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FreeBSD General Other questions regarding FreeBSD which do not fit in any of the categories below. |
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I would agree with the entries in your "very important" category, and add a decent virtual machine (Virtual Box would be a good candidate) and improving the linuxulator. The latter is important because all of the commercial desktop software runs only on Linux, and the emulation layer is pretty stale.
Those things you list as "important" are not to me, personally. I don't use laptops nor do any TV stuff. It is important to recognize, though, that what a desktop is depends a whole lot on the individual. Beyond simple email, web viewing, documents and music, users' needs begin to diverge rapidly. It really is hard to say what a desktop is other than it is what people do interactively on the computer. BTW, running the Windows version of Flash9 in Firefox under Wine works pretty well. Native would of course be better, but in the interim this works pretty well. |
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That it is true, I am using a laptop, so these are important to me
The lack of a decent virtual machine (I guess you mean FreeBSD as a host server) I think it would be more important on the server side. Anyways, adding a VirtualBox or a Vmware virtual machine would be great! |
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No, a VM is probably more important on the desktop. VMware ESX is now free, so you can use that as a base for a server to run whatever you want. On the desktop side, there are always applications that will be Windows-only. So either you run them in a VM, or keep a Windows box around to do so. The latter might be easier, but for me there are so many of these applications that it sure would be nice simply to run them in a different window.
And yes, I do mean as a virtual machine host. There is an effort to port the most recent version of VMware to FreeBSD, but it is being hung up partially by the unfinished state of the Linux 2.6 layer. |
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The lack of suspend-to-disk and suspend-to-ram is very important for me. The 3D thing is a non-issue for me as the GPU in my laptop is fully supported by open source drivers, and quite capable of driving blender and compiz.
Adam |
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FreeBSD is a server operating system, which just happens to run on the destop.
If you want a desktop OS with the features you listed, then choose Windows, or OSX, Or Linux, or whatever. Quote:
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UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things. |
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&Carpetsmoker
So U think the FreeBSD is the best solution for any kind of servers(for corporates personal use ant so on)? In which way the BSD are better servers than linux? They are safer, fastest? Regards Artur |
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Adam |
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FreeBSD - The Power to Serve Quite directly, I think, yes. |
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Adam |
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Linux currently is very usable as a desktop operating system and shares with FreeBSD the same X windows environment, the same window managers, the most of the available opensource programs, etc.. - so with just a few additions FreeBSD can do the same good job as Linux does. Quote:
We are talking about just a f** player after all !!! How much money are needed for this??... We don't need the whole adobe flash suite to be ported to FreeBSD, for God's shake!! Last edited by harisman; 18th August 2008 at 07:43 PM. |
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But, aren't all the *BSDs (and even all *nix) server operating systems?
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And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14) |
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I don't think so. The BSDs and GNU/Linux distributions are multipurpose operating systems that have predominantly been used on servers in the past because they were originally intended as F/OSS replacements for proprietary Unixes, which were also predominantly used on servers. As time passed, the userbase of at least the BSDs and Linux diversified because of how far-reaching F/OSS is. Inter-Unix portability is outstanding, so I think any Unix can be used as a fulfilling desktop operating system. However, some are better than others, depending on what the user(s) expect out of their system.
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"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity." MacBook Pro (Darwin 9), iMac (Darwin 9), iPod Touch (Darwin 9), Dell Optiplex GX620 (FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE) |
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And the WORD was made flesh, and dwelt among us. (John 1:14) |
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Current market capitalization is $23Bn. I'll chip in a few dollars, if you are up for it.
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The only dumb question is a question not asked. The only dumb answer is an answer not given. |
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The FreeBSD Foundation could fund Adobe as Sun did/does for the Solaris port. It all comes down to how much money the Foundation has. Currently, there's ongoing discussions on the mailing lists about funding Sun for a VirtualBox port. I've found only one discussion of porting Flash; most people seem to be content with the current state of Flash and are looking forward to Flash 9 on 8.0R (Flash 9 works rather well in the 8-CURRENT branch where Linuxulator is at 2.6.16 by default and has more features). I think that sound virtualization (Xen and Virtualbox) support is more urgent than Flash support. Some people may want Flash, but I doubt even vast majority of people who use FreeBSD as a desktop want Flash support. Our best bets with respect to Flash is swfdec and gnash. It's best for F/OSS to support those in the long-run too. (By the way, I don't care about Flash.)
