# Will systemd make FreeBSD more popular?



## walterbyrd (Jan 24, 2015)

I have seen lots of posts from Linux users who say they are moving to FreeBSD, or have already moved. 

I have been using Linux myself for over ten years, systemd is the reason I am trying out FreeBSD. 

Poettering called FreeBSD an irrelevant toy. It would be awesome if there was a surge in popularity for FreeBSD.


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## Dies_Irae (Jan 24, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> I have seen lots of posts from Linux users who say they are moving to FreeBSD, or have already moved.


Well, they are welcome. I just hope they do not expect to come here asking why FreeBSD is not like Linux, like many Windows users do when they switch to Linux and then asks why the desktop is not as good as in Windows.



walterbyrd said:


> Poettering called FreeBSD an irrelevant toy


The feeling is reciprocal. Moreover, considering the fact that every time he create something new, users starts looking around in search of an OS without that new feature, I personally couldn't care less of his opinion.



walterbyrd said:


> I would be awesome if there was a surge in popularity for FreeBSD.


I disagree. I've been a Debian user for about 10-12 years before definitely switching to FreeBSD. In the beginning (I'm talking about the Debian 2.0 era) using Linux was a pleasure. Users constantly asked for more popularity, so they can have more drivers and more software. Then came Ubuntu, and also popularity. And chaos. And the OS became an ever-changing entity.


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## BSDBernd (Jan 24, 2015)

Dies_Irae said:


> And the OS became an ever-changing entity.


Although I am by far no expert of operating systems, let alone the Unix like ones, I guess that there can be good and bad changes. FreeBSD grows and changes also, gets lots of new features, very very interesting ones, like f.e. bhyve. 
When it comes to systemd, one of the founders of FreeBSD, Jordan Hubbard, gave a talk where he explained why they needed launchd when creating OSX 10.4 (I think it was 10.4). If you have to worry about power consumption, when you want to make things more 'lego like', when your machine gets switched on and off lots of times and lots of devices can be plugged in and dragged out and what ever, in short when you have f.e. a mobile device or a laptop, you need another way to handle things, as I understood Hubbard.


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## kpa (Jan 24, 2015)

Didn't we already beat this subject to death?

Thread 46667


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## Oko (Jan 24, 2015)

Maybe among hobbyists. I would be seriously surprised to see any business moving to FreeBSD just because they dislike systemd.

I work for pure UNIX shop and we use OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and Red Hat (I have played a lot with DragonFlyBSD as well so I can say something about that). We have to run Red Hat because MATLAB and bunch of our proprietary software doesn't run on any BSDs (I know everything about MATLAB alternatives but that is not how real world works). We tested Red Hat 7.0. We dislike it a lot and already made decision to stick with branch 6 till the end of its life which is 2020. I think this is more or less what is going to happen with most labs and businesses.

I will tell you another example from my Lab where we had even more compelling technical reason to chose FreeBSD over Linux and it has not happened. We currently run bunch of our proprietary software out of KVM instances running Red Hat on host and guests. Guests must have access to common storage pool so I set up soft RAID 6 on the guest OS (XFS) and tried to mount to guest using pass-through 9p distributed file system. 9p comes from Plan 9 and works like charm on its native platform. It turns out that 9p like many things on Linux  is just a vaporware so I was forced to use NFS. We are hitting some serious bottle necks with that NFS now. Being BSD guy I suggested a radical but very simple solution. We would use FreeBSD as host OS, common storage pool will run ZFS, guest OSs will run in Jails
and share common data storage via nullfs(5). All technologies I suggested are very mature and work like charm. However some effort was required to clean mostly our proprietary code to run on FreeBSD (should not be  a big deal). My idea was more or less immediately rejected by developers (read Linux users) and management. Developers are Linux users and are afraid of FreeBSD while management doesn't want to be stuck with obscure platform on our code when everyone else is using Linux. Instead I started experimenting with ZFS data storage pool on Linux and Dockers. I got things to work as advertised and then just demonstrated how a person with the access to a Docker instance which has common data pool mounted can use it to gain the root access to host machine. I also show that Dockers don't work well off ZFS. The crew is reconsidering FreeBSD. Stay tuned.


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## ANOKNUSA (Jan 24, 2015)

More popular? Maybe. That's a big "maybe." It is of course worth keeping in mind that the kind of person who spends time and energy bitching and moaning about systemd is not the kind of person who's going to contribute something to the community, or even express gratitude. They'll remain silent and contribute nothing, until the people doing the work decide to change something in a way they don't like. They'll then either hop ship to the closest thing resembling what they're used to (perhaps FreeBSD), or they'll suck it up and get used to the changes, eventually forgetting what they were ever complaining about. In the meantime, new users and developers enter the community at large totally unaware any controversy exists, and their only experience with the Linux ecosystem is with the stuff everyone previously thought controversial. They grow accustomed to it and then, one day, someone actually maintaining the system they love so much decides to make another change, and the bitch cycle continues. This pattern has been repeating itself in the Linux world for decades now.

I switched to FreeBSD as my primary OS after seven years of using Linux, and did so for several reasons. systemd was not one of them.


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## NewGuy (Jan 24, 2015)

Most of my clients are now running FreeBSD on their servers rather than Linux and part of that (though certainly not all) was due to changes like systemd. These are mostly small businesses, not big enterprises, but it still shows some people are migrating toward FreeBSD. Another big drawing point was ZFS and boot environments. While Linux has Btrfs, it is not fully supported in most distributions yet and ZFS is stable on FreeBSD these days.

I guess what I'm saying is there might not be a huge surge toward FreeBSD, but there is a trickle of people/businesses migrating to FreeBSD.

And despite what ANOKNUSA suggested, some of the people complaining about systemd are contributors, in one way or another. Some are looking at helping with port maintaining, most of them are planning to donate to the FreeBSD Foundation. More users means more funding and more bug reports.


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## retrogamer (Jan 24, 2015)

I know the other thread was brought up (and somewhat beaten to death), but I didn't throw my hat in the ring there as someone who is relatively inexperienced with the BSDs (which was the original focus of that thread, though it veered off topic).  Certainly I'm not qualified to criticize the technical direction of the project, I would say that.  I have some thoughts as a recent convert to FreeBSD on all of my devices (laptop/desktop) if anyone is interested, though.

I'd been using Slackware (as well as some other distros, on and off) since the late 90's.  Systemd didn't have anything (at all) to do with why I switched, considering there is guaranteed to be a supported Slackware without systemd until - at least, knowing Pat maybe longer - 2020.  Let me break down my reasons for switching:

1.  Linux is becoming more and more bloated as time goes by, in spite of dropping support for old hardware that I still use (there are distros that use older kernels to counteract this, but I wouldn't connect one to the Internet).  A real use case example of bloat:  I can run several emulators (emulators/dolphin-emu, emulators/pcsxr) with no slowdown on my older Core 2 Quad PC with a GTX 550 Ti and x11/nvidia-driver on FreeBSD.  I can't do this on Linux any longer.  I have tried minimalist Linux distros, but can't achieve that with a modern one.  FreeBSD is much more efficient these days, just in my experience.  Granted, that's not my main desktop, but it isn't obsolete hardware either.  Also, FreeBSD still runs on my obsolete hardware (PII/PIII era) while a newer Linux kernel doesn't.
2.  Btrfs is just not ready as a next generation file system, but ZFS on Linux lags far behind ZFS on FreeBSD.  I swore by LVM with XFS for many years, but the advantages of next gen file systems have made it less than ideal for me (especially in preventing bit rot) these days.
3.  FreeBSD hardware support is very good now.  I get better performance with my desktop NVIDIA cards, plus my sound cards and onboard Intel all work with my recent (say 2010 or newer) motherboard and sound card purchases.  Sound support used to be one of the things that stopped me from switching, this isn't the case anymore, and it hasn't been for awhile.
4.  FreeBSD still uses OSS, which I was very annoyed to lose in Slackware.
5.  FreeBSD still has (in my opinion) a more complete and properly supported ports system than any modern Linux distro (Gentoo, Void, etc.)
6.  FreeBSD has clear leadership and direction, you don't see statements like this - http://ostatic.com/blog/linus-systemd-indifference-pclos-review-and-rebecca#buzz
I am personally hesitant to donate to and support (via forums, bug reports, etc.) projects when I don't see a clear road map for the future.  As much as I think Pat Volkerding knows what _should_ happen with Linux, he is just the BDFL of Slackware and can't control decisions made by Linus and Red Hat.

Also, one other thought I would put out there:  I don't see why people are so apt to assume FreeBSD will make the same mistakes that were made with systemd when/if a new init system is implemented.  To give an example, DEVD has been introduced in place of HAL and is excellent (rather than being another HAL); after watching Jordan's presentation on YouTube, I feel like he is being misrepresented a bit.  If he had said "We're bringing the greatness of systemd to FreeBSD!", then I'd be worried, but he didn't say anything like that at all.  As I understood it, the hope is to please the embedded device makers (and supporters of FreeBSD) taking advantage of lessons learned from launchd and still adhering to the UNIX philosophy (with the Lego analogy being my source for that).

In short, I think FreeBSD is becoming more popular, but systemd has little to do with it.


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## ANOKNUSA (Jan 24, 2015)

NewGuy said:


> And despite what ANOKNUSA suggested, some of the people complaining about systemd are contributors, in one way or another. Some are looking at helping with port maintaining, most of them are planning to donate to the FreeBSD Foundation. More users means more funding and more bug reports.



I neither doubt nor deny this. There's just no way the number of people actively contributing to any projects (be they alternatives to systemd or their distro/OS of choice) in the Linux world has even approached the number of people content to spend all their time and energy simply complaining about systemd. There's just no other conclusion to draw from the thousands upon thousands of rants that have been made about it, relative to the tiny number of people actively working to create alternatives in the couple years since the push toward systemd began. Most people who "hate" systemd will do nothing more than hop from one distro/OS to another until they're left with no other options, at which point they'll likely suck it up and acclimate to it. They want things the easy way. They want someone else to fulfill their expectations. That's unlikely to change for most people who wind up choosing FreeBSD _for no reason other than that it doesn't have systemd_.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 24, 2015)

Oko said:


> Maybe among hobbyists. I would be seriously surprised to see any business moving to FreeBSD just because they dislike systemd.


For what it's worth, someone on reddit, a few days ago, posted that their company runs 60 servers and were going to switch them all to FreeBSD cause systemd was the final blow among other reasons.


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## Oko (Jan 24, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> For what it's worth, someone on reddit, a few days ago, posted that their company runs 60 servers and were going to switch them all to FreeBSD cause systemd was the final blow among other reasons.


The key ward here is final. In my book that means that they had many other reasons and systemd was just the last drop. I hope your read the rest of my original post. I am just doubtful that systemd alone will force anybody in the next couple of years to move away from Linux. 4-5 years from now is anybody's guess.

IMHO here in U.S. the main reason for lack of adoption of OS like FreeBSD is the lack of large legal entity which can be sued if thing and which provides support for OS. I am afraid that iXsystems is just not big enough and that would take a player like IBM for more people to adopt FreeBSD. On another hand individual technologies are different story. For example, in some sense every car in U.S. runs OpenBSD by way of QNX. OpenSSH is also in your car for the same reason. And those two things are just a tip of the iceberg when it comes to technologies which came our of OpenBSD. On another hand you have even people on this forum presumable  FreeBSD users who think OpenBSD is irrelevant.


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## fernandel (Jan 24, 2015)

Oko 

I think the topic is about systemd and popularity of FreeBSD and no how to advertising OpenBSD.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 24, 2015)

Oko said:


> Maybe among hobbyists. I would be seriously surprised to see any business moving to FreeBSD just because they dislike systemd.



I think it might depend on which business. I have been corresponding with a few business owners who have switched from Linux, to FreeBSD. One has a small web-hosting business, the other a small software development business.

In both of those cases, the reasons for moving where not entirely related to systemd. They just thought FreeBSD was a better fit.


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## worldi (Jan 24, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> I would be awesome if there was a surge in popularity for FreeBSD.



No, it would not. FreeBSD (or any BSD for that matter) is like this beautiful, quiet beach you've discovered. You don't want this beach to become a fscking tourist attraction.

This is exactly what happened to Linux (as pointed out by someone more than 10 years ago):


> In the beginning, Linux was pretty cool. It was free (always a plus), had a rapid development cycle, a moderately knowledgeable user base, and a funny mascot. Then the pinheads arrived.


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## Oko (Jan 24, 2015)

fernandel said:


> Oko
> 
> I think the topic is about systemd and popularity of FreeBSD and no how to advertising OpenBSD.


Too bad this forum has no down vote button


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## zspider (Jan 24, 2015)

worldi said:


> No, it would not. FreeBSD (or any BSD for that matter) is like this beautiful, quiet beach you've discovered. You don't want this beach to become a fscking tourist attraction.
> 
> This is exactly what happened to Linux (as pointed out by someone more than 10 years ago):



Truer words have never been said. I really hope this beach does stay the idyllic place it has been for the last 4-5 years(for me), or I *will* be moving to a new one. That would be a sad day.


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## jrm@ (Jan 24, 2015)

This conversation reminds me of this scene.


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## retrogamer (Jan 25, 2015)

jrm said:


> This conversation reminds me of this scene.


While I get what you mean, there really is a _problem of perception_ in the tech media.  There are so many clickbait articles about systemd that attribute people switching to FreeBSD and BSDs in general (or considering doing so) due to an init system that a lot of them don't even understand in the first place (i.e. painting people who switch in a buffoonish light), when there are *many* valid reasons that users are switching because of.   The story always seems to be about what Linux is doing wrong (the equivalent of saying "Well gee, I guess you're stuck with a BSD then.") when there are so many positive things about FreeBSD that should get mentioned.  I just wanted to rant a bit, I realize negative articles get page views and writing an article like "The 10 features that will make you want to use FreeBSD" won't generate the clicks of "SYSTEMD ARMAGEDDON APPROACHING! WHERE WILL THE SURVIVORS TURN?".


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## Beastie7 (Jan 25, 2015)

Oko said:


> The key ward here is final. In my book that means that they had many other reasons and systemd was just the last drop. I hope your read the rest of my original post. I am just doubtful that systemd alone will force anybody in the next couple of years to move away from Linux. 4-5 years from now is anybody's guess.
> 
> IMHO here in U.S. the main reason for lack of adoption of OS like FreeBSD is the lack of large legal entity which can be sued if thing and which provides support for OS. I am afraid that iXsystems is just not big enough and that would take a player like IBM for more people to adopt FreeBSD. On another hand individual technologies are different story. For example, in some sense every car in U.S. runs OpenBSD by way of QNX. OpenSSH is also in your car for the same reason. And those two things are just a tip of iceberg when it comes to technologies which came our of OpenBSD. On another hand you have even people on this forum presumable  FreeBSD users who think OpenBSD is irrelevant.



This is something I would like to see, a more or less commercialized version FreeBSD with commercial support. As solid as FreeBSD is as a platform is, "who are we going to call if something breaks" is a common concern of IT managers, and should definitely be addressed should companies decide to use FreeBSD. I'm not sure what iXsystems is doing with TrueOS but they don't seem to marketing it much as a viable alternative platform to Linux/Windows. It doesn't take much to advertise FreeBSDs' administrative and/or development features to steer people this way.

I yearn for a commercialized version of RHEL from iXsystems, and yes, with a GUI also. It'll attract a wider audience. Even though  I think GUIs on a server are kind of a sin. 

The key really is in advertising from a commercial entity, whether big or small. Just look at guys from Joyent with SmartOS.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 25, 2015)

Oko said:


> IMHO here in U.S. the main reason for lack of adoption of OS like FreeBSD is the lack of large legal entity which can be sued if thing and which provides support for OS.


I hear that reason used often but never in practice. At least the "suing" part. No one choose Windows so they can sue Microsoft should it ever fail. Support for IIS? Sure but 75% of the web runs on non-Microsoft products so the evidence isn't there for the majority. For Fortune 500 companies? Maybe that is true.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 25, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I hear that reason used often but never in practice. At least the "suing" part. No one choose Windows so they can sue Microsoft should it ever fail. Support for IIS? Sure but 75% of the web runs on non-Microsoft products so the evidence isn't there for the majority. For Fortune 500 companies? Maybe that is true.



I have done a lot of work in IT for government, government contractors, and large corporations. 

In some cases, I think there may be a "you scratch my back and I will scratch yours" decision making process. Ever notice how often IT projects for governments go way over-budget, and are badly botched? Ever notice how a decently working system is replaced, at great expense, with a worse system? I think there have been cases of a top exec leaving an institution, then starting his/her own company, and doing business with his/her old buddies back at that institution. 

In other cases, I think there is a huge avoidance to try anything new - because it's your ass on the if things go wrong. They used to say "nobody ever gets fired for buying IBM" then it was Microsoft, then Linux. 

I also think that sometimes corporations tend to identify with, and therefore trust, other corporations. If you are not making money with your product, how do I know it will still be around six months from now? There is something fishy about software being given away for free. 

But, I think most of that stuff is more relevant for huge institutions, not smaller businesses. 

All JMHO, of course.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 25, 2015)

> FreeBSD . . . is like this beautiful, quiet beach you've discovered. You don't want this beach to become a fscking tourist attraction.



I am not sure how far you can take that analogy. 

Problem is, can you count on a lot of support for an OS that practically nobody uses?


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## walterbyrd (Jan 25, 2015)

> Maybe among hobbyists. I would be seriously surprised to see any business moving to FreeBSD just because they dislike systemd.



"*Just* because of systemd?"

I dunno. I think systemd is a _*very*_ big deal. Systemd is not just a replacement for the init system, systemd completely changes everything.

No more: init, login, PAM, getty, syslong, udev, mount, cryptsetup, cron, at, dbus, acpi, cgroups, gnome-session, autofs, tcpwrapper, audit. No more run levels, no more text logging, no more POSIX, no more UNIX philosophy.

Great gif describing this:
http://giphy.com/gifs/hungry-systemd-5xtDarAgrjoOrBxSVYk/fullscreen


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## Dies_Irae (Jan 25, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> No more: init, login, PAM, getty, syslong, udev, mount, cryptsetup, cron, at, dbus, acpi, cgroups, gnome-session, autofs, tcpwrapper, audit. No more run levels, no more text logging, no more POSIX, no more UNIX philosophy.


Well, consider this thing from another point of view: we are moving towards an OS made of a single monolithic file. No config files, no libraries, and only one thing to keep up-to-date. Not to mention the install procedure... a dream for every sysadmin!


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## Oko (Jan 25, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> "*Just* because of systemd?"
> 
> I dunno. I think systemd is a _*very*_ big deal. Systemd is not just a replacement for the init system, systemd completely changes everything.


I agree but if you read the rest of my post you will see that it is not like you have to chose between systemd and FreeBSD. Many of my colleagues have decided just like me to stick with Red Hat (or clone of it) 6.XXX which will be available until 2020 and postpone the decision until dust settles. Now I don't know many people who run Ubuntu and Debian in production and I am guessing they might have to  decide earlier.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 26, 2015)

> Many of my colleagues have decided just like me to stick with Red Hat (or clone of it) 6.XXX which will be available until 2020 and postpone the decision until dust settles.



Technically, RHEL 6.x may be around until 2020, but is it really practically to stick with RHEL 6.x much longer? I think the kernel in RHEL 6.5 is already 5 years old.

Once Debian is on board with systemd, I expect Red Hat to accelerate its effort to make more software dependent on systemd.

Some people may stick with old Red Hat, or CentOS, or whatever. But I suspect most will feel it's time to move on, and just accept it.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 26, 2015)

Dies_Irae said:


> Well, consider this thing from another point of view: we are moving towards an OS made of a single monolithic file. No config files, no libraries, and only one thing to keep up-to-date. Not to mention the install procedure... a dream for every sysadmin!



I really wonder why systemd advocates don't just move to MS-Windows? If you want one big file that controls everything, controlled by a monopolistic corporation that is intent on controlling the entire ecosystem. If you don't mind vendor lock-in, or a subscription service, or having the inner workings of your OS hidden from you. And let's be honest, MS-Windows has the best desktop x86 hardware support in the business, and better graphics. If you are a PC end users at your place of work, Microsoft skills are far more widely used than everything else put together. Windows runs practically all widely used desktop applications, especially games.

After being a Linux advocate for decades, I now wonder if Linux has any place in the world? Maybe something like this makes more sense?

FreeBSD for servers, or tech lovers.
Windows for typical desktop/laptop end users.
iOS or Android for hand-held devices
Linux is trying to fit into all three of the above categories, and I am not sure if it does an especially good job at any of them.


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## Beastie7 (Jan 26, 2015)

FreeBSD could potentially fill in 1 and 2. Like those good ol' SUN days.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 26, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> I am not sure how far you can take that analogy.
> 
> Problem is, can you count on a lot of support for an OS that practically nobody uses?


I forgot to reply to that myself but I feel the same way about the "nice, quiet beach". At times, I show my irritation on these boards for some who come over to investigate FreeBSD who have obvious Linux roots and take quick jabs like this was reddit or somesuch. The peacefulness and knowledge here has a lot going for it.

I have the same issue with a new client that I started a thread about last week. They are strictly a Windows shop but run a Linux server for their web site. These guys can barely spell "internet" much less know how anything works outside the Windows software they write for the devices they sell. I am going to tell them they need to switch web hosts because their current provider can't deliver the services I need as I update their web site along with other interfacing needs. One of their two arguments is "no one uses FreeBSD so who's going to support it?" My reply is, "Who do they call when their CentOS web server goes down?"

I'm going to have to update that thread cause an interesting thing happened last week. I'll try and do it today but our state governor and a 25-member economic development team is visiting today(!).


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## Crivens (Jan 26, 2015)

This might not be completely relevant, but I came across this entry which nicely explains some of the pains still to come with systemd. I was not aware of all of the things comming with your PID being 1, but there will be some interesting times for people who trust systemd.

So in the end it might make FreeBSD more popular, but the question really is if that is in our interest. I like quiet beaches, too.


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## ANOKNUSA (Jan 26, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> I really wonder why systemd advocates don't just move to MS-Windows?



There's no logic to this. This thinking is exactly why reasonable debate over systemd is virtually non-existent, and why this thread will inevitably be closed.


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## Crivens (Jan 26, 2015)

In order to discuss about systemd, it would be neccesary to define what it IS. Not what it claims to be or aims to be, but what it is and what it most likely will become.
Then we can discuss about its merits.


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## kpa (Jan 26, 2015)

Crivens said:


> In order to discuss about systemd, it would be neccesary to define what it IS. Not what it claims to be or aims to be, but what it is and what it most likely will become.
> Then we can discuss about its merits.



Most importantly, not what people who are not going to use it or are even interested to find out what it is, claim it to be.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 26, 2015)

ANOKNUSA said:


> There's no logic to this. This thinking is exactly why reasonable debate over systemd is virtually non-existent, and why this thread will inevitably be closed.



Why would you say there is no logic to what I posted? I explained my reasoning. Systemd does make Linux much more Windows like. I have explained exactly why, and you have not refuted any of my reasons. 

My post was not just a rant, I was not just spewing vitriol. As I explained: MS-Windows is superior to both Linux, and FreeBSD, in some respects. That is not an insult, it is a statement of fact. For example: nobody can beat Windows when it comes to new x86 desktop/laptop hardware compatibility. 

Compared to Linux, Windows is more standardized, more monolithic, and more proprietary. Microsoft believes in protecting the end user from complexity by hiding the inner workings of the OS. Some people favor this approach - especially end users. Windows is very good with GUI control panels, and network configuration panels and the like.

For good or bad, systemd is more Windows like in all of those respects. And a lot of people are raving about systemd because of it. 

Personally, I do not favor the MS/systemd approach. But I do wonder, if people like the systemd approach, why not just use Windows? Windows has all the advantages of systemd, and then some. 

I think I can defend everything that I have asserted. I am not sure why you think my statements are so illogical and/or unreasonable; or why they would be cause to shut down the thread.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 26, 2015)

kpa said:


> Most importantly, not what people who are not going to use it or are even interested to find out what it is, claim it to be.



I am not certain that is entirely accurate. For example, what if new applications are written for systemd, and that makes the applications more difficult, or even entirely impractical, to port those apps to FreeBSD? 

