Integrating GUI into the OS?

[Carpetsmoker]

I don't think that writing a whole new set of tools really solves anything, IMHO The `hey, this could be better, let's just make a whole new application/api and throw the old one out'-attitude is seldom useful. Actually making the existing solutions better is almost always the best thing to do, there are exceptions to this of course, and sometimes there is no one `golden' solution, but more often than not the differences are minor and don't really matter.

A simple example might be epoll vs. kqueue, they both do the same thing, and AFAIK there's no real functional difference between them.
kqueue was there a couple of years earlier, but for some reason the Linux devs opted to create epoll. Perhaps they had good reasons for that, perhaps not, but the situation 12 years later is that we need to use a wrapper if we want to support both FreeBSD & Linux.
Later someone created inotify, which does pretty much the same as epoll & kqueue, with minor differences/improvements, further complicating matters.
And that's just Linux & FreeBSD, other systems may use yet another solution...

[LeFrettchen]

Originally Posted by harishankar

Obstacle to freedom in what way?

Just because choice = freedom.
An imposed GUI wouldn't be a sign of freedom for me. Even a good GUI...

For example, OS X is a really good OS, with a very good GUI, well integrated.
But I prefer OpenBSD, just because it's more flexible.

Originally Posted by harishankar

The biggest problem appears to be the mindset resistance which you have shown, and which appears to be shared be the BSD developer community.

I started to use computers with MS-DOS, just like you, and I use everyday Windows, OS X & OpenBSD, with Windows's Explorer, OS X's Finder, KDE, LXDE, XFCE, FVWM etc..., depending of the machine I use.
And I don't see much differences between those different OS & GUI.

I'm not resistant to anything.
But I really don't see the need for a new GUI, since BSD's GUI are sufficient enough.

So I wonder if a new GUI would change anything, except for a low percent of users...

[harishankar]

Let us be specific. I have stated in what ways the desktop environments in BSDs are lacking. Namely, they lack the tighter integration with the OS that Linux provides by various daemons, some of which are ported to BSDs while others are not. It is currently messy "Linuxisms" that make BSDs more user-friendly for desktop.

I have proposed two solutions. What is your stand on each of them?

i.e. 1. One of the BSDs choose to focus and create a DE that is entirely UNIX-like and clean, i.e. focus on the BSD services instead of relying on Linuxisms. It could be a fork of any of the existing desktops like Gnome or KDE as well. Thus the entire abstraction layer could be eliminated making the GUI layer talk directly to the kernel rather than through "abstraction kits". This will be ideal and allow BSDs to have feature rich DEs without depending on Linux code.

2. BSDs embrace new solutions in the place of the existing Linuxisms like Conksolekit, policykit, dbus etc. which will seamlessly allow the existing DEs to work as feature-rich on BSD as in Linux.

Surely it is within the scope of a project or a group within the BSD community?

The current situation is that many of the features of Gnome and KDE that are Linux specific, either do not work at all on BSD or are half-implemented, making these desktops less featureful.

[IdOp]

Originally Posted by harishankar

i.e. 1. One of the BSDs choose to focus and create a DE that is entirely UNIX-like and clean, i.e. focus on the BSD services instead of relying on Linuxisms. It could be a fork of any of the existing desktops like Gnome or KDE as well. Thus the entire abstraction layer could be eliminated making the GUI layer talk directly to the kernel rather than through "abstraction kits". This will be ideal and allow BSDs to have feature rich DEs without depending on Linux code.

Wouldn't the end result of this be a single DE, though? (As in the first sentence.) E.g., it might be a fork of Gnome. I don't know about others, but personally I want nothing to do with Gnome or KDE, so this would reduce my choices.

2. BSDs embrace new solutions in the place of the existing Linuxisms like Conksolekit, policykit, dbus etc. which will seamlessly allow the existing DEs to work as feature-rich on BSD as in Linux.

But, the existing DEs are (initially) a product of Linux-land, and so rely on the Linuxisms. If you replace the Linuxisms with new solutions, you'll still have to port the existing DEs to the new solutions, in perpetuity as they evolve. Or if the existing DEs are really to be used "seamlessly", then the new solutions must continue to change to emulate the changes to *kit, dbus, etc., in Linux-land. Does this really get us anywhere? Maybe I'm missing something.

[DaBSD]

Originally Posted by ocicat

I suspect you have already answered this question when you acknowledged above that the *BSD developer community is small, & that they have to pick & choose what battles they can or will fight.

The *BSD developer community is small not least because it is split into Free/Net/Open/DragonFly/Midnight/bitrig and God knows what other teams.

Linux has long been supported by industry grands, such as IBM, Oracle, RedHat etc., who's nowadays responsible for almost 50% of kernel code changes. IBM alone invested 1bn USD into Linux 10-12 years ago and is going to repeat it again. Such a strong backing leads to a much broader functionality, hence a bigger eco-system, more distribs, more hardware drivers, more software, more games ported, more life.

[muflon]

Originally Posted by DaBSD

The *BSD developer community is small not least because it is split into Free/Net/Open/DragonFly/Midnight/bitrig and God knows what other teams.

"Small" community of people which knows what they are doing mostly equals to High Quality of Code.

OpenBSD is the example of that.

[Carpetsmoker]

Originally Posted by DaBSD

Linux has long been supported by industry grands, such as IBM, Oracle, RedHat etc., who's nowadays responsible for almost 50% of kernel code changes. IBM alone invested 1bn USD into Linux 10-12 years ago and is going to repeat it again. Such a strong backing leads to a much broader functionality, hence a bigger eco-system, more distribs, more hardware drivers, more software, more games ported, more life.

I don't think that industry support equals better quality. In fact, in my experience as both a user & developer is that commercially developed is often (not always) of poorer quality. A mediocre `meh, good enough' is the industry standard.

[DaBSD]

Originally Posted by muflon

"Small" community of people which knows what they are doing mostly equals to High Quality of Code.

OpenBSD is the example of that.

Well, this comment should rather be addressed to Ocicat, who was the first to make the point about the small size of *BSD developer teams:

Originally Posted by DaBSD

The *BSD developer community is small not least because it is split into Free/Net/Open/DragonFly/Midnight/bitrig and God knows what other teams.