# Choosing between portability and innovation



## oliverh (Mar 10, 2011)

> These three cases clearly show that there's a constant tension between portability and innovation, which are two important qualities of open source software. In a lot of domains, Linux is taking the lead with respect to innovation, and the BSDs are forced to follow this lead if they don't want to be left behind. While the BSDs will probably not be interested in adopting systemd, implementing KMS is a must-have because one cannot imagine a modern X.Org desktop any more without it. But the biggest portability problems will be in the layers right above the kernel that don't have suitable abstraction layers, such as the Xfce case shows. Will FreeBSD implement udev or will the problem be solved another way? These kinds of questions are important and choosing when to use the POSIX or the Linux API is a delicate balancing act: choosing a Linux-centric approach for a low-level component like systemd is understandable because of the performance and maintenance gains, but most applications won't necessarily benefit from that approach.
> 
> But maybe the biggest problem these cases hint at is that Linux development is being done at such a fast pace that other operating systems just can't keep up. Linux distributions and Linux-centric developers are used to the "release early, release often" mantra, including swapping out key components and breaking APIs each release. The BSD world doesn't work that way, and this makes working together on a modern cross-platform open source desktop increasingly difficult. The innovation of Linux inevitably comes at a price: Linux is the de facto Unix platform now, and hence more and more programs will not be portable to other operating systems.



via lwn


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## Crivens (Mar 11, 2011)

*Rant time*

Somewhere in the last years I came to the conclusion that Linux is the new Windows. 
When you throw portability out of the window to gain "maximum user experience", something is turning my toenails up. This smells of walled gardens, any I am not going in there because I am not going to update each and every port/package/rpm/whatever because someone decided to use the newest since sliced bread interface for minimal benefit. 

If I wanted to have all the newest bells and whistles, combined with a desktop like a candy box, there are other prominent choices one could make. Poking around in some XML file from hal to get something running or messing about with regedit - where is the difference?

</rant>


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## drhowarddrfine (Mar 11, 2011)

Agree.


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## Pushrod (Mar 11, 2011)

I know it will never happen, but I actually wish that FreeBSD had a well-integrated GUI (including WM) that was maintained as part of the FreeBSD project and was purpose-built to work in a consistent, compatible manner, as is the rest of the OS. Leave it to the Linux community to waste more time on tacking new APIs and features to X.org, which will always be a failure in my eyes. X could always be emulated for compatibility.


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## sossego (Mar 11, 2011)

Pushrod said:
			
		

> I know it will never happen, but I actually wish that FreeBSD had a well-integrated GUI (including WM) that was maintained as part of the FreeBSD project



The closest you could come to it would be recreating the older 3 CD set or single DVD with Xorg and adding a window manager. It would have to be something that you yourself works on.
Another thing: everybody doesn't want or need  the same features.


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