In that case: if you are a FreeBSD user, then systemd might affect you, even if you have no interest in ever using systemd. 

I think we can get a pretty good idea about where systemd is heading by: 1) Considering Red Hat's motives, and: 2) Considering Red Hat's pattern of behavior so far.

Issue (1) is easy: Red Hat is a public corporation, and as such has a responsibility to it's shareholders to maximize profit. Clearly it would be advantageous to Red Hat if Red Hat controlled the Linux - and maybe even UNIX - ecosystem

Issue (2) might be more complex, and more debatable. Personally, I see Red Hat making a series of changes, even before systemd, that have no technical advantage, but those changes may make Linux more dependent on Red Hat standards.  Systemd is still being advertised as an init replacement, by systemd if far more than that. 

All JMHO, of course.


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## NewGuy (Jan 26, 2015)

People running Ubuntu have at least until April 2019 before they face having to run systemd (Ubuntu is one of the few Linux distributions still holding out on systemd as the default init software). Debian probably has until at least 2017, perhaps longer if Wheezy gets LTS support like Squeeze did.  Plus Debian may have the Devuan fork providing a non-systemd base for Debian packages.

As Oko said, there are options for people who do not like systemd besides FreeBSD. Of course, FreeBSD is an attractive choice, but it is one of several.


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## protocelt (Jan 26, 2015)

I usually stay out of the systemd conversation as I've admittedly little technical knowledge of the project and any conversation here(and elsewhere) usually revolves around "what ifs?" and personal opinion. I can only make the assumption more threads on this topic will pop up from time to time at least in the short term. Maybe it's just me, but what I would really like to see is someone/people that actually uses systemd in a production environment post some relevant information on what kinds of things it made easier for them or some of the technical pitfalls in using it has caused along the way. While I can't search the Internet constantly, I have yet to run into any generally objective posts in technical nature from that point of view. As far as how systemd will affect FreeBSD, I don't know but there are too many "what ifs" or lack of knowledge/experience with it at this point for me to form an informed opinion.


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## scottro (Jan 26, 2015)

While it's a nice thought, I wonder how many of us working at FreeBSD-centric jobs would easily be able to find another one if the current one disappeared. Here in the Northeastern US, I see very few FreeBSD-centric jobs listed, the vast majority are Linux.  I don't think that's going to change very quickly.


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## Crivens (Jan 27, 2015)

I have only an academic interest in systemd, as I currently do not have to use it and am also not dealing with applications which demand it. But it looms on the horizon that one day I may be forced to do it, and I like being forced to do things about as much as the next person. So I spend some time to see if it would be a good idea (nullifying the being-forced factor), but what I see there is nothing that convinces me as an engineer. Untill now, I have only seen that systemd tries to solve things that are already solved, and the extra benefit it brings to the table do not justify the risk of touching that part of the infrastructure. That is my opinion.

Yesterday I had a small conversation with one systemd defender, and he said that he liked the service files and the journaling in binary. But he could not express to me why a binary log would be superior. It logs a lot more meta data, yes, but here is the real-world admin yet to speak up on the positive points of that. Does anyone know such an administrator to ask for input?

Some other facts I can dig up using a stop watch: my systems use between 2 and 4 seconds from loading init untill they reach the login prompt. That time might be cut in half by a smarter init system, but these are systems tuned to be of personal use. How long does a real server take to reboot, and what could be saved by making the startup faster? I do not have such machines, and if I had I might be uninterested in rebooting them only to watch the console holding a stop watch. Maybe someone here can share some numbers on that, but for me the time saved is in no relation to the time it would take me to set up some other init system. For each minute spent there, I can reboot my system for a month, each day, untill I get to the break even point. And this posting would equal a year of reboot time saved.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 27, 2015)

> How long does a real server take to reboot, and what could be saved by making the startup faster?



I have used CentOS 6.5 (no systemd) and CentOS 7 (which has systemd) on the same box. I was surprised to find that the CentOS 7 took more time to boot. A systemd advocate told me that was because I was not running many services. Systemd's great strength is that it starts many services in parallel. 

Bottom line: the time you may, or may not, save depends on your particular setup. I can see where it would be easy to rig benchmarks, either one way, or the other.  Also, there are other methods of increasing boot-up speed without the massive system-wide changes of systemd. How those other methods compare to systemd is probably a matter of the individual systems. Something else that may need to be figured into the equation: a systemd setup may require more booting than standard init setup (just something I have read).

Personally, it is difficult for me to believe that boot-up time would be such a huge issue that massive system-wide changes would be justified. A well maintained Linux service may only need to be rebooted once every few months. Also, I am not convinced of the safety in starting a lot of services in parallel.


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## NewGuy (Jan 27, 2015)

I have compared Debian's upcomign version 8 (no systemd) with Debian 8 (with systemd). There was no difference in boot time, a few services/daemons didn't work with sysetmd init. Unit (service) configuration was a little easier to parse, but most administrators do not need to adjust init scripts anyway. Binary logging was really inconvenient, but it can be turned off. For desktop users there probably isn't any practical difference. For system administrators systemd is more trouble than benefit, in my opinion, but it isn't a huge issue.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 27, 2015)

NewGuy said:


> People running Ubuntu have at least until April 2019 before they face having to run systemd (Ubuntu is one of the few Linux distributions still holding out on systemd as the default init software).



Ubuntu is based on Debian, and therefore follows Debian. Debian will default to systemd, probably, a little later on this year. 

Furthermore, when you say you have until 2019 to switch. Remember: your system may, technically, be supported until 2019; but that does not mean you will have an up-to-date system that will run recently released applications. Supposedly, CentOS 6.5 will be supported until 2020, but the kernel is already five years old, and I was have trouble with some recent applications just a few months ago. 

Ubuntu's great appeal is to desktop users. Desktop users usually want the latest versions of applications. I think this is why Ubuntu does not use Debian stable. For most desktop end-users, the latest version is more important than being super-stable. I think it is doubtful that many Ubuntu users will want a five year old OS in 2019, or that many CentOS users will want a ten year old kernel in 2020. Red Hat has made it clear that they intend to have systemd take over even more. Want the newest version of udev? You need systemd. Might not be a problem now, but what about  two years from now?


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## walterbyrd (Jan 27, 2015)

> For system administrators systemd is more trouble than benefit, in my opinion, but it isn't a huge issue.



Not a huge issue? Are you kidding? Systemd is a radical departure from traditional Linux, and promises to change Linux much more radically in the near future. Systemd is still in it's infancy. Once Debian is firmly established with systemd - about a year a from now - Red Hat will control Linux like Microsoft controls Windows. 

With systemd, POSIX, and the UNIX philosophy are gone. 

With systemd, you can forget much of what you know about CLI, configuration files, logs, and much more. 

No more: init, login, PAM, getty, syslong, udev, mount, cryptsetup, cron, at, dbus, acpi, cgroups, gnome-session, autofs, tcpwrapper, audit. No more run levels, no more text logging.  And systemd is just getting started.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 27, 2015)

I've been using FreeBSD for 2-3 years for various things, and ramped up my use after Arch broke all non-systemd installs by effectively making everything dependent on libsystemd. 

I don't want FreeBSD to become more popular and take the role that Linux has been serving - that's not what I'm about. FreeBSD has just about enough support for me to be satisfied with its use.

As far as Jordan Hubbard is concerned, he can shove launchd where the sun doesn't shine - I'm not an Apple user, and I don't want any more of their franken-Mach bull in my OS. OS X is more Mach than BSD, and its not something I aspire to use - I left OS X because Apple is nothing more than a status symbol - OS X is just as bad as Windows, if not worse. 

If FreeBSD gets launchd, by that time my NDAs will be done and over with, I'll personally fork FreeBSD and invite anyone to join me. I already have voiced before that OpenRC and Runit are both fantastic options for a new init system, and that we're a BSD, not an Apple OS.


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## NewGuy (Jan 27, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> Ubuntu is based on Debian, and therefore follows Debian. Debian will default to systemd, probably, a little later on this year.
> 
> Furthermore, when you say you have until 2019 to switch. Remember: your system may, technically, be supported until 2019; but that does not mean you will have an up-to-date system that will run recently released applications. Supposedly, CentOS 6.5 will be supported until 2020, but the kernel is already five years old, and I was have trouble with some recent applications just a few months ago.
> 
> Ubuntu's great appeal is to desktop users.



First, yes, Ubuntu is based on Debian, but the first stable release of Ubuntu to be based on a version of Debian with systemd will not happen until April 2016. So that gives people over a year. And, again, supported releases with Upstart are supported through to 2019.

As for up to date software, Ubuntu and Debian have backports, meaning users on older system will have access to modern applications during that time. As for kernels, you only need a newer kernel if you are running newer hardware that isn't supported. Existing hardware will continue to work and it is easy enough to purchase only hardware supported by existing kernels.

Further, while Ubuntu has a strong following on the desktop, most desktop users won't be affected by systemd. I was talking about systemd's impact on servers (where Ubuntu is also quite popular these days), and people running servers rarely want to stick on the cutting edge.

Which brings me back to my previous point, people in the Linux community (especially those running CentOS, Debian and Ubuntu) have years to figure out what they want to do with regards to systemd.


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## retrogamer (Jan 27, 2015)

ANOKNUSA said:


> There's no logic to this. This thinking is exactly why reasonable debate over systemd is virtually non-existent, and why this thread will inevitably be closed.


Every thread seems to go this way, I think.  I was ready to write a response to some of the ridiculous statements that have popped up, but why bother?  There is some good information in this thread to go with some nonsense, at least.  I just wish people would *listen *and *try to actually understand* what Jordan said in his presentation, but oh well.  I'm going to go ahead and at least post it again:


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## Crivens (Jan 27, 2015)

Okay, I did an install of the currently available Ubuntu on a VirtualBox, since I need that one for my job. Some projects have so deep links to Linux that they do not build outside of that ecosystem, and I have not the time to patch that up. But I was checking for systemd and yes, it is running. On a current Ubuntu. So now I can check some things I want to see on that virtual machine.

Lets discuss things further, to see if we can get to the point where we can find answers and maybe have something like a plan, before the thread diverges and gets closed. That would be a bit useless in my humble opinion, as a new one will instantly respawn and continue. We need more data to support a decision. My gut tells me what I would like to see, but my engineering mind wants these pesky details... and I hope I am not alone with that.


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## NewGuy (Jan 28, 2015)

Crivens said:


> Okay, I did an install of the currently available Ubuntu on a VirtualBox, since I need that one for my job. Some projects have so deep links to Linux that they do not build outside of that ecosystem, and I have not the time to patch that up. But I was checking for systemd and yes, it is running. On a current Ubuntu. So now I can check some things I want to see on that virtual machine.



Ubuntu does not yet use systemd in its stable releases. There is a systemd shim, but the init software in Ubuntu's stable branch is still Upstart, specifically Upstart version 1.12.1. Development versions of Ubuntu may have systemd.


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## Beastie7 (Jan 29, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> I've been using FreeBSD for 2-3 years for various things, and ramped up my use after Arch broke all non-systemd installs by effectively making everything dependent on libsystemd.
> 
> I don't want FreeBSD to become more popular and take the role that Linux has been serving - that's not what I'm about. FreeBSD has just about enough support for me to be satisfied with its use.
> 
> ...



It's attitudes like this that will keep FreeBSD way behind the puck as markets fundamentally change. If you want more people to use our code or to even stay relevant, we to have to learn to adapt to current trends. I'm all for adopting something like launchd as long as it doesn't change FreeBSDs overall structure and design ethos. Think mobile, for example. Something like launchd could greatly improve projects like PC-BSD where targeting the mobile space (tablets/laptops) are more of a challenge. If you've watched Jordans talk, he states more Unix machines are running on batteries than any other form of power, which is true.

Just my two cents.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 29, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> it's attitudes like this that will keep FreeBSD way behind the puck as markets fundamentally change.


You've just stated that FreeBSD is way behind the puck and nothing could be further from the truth. 

This is not a popularity contest and any company that determines which OS they use based on a forum poster's comment is a company that won't be around a year from now. Popularity does not determine technical excellence or success. Nor do changes in the market necessarily make an operating system unable to handle its needs. 

You can put FreeBSD up against any other operating system out there and be wildly successful. Ask one of its biggest users and contributors Netflix why they switched to FreeBSD just a couple of years ago.


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## scottro (Jan 29, 2015)

With respect to both parties, I think that there might be some misunderstanding here.  We'd have to define behind the puck, but I took it as meaning less well-known and less supported.  drhowarddrfine is seeing the issues that can cause.  Were it more popular, there would be less resistance.

Somewhere, there must be a happy medium (not that I know it, nor have any idea how to get there) where it's popular enough to be well supported but not so popular that it becomes the target of those who would add all the things that would stop you from doing dumb things but also get in the way of stopping the smart things.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 29, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> It's attitudes like this that will keep FreeBSD way behind the puck as markets fundamentally change. If you want more people to use our code or to even stay relevant, we to have to learn to adapt to current trends. I'm all for adopting something like launchd as long as it doesn't change FreeBSDs overall structure and design ethos. Think mobile, for example. Something like launchd could greatly improve projects like PC-BSD where targeting the mobile space (tablets/laptops) are more of a challenge. If you've watched Jordans talk, he states more Unix machines are running on batteries than any other form of power, which is true.
> 
> Just my two cents.



I against OS X and its usage. I'd rather use Linux or Windows over OS X - the OS is laid out very poorly, and I do not appreciate its engineering or design. An init system has nothing to do with power management - you should leave that up to a separate subsystem. 

I'm not saying that rc should or should not stay, but if you're going to change it out for something different, then it should ideally be something like Runit, or OpenRC. They're under more BSD compatible licences vs launchd, they're simpler and they already run on BSD with little to no modification. As I said, I'll fight tooth and nail if Jordan Hubbard continues to push this agenda, and if he does, I'll fork the last non-launchd branch of FreeBSD and start working on making changes that I've already wanted to see in FreeBSD for a long time.


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## Beastie7 (Jan 30, 2015)

Meh, I enjoy the user experience and ecosystem, and it's still Unix. It's well designed enough for it's purpose and place in the market as a solid Unix Workstation.


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## Oko (Jan 30, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> I against OS X and its usage. I'd rather use Linux or Windows over OS X - the OS is laid out very poorly, and I do not appreciate its engineering or design. An init system has nothing to do with power management - you should leave that up to a separate subsystem.


In generally I like your posts and even better I like your enthusiasm but I respectfully disagree with your assessment of OS X. For the record my desktops run OpenBSD so I have no horse in that race. Due to the nature of my job I had to play with OS X and these are observation of a UNIX geek.

GOOD:

OS X in its heart is UNIX and opening shell reveals that.
With a little effort it can be configured to feel and have similar functionality as for example OpenBSD (of course not nearly as secure and simple as OpenBSD)

Includes more modern version of PF than FreeBSD for example
DTrace in the base

MAC ports are solid and having all that proprietary software is nice
BAD :

Lack of centralized rc.conf file is pissing me off
PList should be banned by law. The only format which kernel should be able to parse is plain text files of course
I am not a big fun of Apple proprietary file system. Too bad Oracle bought SUN Microsystem because OS X would include ZFS (third party OpenZFS doesn't count sorry people). However I would not be surprised to see HAMMER2 (if/when finished) ported to MAC before FreeBSD
I kind prefer traditional FreeBSD userland over Linux-ism (bash is default shell of OS X) but in whole honestly FreeBSD was moving in that direction (userland development was neglected for couple of years and FreeBSD was full of ugly GNU userland software) itself for a while (thinks are better in last year or two) so I understand why Apple moved to that direction
UGLY:

One has to fight GUI all the time

Network drivers are very flaky comparing to OpenBSD
One has to go through Apple store/itunes (whatever it is called) and register to download Xcode Tools (you must be fucking kidding me)
Turn on that PF first thing and write the most restrictive pf.conf file you can because otherwise Apple controls your machine.
Most OS X users are click clack moo GUI users and have the same or lower computer literacy as Windows users. However they have an additional thing working against them. They are snobs and buying into a life style. Most of them are plain clueless when it comes to technology. 



TeamBlackFox said:


> As I said, I'll fight tooth and nail if Jordan Hubbard continues to push this agenda, and if he does, I'll fork the last non-launchd branch of FreeBSD and start working on making changes that I've already wanted to see in FreeBSD for a long time.



I don't think that Jordan Hubbard has that kind of influence over FreeBSD. People like Hiroki Sato (who is current core team member) have done and are currently doing far more damage to the project. Jordan Hubbard has a corporate mindset and he/ixSystems have done great job with Free/TrueNAS as well as PCBSD/TrueOS. People like you and me might prefer vanilla FreeBSD for our own reasons but those are good products for typical American consumers.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 30, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> Meh, I enjoy the user experience and ecosystem, and it's still Unix. It's well designed enough for it's purpose and place in the market as a solid Unix Workstation.



Not by my definition, but okay. I'm not going to argue with you on that. 



Oko said:


> In generally I like your posts and even better I like your enthusiasm but I respectfully disagree with your assessment of OS X. For the record my desktops run OpenBSD so I have no horse in that race. Due to the nature of my job I had to play with OS X and these are observation of a UNIX geek.
> 
> GOOD:
> 
> ...




I was an OS X user for 7 years, I left shortly after Yosemite made its debut, because I had a love-hate relationship with Linux, and because I at the time despised Windows heavily. I left for a variety of reasons, one of which was the progressively declining build quality of their systems. In the PowerPC days, the price made sense and OS X was an okay OS, also I was significantly less computer literate. The nail was that my Powerbook G4 of 3 years (used) met its end, and I had to have new computer for college, so I blew $2500 on a shiny new rMBP. and I had so many issues with it:

The SSD had to to be replaced no less than 4 times, twice by Apple, once by an Apple store, and once by myself. When I cracked that case open, I was mortified because they glued the damn battery to the case - what were they thinking!? I was also increasingly fed up with the instability of newer versions, the brittleness of the plastic keys, the piss poor performance of code I wrote, as well as so much rigmarole with the libraries, plist files, App-Store bullshit, outdated libraries and hell knows what else. I replaced the SSD a final time, and sold it for $1000 in February of 2014, after roughly 16 months of use. I've been Apple-free for nearly a year, and before that my servers  running Fedora and desktops running Arch were forced into that straight-jacket called systemd, I've had enough with these "relevant", "walled garden" or other bullshit consumer OSes. About the only OS that I have any respect for is Android, and that's because its very well designed compared to conventional Linux, and I love that everything but the kernel is permissively licensed, if Apache License ( I agree with DeRaadt here, the AL 2.0 is bullshit )



Oko said:


> I don't think that Jordan Hubbard has that kind of influence over FreeBSD. People like Hiroki Sato (who is current core team member) have done and are currently doing far more damage to the project. Jordan Hubbard has a corporate mindset and he/ixSystems have done great job with Free/TrueNAS as well as PCBSD/TrueOS. People like you and me might prefer vanilla FreeBSD for our own reasons but those are good products for typical American consumers.



I use PC-BSD, and their *NAS products for various things. My main system is FreeBSD 10.1, and relatively minimal and simplistic. I love Lumina, but just like I don't want Windows in my Linux, I don't want Apple in my BSD. 

As I said, if the day comes where launchd or anymore poorly designed Apple bullshit comes into FreeBSD, I'm going to fork it, like Matt Dillon did. Looks like I have at least another year, since the change will have to come at release 12 or later, which is good because my prohibition from contributing open source expires May 19th of this year. Note, I'm not ragging on clang, because clang is good, but most all other change.

I'll invite any disgruntled users of FreeBSD, any developers and such to the project as well.


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## zspider (Jan 30, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Not by my definition, but okay. I'm not going to argue with you on that.
> 
> I was an OS X user for 7 years, I left shortly after Yosemite made its debut, because I had a love-hate relationship with Linux, and because I at the time despised Windows heavily. I left for a variety of reasons, one of which was the progressively declining build quality of their systems. In the PowerPC days, the price made sense and OS X was an okay OS, also I was significantly less computer literate. The nail was that my Powerbook G4 of 3 years (used) met its end, and I had to have new computer for college, so I blew $2500 on a shiny new rMBP. and I had so many issues with it:
> 
> ...



I will definitely climb aboard as a user and a potential donor if things come to that, I really hope it doesn't come to that though.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 30, 2015)

I appreciate the support. Let's hope it doesn't. I'm a capable developer, but I'm nowhere near capable enough to tackle a project like that by myself. Communities are weakened by fragmentation - for instance the NetBSD-OpenBSD schism has left NetBSD without much steam, especially after the collapse of Wasabi Systems.


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## Oko (Jan 30, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Not by my definition, but okay. I'm not going to argue with you on that.
> 
> I was an OS X user for 7 years, I left shortly after Yosemite made its debut, because I had a love-hate relationship with Linux, and because I at the time despised Windows heavily. I left for a variety of reasons, one of which was the progressively declining build quality of their systems. In the PowerPC days, the price made sense and OS X was an okay OS, also I was significantly less computer literate. The nail was that my Powerbook G4 of 3 years (used) met its end, and I had to have new computer for college, so I blew $2500 on a shiny new rMBP. and I had so many issues with it:
> 
> The SSD had to to be replaced no less than 4 times, twice by Apple, once by an Apple store, and once by myself. When I cracked that case open, I was mortified because they glued the damn battery to the case - what were they thinking!? I was also increasingly fed up with the instability of newer versions, the brittleness of the plastic keys, the piss poor performance of code I wrote, as well as so much rigmarole with the libraries, plist files, App-Store bullshit, outdated libraries and hell knows what else. I replaced the SSD a final time, and sold it for $1000 in February of 2014, after roughly 16 months of use. I've been Apple-free for nearly a year, and before that my servers  running Fedora and desktops running Arch were forced into that straight-jacket called systemd, I've had enough with these "relevant", "walled garden" or other bullshit consumer OSes. About the only OS that I have any respect for is Android, and that's because its very well designed compared to conventional Linux, and I love that everything but the kernel is permissively licensed, if Apache License ( I agree with DeRaadt here, the AL 2.0 is bullshit )


It looks like most of your distaste with Apple comes from previous problems with hardware not with OS X. I thought we were discussing OS X not hardware. Yeah I agree with you. Since Apple switched from PPC to Intel their hardware is peace of shit although other products are getting significantly lower quality (my beloved ThinkPads for example). For the record I always preferred Sparc64, Mips, and in particularly Alpha to PPC.  I never had money for the latter two. However I still run Sparc64 eagerly awaiting for ARM to mature. 



TeamBlackFox said:


> I use PC-BSD, and their *NAS products for various things. My main system is FreeBSD 10.1, and relatively minimal and simplistic. I love Lumina, but just like I don't want Windows in my Linux, I don't want Apple in my BSD.
> 
> As I said, if the day comes where launchd or anymore poorly designed Apple bullshit comes into FreeBSD, I'm going to fork it, like Matt Dillon did. Looks like I have at least another year, since the change will have to come at release 12 or later, which is good because my prohibition from contributing open source expires May 19th of this year. Note, I'm not ragging on clang, because clang is good, but most all other change.
> 
> I'll invite any disgruntled users of FreeBSD, any developers and such to the project as well.


Why not join DragonFly BSD? The project is super cool and they are craving for more developers. 2 dozen or more capable developers to DragonFly and DF to FreeBSD will look more like OpenBSD to NetBSD.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 30, 2015)

Oko said:


> It looks like most of your distaste with Apple comes from previous problems with hardware not with OS X. I thought we were discussing OS X not hardware. Yeah I agree with you. Since Apple switched to Intel their hardware is peace of shit although other products are getting significantly lower quality (my beloved ThinkPads for example).



My thinkpad T510 is a hella better than my rMBP ever was, even if it was a step down. Also, since OS X is locked to Apple hardware, talking about OS X without talking about the hardware would be like trying to talk about Buddhism with no mention of Siddhartha Gautama. I have plenty of major issues with OS X in my post, but those things I don't care to elaborate on because I've forgotten most of the details in any case.




Oko said:


> Why not join DragonFly BSD? The project is super cool and they are craving for more developers. 2 dozen or more capable developers to DragonFly and DF to FreeBSD will look more like OpenBSD to NetBSD.



