are striving towards, there is a fair many years between that. I also don't believe that smaller shops being bought up by larger shops can ever truly dominate the industry. For example if a company needs a specific program to measure something, the cloud will not help with this and it is too niche for the behemoth companies to deal with. They would probably dust off an old DOS PC and write it themselves in this case.



anonymous9 said:


> Guess what the company is moving into?  The cloud!  They are also moving quickly into Docker and Kubernetes.


Well yeah, like they did many years ago when central mainframes were cool. But once a more distributed approach becomes cool again (like it did around the IBM PC era), they will be straight back out again. Large companies are wasteful with their monetization trends; in many ways it does give open-source a fighting chance (but *only* if we ignore them and don't play along). For example if Microsoft wasn't frigging around for the last 20 years focusing on monetization (and little else), it should have been many more miles ahead of Linux by this point.

What has pretty much destroyed the Linux desktop is them trying to play with mobile devices and producing a desktop Gnome 3 that unfortunately suffered from the same flaws as Windows 8's Metro. I am disappointed that the Linux community wasn't smarter here but instead jumped on gimmick bandwagons. At least Microsoft was smart (and rich) enough to abort it; Linux unfortunately is a little bit screwed here.


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## a6h (Nov 14, 2020)

Watching Netflix on FreeBSD: https://twitter.com/antranigv/status/1327422687107555329/


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## Jose (Nov 14, 2020)

PMc said:


> Way back, you know, early mainframe times, there was a stance that the world does only need two computers, one at the east coast and one at the west coast. This was later laughed at - but I believe, in the end it might become more or less true.


There will always be a small band of renegades that refuses to play along with the hegemony. I expect a significant fraction of them will run some BSD.


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