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"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity." MacBook Pro (Darwin 9), iMac (Darwin 9), iPod Touch (Darwin 9), Dell Optiplex GX620 (FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE) |
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Linux is trying to be a jack of all trades, like windows. |
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I wouldn't be so quick to say that "FreeBSD is a server operating system," but it has historically been predominantly used as such. The same is true for Linux; only recently has desktop Linux just taken off.
If you look at FreeBSD's userbase, then I'm willing to bet that the lack of a native Adobe Flash player doesn't matter to at least half of them. I've encountered complete indifference to Flash and sometimes outright hatred of it on the IRC channel and on here. Flash only matters to those who need it. I've been happily running swfdec for a while, and I appreciate that Flash content on a website doesn't load automatically. Flash is annoying; I use it only for Youtube and Google Video, which swfdec and Gnash handle very well. What's wrong with open source drivers? There was an announcement on NVNews about a month ago that Nvidia would be releasing drivers for FreeBSD 64-bit in about six months. The git version of the radeon driver for Xorg supports upto and through X1000 series cards with accelerated graphics. That branch will be completing support for HD2000 series cards in about three months, as ATi will be releasing documents in about a week. I have not looked into the Intel driver, but I don't see too much of a problem. Maybe I'm not too picky. I do agree with DrJ that the lack of quality virtual machine software is definitely hindering sometimes, especially considering that FreeBSD is still predominantly used in server environments where virtual machine software is often necessary. Progress in ongoing to port VirtualBox to FreeBSD, and I suppose the big thing would be to get Xen Dom0 support. DomU is a step forward, but Dom0 is the most important thing. It would give FreeBSD a good virtualization framework that it has lacked for quite a while. Xen and VirtualBox are the only options I see because VMWare remains woefully ignorant that we even exist, most understandably though. As for suspend, here is the zzz manual page: Code:
ZZZ(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual ZZZ(8) NAME zzz -- suspend an ACPI or APM system SYNOPSIS zzz DESCRIPTION The zzz utility checks for ACPI or APM support and then suspends the sys- tem appropriately. For APM, apm -z will be issued. For ACPI, the configured suspend state will be looked up, checked to see if it is supported and, acpiconf -s <state> will be issued. SEE ALSO acpi(4), apm(4), acpiconf(8), apm(8) AUTHORS This manual page was written by Nate Lawson <njl@FreeBSD.org>. FreeBSD 7.0 July 13, 2003 FreeBSD 7.0 The last item in "Important" referring to "tv/video" is definitely only important to a select few, if that even, maybe only you. As far as FreeBSD Foundation's role in getting a Flash player goes is that they could pay to have Adobe port it over. That's how Solaris has been supported because Sun initially paid them to port it over. However, I doubt the FreeBSD Foundation has those kinds of financial resources to make that possible, so that brings me to the most reasonable alternative, which is to use the Linux version via linuxulator (compatibility layer) with nspluginwrapper. The current version in the 7 branch is at 2.4.2, but the version in 8-CURRENT is 2.6.16, which apparently needs a bit of cleanup. According to the mailing lists, Flash 9 also works "rather well" in 8-CURRENT, so there's hope for it. What's important and what's not important in an operating system is subjective upon the user. You can't generalize like this. Most of the things you listed I don't particularly care, and you'll find many more users like myself who barely give a hoot about Flash, suspend, or the media framework you suggest.
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"UNIX is basically a simple operating system, but you have to be a genius to understand the simplicity." MacBook Pro (Darwin 9), iMac (Darwin 9), iPod Touch (Darwin 9), Dell Optiplex GX620 (FreeBSD 7.1-STABLE) Last edited by ninjatux; 17th August 2008 at 11:02 PM. |
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adamk is correct, "The Power to Serve" means exactly what it says... "to render assistance; be of use; help."
I can't say I agree with Carpetsmokers opinion, all of the BSD's are multipurpose, it's up to the user to define that purpose. I use OpenBSD on all my workstations... as for the "important features" the OP mentioned, I happen to think they're completely irrelevant. |
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