I've considered it, and its still on my mind, but again, I can't join any FOSS project officially till after my legal agreement sunsets. And the only way I would join DFBSD is if Matt and the team allowed me to work on porting it to MIPS and ARM mostly, although I would consider taking on Nouveau as I'm a dedicated Nvidia user. I'm also not keen on some design choices by the DFBSD team, namely, it seems historically Matt is opposed to any work on other architectures, he's willing to making DFBSD more Linux-like, which I'm worried may pollute it with GPL code ( It's bad enough that he's not using clang ) and I'm also likely to piss other people on the team off - I do best when I'm in charge of a project. At the very least though, if I lead the charge in forking FreeBSD, I will probably ditch ZFS for HAMMER2 and improve UFS2.


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## Crivens (Jan 30, 2015)

Okay, some strong emotions are voiced here. Could we, maybe, get back to finding a solution for the original question? I quite appreciate the strong feelings, but this is one of the points that get such threads closed. And then the next one gets closed sooner, and no solution can be worked out at all. I would not like that, because I would like a solution for the problem at hand. Lets discuss all the options, we can discuss if we want OpenRC or launchd, but that will not stop all of upstream to force systemd down our throat. 

As I once explained to a project lead, the result of multiple changes in a design without syncronizing the effords is like shooting a rabbit, while you are kneeling in a boat on the lake. Hasty attempts to fix that mess then turn out to change the boat into a big rubber duck, giving huge buckets of coffee to the rabbit, and dancing the weather dance to get some hurricane, also. In the end someone makes a hole into the duck.

On a side note, said project lead would not listen and said project is now filed in Davy Jones Locker. I would like to spare FreeBSD from that.

Changing FreeBSD to another init system will not change a bit about the problem we have, we need to solve that at the root. And fragmenting FreeBSD more seems, I would say, counterproductive to the situation. I'm more interested in getting Matt and Theo into the same boat.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 30, 2015)

Crivens said:


> Lets discuss all the options, we can discuss if we want OpenRC or launchd, but that will not stop all of upstream to force systemd down our throat.
> 
> Changing FreeBSD to another init system will not change a bit about the problem we have, we need to solve that at the root. And fragmenting FreeBSD more seems, I would say, counterproductive to the situation. I'm more interested in getting Matt and Theo into the same boat.



I am in agreement with this post. I've rested my case with regards to init.

On the subject of systemd dependencies, I think its good the systembsd project and the Devuan project are working on offering some alternatives to systemd services. But that's not the best answer to the issue. We should instead pull together and work on becoming independent. Now's the best time to become more independent - we're getting a lot of new Linux refugees, we are reasonably up to date on a lot of things, and with the GPLv3 becoming evermore prevalent, we have a lot of incentive for leveraging away from Linux.

However, I am for forgoing porting efforts on GNOME, KDE and XFCE, as well any other desktop environment or component reliant on systemd-logind. I know that's likely to be an unpopular opinion, but hear me out. We now have Lumina, and CDE has just been open sourced in the last few years. In both cases, no dependency on systemd-logind or Consolekit. Now while neither of them offer the range of options that GNOME, KDE and XFCE, if we can somehow convince the people who maintain those projects to instead either roll another new, BSD-compatible DE or fork the current options and excise the Linux specific code from them. If we can get some of the people focusing on the desktop environments from Linux on BSD specific ones, we can remove a lot of the systemd dependency pressure.

As far as other software goes, our best options are to either maintain the systemd shims, and hold out for a systemd replacement on Linux's end, or we should start contributing patches to the projects we care about so they can work on this. 

I understand this is unlikely to happen, but I had to throw it out there. The shims only can only carry us so far, and it looks unlikely that systemd will be replaced, unless RedHat somehow collapses.  It has too much power and control of the Linux ecosystem.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 30, 2015)

The first question I would ask, as to how involved FreeBSD needs to get involved in systemd, is, "Why?". Unless there is a compelling need to do so, there is no need to follow Linux or be led around by the nose. 

Does FreeBSD no longer wish to be a Unix-like system? (Linux is no longer a Unix-like system and is Linux only unto itself.)


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## wblock@ (Jan 30, 2015)

Some interesting trains of thought in this thread.  As far as the subject, yes, systemd has clearly generated interest in FreeBSD.  I would suggest that concern over launchd or other rework of the FreeBSD init system is probably a bit misplaced.  For one thing, it's a bit early.  Work on porting launchd (as an alternate, not a replacement) has been going on intermittently for years, and other working init systems, usually offering concurrent startup, have been available in the meantime.  Secondly, the idea that FreeBSD developers would work in the same way or produce the same results as systemd is pretty skeptical.  The FreeBSD ecosystem tends to reject under-engineered stuff.  Have some faith that if or when new systems are offered, they will be up to the level expected by FreeBSD users.


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## BSDBernd (Jan 30, 2015)

When it comes to init systems like launchd, I think that I do no harm to the conversation to mention the puredarwin project here:
http://www.puredarwin.org/
This is the open source core of Mac OSX. It is an independent project. These people have nothing, no hardware donations, no donations in general, I once talked to them in their IRC channel. They need support . It would be cool if their OS would grow also, this would then presumably a more BSD-like OS for mobile devices and Laptops etc.
Edit: Although, when I think about it, launchd came with Mac OSX 10.4. Hopefully they have launchd in their OS, they are not so up to date ...


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## walterbyrd (Jan 30, 2015)

> This is not a popularity contest



I cannot help but notice that more popular OSes have better hardware, and software, support. It is just a fact.


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## walterbyrd (Jan 30, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> The first question I would ask, as to how involved FreeBSD needs to get involved in systemd, is, "Why?". Unless there is a compelling need to do so, there is no need to follow Linux or be led around by the nose.
> 
> Does FreeBSD no longer wish to be a Unix-like system? (Linux is no longer a Unix-like system and is Linux only unto itself.)



Linux software is being made to be dependent on systemd. Could that affect porting to FreeBSD? If so, is that a compelling reason for FreeBSD to be concerned with systemd?


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 30, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> The first question I would ask, as to how involved FreeBSD needs to get involved in systemd, is, "Why?". Unless there is a compelling need to do so, there is no need to follow Linux or be led around by the nose.
> 
> Does FreeBSD no longer wish to be a Unix-like system? (Linux is no longer a Unix-like system and is Linux only unto itself.)



That's what I meant by the above post, moreorless. Most of Linux went off the cliff like lemmings, but we're not lemmings - we don't have to follow them.



wblock@ said:


> Some interesting trains of thought in this thread.  As far as the subject, yes, systemd has clearly generated interest in FreeBSD.  I would suggest that concern over launchd or other rework of the FreeBSD init system is probably a bit misplaced.  For one thing, it's a bit early.  Work on porting launchd (as an alternate, not a replacement) has been going on intermittently for years, and other working init systems, usually offering concurrent startup, have been available in the meantime.  Secondly, the idea that FreeBSD developers would work in the same way or produce the same results as systemd is pretty skeptical.  The FreeBSD ecosystem tends to reject under-engineered stuff.  Have some faith that if or when new systems are offered, they will be up to the level expected by FreeBSD users.


I will admit, I'm less faithful in the FreeBSD project then when I was when I first came here. I'm a little dismayed that many users do not use it as a desktop OS and instead use other OSes, they reinforce the stereotype that FreeBSD is no good on the desktop.

Secondly, while I don't doubt any init system replacement will solve any limitations of rc, I believe in the UNIX philosophy. Launchd violates this principle, in my opinion.

I refuse to associate with Apple, and thus I will not contribute to or support Darwin. I see them as worse than Microsoft these days, tying the OS to subpar, overpriced hardware, and with a sellout philosophy making the OS useless for power users.

I'm fine with Android as a mobile platform, so I'm not interested in FreeBSD going mobile, or becoming more popular. From what I know FreeBSD has a higher userbase of Japanese speakers than does Linux, at least this was 5 or so years ago when I read this.


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## scottro (Jan 30, 2015)

I would doubt that, but my evidence is purely anecdotal.  Most Japanese speakers I know use Windows or Mac.  There is a Tokyo Linux Users group (which also has many FreeBSD users), but actually the majority of its members are gaijin.   I haven't been to Japan since the early double oughts, either.  

However, I repeat my evidence is anecdotal, and most of the Japanese folks I know aren't involved with tech.   (Debates a take my wife....please joke and decides against it.)


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 30, 2015)

The reason I say that is that, according to my contact in Yokohama, the BSD community was the first to really get decent Japanese support going in the OS, and much of Japan lives in the stone age of computers, so many corporations into the 2000s used the original BSD on a lot of VAXen and such, so its only natural that FreeBSD would have a large Japanese community. Most of the Linux users in Japan I've met are indeed foreigners. Hell, I know a guy who has a PC-9821 and runs an old FreeBSD version on one HDD, and the NEC DOS on another.


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## scottro (Jan 30, 2015)

Japanese support started getting easier around the early 2000's, in both Linux and FreeBSD.  I think the first system where I got Japanese input working was RedHat 5 or 6 or so, and around that time, FreeBSD had kinput2 and canna as well.   Anyway, we're digressing, and apologies to others on the thread.  I'm sure your friend is right--by the time I got to FreeBSD, it was already pretty easy to get Japanese working, and that would have been the early 2000's.


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## Oko (Jan 30, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> Linux software is being made to be dependent on systemd. Could that affect porting to FreeBSD? If so, is that a compelling reason for FreeBSD to concerned with systemd?


Yes check Google Summer Code project on OpenBSD website (I didn't make a mistake it is OpenBSD). They are working on the simple code which would solve that problem.


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## roddierod (Jan 30, 2015)

scottro said:


> (Debates a take my wife....please joke and decides against it.)



I'm guessing less than a handful of people on this board get that one...


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## BSDBernd (Jan 30, 2015)

One point by Hubbard is that these days you have these cheap ARM-Chip devices, many many of them. It is like with digital photos, they are cheap, lots of Teens do hundreds and hundreds of them. Because digital images are so important these days, a whole branch of computer science and mathematics grew immense because of that fact: image processing. This is a remarkable subject. An image is nothing else than a function, and with functions you can do a lot to make your image look smoother, reduce the noise, make colors more intense, make borders look more sharp, etc.. I would like to see FreeBSD (or something that uses FreeBSD at its base) also getting good at running on these devices because this is where a big interest is. Why not have several init versions in the ports tree, where creative people can then set up FreeBSD for their needs?


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 30, 2015)

BSDBernd said:


> One point by Hubbard is that these days you have these cheap ARM-Chip devices, many many of them. It is like with digital photos, they are cheap, lots of Teens do hundreds and hundreds of them. Because digital images are so important these days, a whole branch of computer science and mathematics grew immense because of that fact: image processing. This is a remarkable subject. An image is nothing else than a function, and with functions you can do a lot to make your image look smoother, reduce the noise, make colors more intense, make borders look more sharp, etc.. I would like to see FreeBSD (or something that uses FreeBSD at its base) also getting good at running on these devices because this is where a big interest is. Why not have several init versions in the ports tree, where creative people can then set up FreeBSD for their needs?



I don't have a problem with launchd being an optional init system, but I do not want a single port to rely on it. Not one. We don't need our own systemd. Why is launchd necessary for ARM devices? You don't - that's the key. Power management doesn't need to be handled by init. My battery on my laptop lasts longer than Linux or Windows 7 ever did, 3.5 hours to be exact. Again you're not answering the question: Why launchd, or why Darwin?


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## scottro (Jan 30, 2015)

roddierod said:


> I'm guessing less than a handful of people on this board get that one...


But the ones who do will laugh.


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## BSDBernd (Jan 30, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Why launchd, or why Darwin?


I don't know. I am no software engineer, the only thing I can do is to hear what experts say. And by his record, Hubbard is an expert.
He did a great talk and mentioned problems which they had to get Mac OSX on mobile devices etc. and how they solved them. It could very well be that these problems can be solved without a different init system. But the experts seem to use launchd-type of init systems.
I red today that Ubuntu already 2007 wanted to use launchd for their init system but because of Apples open source licence they rejected it.
Edit: It was 2006 and not 2007 . I looked it up again ...
Edit2: To be precise: In the Wikipedia article about launchd, they said that Ubuntu considered using launchd but rejected it because of licensing. This reads a little weaker than what I formulated above ...


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## BSD-Kitsune (Jan 30, 2015)

Well, Jordan Hubbard is associated with Apple, so he's going to of course be an advocate for it. I'm a developer, not a software engineer, but I see no convincing reason to believe that a monolithic init system is the sole answer in the modern world. All of the talk about it is mostly for a usability standpoint, but usability for a GUI user translates to hell for a CLI user.

Again, I think iXSystems is a good company, but I won't stand for Jordan to have his way, I am totally serious about forking FreeBSD. If I lead, others will follow. Not all of us are Apple advocates, and now I'd like to see nothing less than Apple crumble to dust now that Steve Jobs, the only man I had any sort of respect for, is dead.


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## hitest (Jan 31, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> I have seen lots of posts from Linux users who say they are moving to FreeBSD, or have already moved.
> 
> I have been using Linux myself for over ten years, systemd is the reason I am trying out FreeBSD.
> 
> Poettering called FreeBSD an irrelevant toy. It would be awesome if there was a surge in popularity for FreeBSD.



I stopped worrying about what other people choose to run as their OS of choice long ago.  I don't think about systemd a lot.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Jan 31, 2015)

I don't care either about what other people run. However, I care a lot about what _*I*_ run. Systemd may end up playing a big role in what I am _able_ to run.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jan 31, 2015)

hitest said:


> I stopped worrying about what other people choose to run as their OS of choice long ago.  I don't think about systemd a lot.


Exactly. The only time I think of it is when Linux people bring it up here.



OJ said:


> I care a lot about what _*I*_ run. Systemd may end up playing a big role in what I am _able_ to run.


This is my only concern, too.


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## Crivens (Jan 31, 2015)

We seem to get somewhere 

In the end, we have three options: Run, Fight, or Hide.
What is it we should do? Consequences, effords, gains, and so on?


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## gkontos (Jan 31, 2015)

Oko said:


> Many of my colleagues have decided just like me to stick with Red Hat (or clone of it) 6.XXX which will be available until 2020 and postpone the decision until dust settles.



Same here....


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## getopt (Jan 31, 2015)

kpa said:


> Didn't we already beat this subject to death?
> 
> Thread 46667


Some have the pleasure riding a dead horse ...


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## gofer_touch (Jan 31, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> At the very least though, if I lead the charge in forking FreeBSD, I will probably ditch ZFS for HAMMER2 and improve UFS2.



Out of curiosity, is there some reason why you would ditch ZFS for HAMMER2? HAMMER2 even if it were ready today would still require quite some time for it to be deployable without major show stopping bugs. ZFS has had orders of magnitude more testing.

It also seems that porting HAMMER2 won't be trivial according to Matt Dillon himself. 

I understand that the BSD license (HAMMER2's presumed license) is great, but why remove what many would argue is FreeBSD's killer feature?

I would perhaps echo a previous poster's sentiments concerning contributing to DragonflyBSD instead of forking FreeBSD. 

As far as the Dragonfly team not being keen on porting, I've read that they want to establish a stable scalable system on one mainstream CPU architecture first before porting. This seems to make sense.


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## usdmatt (Jan 31, 2015)

Completely off the original topic but completely replacing ZFS with HAMMER (v2 of which is still mostly a research project) would be moronic. ZFS has seen 10 years of enterprise testing/use and OpenZFS is supported by many systems and the basis of many enterprise solutions. The inclusion of ZFS has been very good for FreeBSD. One thing that will intruiged Oko and TeamBlackFox though is this page that's appeared on the wiki recently. https://wiki.freebsd.org/HAMMERFS (Obviously I have no issue with HAMMER being supported as an additional file system)

Will systemd make FreeBSD more popular?
Yes. We've already seen the people coming into the forums mentioning that they've moved from Linux. That's not including the people who haven't mentioned they've moved because of systemd (even if it's the last of many reasons) or those that haven't used the forums at all.

I doubt it's actually going to be a big enough migration to actually affect the development of FreeBSD though. Most Linux shops (i.e. not just end users) will just put up with it unless it really affects their services. Linux doesn't really have any interest in maintaining UNIX philosophy. They are slowly getting to the same place as Windows/Mac OS and are developing the sort of cross-subsystem monolithic hacks that are mostly hidden away in the closed source of those other operating systems. I'm fairly sure the FreeBSD devs still do want to maintain the UNIX philosophy.

Discussions about systemd itself (and possible similar, but incredibly unlikely, developments in FreeBSD) have already been beaten to death, and wasn't the purpose of this thread, so I'm not going to comment on that.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 1, 2015)

Replacing ZFS would serve a purpose because while I love ZFS, the way I see forward is through other technology. With the Oracle ZFS being patent protected, none of the enhancements of later versions can make it downstream. OpenZFS is great, but I think in the at minimum of 1-2 years needed for launchd to become the default init it will be safe to assume HAMMER2 will likely be already released and well on its way to be a better alternative for ZFS. It has little to do with licensing, and everything to do with providing something well maintained and with a progressive upgrade path. You can be assured, if we have to make a move, me and the rest of Team Black Fox will definitely support ZFS until I would feel comfortable deprecating, EOLing and removing it in that order. Anyways, I'm just about done with my say in the topic. If it comes to launchd, uselessd or any other init system or change we don't agree with, we will make our move then. Talk until then is just talk


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## hitest (Feb 1, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Exactly. The only time I think of it is when Linux people bring it up here.



Indeed.  I am thankful that FreeBSD does not have this concern.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Feb 1, 2015)

hitest said:


> Indeed. I am thankful that FreeBSD does not have this concern.


How so?


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 1, 2015)

gofer_touch said:


> As far as the Dragonfly team not being keen on porting, I've read that they want to establish a stable scalable system on one mainstream CPU architecture first before porting. This seems to make sense.



I did not see this quote earlier, but this is what I understood about the DragonFlyBSD project. As I do not care to know x86_64 assembler and will not contribute to any architecture specific code involving it, I probably will not be a good fit for the DragonFlyBSD team. I learned and first debugged C on ARM32 and MIPS64 systems, so I know those platforms much better than I know x86_64. I'm not interested in learning it, and I'm also married to Nvidia, and will not use AMD or Intel integrated graphics solutions, so I am better off working on the FreeBSD project for now. 

My final thoughts on the original topic are that I believe systemd in general is good for the BSDs - it puts pressure on us to hold together and pool together. Perhaps we'll be more motivated to leverage ourselves from Linux and finally get ourselves into a position to be more independent.


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## Crivens (Feb 1, 2015)

getopt said:


> Some have the pleasure riding a dead horse ...


That depends on the view. The horse is judged to be dead because it gets you nowhere, but it is also the goal that matters. If you want to stay put, so to speak, a dead horse is your best bet.

This thread is still open partly because I wanted to see where it would get, and get some consensus. If it were closed at the first mentioning of other threads which were closed, it would not get anywhere. But then you get a new thread, and another one, and none of those will go anywhere.

It looks like we have started to understand some things. As each communication trainer will tell you (about dealing with customers, f.e.), the emotional part has to come out first and the arguments come later. So when you stop listening and talking while explitives are hurled around, you will never get anywhere. After that, some cooling down is taking place and people start talking sense. I don't want to single out any example here, but if you read the last two pages of this thread, that pattern becomes obvious. So that is where we are currently heading - the high emotions are out and we can now start to deal with the issue at hand. I want to apologize to walterbyrd that this took the thread away from the original question, but it might be worth it. That is something he has to say.

So let's continue with planning and evaluations of possibilities, and also checking in what ways this will affect the future of FreeBSD.


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## neel (Feb 1, 2015)

Crivens said:


> So let's continue with planning and evaluations of possibilities, and also checking in what ways this will affect the future of FreeBSD.



I believe that systemd is actually hurting Linux, not FreeBSD. Why?

The "One Linux"/"Year Of The Desktop Linux"/"Linux Everywhere" mentality is hurting Linux more than it can ever hurt FreeBSD. Linux didn't suck when these mentalities didn't exist and when distributions focused on making themselves unique. Now, Linux really sucks, largely because of this "One Linux" mentality and the poor development decisions made as a result. (or at least in my opinion)

As a result, people who are unhappy with systemd and the "One Linux" ideology will  want to switch away from Linux. I read one article that said FreeBSD is gaining interest with cloud providers because of WhatsApp's servers run FreeBSD, but I don't think it's WhatsApp driving this interest as much as the resentment of systemd and the "One Linux" ideology.


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## Cthulhux (Feb 6, 2015)

Crivens said:


> In the end, we have three options: Run, Fight, or Hide.



I'd suggest to hide. If disappointed Linux devs came to "improve" FreeBSD (or other BSDs without a definite "that won't ever happen" strategy), we can all imagine how FreeBSD will continue. Everyone can be the next Poettering.

2016, the year of the FreeBSD desktop? For some of us, indeed. I'd miss it.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 6, 2015)

Cthulhux said:


> I'd suggest to hide. If disappointed Linux devs came to "improve" FreeBSD (or other BSDs without a definite "that won't ever happen" strategy), we can all imagine how FreeBSD will continue. Everyone can be the next Poettering.
> 
> 2016, the year of the FreeBSD desktop? For some of us, indeed. I'd miss it.



Jordan Hubbard is a Linux developer? WHOA


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## Cthulhux (Feb 6, 2015)

Jordan Hubbard is not a FreeBSD developer anymore either.


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## zspider (Feb 6, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Dealbreaker for me on using OpenBSD on the desktop is the lack of Nvidia support. I won't use AMD or Intel, the former for piss poor drivers, the latter because their GPUs are as slow as frozen molasses.
> 
> I agree though, I frankly get pissed off at the number of OS X users on here who are so uninformed about the FreeBSD desktop/workstation quality. Its obnoxious, and I wouldn't care less if people used OS X if they kept their damn opinions to themselves.





Cthulhux said:


> I'd suggest to hide. If disappointed Linux devs came to "improve" FreeBSD (or other BSDs without a definite "that won't ever happen" strategy), we can all imagine how FreeBSD will continue. Everyone can be the next Poettering.
> 
> 2016, the year of the FreeBSD desktop? For some of us, indeed. I'd miss it.



I'm glad to see some serious discussion of these issues that I myself have been wondering about for the past couple of years. I hope the sun never sets on FreeBSD, but I am preparing in the event that it does.


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## Crivens (Feb 6, 2015)

Yes, hope for the best but prepare for the worst.

FreeBSD, and I think any other *BSD, has one huuuuge advantage when it comes to those "hackers" tinkering with the codebase. The OS is one unit, kernel and user land in one. The commit priviledge needs not only to be granted, but it can also be removed again, and commits might be rolled back also. So I do not see the chance that some badly designed component would creep into the code base and stay there, together with it's comitter, for very long. Well, at least as the keepers of the gate there are keeping to the path.


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## retrogamer (Feb 6, 2015)

I think Crivens made a good point earlier that was lost in the shuffle, in that if you are talking about systemd in terms of impact on FreeBSD, you really have to specify whether you mean as it exists - currently - in reality as an init system that has subsumed system services, or if you mean the systemd philosophy (which is definitely not the UNIX philosophy).  Also, if you are going to discuss Jordan's presentation, it's important to separate launchd from systemd.  I've been trying to educate myself on these issues, and have some useful links/videos I'd like to post here to help guide the discussion.

First, what is the systemd philosophy?  As I understand it, it has not changed much since Poettering gave this presentation.  The title gives you a good idea of where it's going, being "Beyond Init".





Second, the GNU Hurd developers have had some interesting discussions, along with some ranting, about the implications of systemd for OSes that are not Linux (or GNU/Linux if you will, since this affected Debian GNU/kFreeBSD too ).  http://darnassus.sceen.net/~hurd-web/open_issues/systemd/

Third, I am not an OS X or Apple hardware user, so I'm not familiar enough with launchd to really comment on it and how it differs from systemd.  But, after watching this presentation, I think I have a decent handle on it:


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## Cthulhux (Feb 6, 2015)

zspider said:


> I hope the sun never sets on FreeBSD, but I am preparing in the event that it does.



The more relevant question is: How can we help to avoid that scenario?


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## Oko (Feb 7, 2015)

usdmatt said:


> One thing that will intruiged Oko and TeamBlackFox though is this page that's appeared on the wiki recently. https://wiki.freebsd.org/HAMMERFS (Obviously I have no issue with HAMMER being supported as an additional file system)


So I guess it is time for DragonFly to get  ZFS

https://github.com/victoredwardocallaghan/DragonFlyBSD/tree/zfs-port


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## Cthulhux (Feb 7, 2015)

404

edit: Fixed. Thanks


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## Carbide (Feb 7, 2015)

In reply to the question originally posed in the thread's title, yes and the other BSDs too.  I had sampled the BSD world some time back. While I generally liked what I found, it was different enough that I went back to Linux in order to avoid some of the pain (read work) necessary to make a full transition. That and the fact that I found a Linux distro that did not have systemD and planned to stay that way. All was fine until the hammer dropped.

A few weeks ago, one of the IT journals (sorry, I don't remember which one) published an analysis of how systemD was affecting Linux in general and what we could expect in the future. The author postulated that systemD was mutating and grabbing functionality at such a rate that the hold out distros only had about one year left before they would be forced to capitulate completely or lose major features because of more forced dependencies on systemD. 

A few days ago, the hammer fell the rest of the way. Poettering announced that systemD was now taking over all network functions. That was it. Linux is dead to me now. I wish the hold outs well. I hope they can win in the end, but have little faith that they will. I'm in BSD land to stay.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 7, 2015)

Cthulhux said:


> I'd suggest to hide. If disappointed Linux devs came to "improve" FreeBSD (or other BSDs without a definite "that won't ever happen" strategy), we can all imagine how FreeBSD will continue. Everyone can be the next Poettering.
> 
> 2016, the year of the FreeBSD desktop? For some of us, indeed. I'd miss it.




IMO: it is not the Linux devs that are ruining Linux, it's Red Hat. For years now, changes have been made to Linux which have no technological advantage, but will give Red Hat increased control. 

I suppose that might seem like some crazy conspiracy theory, but if you look at it from the perspective of a $10 billion corporation which would benefit substantially by being able to control the Linux ecosystem, it may not seem as crazy as all that. 

It is not the popularity of Linux that causing the problems, it's corporate interests. To be fair, those corporate interests have been beneficial in the past, but I think things are changing. 

Were it not for Red Hat, Poettering would be an easily dismissed nobody.


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## Carbide (Feb 7, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> Were it not for Red Hat, Poettering would be an easily dismissed nobody.



I agree with that.  Red Hat seems to also have managed to place its own employees into critical decision making positions within competing distributions and critical projects, which gives it the power to effect control over the direction of those distros and projects. At a minimum, Poettering and his cohorts are proceeding with the blessings of Red Hat, tacit or otherwise, if not at its outright behest and direction.  As his employer, Red Hat is responsible for what he is doing in the Linux arena, including his conduct on mailing lists and forums.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 7, 2015)

The Linux ecosystem was historically broken to begin with, when you have two entities with two different approaches to the same ideology, chaos is bound to happen with people splitting off into different realms of the ecosystem. I honestly believe "GNU"/"Linux" just happened because both parties didn't have the momentum to complete their objective. Redhat sought to unify everyone (and they did actually), but Red Hat has always been a company since the inception of Linux, so of course they're going to have more control over the ecosystem given the cash they have. Hell, even canonical had the ability to do it, but they're too busy trying to be Apple. In retrospect, with Red Hat being Linux's biggest contributor, they have did a lot of good for advancing Linux as a whole though. I believe Red Hats greediness began when they acquired JBoss, and started on their huge "Cloud" fantasy trying to compete with Oracle/IBM/Google, and knowing the Linux ecosystem, the wild west doesn't care for Market trends.


Just imagine if 386BSD released in time, we wouldn't be here having this conversation.


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## Cthulhux (Feb 7, 2015)

Of course we would, as 386BSD was started after Linux.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 7, 2015)

The previous two posters need their history corrected but I don't have the time.


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## Cthulhux (Feb 7, 2015)

The history is: There was no free Unix back in 1991, so Linus started developing Linux modelled after Minix. In 1992, free replacements for almost all AT&T code was ready.

If they had just hurried a bit.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 7, 2015)

Cthulhux said:


> If they had just hurried a bit.


You are misinformed but, again, I have no time to go into it. Today is my birthday and I must appear in front of my millions of admirers.


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## BSDBernd (Feb 7, 2015)

I forgot to answer the question of the thread. http://distrowatch.com/index.php?language=DE seems to suggest an opposite trend, at least when it comes to normal users, general citizens like you and me . The interest seems not to have grown, I regularly look on that site. In fact, popularity seems to get down. The same I get when I look at google trends.  Apart from the frightening  diagram http://www.google.de/trends/explore#q=FreeBSD , even when you look at more recent time spans, f.e. the last 90 days, there seems to be no upwards trend. For the Distrowatch thing, I believe a simple explanation could be that the Linux folk try to get more reliable when it comes to Desktops, Laptops, mobile devices, and they care about Clouds etc. Ubuntu has these long time support versions which seem to run stable. I know several people who run these and they seem not to have problems with stability. Also these more stable Linux distros care about power consumption, boot up times, about getting their OS on mobile devices, about the things Hubbard mentioned in his talk. 
May be the upwards trend will come, but it seems not at the moment to come.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 7, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> You are misinformed but, again, I have no time to go into it. Today is my birthday and I must appear in front of my millions of admirers.



You've replied twice, and yet you have no time to enlighten us... interesting.


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## scottro (Feb 8, 2015)

Meh,  it's easy enough to track down, I think.  I don't really know the timeline, nor care all that much, but AT&T did Unix, Berkeley did some stuff, there was court stuff. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD#Birth_of_FreeBSD

Now what that has to do with Linux, I dunno.  Linus Torvalds made a kernel, somewhere along the line it got mixed in with the Stallman stuff and you got a Unix like system.  
I don't care enough to google which was first, but it should be a quick look.
Anyhoo, during the lawsuit time, I think, more people started using Linux or LInux mixed with the GNU stuff.  Gnu is not Unix, part of Stallman's whole thing about software being free.

So, how does this affect all of us.  IT HAS ABSOLUTELY NO MEANING LEGAL OR OTHERWISE to what we're using today, save for a few, Oh, if this, then maybe that.  I'd have to to spend more effort to google the time period than I care to do.  I can affirm that either Linux or the BSDs came first, and the other one came second.  

I'm a very selfish person.  I even have a vid up--the situation is that the man and the woman are being given a head start before a drug lord hunts them as human prey.  Here is the video. 

http://srobb.net/selfish.mp4

So, has anyone job hunting seen a lot more FreeBSD sysadmin ads since CentOS (and RHEL) 7 started using systemd?  I haven't, I've just seen people on mailing lists or forums saying, Gee, I'm going to FreeBSD.  

Has Amazon, for example, in shock and disgust at systemd, or Google, suddenly changed their servers to FreeBSD or made plans to do so?  

Anyway, this has, to be a bit trollish, begun to remind me of the 100 post plus threads on Linux forums about how Windows is dying.   And yet, somehow, most people still use it.  Shucks, I was watching Grimm the other day, where they probably have a product placement deal with Apple, and one of the main characters goes to check his girlfriend's iMac.  You see the desktop and its Windows.   Of course, on the Linux forums (fora?), many of the posters will be young kids posting about the end of Winblow$ and so on.  But...

While there may be some users leaving Linux for this, and while it may even be the beginning of an exodus, I doubt it will have the effect that many of us hope it will.   It may have the negative effect of making things harder to port, as it grabs more and more things to do, and I believe that Mr. Poettering has stated that he doesn't care about POSIX standards (but that might be FUD on my part--too lazy to google, see the selfish thing above.)


TL;DR
The history and which came first isn't going to matter practically.  Whether some people leave Linux because of systemd or whatever, I don't yet see noticeable amounts of sysadmin jobs changing from requesting Linux to requesting BSD expertise.


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## retrogamer (Feb 8, 2015)

BSDBernd said:


> I forgot to answer the question of the thread. http://distrowatch.com/index.php?language=DE seems to suggest an opposite trend, at least when it comes to normal users, general citizens like you and me . The interest seems not to have grown, I regularly look on that site. In fact, popularity seems to get down. The same I get when I look at google trends.  Apart from the frightening  diagram http://www.google.de/trends/explore#q=FreeBSD , even when you look at more recent time spans, f.e. the last 90 days, there seems to be no upwards trend. For the Distrowatch thing, I believe a simple explanation could be that the Linux folk try to get more reliable when it comes to Desktops, Laptops, mobile devices, and they care about Clouds etc. Ubuntu has these long time support versions which seem to run stable. I know several people who run these and they seem not to have problems with stability. Also these more stable Linux distros care about power consumption, boot up times, about getting their OS on mobile devices, about the things Hubbard mentioned in his talk.
> May be the upwards trend will come, but it seems not at the moment to come.


That's the point I was trying to make, but you did a much better job of illustrating it.  Big corporations that may not be a fan of Red Hat's current direction with Linux - say Google - have already created Android and Android derivatives that are completely free from systemd dependence, new Linux based OSes using Android's init could be developed into a server or workstation OS (Android is already pretty usable as a desktop OS now), to think they are suddenly going to take interest in BSDs isn't very likely.  There was a great article about that (a workstation OS based on Android) I saw at http://www.dragonflydigest.com/ last year, but I couldn't find it again.

Anyway, if we leave out the giant corporations, who does that leave that might switch?  The smaller company, or the Linux power user.  They might switch over systemd at some point, but there is at least a 5 year window before systemd is going to be the only supported option in several major distros, I doubt that a huge number of people are planning 5 years ahead.  Even then, look at the number of unsupported Linux servers out there.  These are the companies that will switch over systemd?  Doubtful, in my opinion. Now, ZFS, bhyve, Clang, OSS are very present reasons that you might switch to FreeBSD. That said, I wouldn't trust Distrowatch at all to gauge interest in BSDs, that is a completely unscientific ranking of popularity (based solely on DW page hits).  I'd imagine most people who migrate to a BSD quit using Distrowatch with any regularity, since it's a Linux focused site.


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## Carbide (Feb 8, 2015)

retrogamer said:


> They might switch over systemd at some point, but there is at least a 5 year window before systemd is going to be the only supported option in several major distros, I doubt that a huge number of people are planning 5 years ahead..



Where in the world do you get five years? At the rate systemD is gobbling up functionality, in five years it will be the Poettering OS and Linux will be a shell of its former self. Users will have been forced to jump one way or another long before that.


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## retrogamer (Feb 8, 2015)

Carbide said:


> Where in the world do you get five years? At the rate systemD is gobbling up functionality, in five years it will be the Poettering OS and Linux will be a shell of its former self. Users will have been forced to jump one way or another long before that.


As Oko pointed out earlier, - https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata for Red Hat - meaning there is a supported RHEL without systemd until 2020.
Slackware-Current still uses sysvinit and will be supported for at least 5 years when it becomes the next stable release.  Pat has not said (that I know of) whether Slackware will ever implement systemd, though I suspect this will be a situation like OSS and XFree86 where his hand is forced eventually.


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## Carbide (Feb 8, 2015)

_As Oko pointed out earlier, - https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata for Red Hat - meaning there is a supported RHEL without systemd until 2020._

Yes, but that is mainly used by big budget corporate/government entities for servers. Individual users generally prefer something more up to date, not to mention free of charge.  A close family member of mine administers Linux systems for a large organization. Red Hat is almost exclusively servers. Ubuntu and a sprinkling of other stuff is used on desktops. It is the free open source users who will decide the question posed at the top of this thread, and they don't use RH 6.

_Slackware-Current still uses sysvinit and will be supported for at least 5 years when it becomes the next stable release. Pat has not said (that I know of) whether Slackware will ever implement systemd, though I suspect this will be a situation like OSS and XFree86 where his hand is forced eventually._

Forced is the key term here. It is instructive to go to distrowatch and look at the included packages listings for the various distros. Of the hundreds of distros, very, very few are systemD free. PCLinuxOS and Slackware are the only two that I would consider major league, and a lot of people would debate my inclusion of PCLinuxOS.

The bottom line is simple. With the caving of Debian and Ubuntu, the die has already been cast. And that was before the latest systemD power grab that was just announced, networking. It's over, Linux as we knew it is dead. Today, not five years from today. The only thing that is likely to reverse the trend is something like a blistering anti systemD rant from Linus (long overdue in my mind) along with some sign of a systemD free distro arising out of the Debian ashes at the Devuan project.

I'm not holding my breath.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 8, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> You've replied twice, and yet you have no time to enlighten us... interesting.


Yes. In between trips to various activities, while waiting for others, I managed to find a minute to surf here. It's now 2AM and I'll give you another brief moment.

Linus Torvalds wrote Linux because BSD was in legal turmoil with ATT over code BSD contained. As he wrote, and you can also Google for, he stated that if BSD was available back then, he never would have written Linux. Therefore, BSD was around but under hold due to legal problems. Working faster, as one of you two stated, would not have mattered.

I will let you Google for all that since I did not like your response but you can start here.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 8, 2015)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Yes. In between trips to various activities, while waiting for others, I managed to find a minute to surf here. It's now 2AM and I'll give you another brief moment.
> 
> Linus Torvalds wrote Linux because BSD was in legal turmoil with ATT over code BSD contained. As he wrote, and you can also Google for, he stated that if BSD was available back then, he never would have written Linux. Therefore, BSD was around but under hold due to legal problems. Working faster, as one of you two stated, would not have mattered.
> 
> I will let you Google for all that since I did not like your response but you can start here.



Yes, I'm aware of that. But the First "GNU/Linux" distro didn't come into fruition until around 1993 (SLS/Slackware), a little after 386BSD. You can't have a complete operating system without the GNU userland. That's what I was hinting at. But whatever. Let's put this one to rest shall we?


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## ANOKNUSA (Feb 8, 2015)

Carbide said:


> Individual users generally prefer something more up to date, not to mention free of charge.



They also prefer not ever thinking about the internals of their operating systems.



Carbide said:


> With the caving of Debian...



The Debian developers did not "cave." It was put to a vote, as are all such major decisions. The alternatives were OpenRC and Upstart. systemd won. Repeatedly.



Carbide said:


> The only thing that is likely to reverse the trend is something like a blistering anti systemD rant from Linus (long overdue in my mind)



He doesn't care. At all.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 8, 2015)

JMHO responses to the last few posts.



> Whether some people leave Linux because of systemd or whatever, I don't yet see noticeable amounts of sysadmin jobs changing from requesting Linux to requesting BSD expertise.



I would not expect such a change overnight. It would take a few years, if would ever happen.



> As Oko pointed out earlier, - https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata for Red Hat - meaning there is a supported RHEL without systemd until 2020.



Again I am not sure that "supported" means practical to actually use.

I was using CentOS 6.5 (based on last Red Hat version before default systemd) up until a few months ago. The kernel in CentOS 6.5 is already about five years old, and I was coming across apps that would not install, just because of the age of the kernel. Technically speaking, non-systemd may be supported until 2020, but will stuff run on it? In particular, can we count on the latest versions Red Hat stuff like JBoss, and OpenStack, to run on it? I think "supported" may just mean security patches.



> They might switch over systemd at some point, but there is at least a 5 year window before systemd is going to be the only supported option in several major distros



Systemd will be the default in practically all Linux by the time Jessie comes out.

As I see it, especially for corporate use, there are two dominating players: Red Hat and Debian. Keep in mind that Canonical is based on Debian, and OpenSuse is really based on Red Hat (OpenSuse denies this but OpenSuse uses the same package management, and the same systemd).

With Red Hat, Debian, Canonical, Oracle, IBM, and Novell all firmly behind systemd, I think systemd will be the standard by the end of 2015. Once systemd is the standard, Red Hat is firmly in control. When that happens, I expect anything optional about using systemd will be eliminated.



> Slackware-Current still uses sysvinit and will be supported for at least 5 years when it becomes the next stable release. Pat has not said (that I know of) whether Slackware will ever implement systemd, though I suspect this will be a situation like OSS and XFree86 where his hand is forced eventually.



I like Slackware, but it has no real leverage in the corporate world. I read an interview by Pat, where Pat said that he had no plans to put systemd in slackware - but that it might become inevitable.



> The only thing that is likely to reverse the trend is something like a blistering anti systemD rant from Linus (long overdue in my mind) along with some sign of a systemD free distro arising out of the Debian ashes at the Devuan project.



It might be possible that Linus' ego is preventing this. Linus may not want to admit how powerless he is in this. I hope Devuan works, but in terms of leverage, resources, and entrenchment, Devuan is hugely outmatched. We are talking about a $10 billion corporation, that already has 65% of the corporate Linux users, compared to what? Devuan may win out anyway, it will be interesting to watch.



> The Debian developers did not "cave." It was put to a vote, as are all such major decisions. The alternatives were OpenRC and Upstart. systemd won. Repeatedly.



I have read some of the email list discussions. It seemed to me that the discussions were not about the quality of systemd, but rather: is systemd inevitable?

I get the idea that Debian is supporting systemd for the same reason that Libreoffice supports OOXML. Not because they love it, but because it is, effectively, forced on them by the dominate player.

Again, all JMHO, of course.


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## ANOKNUSA (Feb 8, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> OpenSuse is really based on Red Hat (OpenSuse denies this but OpenSuse uses the same package management and the same systemd).



They use the same package format. That doesn't mean the contents of those packages, nor the software to install it, nor configuration of software once installed is the same. And, what, are there other systemds I don't know about? Or are all distributions Red Hat now, because they all contain 20-odd megabytes of software developed by Red Hat?



walterbyrd said:


> It might be possible that Linus' ego is preventing this. Linus may not want to admit how powerless he is in this.



It might be possible that Linus has been possessed by demons summoned from beyond the realms of mortal men by Lennart Poettering, and is prevented by dark magicks from retrieving the mighty Sword of SysV in order to slay the evil systemd beast that threatens to destroy our villages and spoil our crops and defile our women and melt our ice cream cones. But such speculation contributes nothing to the discussion. He says he doesn't care, and that's all anyone has to go on.

It's fine to dislike systemd---there are valid gripes to be had---and discussions over its ramifications are fine as well. They're good, in fact---whether you like systemd or not, talking about how it may or may not affect your future is just the smart thing to do. But fallacious reasoning and random speculation and conspiracy mongering taint any and every attempt at a decent discussion on matter every goddamn time. _Every_ time. The only reasonable thinking I've seen on the matter is a single blog post nobody of consequence will ever read. I'll shed a single tear for the well-reasoned discourse that could have been, and move on.


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## retrogamer (Feb 8, 2015)

> ="ANOKNUSA, post: 281627, member: 44375"
> 
> It's fine to dislike systemd---there are valid gripes to be had---and discussions over its ramifications are fine as well. They're good, in fact---whether you like systemd or not, talking about how it may or may not affect your future is just the smart thing to do. But fallacious reasoning and random speculation and conspiracy mongering taint any and every attempt at a decent discussion on matter every goddamn time. _Every_ time. The only reasonable thinking I've seen on the matter is a single blog post nobody of consequence will ever read. I'll shed a single tear for the well-reasoned discourse that could have been, and move on.


That really is a great article, I think the section breaking down what is meant by the "UNIX philosophy" in particular deserves to be referenced more often.  This is where I think Poettering does deliberately feed the trolls, I don't believe for one minute he really meant it when he said:


> *"That all said, I am pretty sure that systemd actually brings Linux much closer to Unix than Linux ever was. *All the true Unixes of today (such as FreeBSD, Solaris, ...) are maintained in central place, sharing code repository infrastructure, lifecycles and release schemes, for all their compenents, regardless if its the kernel, the libc or the rest of userspace. On real Unixes it is much easier to patch through the entire stack from kernel to userspace, because everything comes from the same source, and follows the same cycles. Real UNIXes tend to feel more uniform, since the same folks work on the whole stack, things come out of a single hand. Linux always was different: our components are independently maintained, in different repos, in different coding styles, by different people, with different release cycles. They are differently well maintained, a lot of our stack is actually traditionally very badly maintained if at all.
> 
> With systemd we kinda try to find the middle position, move to a more UNIX-like scheme, without dumping _everything_ into the same repo like UNIX does, but at least the core userspace bits. But even beyond the procedural bits, there's a lot of areas where systemd is closer to traditional UNIX than Linux was. For example, one Unix mantra is "everything is a file" (which, btw, is a pretty broken one, because my printer is not a file, not at all), and you could say that systemd exposes one of the most core concepts of a Unix system, that of services/daemons as files via the cgroup logic. So yeah, if you claim that we are not UNIX, then I'll tell you that we are actually much closer to UNIX in many ways then we ever were.
> 
> *I am pretty sure that most folks who constantly repeat that systemd wasn't Unix-like like a parrot actually have no idea what UNIX really is...”*



EDIT:  Also, lest anyone question "Why do you feel you know what comprises the UNIX philosophy?" I would just answer that I have read and mostly understood Basics Of The UNIX Philosophy.


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## Oko (Feb 9, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> OpenSuse is really based on Red Hat (OpenSuse denies this but OpenSuse uses the same package management, and the same systemd).


That is grossly inaccurate statement. SUSE enterprise Linux and its open source counter part OpenSUSE are products of
Micro Focus International which is one of Red Hat main competitors (not so much on U.S. market but certainly should be in Europe). Micro Focus International employees are second largest contributors to Linux kernel after employees of Red Hat. To give you further analogy OpenSUSE is to SUSE enterprise the same as Fedora and since recently CentOS to Red Hat. Fedora was always cutting edge unlike OpenSUSE which was more stable. Now Red Hat has CentOS which is probably as stable as OpenSUSE. Scientific Linux is dead and it is just a community version of new CentOS 7.0. The only truly genuine open source clone of Red Hat I am aware off is Springdale Linux which we use in our organization and is created by people from Princeton University and institute for Advance studies plus people from Rutgers University (New Brunswick campus) super computing centre.

The only thing SUSE and Red Hat share is package format.

As most people who are in this business in U.S. I don't care much for SUSE. When we need say Linux that typically means Red Hat or for some people Debian and its proprietary version Ubuntu(Canonical). For the record IIRC Canonical doesn't contribute to Linux kernel.

I am not sure what people who need OpenStack will do but I can certainly reiterate that many shops like mine will continue to run Red Hat branch 6.xxx until 2020 in-spite "older kernel issue" (That is typical statement coming out of Debian and other people who are not familiar with Red Hat kernel back porting policies).

So far I have been running away as far as possible from OpenStack but I have played a lot with Docker and it is pure garbage. Docker or even LXC might fool people who are not familiar with UNIX but can't fool people who used Solaris Zones and FreeBSD jails for the past 15 years.


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## Crivens (Feb 9, 2015)

Maybe this will all resolve pretty fast.

I have run `ldd` against /sbin/init (which is systend) on my VM and it shows me that it needs glibc. Now they want networking? I am really waiting for the 0day attack on it, and maybe someone will learn then that this is not how to do it, but as usual only after someone ghosted the servers.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 9, 2015)

Okay, I was wrong about Suse being based on Red Hat. 

But my salient point is still just as true: all of the major commercial forces behind Linux are behind systemd. If you know about the way Linux is developed, then you know that is a very big deal. To suggest that most Linux users can avoid systemd for any length of time seems a bit naive. I think that anything Red Hat sees as a viable alternative to systemd, for most Linux users, will be gone by the end of 2015. 

Again, don't get me wrong, I have a lot of respect for Slackware, Gentoo, and the Devuan project. But all of those put together are not David vs. Goliath, it's more like David vs an army of Goliaths. People like Patrick Volkerding may know the right thing to do, but he does not have that much control over most of Linux development, Pat only controls stuff unique to the Slackware distro. Even Linus only controls the kernel. For Linus to complain about systemd would only expose Linus as being powerless to stop it - and Linus has too much ego for that. 

Everybody knows about boiling a frog, right? If you put a frog in hot water, the frog will immediately jump out. But, if you put a frog in cold water, and slowly heat the water, the frog will stay there until it dies. 

I suspect that Red Hat's systemd strategy is analogous to frog boiling. If Red Hat does too much, too fast, users will abandon Red Hat for other Linux distros. But, if Red Hat moves slowly, if Red Hat claims that systemd is only optional, and the non-systemd will be around for years, then Red Hat waits to make sure that all viable alternatives to systemd are eliminated: then Red Hat can turn up the heat until they kill Linux as we know it, and there is not much anybody can do it.

JMHO, of course.


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## Crivens (Feb 9, 2015)

It looks like this can be considered to be a fact by now. RedHat is doing a move, and the  systemd crowd is playing the role which was labeled "useful idiot" by Lenin.

Linus himself can not do anything, he is forbidden to do so by his own agenda. He can not introduce code into the kernel which would forbid systemd to work because this would be a regression. And that is something the kernel team is all about to prevent. He can not break that policy, for any reason. So he can do nothing, publically. What RedHat is doing there is going for this point of maximum market control, but they are not in a position to steer this intelligently. They are a public company, and as such need to maximize the return for a quarter. Future be damned. That is how that stuff works, been there, seen it, got the tie.

The key pivot point is the applications. Who is going to depend on systemd and who will not. And I do think that a lot of the upstream from KDE for example is keeping portability in mind, and I hope that they _do_ care about betting the farm on one platform. Because they would deliver themselves to the mercy of the suppliers of the stuff they depend on. That is true for all of the dependencies. As long as  your dependencies and requirements are *POSIX*, you are safe. You can run your code on a lot of platforms, and no one can strong arm you into something. Leaving that behind would require a special kind of stupid, in my opinion. So my idea would be to see who is now pulling in dependencies for systemd and if they can be persuaded not to do that.

It is mostly desktop users which will be sucked into this, I can not think of any server-centric software which would need this kind of dependency to work. But my field of vision there is almost NULL, so if someone of you knows about server applications pulling in such dependencies, please speak up.

walterbyrd, maybe they want to cook the frog (which does not work, by the way) - but it is the upstream of the applications which must decide if they want to be part of that party. If RedHat is killing of Linux as we know it, then the Linux users must do something about that. We can help, but not act. And if they succeed, maybe it was time for Linux to die and be replaced by something else. Maybe it is time for HURD after all. In the end, Linux is only the kernel, and the GNU userland is running amok. Time will tell who needs whom, and who wants to join the dinosaurs. In the end, we all do. But not today.


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## Oko (Feb 10, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> I think that anything Red Hat sees as a viable alternative to systemd, for most Linux users, will be gone by the end of 2015.


I honestly couldn't care less. I don't run Linux on my personal machines. Much like people who got hooked up on UNIX in late 80s early 90s I never cared for Linux or had any curiosity about it. I use Linux because somebody is paying me to do the work. I could go back and teach college mathematics again and never even touch computers for living.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 10, 2015)

There are many things I'd do instead of be a sysadmin in charge of systemd or launchd based systems - I'd rather be a Windows Server admin for one, because if you can't figure it out then MS brings out techs to fix the problem. Doesn't mean I enjoy it, but at least I can offload something thats too hard on someone else. With CentOS at my old job, we couldn't do that. We had to sit and isolate the problem and if we couldn't fix it then, we had to write a report describing what was needed, then the ticket would be assigned right back to you. 

As a guy who grew up using Windows, hated it, went to Linux and Mac, settled on Mac with occasional BSD, Linux and commercial UNIX dabbles, then mostly BSD and commercial UNIX I have to say BSD and the commercial UNIX derivatives are the most coherent operating systems I've used, even compared to BeOS, which I love, but its an insecure dinosaur with lots of crap software. I just like working with stuff that works, and does so in a reliable and coherent manner.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 11, 2015)

> it is the upstream of the applications which must decide if they want to be part of that party.



As I understand it, GIMP is halfway there. It will run without systemd, but pulls in systemd libraries when it is installed.


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## retrogamer (Feb 12, 2015)

Crivens said:


> walterbyrd, maybe they want to cook the frog (which does not work, by the way) - but it is the upstream of the applications which must decide if they want to be part of that party. If RedHat is killing of Linux as we know it, then the Linux users must do something about that. We can help, but not act. And if they succeed, maybe it was time for Linux to die and be replaced by something else. Maybe it is time for HURD after all. In the end, Linux is only the kernel, and the GNU userland is running amok. Time will tell who needs whom, and who wants to join the dinosaurs. In the end, we all do. But not today.



You raise a good point about the GNU userland.  One thing I've found interesting is that Stallman hasn't weighed in on systemd in any meaningful way, but when GNU Guix was introduced he had praise for it.  GNU Guix uses dmd as its init system, and that would presumably hold true for a release using the HURD kernel (it uses a deblobbed Linux kernel right now).  There is also an effort to create a GNU distribution using a deblobbed FreeBSD kernel I posted about earlier this year.  I've seen a lot of the tech media equate GNU to Linux as a 1:1 in being lockstep with regard to the direction of the OS, but I'm not so sure that's the case.  I'm not personally that interested in the licensing philosophy behind the software (I'm anti-DRM, but that's about it), but I don't think it would be the worst outcome if this inadvertently created a viable FreeBSD based GNU distribution and made it easier to run some "Linux" applications on FreeBSD.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 12, 2015)

I doubt people here would want anything to do with GNU. I wonder though, if GTK+ will end up being swallowed by systemd also. Because AFAIK Red Hat is its biggest contributor also, and they even have paid employees dedicated to the project. If that happens I'm afraid our application support would be cut short, or would it? I hope I'm wrong. We would still have Qt/KDE but I know the Framework/App stack is heavily Linux centric, and the majority of commercial parties and devs reside of the GTK+ side I believe. Not sure.


I'd be nice if PC-BSD had more man power and momentum for support. Having our own application stack for Lumina wouldn't be a bad idea. I say use OS X and call it a day, but not everyone wants to go that route.


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## retrogamer (Feb 12, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I doubt people here would want anything to do with GNU. I wonder though, if GTK+ will end up being swallowed by systemd also. Because AFAIK Red Hat is its biggest contributor also, and they even have paid employees dedicated to the project. If that happens i'm afraid our app support would be cut short, or would it? I hope i'm wrong. We would still have Qt/KDE but i know the Framework/App stack is heavily Linux centric, and the majority of commercial parties and devs reside of the GTK+ side i believe. Not sure.
> .


I have to say, as someone who mostly uses FLTK applications, I'm not sure that GTK or Qt matter _that_ much.  For people who want a full on "desktop" with pretty GUIs for every task, it's something of an issue, but the ability to use /x11-wm/jwm with  with /www/dillo2, /editors/ted, etc. along with command line utilities like /multimedia/livestreamer isn't going anywhere.

I don't use PC-BSD, but I thought it was already using Debian GNU/kFreeBSD for its Linux emulation, or has that been dropped?


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 12, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I say use OS X and call it a day, but not everyone wants to go that route.



I wish we didn't have people saying stuff like this. We already have enough Apple influence as it is, we don't need to become the server extension of OS X. I'm not shooting you down Beastie, I'm merely saying people should bake and eat their own cake, or else don't bake it at all.


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## alphaniner (Feb 12, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> I just like working with stuff that works, and does so in a reliable and coherent manner.



From my perspective, this is exactly the direction systemd is taking Linux. I spent a few years using SysV based distros, and never learned a thing about it. Granted, I can't say I really tried. About five years ago I moved to Arch Linux, which at the time used a "BSD style init framework". It seems like I groked that much more easily, but maybe that was because in Arch you can't help but learn how things work. In any case, after getting a handle on it I felt completely lost when dealing with standard SysV systems.

And now, after the initial growing pains of the transition to systemd I can hardly imagine running Linux without it.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 12, 2015)

alphaniner said:


> From my perspective, this is exactly the direction systemd is taking Linux. I spent a few years using SysV based distros, and never learned a thing about it. Granted, I can't say I really tried. About five years ago I moved to Arch Linux, which at the time used a "BSD style init framework". It seems like I groked that much more easily, but maybe that was because in Arch you can't help but learn how things work. In any case, after getting a handle on it I felt completely lost when dealing with standard SysV systems.
> 
> And now, after the initial growing pains of the transition to systemd I can hardly imagine running Linux without it.



Systemd isn't reliable, and isn't coherent. It works, much like Windows, but when stuff breaks, good luck getting it fixed. I had a server lock up due to systemd, rebooted, and it went into an fsck loop. It was a fucking pain in the ass to fix. With the BSD and SysV inits, this was never an issue, and if it was, I wouldn't have systemd trying to mount the volume going into single user, then try to fsck it all over again. I could, if needed on the inits, boot with the volume not mounted and do something from there to get it to fsck and mount. 

Standard Linux SysV init wasn't very good, I'll admit it, but IRIX sysvinit is a dream to work with by comparison. Then again, I see IRIX as a mostly perfect OS. If it was open sourced tomorrow, I'd work to port Xsgi and the magic desktop to FreeBSD in a heart beat. 

There's just as easy and usable alternatives for systemd, runit being a fantastic choice.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 12, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> I wish we didn't have people saying stuff like this. We already have enough Apple influence as it is, we don't need to become the server extension of OS X. I'm not shooting you down Beastie, I'm merely saying people should bake and eat their own cake, or else don't bake it at all.



Oh none taken. But the reality is, is that your average Joe isn't going to care where the cake came from, or who developed it. The fact is that OS X is a good user experience and a very useful tool for end users, regardless of technical bias, licensing or whatnot. That's exactly what is it, a useful UNIX desktop based on bits of FreeBSD. Apple has successfully done that, and they understand joe blow. It's about perspective. Now I'm not implying PC-BSD is useless because it isn't for some people, but from a user experience standpoint (including mine), I can tell you I wouldn't recommend PC-BSD to anyone, not to mention third party app support. It was painful. iXsystems needs a way to attract more developers, and give users a compelling incentive to switch to PC-BSD, whether from Windows/OS X/whatever. Because users care about user experience, just look at Ubuntu. It matters. It's been six years since iXsystems acquired PC-BSD (just two years after the inception of Ubuntu), and I don't see much accomplished.

Again just my two cents, but this is the reality.



TeamBlackFox said:


> we don't need to become the server extension of OS X



I don't see how this is a bad thing, especially with awesome tools like the Casper Suite. The Mac/BSD stack is a perfect replacement for Windows/Windows Server.


----------



## Beastie7 (Feb 12, 2015)

retrogamer said:


> I don't use PC-BSD, but I thought it was already using Debian GNU/kFreeBSD for its Linux emulation, or has that been dropped?



I believe Debian will drop the whole GNU/kFreeBSD project on their next release (Jessie). I read an article on it, but i can't find it right now. Maybe because of.. well, you know. lol


----------



## retrogamer (Feb 12, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I believe Debian will drop the whole GNU/kFreeBSD project on their next release (Jessie). I read an article on it, but i can't find it right now. Maybe because of.. well, you know. lol


The project isn't being dropped (as in not developed), it just isn't going to be an official release, in the same way that Debian GNU/Hurd is not an officially supported release.  I posted a link to an article about that in this very thread.


----------



## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 12, 2015)

I don't like Apple's business model. They sell you a status symbol with overpriced, underpowered hardware, they lock their OS to the hardware and I find their interface a sickly saccharine one.

The amount of FreeBSD code in OS X isn't very big, thats a common myth. Try running XNU instead of the FreeBSD kernel and maintaining binary compatibility, it won't happen, and the subsystems are different entirely. The userland of OS X is part GNU, part BSD, and part NeXTSTEP. The XNU kernel itself consists of Mach, which is a terrible kernel (I'm opposed to the microkernel model they went with, just look at Hurd for evidence) with a NeXTSTEP-derived wrapper for certain parts of the stack. Some of the network code, most of the POSIX wrappings, and some mostly-subsystem frameworks. That's about it.

I don't want us associated with the Apple crowd, I hate the pricks at the Apple store, I think Tim Cook is pissing on Steve Job's legacy, I hate the iDevices. I hate the Apple users, I think OS X is a piece of awful dreck that needs to die and I see Apple as worse than MS. Then again, I worked for MS as a DC tech for a few months. They treat their workers like shit, sure, but the pay was good, and the work was easy. Back to the point, I won't let Linux, Red Hat, GNU, Apple or anyone else ruin UNIX for those who like it as it is.

Also, I'm one of the opponents of adding anymore Apple code to FreeBSD, to the point I have threatened to start a fork of FreeBSD if launchd comes, if you look back in the thread I've said that. And this is coming from someone with nowhere near the experience necessary to do it by myself, but I will, if I have to, and from what people here have said, I'm not alone.

I don't use PC-BSD, but I do like some of their work and have recommended it to people, who do like it. Your opinion seems to be the minority. I'd use PC-BSD if they didn't include so much antique dreck and didn't dumb down the install.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 12, 2015)

retrogamer said:


> The project isn't being dropped (as in not developed), it just isn't going to be an official release, in the same way that Debian GNU/Hurd is not an officially supported release.  I posted a link to an article about that in this very thread.



It is being support by Debian?  as per this thread;

https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/11/msg00005.html

they're expecting "porters" to make an unofficial release, I'm not sure who they are. Seems Debian isn't developing GNU/kFreeBSD anymore? or did I miss something else?

Regardless, I still think iXsystems should make moves with the PC-BSD project, much in the same reason why Lumina was developed instead of continuing on KDE portage from Linux dependencies.



TeamBlackFox said:


> I don't like Apple's business model. They sell you a status symbol with overpriced, underpowered hardware, they lock their OS to the hardware and I find their interface a sickly saccharine one.
> 
> The amount of FreeBSD code in OS X isn't very big, thats a common myth. Try running XNU instead of the FreeBSD kernel and maintaining binary compatibility, it won't happen, and the subsystems are different entirely. The userland of OS X is part GNU, part BSD, and part NeXTSTEP. The XNU kernel itself consists of Mach, which is a terrible kernel ( I'm opposed to the microkernel model they went with, just look at Hurd for evidence ) with a NeXTSTEP-derived wrapper for certain parts of the stack. Some of the network code, most of the POSIX wrappings, and some mostly-subsystem frameworks. That's about it.
> 
> ...



I'm sorry you feel that way. You seem to be more emotional than objective about what I'm saying. You hate anything Apple, and I enjoy the Apple integrated experience. Let's just leave it at that.

You know, some of what you say I feel the exact same way about Microsoft and Windows, and they've done more damage to end users and national security than any other top OS vendor, not to mention Windows being a huge mess in and of itself. But I still use windows server for their apps because users (businesses) require them.


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## retrogamer (Feb 12, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> It is being support by Debian?  as per this thread;
> 
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2014/11/msg00005.html
> 
> they're expecting "porters" to make an unofficial release, i'm not sure who they are. Seems Debian isn't developing GNU/kFreeBSD anymore? or Did I miss something else?


You have misunderstood what you read.  The "porters" are the developers of that port.


> We discussed kfreebsd at length, but are not satisfied that a
> release with Jessie will be of sufficient quality. We are dropping
> it as an official release architecture, though we do hope that the
> porters will be able to make a simultaneous unofficial release.



That means that the hope is for the developers to continue doing simultaneous releases with the official Debian releases.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 12, 2015)

Bah, alrighty then. I still think it's better to brew our own solutions instead of trailing behind updates for apps that require newer versions of kernels and graphics drivers.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 12, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I'm sorry you feel that way. You seem to be more emotional than objective about what I'm saying. You hate anything Apple, and I enjoy the Apple integrated experience. Let's just leave it at that.
> 
> You know, some of what you say I feel the exact same way about Microsoft and Windows, and they've done more damage to end users and national security than any other top OS vendor, not to mention Windows being a huge mess in and of itself. But I still use windows server for their apps because users (businesses) require them.



Yeah? Well Apple cheated me out of nearly $5k in the last 2 years I used their products. That's the cost of my old mini, Retina Macbook Pro and numerous accessories, along with lost revenue from terrible build quality requiring me to send off the machines for RMA 5 times collectively. Not so much as an apology from a manager from numerous botches RMAs. BBB complaint was totally stacked in their favour. I don't hate Apple's customers, rather I hate when people suggest OS X, its an upgrade from Windows, if by a knife edge. OS X really declined in quality after Leopard as well. The OS just became a side dish to iOS. I have every right to hate them as a company.

By comparison, working with MS and Dell, as a Dell tech I got prompt and professional assistance from the MS service team (I handled the hardware, they handled the OS) while working for Dell. Later was hired by MS. Guys I worked with all used *NIX at home, and just worked for MS because it paid well.


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## TiberiusDuval (Feb 12, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> Oh none taken. But the reality is, is that your average Joe isn't going to care where the cake came from, or who developed it. The fact is that OS X is a good user experience and a very useful tool for end users, regardless of technical bias, licensing or whatnot. That's exactly what is it, a useful UNIX desktop based on bits of FreeBSD. Apple has successfully done that, and they understand joe blow. It's about perspective. Now i'm not implying PC-BSD is useless because it isn't for some people, but from a user experience standpoint (including mine), I can tell you I wouldn't recommend PC-BSD to anyone, not to mention third party app support. It was painful. iXsystems needs a way to attract more developers, and give users a compelling incentive to switch to PC-BSD, whether from Windows/OS X/whatever. Because users care about user experience, just look at Ubuntu. It matters. It's been six years since iXsystems acquired PC-BSD (just two years after the inception of Ubuntu), and I don't see much accomplished.
> 
> Again just my two cents, but this is the reality.


I can recommend PC-BSD, it has improved quite much, especially most recent update did lot of good. Generally most problems nowadays are on growing pains side. Usually when new upgrade comes it breaks things, and seem to be a bit undertested. Now when they have automatic boot-environment creation that problem is going to be mitigated. If new update messes up your system, just boot on previous boot environment, report problems and wait for patch.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 12, 2015)

alphaniner said:


> > I just like working with stuff that works, and does so in a reliable and coherent manner.
> 
> 
> From my perspective, this is exactly the direction systemd is taking Linux.



Again, if you want proprietary, go with MS-Windows. 

Some here think that that statement is over-emotional bashing, but it's not. I really mean it. Microsoft does proprietary better than Red Hat.

There are advantages to proprietary. An OS controlled by one group will be more coherent. Today's Linux, by contrast, is all over the map. 

The downsides of a proprietary system is deliberate obfuscation, and vendor lock-in. 

Red Hat is following Microsoft's playbook to the letter. Right down to the exact same propaganda, FUD, and astro-turfing. I followed MS business practices for decades, and to me, it's glaringly obvious.

Would you be surprised to learn that, according to senior Microsoft developers quoted 'on the record' and documented in O'Reilly references, one of the key design decisions was to eliminate the 'power user' class. By making the registry impenetrable to mortal humans they eliminated what they saw as a 'problem' of users thinking they could control their computer.

From another forum:



> This sharper division between developers and users is also a goal of the freedesktop/systemd/gnome push. If you don't believe me, go look in /etc/udev and tell me humans are intended to touch anything in there. No line breaks, no comments, no reliable documentation other than the source. Same for dconf, although it least it, unlike the Windows Registry, has an explicit feature for help text as an option for each key... although it is pitiful how few actually have any supplied. Again, the assumption in actual use in the field is that dconf is for applications. Developers will write apps that store values in the 'registry' and those apps alone will manipulate them. If an app doesn't expose a knob to change one the user isn't supposed to manually tamper with it.
> 
> This reminds me of Microsoft paying De Icaza to attack Linux from the inside with the Mono trojan horse. Now, it is Red Hat (no doubt directed by their customer Fed Gov) directly attacking the simple, modular, do-one-thing-right Unix design philosophy and replacing it with the far-reaching, metastatizing blob that is SystemD. Why? To bake-in impossible to find, intentional backdoors and vulnerabilities as designed by Poettering and the rest of his paid-off coven.


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## alphaniner (Feb 12, 2015)

Why are you on these forums if you equate "controlled by one group" with deliberate obfuscation and vendor lock-in?



walterbyrd said:


> Red Hat is following Microsoft's playbook to the letter. Right down to the exact same propaganda, FUD, and astro-turfing. I followed MS business practices for decades, and to me, it's glaringly obvious.
> 
> Would you be surprised to learn that, according to senior Microsoft developers quoted 'on the record' and documented in O'Reilly references, one of the key design decisions was to eliminate the 'power user' class. By making the registry impenetrable to mortal humans they eliminated what they saw as a 'problem' of users thinking they could control their computer.



I can accept all that as possible. But unless you're willing to state your case in a professional manner with evidence backing up every claim, it's just another opinion.



> This sharper division between developers and users is also a goal of the freedesktop/systemd/gnome push. If you don't believe me, go look in /etc/udev and tell me humans are intended to touch anything in there.



I guess I'm not human, because I have written custom udev rules. A few months ago, I decided to see if I could use a udev rule to start a network profile when a USB ethernet device was attached. The biggest barrier I encountered was misinformation from "Tux Q. Blogger". But a mailing list message by Poettering cleared it all up in an instant. 

Granted, I never considered doing anything similar without udev rules and systemd. Whether cause or effect, I can't imagine I could have accomplished anything comparable without an impractical amount of work.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 12, 2015)

alphaniner said:


> I guess I'm not human, because I have written custom udev rules. A few months ago, I decided to see if I could use a udev rule to start a network profile when a USB ethernet device was attached. The biggest barrier I encountered was misinformation from "Tux Q. Blogger". But a mailing list message by Poettering cleared it all up in an instant.
> 
> Granted, I never considered doing anything similar without udev rules and systemd. Whether cause or effect, I can't imagine I could have accomplished anything comparable without an impractical amount of work.



Granted you like systemd apparently, what do you propose the FreeBSD do?

udev, dbus, hal, systemd, logind, consolekit, polkit, it all just reinvented the wheel in various ways. I honestly like FreeBSD's devd, its very simplistic in operation, does exactly what is needed for device node management and I've never had any issues with it. I could likely do the same thing you did in udev using a combination of devd rules and helper scripts. Do I want to? Not really. On Slackware I'm using mdev, after having to wrestle with xorg's source code. What a hassle just to use a device manager that does only what is needed.


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## alphaniner (Feb 12, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Granted you like systemd apparently, what do you propose the FreeBSD do?



Keep on keepin' on. I don't propose or hope for any change in FreeBSD. For the purposes of this thread, I'm just a Linux user who is happy with systemd.


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## gkontos (Feb 12, 2015)

_Endless topic, short and best answer:_

*Will systemd make FreeBSD more popular?*

*NO!!!*


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## usrslashpeople (Feb 12, 2015)

I have been a long time supporter of FreeBSD. I have a copy of "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" in my restroom on permanent loan. I have been a Linux engineer/admin for too many years. I was never excited about Linux. I grew up with IRIX and still use an Octane2 (with green skins) as my main system for doing any work in the terminal (which is most of what I do). I like UNIX or UNIX like when it comes to the choice of operating system. I currently hold two jobs as the decision maker on what we use. I was not a fan of gnome3, but it didn't matter because I could choose whatever WM I want to use (windowmaker!) I am not a fan of systemd. I really don't care what it does. The simple fact of the matter is that it makes Linux more like Windows and throws the UNIX philosophy in the trash. We have already had meetings at both of my jobs about the future direction of Linux. I will be working on a FreeBSD migration plan. I am just starting this project and I am hoping most scientific applications like R will be available. Commercial software such as SAS will run on Windows if it isn't possible to run on FreeBSD. In two years we will be on Linux without systemd/FreeBSD or FreeBSD/Windows.

 If systemd is here to stay, I hope all of the hipsters in skinny jeans at starbucks really enjoy fast Linux boot times on their laptops. I will continue to work with UNIX like operating systems in the enterprise. When a server takes 10 minutes to post, I really don't care if the OS boots 3 seconds faster with systemd than with SysV init.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 12, 2015)

Oh hello! Another IRIX user! I have an Octane2 with blue skins, an Origin 300 server, and an Indy I want to use for N64 debugging when I can find the kit. 

I agree with much of what you said, but I'm mostly OpenBox, CDE and such guy. Love the username too ^o^.


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## Carbide (Feb 12, 2015)

Originally quoted as from another forum (not named, though).
_
This reminds me of Microsoft paying De Icaza to attack Linux from the inside with the Mono trojan horse. Now, it is Red Hat (no doubt directed by their customer Fed Gov) directly attacking the simple, modular, do-one-thing-right Unix design philosophy and replacing it with the far-reaching, metastatizing blob that is SystemD. Why? To bake-in impossible to find, intentional backdoors and vulnerabilities as designed by Poettering and the rest of his paid-off coven._

No, this isn't directed by the federal government. There is no benefit to the government. This isn't Windows with its proprietary code. It is still open source with thousands of eyes upon it.

RH has huge contracts to supply Linux software to the feds, with support, which is where the big money comes in. A large percentage of those contracts are with the military. The last thing the military wants is an OS with backdoors, especially when the developers are scattered around the globe. Poettering is in Germany, for example.

It is more likely that RH is trying to lock down future federal Linux contracts by "engineering" a semi-proprietary version of Linux that they control or effectively control. Support contracts almost always require a demonstration of in-depth subject knowledge by the bidder's employees.  RH can simply say we know that intimately, we wrote it. That would put them in the catbird seat for future contracts, essentially guaranteeing they would get the work.

It's about the money, as usual.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 12, 2015)

> Why are you on these forums if you equate "controlled by one group" with deliberate obfuscation and vendor lock-in?



I think I said that an OS controlled by one group tends to be more coherent, and that a proprietary OS tends to have deliberate obfuscation and vendor lock-in.

Proprietary OSes are controlled by one group, but not all OSes that are controlled by one group are  proprietary.


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## Oko (Feb 13, 2015)

usrslashpeople said:


> I have been a Linux engineer/admin for too many years. I was never excited about Linux. I grew up with IRIX and still use an Octane2 (with green skins) as my main system for doing any work in the terminal (which is most of what I do).


+1 for old Irix guy. My first work station after moving to U.S. was Indy  OpenBSD runs pretty well on SGI hardware these days. I have Octane 2 in my garage due to the fact that power supply died few years back and never bother to fix it. Once I almost purchased Origin 3000 (no OpenBSD doesn't run on that one) but my wife threaten me with the divorce so I had to pass on the best find of my life.


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## alphaniner (Feb 13, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> I think I said that an OS controlled by one group tends to be more coherent, and that a proprietary OS tends to have deliberate obfuscation and vendor lock-in.
> 
> Proprietary OSes are controlled by one group, but not all OSes that are controlled by one group are  proprietary.



Ok, I agree with that. It seemed to me you were using proprietary and "controlled by one group" interchangeably before.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 13, 2015)

Oko said:


> +1 for old Irix guy. My first work station after moving to U.S. was Indy  OpenBSD runs pretty well on SGI hardware these days. I have Octane 2 in my garage due to the fact that power supply died few years back and never bother to fix it. Once I almost purchased Origin 3000 (no OpenBSD doesn't run on that one) but my wife threaten me with the divorce so I had to pass on the best find of my life.



IRIX still has a community developed package list, so I don't bother running OpenBSD or NetBSD on the boxen I have. Also, I have a spare Octane PSU I don't mind sending you for the cost of postage. If you're interested just PM me . Shame about the O3000 though.


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## zspider (Feb 13, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Oh hello! Another IRIX user! I have an Octane2 with blue skins, an Origin 300 server, and an Indy I want to use for N64 debugging when I can find the kit.
> 
> I agree with much of what you said, but I'm mostly OpenBox, CDE and such guy. Love the username too ^o^.



Used to rock the FreeBSD version of CDE before switching to Fluxbox myself. Apparently they've fixed alot of the annoyances I had with old CDE. I'll have to check it out again.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 13, 2015)

Fluxbox is okay, but I like OpenBox better because its faster and it actually works with bgs and the rest of my suite I use currently very well. CDE is still pretty damn nice though.


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## zspider (Feb 13, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Fluxbox is okay, but I like OpenBox better because its faster and it actually works with bgs and the rest of my suite I use currently very well. CDE is still pretty damn nice though.



Well one of the reasons for Fluxbox is because I found matching themes for it and GTK2 (nimbus), been using it like that for a couple of years now.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 13, 2015)

I don't know if anybody else is seeing this stuff on twitter:


> FreeBSD Help ‏@FreeBSDHelp  11h11 hours ago
> RT @_fl0ss: @Sneakernets Surely systemd is the only excuse you need? Install FreeBSD and prosper.





> FreeBSD Help ‏@FreeBSDHelp  14h14 hours ago
> Plan an #InstallFreeBSD Event in your area! A Call to Action by Trollaxor http://www.trollaxor.com/2015/02/call-to-action-plan-installfreebsd-event.html … #March30


Here is the call to action:


> trollaxor.com
> 
> Feb 10, 2015
> 
> ...


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## ljboiler (Feb 13, 2015)

Are they starting the April Fools jokes early?


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## Crivens (Feb 13, 2015)

Carbide said:


> It is more likely that RH is trying to lock down future federal Linux contracts by "engineering" a semi-proprietary version of Linux that they control or effectively control. Support contracts almost always require a demonstration of in-depth subject knowledge by the bidder's employees. RH can simply say we know that intimately, we wrote it. That would put them in the catbird seat for future contracts, essentially guaranteeing they would get the work.


It may be about time that Stallman speaks up on this. But I fear he is in the same position as Linus, because they both are bound by their own mission statements. Nothing Red Hat is doing is against the GPL, but that licence has no clause to forbid you the creation of an abomination unto the great old ones (Wirth, Knuth, Dijkstra, ...) by turning software into an unholy mess. As long as it is cheaper to pay them for support than to switch your software over to something else, they win.

Red Hat does not need to claim rights to the source code, they would be very ill advised if they did try that. They would then also be responsible. They are heading to a position where they will be payed to keep the unholy mess they created from blowing up, while at the same point not being responsible for it. Brilliant. But that would then also mean that the GPL has (kind of) failed. That might be a little bit depressing for GPL advocates, to put it kindly. The  next step would one day be to reach out to whoever depends on this setup and say "Nice application you have there. Would be a shame if something would happen to it, no? Want us to take care of the support?" 

And that would be a very sad day indeed.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 13, 2015)

Crivens said:


> It may be about time that Stallman speaks up on this. But I fear he is in the same position as Linus, because they both are bound by their own mission statements. Nothing Red Hat is doing is against the GPL, but that licence has no clause to forbid you the creation of an abomination unto the great old ones (Wirth, Knuth, Dijkstra, ...) by turning software into an unholy mess. As long as it is cheaper to pay them for support than to switch your software over to something else, they win.
> 
> Red Hat does not need to claim rights to the source code, they would be very ill advised if they did try that. They would then also be responsible. They are heading to a position where they will be payed to keep the unholy mess they created from blowing up, while at the same point not being responsible for it. Brilliant. But that would then also mean that the GPL has (kind of) failed. That might be a little bit depressing for GPL advocates, to put it kindly. The  next step would one day be to reach out to whoever depends on this setup and say "Nice application you have there. Would be a shame if something would happen to it, no? Want us to take care of the support?"
> 
> And that would be a very sad day indeed.



The GPL isn't business friendly, and as such it was bound to fail.


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## Carbide (Feb 14, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> The GPL isn't business friendly, and as such it was bound to fail.



Thanks for that link. It helps to explain what Red Hat is doing.

Here is something else. A RH Sys Admin that I know very, very well, thinks RH also deliberately sucks at their support role, while providing deliberately inadequate open source docco. Their goal, again according to my Sys Admin source, is to drive as many of their business/enterprise users as possible into formal (read expensive) training courses, where the real docco is handed out. In essence, they are double dipping.


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## Crivens (Feb 14, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> The GPL isn't business friendly, and as such it was bound to fail.



On the other side, if it _was_ business friendly, it would already be belly up in the water. Business (and public corporations in special) _are forced_ to be predatory. That link Beastie7 posted sums it up, but it should be of no surprise to anyone. I have seen (and suffered) actions driven by "shareholder value, shareholder value!!" calls, some of which threw promising new technology under the bus only to lengthen the current business models remaining run time. If you ever have a ground breaking idea, _ don't go to the stock exchange for money_ if you want it to succeed. This has cost humanity some hundred years worth of progress upto now, I would imagine.



Crivens said:


> And that would be a very sad day indeed.


This I need to correct, now that I had some sleep, into:
"And that _will_ be a very sad day indeed."

There is no doubt, at least to me, that this is one day comming around.


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## gofer_touch (Feb 14, 2015)

Very interesting thread.

It is rather interesting that neither Stallman or Linus have weighted in on these massive changes in Linux. I am also somewhat surprised that this hasn't happened sooner. Linux is big and often the first choice for shops seeking to go "open source". It's popular with radicals, scientists and government agencies alike. It's too big of a tool not to control in the eyes of some.

Given this, it is quite refreshing to have the diversity that we have in BSD-land (Free, Net, Open, Dragonfly... and forks). The focus on clean engineering, avoidance of obfuscation, better license and preference for non-proprietary are well-appreciated hallmarks of the BSDs.

I couldn't imagine them being usurped in the same way that Linux is being driven into the ground.


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## Crivens (Feb 14, 2015)

gofer_touch said:


> Very interesting thread.
> 
> It is rather interesting that neither Stallman or Linus have weighted in on these massive changes in Linux.


Linus simply can't do anything. His responsibility ends at the syscall level, so to speak. They have the mission to keep everything running which, at one time, was able to run on the kernel.

It is GNU/Linux, and in the space between this the wedge is set. Should Linus speak up, he will not do anything to the situation other than lessening his impact factor because Red Hat and other stakeholders (there are more, I presume) will simply not listen. So his rant will evaporate, and he will only demonstrate that he is unable to do anything. A lot of his standing is the knowledge, his and of others, that _he can do this_. He can not fail this, he can not change this, so he will not try. Imagine some change to the Linux kernel which breaks systemd. There would simply be a regression ticket, and that's that. The kernel team can not lock them out.

Stallman has brought up the GPL, and he has no other lever to pull in this. The code is free, you can do anything with this. It is the complexity which is generated here that is the problem which makes you pay Red Hat for support. If anyone could do it, it would be valueless.

I would bet that Linus, Stallman, and a lot of others who do not speak up are pretty unhappy and disgusted with this whole situation. But there is little they can do.



> I couldn't imagine them being usurped in the same way that Linux is being driven into the ground.


*BSD do not have this attack vector of a gap between user land and kernel. And I can not stress this enough, the other point is the documentation. This has already been brought up. So, again, a big praise to the unsung heros and heroines who write documentation, manpages and who maintain them. When I call up the manpage for a kernel function and I get a good, current and helpfull description, I am so happy that this is the status we can enjoy. A lot of the stuff Red Hat could sell to the average *BSD user is not needed by them. Also, and here we have another discriminator, *BSD users prefer the style. They prefer engineering solutions and concepts. An attempt to force systemd down the throats of the lot here would raise arguments, hostility, arguments and rejection. And I come to realize that it is not FreeBSD that is damaged by this - it is the (desktop) applications which will start to depend on it. FreeBSD would be colateral damage.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 14, 2015)

Crivens took the words right out of my mouth. Here's the way I see it and how I'd be doing it if I forked FreeBSD. Since I'd start at least the first major release with just rc, I'd tell developers who came onto the project that my concerns do not lie in the big desktop environments. If they want KDE, or GNOME, that I'd give them the go-ahead to work on it, unless they were doing other things and that work started making other things fall behind. The reality is that for the big-3 desktop environments, KDE, XFCE and GNOME, its rapidly becoming less-feasible to keep them running on the BSDs. I'd put a priority on Lumina, CDE, and maybe Enlightenment staying portable. They're less bloated, and less dependent on the Linuxisms. The fact that I ran GNOME 2 for years without ConsoleKit, Polkit, d-bus, HAL, udev or any of this feature-creep proves the point that none of it is needed for a multiuser desktop system. I'd eventually switch the default to runit and build a few perl tools to port existing initscripts to runit. Runit is inline more with the BSD philosophy, and if rc is going to be obsoleted in the future, that's the init system I'd recommend. If nobody maintained KDE, GNOME or XFCE's compatibility with the project, I'd recommend their removal along with what dependencies we'd effectively not need at that point like Consolekit and D-BUS. Firefox, Thunderbird and LibreOffice all do not need D-BUS to run. Chromium may, but I know few FreeBSD users who use it. The FreeDesktop project I have no interest in supporting their overengineered bullshit myself.


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## Carbide (Feb 15, 2015)

_Will systemd make FreeBSD more popular?_

Apparently not to this systemD fan, who refers to BSDers as rapists (really).  

http://fossforce.com/2015/01/top-ten-things-linux-users-say-about-systemd/#comment-13820


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## Deleted member 9563 (Feb 15, 2015)

Carbide said:


> _Will systemd make FreeBSD more popular?_
> 
> Apparently not to this systemD fan, who refers to BSDers as rapists (really).
> 
> http://fossforce.com/2015/01/top-ten-things-linux-users-say-about-systemd/#comment-13820


Scarlett is obviously not a people person, but she did get one thing right - spelling. The rest is not really worth commenting on. Anyway, that thread only highlights the confusion that arises from thinking that all people have the same needs and concerns in their life.  Fundamentally, this discussion is not about systemd at all.

Of course there are many views and concerns and it really isn't a matter of two camps. But if I were to break it down that simply, I'd say there are those that are most concerned about having things done for them ("just works"), and those that like to have their own control over the system. These are two different concerns which can't be directly compared but which find an intersection in the systemd debate.


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## retrogamer (Feb 15, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Chromium may, but I know few FreeBSD users who use it. The FreeDesktop project I have no interest in supporting their overengineered bullshit myself.


I wanted to mention one thing in regard to Chromium.  While it isn't my favorite browser for a whole host of reasons (the locked down add on architecture in particular), right now it is the only way to have support for MSE DRM on FreeBSD.  Some may say, well, just use Flash with Firefox.  This is a big problem - Firefox is eventually going to retire NPAPI, meaning that option is going away (from what I understand, this is why work on Gnash stopped as well, it would be a plugin without a browser).  At that point, if you want to watch a Youtube video in 1080p or use any other website that requires EME, you will have to try running the Windows version of Firefox via WINE or rely on Chromium.  A real use case example, the website Snag Films can only be used on FreeBSD with HTML5 via Chromium.  http://www.snagfilms.com/  There's also the issue of performance, where HTML5 with hardware acceleration in Chromium is much lighter than Flash in Firefox.  I realize not everyone cares about this, but there are still valid uses for Chromium.  I really doubt this will ever happen with Chromium though, as its "tier 1" platforms (Chrome OS and Android) rely on upstart and init.rc respectively.

On that note, the EFF published an article about EME this week.  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/new-drm-boss-same-old-boss


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## Crivens (Feb 15, 2015)

Carbide said:


> _Will systemd make FreeBSD more popular?_
> 
> Apparently not to this systemD fan, who refers to BSDers as rapists (really).
> 
> http://fossforce.com/2015/01/top-ten-things-linux-users-say-about-systemd/#comment-13820



This posting reminds me of a certain blog, whose mentioning usially gets threads closed about as fast as the questions about one specific multi-user game 

Cromium is another can of worms to deal with. That should not bother us right here and right now.


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## retrogamer (Feb 15, 2015)

Crivens said:


> Cromium is another can of worms to deal with. That should not bother us right here and right now.


I didn't mean to go too off topic there, I just wanted to nip any notion that Chrome/Chromium is moving in that direction in the bud before it got started.  If anyone has been following what Google are up to with their own software/operating systems, systemd doesn't seem to be in their future, so any Google developed applications shouldn't be a concern or worth mentioning in terms of systemd's impact on FreeBSD ports.


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## Crivens (Feb 15, 2015)

retrogamer, Cromium is not completely off topic, as it surely has the same mechanisms working there. Some folks, when presented with something that is free, first look for a place to put their price tag on it. Sad, but true. I would not put too much hope into Google here. Their version of an init system would consist of a rcorder tool as a cloud based service so you could not start any device without their cloud connection. Maybe not at first, but it would be one day. They do not care about systemd, they don't use it. And if the stand-alone applications become unusable and unreliable due to the feature creep there, they will simply offer you their cloud based versions. So they will simply lean back watch the fireworks.


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## BSDBernd (Feb 15, 2015)

I don't know if this is the right place to post it, but I found an interesting page: Has anybody ever heard of supervisord?
http://supervisord.org/
It seems that you don't need to replace init to have something like launchd in f.e. FreeBSD. 
This program, and may be there are many others, allows you to load your process control deamon at startup. 
I am no expert, but this would basically satisfy everyone, the ones who want to use FreeBSD as a tablet OS, care about power consumption, care about the remarks Hubbard made, and the ones who want to use it still as a server OS.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 15, 2015)

retrogamer said:


> I wanted to mention one thing in regard to Chromium.  While it isn't my favorite browser for a whole host of reasons (the locked down add on architecture in particular), right now it is the only way to have support for MSE DRM on FreeBSD.  Some may say, well, just use Flash with Firefox.  This is a big problem - Firefox is eventually going to retire NPAPI, meaning that option is going away (from what I understand, this is why work on Gnash stopped as well, it would be a plugin without a browser).  At that point, if you want to watch a Youtube video in 1080p or use any other website that requires EME, you will have to try running the Windows version of Firefox via WINE or rely on Chromium.  A real use case example, the website Snag Films can only be used on FreeBSD with HTML5 via Chromium.  http://www.snagfilms.com/  There's also the issue of performance, where HTML5 with hardware acceleration in Chromium is much lighter than Flash in Firefox.  I realize not everyone cares about this, but there are still valid uses for Chromium.  I really doubt this will ever happen with Chromium though, as its "tier 1" platforms (Chrome OS and Android) rely on upstart and init.rc respectively.
> 
> On that note, the EFF published an article about EME this week.  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/new-drm-boss-same-old-boss



MediaSourceExtensions are making their way into Firefox. Youtube is beginning to default to HTML5, and Mozilla is moving Shumway along to act as a Flash emulator. In other words, this is becoming a non-issue

Again, since I do not want to deal with RedHat's D-BUS, if I start a fork of FreeBSD, I will be segregating the current ports tree into priority and non-priority ports to encourage effective use of time. Now, I know that for some time Chromium has had a non-D-BUS patch, so if that runs against the version in ports, then hopefully the maintainer is willing to use that instead. 

And D-BUS discussion is on-topic, as it is one of the frameworks systemd is built on, and if you've tried looking at the code for it, you'll see how nightmarishly bad it is.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 15, 2015)

BSDBernd said:


> I don't know if this is the right place to post it, but I found an interesting page: Has anybody ever heard of supervisord?
> http://supervisord.org/
> It seems that you don't need to replace init to have something like launchd in f.e. FreeBSD.
> This program, and may be there are many others, allows you to load your process control deamon at startup.
> I am no expert, but this would basically satisfy everyone, the ones who want to use FreeBSD as a tablet OS, care about power consumption, care about the remarks Hubbard made, and the ones who want to use it still as a server OS.



Same idea as runit, only runit has a smaller codebase and simpler setup.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 15, 2015)

Also, just for reference, init has nothing to do with power consumption, the practicality of FreeBSD as a tablet OS or anything else. That's just smoke/mirrors by Jordan Hubbard. He's blowing smoke because he wants FreeBSD to continue to be more like a little brother to OS X. If he and iXSystems get their way on this point, my fork will take form, and with it, I'll be disavowing any further code intrusion from Apple. Clang was a good, clean break, but that's not launchd or plists as a lingua franca, things that will fundamentally change the way FreeBSD works. About the only Mach-based OS I can stand to run is Tru64, and DEC was fantastic at keeping it true to the UNIX philosophy.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 15, 2015)

> But that would then also mean that the GPL has (kind of) failed. That might be a little bit depressing for GPL advocates, to put it kindly.



<Raising my hand>

I used to be a GPL advocate. I honestly thought that the GPL did more to keep F/OSS from being ripped off by corporations, than BSD.

I will admit I was wrong. The GPL has failed.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 15, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> <Raising my hand>
> 
> I used to be a GPL advocate. I honestly thought that the GPL did more to keep F/OSS from being ripped off by corporations, than BSD.
> 
> I will admit I was wrong. The GPL has failed.



<Also raises hand> Used to be a militant Linux, and then a militant Mac, then again a militant Linux user for many years. I was wrong. The GPL is inherently flawed, and OS X is as well.


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## ANOKNUSA (Feb 15, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Same idea as runit, only runit has a smaller codebase and simpler setup.



I'm a fan of runit myself, but I've only used it under Linux as a complete init system. It was always my understanding that the init implementation and process supervisor were separate, so using the latter doesn't require the former, but the online runit documentation isn't really clear on that. I might be overlooking something.


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 15, 2015)

ANOKNUSA said:


> I'm a fan of runit myself, but I've only used it under Linux as a complete init system. It was always my understanding that the init implementation and process supervisor were separate, so using the latter doesn't require the former, but the online runit documentation isn't really clear on that. I might be overlooking something.



Runit's supervisor runs independent of PID 1. It includes its own init process if you want, but its not necessary to use it. You can easily use rc init with it.


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## BSDBernd (Feb 16, 2015)

TeamBlackFox said:


> Also, just for reference, init has nothing to do with power consumption, the practicality of FreeBSD as a tablet OS or anything else. That's just smoke/mirrors by Jordan Hubbard. He's blowing smoke because he wants FreeBSD to continue to be more like a little brother to OS X. If he and iXSystems get their way on this point, my fork will take form, and with it, I'll be disavowing any further code intrusion from Apple. Clang was a good, clean break, but that's not launchd or plists as a lingua franca, things that will fundamentally change the way FreeBSD works. About the only Mach-based OS I can stand to run is Tru64, and DEC was fantastic at keeping it true to the UNIX philosophy.



The thing with power consumption is my mistake not Hubbards (who by the the way gave a great talk). One could read out of my post that I suggest that power consumption has something to do with the init-software. Hubbard mentioned process control programs because unlike in servers, devices are plugged in and pulled out in phones and tablets and laptops all the time and the software has to respond to this. Start that or that demon if it is needed, kill it if it sits around doing nothing, start it again if it hanged itself, etc.. This, Hubbard said, has something to do with power consumption, which is obvious. You don't want to have 10 demons which are not used sucking on your DC power all the time. Only if a program asks for a particular demon, start it. 
To be honest, I am a fan of power efficiency. I really would also like my desktop run as power efficient as possible. Therefore I enjoyed Hubbards talk so much. I feel bad when I forgot to turn off the light and come back in the evening and realize that the lamp burned the whole day wasting energy. And I feel not really good about running an OS which is not efficient, especially when the computer is turned on the whole day. Therefore I really am a fan of process control demons. 
You may not like OSX, but it runs efficient, I tested this with my Macbook (mid 2011). Using OSX, you can write up to 7 hours- 7.5 hours a text read pdfs, look up this or that in the internet (not watching videos). I for testing purposes installed FreeBSD CURRENT on a second partition on it (amazingly it worked without any problems, I used rEFInd, the only problem is that there is no Broadcom driver  ) and tested battery life without having installed X11, just idle. It said 4 hours and 30 minutes of battery life. That is a big difference.
I am absolutely sure that FreeBSD has the means to solve that problem, may be using runit and other programs from the mighty ports tree but a fresh install is not that power efficient. I want to be at least as good as 7-7.5 hours when I run my Macbook doing work. This is a very interesting challenge, even for people who run FreeBSD as a server. I want efficiently running servers  because power=money and if I can get a more efficient software for running my server I choose that one .


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## walterbyrd (Feb 16, 2015)

Just found out, there was a recent itwire article on this subject:




> *Fed up with systemd and Linux? Why not try PC-BSD?*
> 
> 09 February 2015
> 
> ...


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## BSD-Kitsune (Feb 17, 2015)

BSDBernd said:


> The thing with power consumption is my mistake not Hubbards (who by the the way gave a great talk). One could read out of my post that I suggest that power consumption has something to do with the init-software. Hubbard mentioned process control programs because unlike in servers, devices are plugged in and pulled out in phones and tablets and laptops all the time and the software has to respond to this. Start that or that demon if it is needed, kill it if it sits around doing nothing, start it again if it hanged itself, etc.. This, Hubbard said, has something to do with power consumption, which is obvious. You don't want to have 10 demons which are not used sucking on your DC power all the time. Only if a program asks for a particular demon, start it.
> To be honest, I am a fan of power efficiency. I really would also like my desktop run as power efficient as possible. Therefore I enjoyed Hubbards talk so much. I feel bad when I forgot to turn off the light and come back in the evening and realize that the lamp burned the whole day wasting energy. And I feel not really good about running an OS which is not efficient, especially when the computer is turned on the whole day. Therefore I really am a fan of process control demons.
> You may not like OSX, but it runs efficient, I tested this with my Macbook (mid 2011). Using OSX, you can write up to 7 hours- 7.5 hours a text read pdfs, look up this or that in the internet (not watching videos). I for testing purposes installed FreeBSD CURRENT on a second partition on it (amazingly it worked without any problems, I used rEFInd, the only problem is that there is no Broadcom driver  ) and tested battery life without having installed X11, just idle. It said 4 hours and 30 minutes of battery life. That is a big difference.
> I am absolutely sure that FreeBSD has the means to solve that problem, may be using runit and other programs from the mighty ports tree but a fresh install is not that power efficient. I want to be at least as good as 7-7.5 hours when I run my Macbook doing work. This is a very interesting challenge, even for people who run FreeBSD as a server. I want efficiently running servers  because power=money and if I can get a more efficient software for running my server I choose that one .



The approach Jordan Hubbard suggests would make us no more than an Apple's little brother OS. 

The starting/stopping of daemons according to events can easily be done by a combination of daemons, see my below example:

User inserts USB drive. Kernel detects this and logs it, so devd creates a device file for it, and the automounter then automounts the drive. Similarly, if a user removes the drive without running `umount`, the kernel knows and logs it, so devd destroys the device file, which in turn forcibly unmounts the drive. 

In launchd and systemd, this mostly takes place within their process groups. While this is simpler from an outside perspective, it inevitably leaves a small group of processes responsible for a large array of system critical functions. Myself, and many other users, see this as an affront to the UNIX philosophy, as well as a serious hazard to security and stability. A UNIX system in the traditional sense may have many points of failure, but its designed that if a few daemons or processes die that the system does not go down. The critical points of the system are the kernel and init, plus the network if you're on a server. By comparison, Windows has about 25 processes on a typical desktop that need to be running for the system to keep running interactively. If a single one of those go down, you have to reboot. 

Fan control is not normally handled by the OS in well designed hardware, its handled by the firmware, and good firmware will equal efficiency. The fact is that exposing that much hardware to the OS isn't smart. 

You also can't use your Macbook as a comparison here: BSD, Linux and Windows are unspecialised operating systems, meaning that they run on a wide range of hardware so they can't really afford to make hardware specific changes. OS X, by comparison, is the opposite. Its a specialised OS running on special hardware tailored to it. There's nothing wrong with this approach, see the SGI MIPS systems, but you can't make comparisons across both groups. Its literally APPLES to ORANGES.


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## Oko (Feb 17, 2015)

walterbyrd said:


> Just found out, there was a recent itwire article on this subject:


I found quite a few dis-genuine statements in that interview starting with the sentence 





> At first glance it may even be difficult to tell them apart, we have almost all the same open-source software available


Kris is a smart guy so I will attribute those statements to the journalist. If the systemd becomes the King of the Linux land as it is looking now many of the commonly deployed software will stop working on BSDs. That question has been already addressed by OpenBSD in GSoC 2014 when the student was creating systemd like API so that programs like Gimp who are very close to the point of being systemd dependent can run in the future on OpenBSD.

Linux users might not have experience with BSDs but they are not stupid. It would be stupid for FreeBSD camp to claim vendor support (Kris talks about flash and Adobe reader in that interview) is such support doesn't exist. And indeed many people myself included have to run Linux due to the lack of vendor support (in my case MATLAB). UNIX desktop market is/was non-existing as correctly observed by Jordan Hubbard. There is some tiny corporate market for niche product like PC-BSD. On the another hand FreeBSD could easily take a serious bite from Linux on the server market if one of major players (Google, Microsoft, HP, IBM, Oracle) wishes to do so. However I am rather skeptical at the time when proprietary UNIX-es are either dead (IRIX), dying like Solaris or they are on the life support HP-Unix, AIX that anybody will put required investment into FreeBSD to make it viable competitor to Linux.


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## Beastie7 (Feb 17, 2015)

I'd say it's redhat that really pushed Linux in the server space, especially with their 10 year Dell partnership. I think if we landed collaborative support with any of the major server vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc) we'd see a boost. But as you stated we'd need huge vendor sustain that support. iXsystems could potentially be both (hardware/software, ie SUN) with TrueOS but they're focusing huge on Storage in 2015. I've looked at some of their development milestones, and its looking very good. FreeNAS 10 will be huge.


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## Oko (Feb 17, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I'd say it's redhat that really pushed Linux in the server space, especially with their 10 year Dell partnership. I think if we landed collaborative support with any of the major server vendors (HP, Dell, Lenovo, etc) we'd see a boost. But as you stated we'd need huge vendor sustain that support. iXsystems could potentially be both (hardware/software, ie SUN) with TrueOS but they're focusing huge on Storage in 2015. I've looked at some of their development milestones, and its looking very good. FreeNAS 10 will be huge.


I think that people overestimate IXsystems. They are not major player in IT field even though they were in business since 1993 (essentially Berkeley folks who lost the job when Computer Systems Research Group was shut down founded the company). However you are raising very interesting point. FreeBSD should not try to compete with Linux across the board now as it is too much behind but in the particular market segment. You mentioned FreeNAS and storage appliances. That is a great example. FreeBSD is hands down superior OS for people who need to store their data. Linux people can continue to elect file system flavour of the day but I don't trust my data to any file system on Linux except perhaps old trusted SGI XFS file system.


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## walterbyrd (Feb 17, 2015)

Oko said:


> However I am rather skeptical at the time when proprietary UNIX-es are either dead (IRIX), dying like Solaris or they are on the life support HP-Unix, AIX that anybody will put required investment into FreeBSD to make it viable competitor to Linux.



FWIW: I was doing some contract work for IBM last year. In part, I was helping with replacing their AIX systems with RHEL.

This was only at one, fairly small, installation. Although I got the idea that this is where IBM is heading. IBM seems to really like RHEL, it was on everybody's desktop (just like Lotus Notes).


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## walterbyrd (Feb 17, 2015)

Another, more recent article:



> Sunday, February 15, 2015
> 
> A Prediction: 2020 the year of (PC-)BSD on the desktop
> 
> ...



Actually, that just looks like some blog post. FWIW: I came across this on slashdot. There is a fairly active discussion about this going on now. 

http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/15/02/16/2355236/pc-bsd-set-for-serious-growth

I don't know if it means anything, but FreeBSD seems to be getting some attention in the pop-media.


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## zspider (Feb 17, 2015)

Oko said:


> I don't trust my data to any file system on Linux except perhaps old trusted SGI XFS file system.



I certainly don't anymore either after all the bizarre things that used to happen with my Linux PC NAS. Since I replaced the OS on it years ago, I've not had any of those issues again.

The blog article is made the same guy who was in here not too long ago nagging about why FreeBSD didn't have this and that luxury feature.


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## drhowarddrfine (Feb 18, 2015)

I still get queasy over my needing to make a decision on what to use for my new client's server OS. I decided I was going to be forced into choosing Linux over FreeBSD and then had to choose between Ubuntu and CentOS. Then other suggestions come flying in just making the choice harder. I KNOW FreeBSD is the better choice and only one basic reason is you can't pin Linux distributions down to any one solid thing. It's a constantly moving (meandering) target.

btw, yesterday I signed them up with a hosting company and I installed FreeBSD. I think I'll continue with that until someone who cares notices. I may get fired for not choosing IBM ... I mean Linux ... but I made the right choice.


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## Crivens (Mar 4, 2015)

So the day starts and the news tell me of new things happening. In this case, news about how to turn more users to *BSD systems.

It seems that the next step in the process for systemd to - ummm - _enhance the user experience_, is that they also want to integrate a boot loader. And containers. How did they manage to avoid that kitchen sink?


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## Deleted member 9563 (Mar 4, 2015)

Crivens said:


> How did they manage to avoid that kitchen sink?



Oh, that's a nerd thing. The sink is full of dirty dishes, so don't even go near it.


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## John Call (Mar 21, 2015)

Hello, January. This is March. FreeBSD doesn't seem to be much more popular. Oh well.


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## Oko (Mar 22, 2015)

John Call said:


> Hello, January. This is March. FreeBSD doesn't seem to be much more popular. Oh well.


I thought April Fool's Day is a week from now.


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## Crivens (Mar 30, 2015)

It still is a bit early for april fools day, is it? If that is real, there will be a shortage of popcorn.


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## tankist02 (Mar 30, 2015)

Here is your April 1st joke:

systemd forked Linux kernel


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## Oko (Mar 30, 2015)

tankist02 said:


> Here is your April 1st joke:
> 
> systemd forked Linux kernel



It is not 1st of April yet. Today is March 30th and March usually have 31 days. You must be running Linux buggy *ntpd *daemon which had to be started through systemd


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## Crivens (Mar 31, 2015)

April 1. will be when Linus praises the systemd-crowd and announces that he will resign the leading role in the kernel staff to these visionary and dynamic gentlemen. And he will have that text properly gendered, so it will be accepted by every person.


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## fernandel (Apr 1, 2015)

Les chiens aboient, la caravane passe.


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## standard_nerd68k (May 29, 2015)

I was a happy Debian user for longer than I want to think about, but here I am. I still kept a Windows box around for games, but used Linux for most other things. Just when it looked like I was finally going to be able to ditch the Windows box and use Linux for games, systemd happens.

My prediction: in about 5 years, I will be using BSD for most things, but have a Linux box for games.

I feel like bashing my head on the wall until I fall into a coma.


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## Oko (May 30, 2015)

In our lab we took a leap of faith and put Red Hat 7.1 on one of new computing nodes (we run Red Hat on computing nodes and desktops while using combination of Open/Free on all other servers). So far so good. System feel completely alien not just because of systemd. My jaws dropped when I realized that there is no `ifconfig` and that the Red Hat has new strange firewall. First thing I did was to install network tools. Disable firewall and install iptables. All in all system seems very snappy (Having 32 cores and 384 GB or RAM as well as OS on the 600 MB/s SSD helps too). MATLAB, R, Python work as expected. Soft RAID looks the same as well configuring LDAP authentication and authorization via SSSD. I am using my old monitoring tools (monit, collectd, SNMP, rsyslog) to monitor the machine even that I heard that systemd could be used for that. As long as I am getting paid to run this shit I have no problems with it. It still feels more controllable than Windows. Once they replace broken again shell (bash for short) with Windows cmd I will be out.

New installer sucks but I tested that thing earlier so I was not trying to do anything serious with it. It is nice having root on old trusted Silicon Graphics XFS instead of that funny ext2 file system.


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## scottro (May 30, 2015)

Oko, yes,`ifconfig` is dropped from the basic tools. It's been replaced by `ip`.   `iptables` is replaced by `firewalld`. That one can be reversed.  The installer, is one that the powers that be consider good and my suggestion on the Fedora testing list that they see if they can hire some Debian developers to redo it was treated (rightfully so), as trolling.  

As you found, both of these things can be, at present, put back in the system.  (By the way, I have a very small page on the ip command at http://srobb.net/ip.html).  Working at a datacenter, several clients who originally requested CentOS or RHEL-7.x installs have asked that it be replaced with 6.x.


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## gkontos (May 30, 2015)

Still, I don't understand what's wrong with `ifconfig` and why it had to be replaced by `ip`.


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## Oko (May 30, 2015)

scottro said:


> Oko, yes,`ifconfig` is dropped from the basic tools. It's been replaced by `ip`.


I thought it was replaced by `nmcli & nmtui` . As of installer the only improvement is setting default non-root user during the installation and of course replacing clunky Ext2/Ext4 with XFS. The rest of the stuff is non-intuitive but that is beyond the point. Installing boot/root on soft RAID 0 is now royal pain and not even quite possible the way it was possible with previous installer. I don't care because I am pretty much using only single SSD nowdays for OS on my computing nodes and I am not concern if OS gets trashed. I am concern for the people's data.


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## scottro (May 30, 2015)

You can still get rid of all the NetworkManager stuff, including the nm-whatevers.  I am _fairly_ (though not completely) sure that I've seen that they still don't work in a variety of situations.  Yeah, I think you're right that the RH way is to use the nm-blah tools instead of `ifconfig`, but, judging from various CentOS list and forum posts, many prefer to not do that.


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## Crivens (May 30, 2015)

gkontos said:


> Still, I don't understand what's wrong with `ifconfig` and why it had to be replaced by `ip`.


Evil people would suggest that it had to be replaced because it "just worked" - but that surely is only a conspiracy theory


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## gkontos (May 30, 2015)

Crivens said:


> Evil people would suggest that it had to be replaced because it "just worked" - but that surely is only a conspiracy theory


 There is a Greek saying that goes like this...  "Δουλειά δεν είχε ο διάολος, γαμούσε τα παιδιά του" Now, it is kind of hard to translate but I will try....

"The devil had nothing to do, so he was fu**ng his children to kill his time...."


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## scottro (May 30, 2015)

Literally Laughing Out Loud.  On Monday, I will troll my Linux loving co-workers with that. 

My own theories are probably too trollish to place on a public forum, but generally, it does seem that many Linux decisions are made by people who run single user laptops and don't think too deeply about production servers.   In fairness, the defaults might make sense to person one and not person two.  Do you figure there are kids who might be dangerous and set it to ask for a password after 10 minutes of inactivity, or figure that it's for the home user who will watch Netflix, where such a default will constantly interrupt their viewing?  And where do you put that information to make it easy for the user to find? 

I'm digressing (as I ran into that, to me, aggravating default the other day when setting something up for my wife.)  Anyway, that line made me laugh enough to merit a thanks.

EDIT:  And I think the reason it made me laugh is because it's often what I think about some Fedora decisions I see--that they just figured they better do something to show their bosses they're working.


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## Crivens (Jun 1, 2015)

scottro said:


> My own theories are probably too trollish to place on a public forum


I am often amazed, and somewhat appalled, when I try out the most evil, selfish, cynical and sometimes perverted explaination for some human actions, only to find out that I actually was only 90% there.


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## sulman (Jun 1, 2015)

on the Linux side `ifconfig` was deprecated in 1999; replaced with the iproute2 family. Distros kept `ifconfig` around for a long time. They probably should not have as the confusion above has been a common result.

As regards `firewalld`, that surprised me, too. I first realised something was up when `iptables -S` returned a huge, foreign looking ruleset. This change I understand less well. It still drives `iptables`, so I couldn't really see the point. I have several Linux boxes of various flavours running `iptables` and I'm not going to learn `firewalld` as it'ls largely a RHEL/CentOS thing at the moment, and truth be told a cursory glance at the documentation didn't reveal much of use.


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## j7j3 (Jun 3, 2015)

Strike another Debian refugee here. I switched to FreeBSD late last year and I am loving the friendly co-operative atmosphere and absence of political posturing which has poisoned the Linuxsphere and has seemed to have turned the userbase into a bunch of robotic zealots, not everyone mind but the frothy mouthed postings of some people and the blind hero worship of others who can do no wrong (naming no names) was just soul destroying for a veteran Linux user - nearly as long as my eldest son has been alive which is bordering on 2 decades. Damn I feel old.


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## Beastie7 (Jun 4, 2015)

I'd wager due to its academic and democratic background, the vibe here tends to be very civilized and/or conservative. I like the idea of FreeBSD being governed by its core committers instead of a huge flux of random people. Bazaar-like. Keeps things sane and consistent.


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## pallfreeman (Jun 4, 2015)

j7j3 said:


> Damn I feel old.


I feel ill after seeing Gizzard Puke on here.


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## kpa (Jun 4, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> I'd wager due to its academic and democratic background, the vibe here tends to be very civilized and/or conservative. I like the idea of FreeBSD being governed by its core committers instead of a huge flux of random people. Bazaar-like. Keeps things sane and consistent.



This is a nice dream but in reality there simply aren't enough of core committers to keep up with the pace of the progress happening. Especially on the ports front the committers are seriously overloaded with work and most of their work is just to act as "rubber stamps" for work done by port maintainers who don't themselves have commit rights. This has resulted in many instances of ports breakage because a change was committed without thorough testing by the committer who simply didn't have time to verify the validity of the commit prepared by someone else.


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## MarcoB (Jun 4, 2015)

...or patches not being committed at all.


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## gkontos (Jun 5, 2015)

I think that this is getting irrelevant with systemd. 
Facts: Most of my clients stick so far with CentOS 6.X and nobody wants to move to 7.1 It is not only systemd that has shifted linux to a more Microsoft direction. You can't expect an OS to work the same as a server and as a desktop. The sooner people realize it, the less threads I will see here regarding FreeBSD and desktop support. 

Personally,  I would love to see FreeBSD to turn on a server only OS. No X, no shit.


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## MarcoB (Jun 5, 2015)

gkontos said:


> Personally, I would love to see FreeBSD to turn on a server only OS. No X, no shit.


Imo that would be really sad because I think FreeBSD would then lose like 80% of it's users.


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## kpa (Jun 5, 2015)

MarcoB said:


> Imo that would be really sad because I think FreeBSD would then lose like 80% of its users.



Not even close, desktop/laptop users make up maybe 10% of FreeBSD users, maybe even less. The huge majority of FreeBSD are big companies, IT pros and hacker hobbyists who use FreeBSD in server environments, firewall/router applications, embedded devices etc. that have nothing to do with desktops or laptops. You could say that this majority is a silent majority because you almost never see them here and quite rarely on the mailing lists, they know how to seek support directly from the FreeBSD devs and can many times solve their problems on their own.


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## Beastie7 (Jun 5, 2015)

kpa said:


> This is a nice dream but in reality there simply aren't enough of core committers to keep up with the pace of the progress happening. Especially on the ports front the committers are seriously overloaded with work and most of their work is just to act as "rubber stamps" for work done by port maintainers who don't themselves have commit rights. This has resulted in many instances of ports breakage because a change was committed without thorough testing by the committer who simply didn't have time to verify the validity of the commit prepared by someone else.



Yeah I hear you. My gripe about the community sometimes is that they don't much to outreach or market themselves to rack in potential developers/volunteers. The whole structured mentor/mentee thing is nice but as far as "selling FreeBSD", iI feel they're too conservative. This is probably a Foundation issue though, not with the project itself.


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## gkontos (Jun 5, 2015)

I will have to agree with kpa here. As a power user with many server installations, my main concern is always to get uptodate drivers for controllers.


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## protocelt (Jun 5, 2015)

General purpose or server only OS I'll continue to use FreeBSD. It would personally make me sad to see desktop support dropped though. With the current pace of technology and unless more developers are roped in however, at some point, a hard choice in direction may unfortunately have to be made. That said, after playing around with systemd on Linux a bit, I still have no more understanding of it than when I started. Documentation on it is horrible as well adding to the frustration, at least in my case...


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## Beastie7 (Jun 6, 2015)

It puzzles me why there's more focus on trailing GNOME 3/GTK+ ports instead of contributing to Lumina development. Is it a C++ thing? Is it easier trailing behind porting upstream patches?

Starting from scratch with something better and made specifically for FreeBSD could drive that direction, IMO.


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## j7j3 (Jun 6, 2015)

gkontos said:


> I will have to agree with kpa here. As a power user with many server installations, my main concern is always to get uptodate drivers for controllers.



Funnily enough as a desktop/server user the only real gripe I have had with FreeBSD since I migrated from Linux is driver support for my other laptops horrible Optimus chipset


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## retrogamer (Jun 8, 2015)

kpa said:


> Not even close, desktop/laptop users make up maybe 10% of FreeBSD users, maybe even less.


It would still stink to get left behind, but then what would happen to PC-BSD?  I'm sure a community derivative would still spring up to maintain a desktop version of some kind, FreeBSD is the only good desktop option if you want ZFS now that Open Indiana is pretty well dead.  It still makes the most sense of any BSD or Linux as a multimedia oriented desktop OS for a power user, I think, because if you want:

1. OSS that is still well supported and not hacky like on the the few legacy Linux distros that use it.
2. ZFS for performance and data preservation (self healing software RAID) rather than being stuck with Btrfs or ancient file systems.
3. Non-obfuscated init system 
4. Decent graphics drivers (yes, I know people hate NVIDIA, but when that driver works well on FreeBSD it is fantastic)

OpenBSD is just not an option for me because of the file system and lack of NVIDIA support.  I could probably live with HAMMER if I switched to DragonFly, but I would hate to give up my NVIDIA GPUs and their ports selection is lacking.  Honestly, FreeBSD + WINE + ZFS is a pretty winning combination for someone who just wants to play GOG games, store their data securely, and watch videos in 1080p.

Anyway, my reason for posting is that there is an interesting article on launchd and the BSDs I ran across and thought I'd post - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/launchd-on-bsd.html


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## kpa (Jun 8, 2015)

retrogamer said:


> It would still stink to get left behind, but then what would happen to PC-BSD?



PC-BSD wouldn't go anywhere if FreeBSD itself stopped offering half-baked (just my opinion) X11 based desktop environments that are barely usable for newcomers. PC-BSD could very well just take over the maintainance of the X11 and desktop environment related ports leaving FreeBSD in charge of the core technologies that are not X11 or DE related.


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## tingo (Jun 9, 2015)

j7j3 said:


> Funnily enough as a desktop/server user the only real gripe I have had with FreeBSD since I migrated from Linux is driver support for my other laptops horrible Optimus chipset


Have you tried FreeBSD 10.1-stable on your Optimus laptop? I have recently installed it onto my Asus U35JC laptop (Optimus, check) and to my surprise it works quite well (FreeBSD 7, 8 and 9 never did).


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## gpatrick (Jun 10, 2015)

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/launchd-on-bsd.html


> The discomforting truth is that we aren't going to get launchd for doing service and system management for the very same reasons that we aren't going to get systemd for doing service and system management. systemd is full of Linuxisms. launchd is full of Machisms. It's simply not a BSD program. It's a Mach program.



I don't think the BSDs need launchd or systemd, because diversity is good and one thing is not good for everyone.  But where there is a will, there is a way.  The engineers at Joyent are proof of this when they ported KVM to SmartOS; then Joyent resurrected Sun's one-time Branded Zones to release LX branded zones to run Linux applications directly on bare metal; and Joyent has ported Docker to SmartOS bare metal.



> now that Open Indiana is pretty well dead


Yes and no, OpenIndiana itself hasn't had a release since 151a9 in January 2014, however, the hipster branch of OI is alive, active and publishes application changes regularly along with iso releases.


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## Beastie7 (Jun 10, 2015)

Launchd adoption has already started a while ago. Integration/testing with TrueOS is already in the works so it's a matter of time before it gets feature completed. Now whether the FreeBSD project will accept and pull in changes is a whole another thing on its' own.

Exciting times indeed.


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## protocelt (Jun 10, 2015)

Beastie7 said:


> Launchd adoption has already started a while ago. Integration/testing with TrueOS is already in the works so it's a matter of time before it gets feature completed. Now whether the FreeBSD project will accept and pull in changes is a whole another thing on its' own.
> 
> Exciting times indeed.


IMHO, something designed from scratch would be a much better idea than porting over Launchd to FreeBSD if at some point that is indeed the direction the FreeBSD developers decide to go. FreeBSD != TrueOS, similar but still some what different project goals.


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## j7j3 (Jun 10, 2015)

tingo said:


> Have you tried FreeBSD 10.1-stable on your Optimus laptop? I have recently installed it onto my Asus U35JC laptop (Optimus, check) and to my surprise it works quite well (FreeBSD 7, 8 and 9 never did).



I would if I could switch off the Intel card in the BIOS but alas I can't. I even got in contact with MSI to ask one of their BIOS engineers for a custom BIOS to be able to turn it off but the laptop is one of those awkward beasts that is not able to bypass the Intel chipset.


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## tingo (Jun 10, 2015)

j7j3 said:


> I would if I could switch off the Intel card in the BIOS but alas I can't. I even got in contact with MSI to ask one of their BIOS engineers for a custom BIOS to be able to turn it off but the laptop is one of those awkward beasts that is not able to bypass the Intel chipset.


My point was that you might not need the "BIOS switch", if the driver works and does it for you. (My case is opposite; I turn off the nVidia card via acpi_call and a script, and just use the Intel chip to get longer battery time).


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## j7j3 (Jun 10, 2015)

tingo said:


> My point was that you might not need the "BIOS switch", if the driver works and does it for you. (My case is opposite; I turn off the nVidia card via acpi_call and a script, and just use the Intel chip to get longer battery time).



Thanks for the tip I'll look into that.


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## retrogamer (Jun 11, 2015)

gpatrick said:


> Yes and no, OpenIndiana itself hasn't had a release since 151a9 in January 2014, however, the hipster branch of OI is alive, active and publishes application changes regularly along with iso releases.


If you don't mind me asking, have you tried living with it recently, and if so, how stable was it?  I don't have any intention of jumping ship, but I might play around with it on an older box that I used to run OpenSolaris on.


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## gpatrick (Jun 11, 2015)

OpenIndiana has always been solidly stable, just there isn't any updates for security, etc., although one could do a nightly or regular build on their own to get the illumos changes.  The last time I installed OI was last weekend because I intended to build it to a newer release, but then after building packages and building illumos I stopped.  

As for hipster I've never installed it, but since it uses OI 151a9 I'd assume it to be just as stable, however, since they are regularly updating applications they mention it may break sometimes.  But that is an application, OI would still be stable.


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## garry (Jun 11, 2015)

retrogamer said:


> It would still stink to get left behind, but then what would happen to PC-BSD?  I'm sure a community derivative would still spring up to maintain a desktop version of some kind, FreeBSD is the only good desktop option if you want ZFS now that Open Indiana is pretty well dead.  It still makes the most sense of any BSD or Linux as a multimedia oriented desktop OS for a power user, I think, because if you want:
> 
> 1. OSS that is still well supported
> 2. ZFS
> ...



I've come to really appreciate two operating systems for meeting your four "power user" requirements.  One of course is {Free,PC}BSD.  The other is Funtoo Linux.  I multi-boot between FreeBSD and Funtoo Linux on ZFS with my home directories on a ZFS mirror.  Both support ZFS very well and Funtoo uses a very clean init system, OpenRC.  Funtoo has committed to work well for both servers and desktop and to continue using OpenRC as its default and preferred init system.  I've been finding myself doing most of my work (octave/matlab, DrRacket, smlnj, haskell, vim/emacs/latex etc. for coursework and small projects) under Funtoo where I have less problems installing ports than I sometimes do under FreeBSD.

Funtoo Linux ZFS is slightly behind FreeBSD ZFS so create any shared ZFS pool in Funtoo first and do not upgrade it from FreeBSD.  Funtoo Linux does seem to be a pocket of sanity.


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## sulman (Jun 11, 2015)

FreeBSD is only going to get stronger in the desktop, not weaker.


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## sossego (Jun 11, 2015)

The solution is to rewrite and not patch or to correct the code - a partial rewite - of the problems in the Linux/GNU system. Debian has been forked into Devuan by a group not happy with the decision to go with systemd. I understand if systemd was used as a layer between a chroot or virtualized environment; but, there is no reason to add unneeded complexity in a system. On smaller devices, this is a waste of valuable memory.


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## UnixRocks (Jun 25, 2015)

Well, Red Hat's decision to go all-in for SystemD with its code bloat, its being a possible SPF due to being a large program run as PID 1, its diversion from Unix philosophy, and its multiple tentacles into Linux distributions has our level III admins at my business seriously discussing how FreeBSD can be used to replace CentOS on our servers going forward. Most of our internet facing services are standard open source program stacks such as Apache, BIND, NTP, etcetera. None of which need Linux with SystemD to work properly. We are working up a business case to present to our department director.


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## Beastie7 (Jun 26, 2015)

There's several companies using FreeBSD that has (via videos, whitepapers) done comparative analysis, described their experience, and explained why they chose FreeBSD. Netflix, Whatsapp, Limelight Networks, and recently Groupon to name a few. I would use that and build a report to present to your superiors. You can even tweak your presentation to explain how FreeBSDs offerings are better for your environment. 

If they're concerned about support, they can call iXsystems.

That's how I would "sell" FreeBSD at least.


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## Crivens (Jun 26, 2015)

UnixRocks said:


> We are working up a business case to present to our department director.


Good luck to you.

It always makes me sad when you need to work in this way. If your management only speaks 'powerpoint', things usually go downwards from there.


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## UnixRocks (Jun 30, 2015)

Thanks guys. TBH, we are also discussing just rolling out new systems with FreeBSD installed and not mentioning it to management at all. We administrators are the only ones that will be touching those systems anyway. One of the team pointed out that if we already have core infrastructure successfully running FreeBSD as a fait accompli before anyone notices, it will be pretty easy to "sell" at that point. Our director is primarily concerned about vendor support for specific enterprise apps that "require" we use either Red Hat or CentOS. For now we use CentOS for those. We plan to just keep those systems as-is, upgrade them as needed to newer CentOS and live with the SystemD pain on those few boxes / VMs. But we do not need Linux for the majority of the servers we run.

Sad anecdote: We are an ISP. My division handles the internet customer facing systems, BIND, NTP, Webmail / POP / IMAP, Speedtest, and so on. A different division handles the "corporate properties" and internal corporate networking. Some "bright" beanie wearer in that other division hired some outside contractors who placed significant portions of our web property on Microsoft's Azure cloud rather than using our own stuff. My team just recently found out about that when some of the ISP web properties we manage stopped working correctly when trying to pull content from the main site, which was having problems because of some issue with Microsoft's "cloud". That was a major "WTF?!" when we found out. Basically typical corporate SNAFU.


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## Avernar (Jul 6, 2015)

Another Debian systemd refugee here.  Systemd is not the only reason I switched but it's the big one.  The proverbial straw.  I debated switching to another Linux distribution that doesn't have systemd but at the rate that it's assimilating everything I believe those other distros will have not choice but to switch sooner or later.

So last night I took the plunge and installed FreeBSD on one of my two Linux boxes.  The BIOS and SSD firmware updates meant I had to re-install anyways so it was the perfect time.  The other Linux box needs some new hardware so again it will be the perfect time to replace it with FreeBSD when it's rebuilt.

So far I've manually did the root on ZFS procedure as I wanted 4K alignment.  Today it was compiling a custom kernel.  So far I'm very pleased with FreeBSD.  The documentation is amazing, which is why things have gone pretty smoothly.  And the system feels more engineered than slapped together.


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## SR_Ind (Sep 28, 2015)

kpa said:


> PC-BSD wouldn't go anywhere if FreeBSD itself stopped offering half-baked (just my opinion) X11 based desktop environments that are barely usable for newcomers. PC-BSD could very well just take over the maintainance of the X11 and desktop environment related ports leaving FreeBSD in charge of the core technologies that are not X11 or DE related.



On the other hand, PC-BSD will cease to exist if FreeBSD provides basic building blocks for a desktop right out of the box.
The Xorg server, drivers, fonts, xdm, TWM, Xterm, etc. From FreeBSD's own stable they just need to add a graphical package manager tool.
For beginners (at least for me, when I started using FreeBSD way back in 2001) setting these up are major stumbling blocks.
I believe if these are available out of the box from a standard installation then all these "Desktop" projects won't be needed.

To the topic of Systemd issue, which I believe got dragged into BSD world due to the road map (assuming there is such a thing  ) Linux has taken towards graphical interface.

So, I'll throw my two cents.

Background and disclaimer.

I'm in IT for last 18 years. I work with a German engineering giant, household name there. Few years ago our communications business was carved out and merged with similar business from a Finnish (again a household name there) telecom giant. So you get the hint. I look after a product that we still maintain, enhance and provide to the telecom company that was borne out of the said merger.

So that establishes my technical background.

We use Windows as the desktop machine. All development is done there. All builds are made to pass on  Windows, CentOS and FreeBSD. This is where I have a stake in this issue. People running development environments on either CentOS or FreeBSD do so on self initiative, without any IT support.

But wait, we have other lines of business (among few others like space and energy ) that do product development for media and transportation, where they use FreeBSD. Our in flight entertainment system and media system for cruise liners use FreeBSD.

I'm partial to FreeBSD myself, opted for Panasonic smart TV because of that.

First the systemd issue. Not many developers are aware of it. Folks that do architecture have just one concern, systemd seems to be aiming to control everything that exists between kernel and user land applications.
It is a single point of failure.
If it misbehaves you don't even get a half working system (something like Windows safe mode). You may need to reboot.

On technical ground other than this there is no issue. Systemd might do good to Linux world, it will stop the fragmentation.

Coming back to UI part, our own teams would have to take a decision if BSD get stuck in with a graphical stack that is in maintenance mode and is progressively less used by *NIX world.
For us X11 really doesn't matter. All we needs is a kernel mode driver and a pixel manipulation library, if X11 goes away. Simple because, the kind of applications our media and transport guys design always run in kiosk mode with some custom widgets. So strictly speaking no X11 is required.

However it will make it difficult for developers to run any kind of development environment on the target system.
Before someone jumps, I mean something like QtCreator.

So, with SystemD the following are the scenarios

1. Hell with SystemD - We don't need any GUI anyway.
2. Fall in line
3. Develop our own graphical stack, because we can't pay for the default BSD+GUI a.k.a Mac OS.
4. Fit Wayland to work without SystemD.
5. Maintain X11 forever.

For BSD world only #4 and #5 are the options.

Parting thought on #1.
There is no need for FreeBSD to spend money for KMS driver and plethora of ARM builds, if servers alone are the installation target.
On the other hand to be fair to the people asking for #1, no one is forcing the lay users to use FreeBSD as a desktop.
However, it is a blatant lie to say FreeBSD is server only OS (heck, even my TV runs on it). 

But I think the truth as always lies somewhere in between.
Probably people that matter realize that the OS as a whole must be capable enough to run a graphical interface. Hence the work on KMS drivers, Wayland port and ARM portability (ARM ... certainly not servers).

Longevity of an OS is due to people using it, people writing applications for it and people keeping it up and running.
It is the third group of people that seems to vocal with #1.

Classic, so called "official" UNIXes must be have learnt this that hard way. For years we have fed with bullshit that critical infrastructure runs on so-called big iron.
For me it was an eye opener when one of the largest telecom providers in India (200 million plus subscribers) gave us firm directive ... only x86 Linux servers.

It is the conservative and vocal minority of the NIX world ... all of them BSDs, big irons, Linux ... combined, that failed to realize the value of decent UI. Hence the place for Wayland and unfortunately in the transition the SystemD guys took advantage of the melee to push their agenda.

Desktop computers are a dying breed anyway. Who are going to use them? Accountants with large spreadsheets, designers and us programmers. That's a very small percentage of total user base.

So, lets not lose sleep over SystemD.

All of our server applications are going to cloud and UI applications are moving to phones.


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## TiberiusDuval (Sep 28, 2015)

Hmm just little comment about desktop computers: There is one not so small niche group using desktop computers too. Pc-gamers. While people have predicted death of pc as gaming platform since at least Playstation 1, Pc gaming seems to be quite hard to kill. There are quite many game genres not decently available to consoles. And on other hand needing such amount of performance, that mobile devices are out of question. And you cannot simply install better GPU to laptop. So for serious gamer only real option is desktop pc. And quite many of them use quite substantial sums of money for their hobby.


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## SR_Ind (Sep 28, 2015)

PC gamers are an even smaller community.

"There are quite many game genres not decently available to consoles."

Its a matter of time these are available on gaming consoles or even Smart TVs.

For the gaming part, we should note that these "desktops" are used as custom made gaming consoles. They are no longer personal computers (I used the word desktop in that sense ... personal computers) in the sense we refer to  them, which is the central theme of this thread.

In that sense, Desktop's are indeed a dying breed.

Its been quite a few years I've seen anybody buying desktops for home use. In the neighborhood also I've seen friends and acquaintances, opting for laptops as suitable for their budgets. Even our IT departments have stopped purchasing them. We are issued laptops (high end).

Gamers wouldn't be bothered by the issue we are discussing here, although they would keep alive a lucrative market for high end machines (no matter what runs in it).

BTW, there is this Gartner report that says PC shipment have dropped by 9.5% in 2015
http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3090817

That's a steep fall in a single year.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Sep 29, 2015)

SR_Ind said:


> On the other hand, PC-BSD will cease to exist if FreeBSD provides basic building blocks for a desktop right out of the box.


This statement seems to assume that you simply don't like what there is already. I understand that. Everybody has different tastes, but it still sounds like an insult when written here. For example I don't have any specialized Microsoft skills or familiarity so when I encounter a Windows machine, my first thought is that it is completely unusable as is and I would need to install and change so much that it simply wouldn't be worth the effort. That's me, and it's a matter of taste. It is not the fault of MS-Windows. To my view FreeBSD does (and does extremely well) already have the basic building blocks for a desktop right out of the box. Type `pkg install x11/kde4` and there you are! If you don't like it that's not the fault of FreeBSD.

tldr; FreeBSD already has a desktop right out of the box. That box is called a "meta-port".


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## SR_Ind (Sep 29, 2015)

OJ said:


> This statement seems to assume that you simply don't like what there is already. I understand that. Everybody has different tastes, but it still sounds like an insult when written here. For example I don't have any specialized Microsoft skills or familiarity so when I encounter a Windows machine, my first thought is that it is completely unusable as is and I would need to install and change so much that it simply wouldn't be worth the effort. That's me, and it's a matter of taste. It is not the fault of MS-Windows. To my view FreeBSD does (and does extremely well) already have the basic building blocks for a desktop right out of the box. Type `pkg install x11/kde4` and there you are! If you don't like it that's not the fault of FreeBSD.
> 
> tldr; FreeBSD already has a desktop right out of the box. That box is called a "meta-port".


Please read my post carefully. Right out of the box means whatever is provided via default install.

Please go through what I've listed that could be considered during default install - repeating for your perusal - Xorg server, fonts, drivers and xinit. I'm not asking for a desktop or even a window manager if you read carefully. An installation process can very well detect the hardware and install the appropriate display and input driver, copy some fonts etc. This much xorg stuff consumes negligible disk space.

I'm aware of what is KDE4. I have my own little desktop hacked out of various Qt based applications, many of them self written. Thank you very much.

There is something called "xorg-minimal" in the ports (you are aware of course) which can serve as a building block, if your intention was to educate me.

Since my comment was about basic bits to build a desktop, I don't understand how exactly meta ports becomes relevant here.

I might sound like an insult to you, but the oft claimed "server OS" does not live up to expectation of a server OS either from the standpoint of out of the box usability.
We have installation images for every obscure hardware out there, but the default installation won't give you something usable like a Web Server or a database server.
Sure, Apache or PostgreSQL may not be FreeBSD's software but they are not of Red Hat or CentOS either.

Every newbie that tries out FreeBSD (or any *NIX for that matter) is not a Windows or Mac OS point and click user of limited skill set.
Most people just don't have the time to go through pain of setting up a HTTP server or a database server after OS installation is done, when options are available.

As you can see we are not talking of GUI alone here, but the underlying malaise is same.

Lack of packaging.

It is not a criticism or any sort of value judgement, just a commentary on the prevalent tech culture.

>>

So, to the OP ... systemd or lack of it will not change anything. 
We might end up with the most optimum and responsive Wayland implementation out there. 
But first timers would still have to hunt around the ports directory to set up their desktops.


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## Deleted member 9563 (Sep 29, 2015)

SR_Ind said:


> Please read my post carefully. Right out of the box means whatever is provided via default install.


I did. And it would appear that we have some difference of opinion.  Of course you know well how to do this stuff. I'm probably much less skilled. However, my point is that there is no OS which works out of the box. Why single out FreeBSD as being significantly different.

Yesterday I spend several hours with a default MS-Windows install. It simply is not useful for basic file management and networking out of the box. I would have to spend many hours learning how to install appropriate software in order to do what I expect to do with the operating systems that I know (DOS, Linux, *BSD). From my perspective, FreeBSD only requires a few simple steps. Perhaps those steps are difficult for a person who comes from a MS-Windows background, but how is that different from my experience where what I need to do to make a Windows install usable seems daunting? (I say daunting, because I really didn't want to go there and just wanted to do a few basic things and then move on.) Windows is simply NOT ready for the desktop unless one has prior skills - one of which is familiarity with GUI installation and other MS-centric quirks such as not installing mouse and keyboard drivers by default. Again, I mention this because it is a fresh example of how even Windows requires a lot of work to use from the beginning. All available operating systems take time and special skills to get to the level that people like you and I are willing to live with.


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## SR_Ind (Sep 29, 2015)

OJ said:


> I did. And it would appear that we have some difference of opinion.  Of course you know well how to do this stuff. I'm probably much less skilled. However, my point is that there is no OS which works out of the box. Why single out FreeBSD as being significantly different.
> 
> Yesterday I spend several hours with a default MS-Windows install. It simply is not useful for basic file management and networking out of the box. I would have to spend many hours learning how to install appropriate software in order to do what I expect to do with the operating systems that I know (DOS, Linux, *BSD). From my perspective, FreeBSD only requires a few simple steps. Perhaps those steps are difficult for a person who comes from a MS-Windows background, but how is that different from my experience where what I need to do to make a Windows install usable seems daunting? (I say daunting, because I really didn't want to go there and just wanted to do a few basic things and then move on.) Windows is simply NOT ready for the desktop unless one has prior skills - one of which is familiarity with GUI installation and other MS-centric quirks such as not installing mouse and keyboard drivers by default. Again, I mention this because it is a fresh example of how even Windows requires a lot of work to use from the beginning. All available operating systems take time and special skills to get to the level that people like you and I are willing to live with.



Lest we go off topic.

1. Windows out of the box - I'm not sure what version of Windows you are using. I've Windows 7 on my corporate laptop (Fujitsu) and Windows 8.1 on my home laptop (HP which dual boots - FreeBSD as the second OS). I never needed to install any driver on either of this. Windows explorer serves my purpose as a file manager. Internet explorer works by default on my home laptop. In my corporate laptop it requires me to adjust the proxy settings sometimes.

2. Windows for developers - Something like IIS server doesn't needs installation. You just need to tick it in the Windows component. Works the same way in Windows versions / editions on servers (where it is on by default) and desktops. Same with SQL Server, MS developer tools will offer to install a stripped down version. Developer tools are specialized tools, so understandably it requires a installation process. Not talking of third party software here.

However, this is an unfair comparison. MS owns all these products and they have the manpower to bundle all this together.

Apt comparison will be CentOS (or its commercial counterpart RHEL). 
The installation process offers presets for "Desktop", "Minimal/Basic", "File Server", "Web Server" and "Database Server". IIRC recent versions of Debian too offers similar options. I'm talking of text /curses based installation program, not the GUI.

Even we confine ourselves strictly to BSD's, IIRC NetBSD (last used way back in 2010) has xorg in the base itself. They have even less funding and manpower. 

How do they manage it?

If an installation process is able to land the user to something like TWM running with XTerm, he/she is halfway through with desktop preparation already.


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## SR_Ind (Sep 29, 2015)

I'll try an analogy, when it comes to out of the box usefulness.

Think of a building with three stories and a basement.

Mac OS owns all the three stories (kernel, basic user land tools and specialized tools) and the basement (HW). Visitors allowed only in the top two floors i.e. third party applications.
Windows is similar to Mac OS, except that they don't own the basement.
FreeBSD owns the first and the second floors.
Linux - Well Linux is Linux - They own the first floor, but claim to own second floor as well and residents of both floors seem to trespass at will.

The FreeBSD stack will resemble similar to that of Windows with some/minimal effort (not that I'm fond of Windows, but that's closest ... FreeBSD can neither design their hardware nor afford the chaos called Linux). The key is "ownership".
Not UI/Graphics, but server applications. Its not that FreeBSD doesn't provide any (Sendmail for example). But leaves out other important server users (Web Servers, Databases, managed environments etc.).


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## UnixRocks (Oct 1, 2015)

SR_Ind said:


> I'll try an analogy, when it comes to out of the box usefulness.
> ...
> The FreeBSD stack will resemble similar to that of Windows with some/minimal effort (not that I'm fond of Windows, but that's closest ... FreeBSD can neither design their hardware nor afford the chaos called Linux). The key is "ownership".
> Not UI/Graphics, but server applications. Its not that FreeBSD doesn't provide any (Sendmail for example). But leaves out other important server users (Web Servers, Databases, managed environments etc.).


SR_Ind, I am not seeing how your post relates to the topic. I am a Level III systems administrator who helped move my company division toward FreeBSD and away from CentOS / Ubuntu / InsertSystemDLinuxDistroHere partly because of SystemD and its development team who appear to have little regard for servers. One of the *other* reasons we wanted to move to FreeBSD was *because* it does not _assume_ what we want up front with a pick-list of services. That is just another install screen for us to have to wade through when we just want a bare install onto which we can put just the components we need.

Regardless, the question is whether or not FreeBSD will become more popular due to Linux being overtaken with SystemD. In our case, the answer is a resounding "yes".


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## SR_Ind (Oct 2, 2015)

UnixRocks said:


> SR_Ind, I am not seeing how your post relates to the topic. *I am a Level III systems administrator* who helped move my company division toward FreeBSD and away from CentOS / Ubuntu / InsertSystemDLinuxDistroHere partly because of SystemD and its development team who appear to have little regard for servers. One of the *other* reasons we wanted to move to FreeBSD was *because* it does not _assume_ what we want up front with a pick-list of services. *That is just another install screen for us to have to wade through when we just want a bare install onto which we can put just the components we need.*
> 
> Regardless, the question is whether or not FreeBSD will become more popular due to Linux being overtaken with SystemD. In our case, the answer is a resounding "yes".



So, the installer screen is just another screen for you to "wade" through when "you" want a bare install? And who are "us" in your context? System administrator?
So, FreeBSD installer must be designed for system administrators alone? 
And FreeBSD must "pre-assume" your (System administrator) needs alone? Other user groups be damned.

You may not notice the hypocrisy, intolerance and the arrogance in your post, others do. At least those do that have English as their primary language of communication.

Forget about newbie requests in this forum asking for a GUI, or even experienced users like me suggesting that a preset installer with server components could be available, you have problem with the very concept that choices could be made available during the installation.

Notwithstanding the fact that during installation it is up to you to pick what lands up on your hard disk, you feel its okay to infringe upon the right of other to have choices.
It also escapes your comprehension that system administrators are handed the responsibility of managing the server only. They don't own the server or the applications running on it.

You can solace in the fact that even our IT support (yeah Fortune 100 company) behaves exactly the same way.

No wonder the entire IT support cabal alongside the HR are most hated departments in any organization.


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## Beastie7 (Oct 2, 2015)

SR_Ind said:


> So, the installer screen is just another screen for you to "wade" through when "you" want a bare install? And who are "us" in your context? System administrator?
> So, FreeBSD installer must be designed for system administrators alone?
> And FreeBSD must "pre-assume" your (System administrator) needs alone? Other user groups be damned.



Those who want a simple, and cohesive toolkit for *systems development and administration*. You want a graphical environment? You gotta build your base. This isn't Linux or Windows. Your insistence on such ideological shoehorning conveys a lack of understanding on how the project works, and why it's been the way it has been.



SR_Ind said:


> Forget about newbie requests in this forum asking for a GUI, or even experienced users like me suggesting that a preset installer with server components could be available, you have problem with the very concept that choices could be made available during the installation.



Forget about the presence of PC-BSD; which already coincides with what newbies have been requesting in this forum. Forget about the fact that here lies documentation one can follow for installing a desktop environment, and any other desktop related utilities. You have a problem with the very concept that FreeBSD follows the BSD philosophy of separation of Base and third party software, and that the installer is to be as light and simple as possible. Such artifacts that have been specifically pre-defined a long time ago and historically maintained due to it's lineage and community.



SR_Ind said:


> You may not notice the hypocrisy, intolerance and the arrogance in your post, others do. At least those do that have English as their primary language of communication.



The irony in your post is excruciatingly embarrassing.



SR_Ind said:


> Notwithstanding the fact that during installation it is up to you to pick what lands up on your hard disk, you feel its okay to infringe upon the right of other to have choices.
> It also escapes your comprehension that system administrators are handed the responsibility of managing the server only. They don't own the server or the applications running on it.



Notwithstanding the fact that you're trying to shoehorn a development methodology onto something not targeted towards desktop users. Such deliverables are not (and has never been) the focus of the projects developers. You have plenty of choice *after *you install FreeBSD.

What keeps you from using PC-BSD? It's objectives provides exactly what you're after.



SR_Ind said:


> No wonder the entire IT support cabal alongside the HR are most hated departments in any organization.



That's a terrible generalization, and it's quite offensive.


Please, someone close this thread already.


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## Crivens (Oct 3, 2015)

And the referee enters the ring, sounding the whistle and anounces the last round. Shake hands, gentlemen, for this thread will be closed soon. Maybe this evening, maybe a bit later.


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