On Wed, Apr 04, 2001 at 05:46:01PM -0700, Jason Victor wrote:
> Wow, thanks alot for all your advice. I just have a
> couple (read: 412) questions about switching to
> FreeBSD (if I should do it.) Please keep in mind that
> I am a hobbyist developer, but am looking to get
> better.
>
> 1. Can I work on the GNOME project under FreeBSD? Does
> anyone have Ximian GNOME running?
> 2. Is the FreeBSD project smaller than Debian's? Does
> that mean that a certain individual has more or less
> projects to choose from? Do you guys need lots of
> help?
> 3. Can I compile apps in GTK/GNOME? I don't think gcc
> works in FreeBSD...
> 4. Can I get involved in the part of FreeBSD involving
> moving it to the home/desktop market? Competing with
> Linux?
> 5. How close is FreeBSD to Linux?
> 6. Is there any logo cooler than the Daemon?
> 7. Why isn't FreeBSD more popular than Linux? You say
> it is so much better!!! How quickly is FreeBSD
> developing?
> 8. Can I work on an apt-get for FreeBSD? Does one
> exist?
> 9. Can FreeBSD run ALL Linux apps (including source
> tarballs as well as binary installs like
> StarOffice's?)
> 10. Which is a better development/home user
> environment? Honestly. Does Glade work?
> 11. How steep will the learning curve be for a Linux
> user?
> 12. What are the reasons big companies like Yahoo! are
> using FreeBSD over Linux.
> 13. Does anyone think FreeBSD will be popular enough
> to compete with Linux? Windows?
>
> Thanks alot to anyone who can answer any of these
> questions!!!
> --Jason
1. GNOME is in the ports, 1.2.<something>. Recently, GNOME announced
official support for FreeBSD, which means the GNOME packages won't be
released until they are guaranteed to run on FreeBSD. If you want 1.2,
get it from the ports, if you want 1.4, grab the tarballs from GNOME
themselves.
2. I'm not sure about the size of the Debian project. If I'm not
mistaken, there are a couple hundred CVS committers for FreeBSD, who are
regulated by 9 (now elected) core members. Each committer has full
access to the entire FreeBSD repository. If you have patches to submit,
you can give them to a committer. In the ports tree, each port is
maintained by a certain individual.
`3. GCC is the default compiler for FreeBSD. The current included version
is 2.95.2, 2.95.3 should be out in a while (it needs to be certified as
stable enough for FreeBSD -STABLE). Everything I've ever built on my
system has been built with GCC.
4. You can do anything you want to get FreeBSD on the desktop, although
I don't think the mentality is the same here. My impression, and
certainly my opinion, is that it doesn't matter one bit whether or not
FreeBSD is on every desktop. I use it for my 17+ reasons; I don't care
who else uses it. Linux seems to be fighting a market-share war for
religious purposes. Still, because the license FreeBSD is distributed
under is so free (much more so than the GPL), you can even close up
everything, add propriety code, and sell packaged FreeBSD for $1k per
box. Basically, you do what you want with it.
5. Did you ever play Marble Madness for Nintendo? Remember the final
stage? The message on the screen was "Everything you know is wrong."
FreeBSD is like that level... things will seem backwards, almost
counterintuitive. That's because you've wrapped your brain around the
Linux way of doing things (often an ass-backwards way, too). Give it a
few days of patient work, you'll get used to everything. Essentially,
this involves relearning the device names, and figuring out where your
favorite Linux programs are now located. Other things, like compiling
new kernels, updating your system, and configuring the bootscripts, will
need to be learned, too, but they aren't essential to getting a running
test system going.
6. Does there need to be? I personally think the Daemon is a bad-ass
logo, much cooler than a penguin. I mean, what the fuck is a penguin
good for, anyway?
7. FreeBSD is developed very rapidly. Especially if you subscribe to
mailing lists, you can see bugs fixed almost as soon as they are
mentioned. New features are added more conservatively, however. New
stuff is tried out in -CURRENT, where the heavy-duty FreeBSD hackers
make it stable, then merge it into -STABLE. The reason Linux became more
popular than FreeBSD is, as I've read: Linux development is
helter-skelter--anybody can make changes to the system and redistribute
them with ease. As a consequence, a wide range of people worked to
develop the components on your Debian system. This distribution and
encouragement led to confusion, but also popularity. FreeBSD, on the
other hand, is maintained by a fixed group of committers. While you can
still modify your system, it is more difficult to get random changes
into the main code tree. The result is a more structured and sane
development process, with an emphasis on stability rather than untested
additions.
8. No you cannot. The analagous process in FreeBSD is to locate the
program you wish to install in the ports tree, go to its directory, and
do a `make install clean`. This fetches the source, configures it,
builds it, installs it and removes the unnecessary build leftovers. If
you don't have the time to compile, use `pkg_add -r <pkgname>`. This
will fetch and install a prebuilt packaged.
9. A wide range of Linux apps can be run under FreeBSD. Examples include
VMWare, Netscape (although there is a native port), StarOffice,
Mathematica and many others. Source designed specifically for Linux may
have trouble building, but if you can build it, chances are you can run
it.
10. I don't see an advantage to either platform in terms of development.
Both have the same compiler by default, both are open systems. People
may disagree, but for building programs for yourself, it probably won't
matter one way or another. I don't know about Glade, I´ve never tried to
use it.
11. I used Linux for about a year, and was quite proficient with it. It
took me about a week to move around comfortably in FreeBSD, but I'm
still learning the little idiosyncracies (it's been 2 months now). Mind
you, I know more about Linux than many people that have been using it
for many years, and I put a lot of time into my system, so your
results may vary.
12. Stability, I imagine. A better, fault-tolerant file system. A better
license. Better networking, particularly the TCP/IP stack. Furthermore,
FreeBSD is much more mature than Linux.
13. As I said before, I don't think FreeBSD users really care what
happens in the desktop market. There's certainly no prominent person
pushing hard to get FreeBSD everywhere. The thing is, to put it on the
desktop, it would have to be mangled, and I like the way things are done
now. For instance, take the partitioning process. If the average Windows
user is too clueless to format a hard disk partition, imagine the same
person trying to edit the master boot record using fdisk, and then
creating a disklabel for a new slice. But I like how it's done now, I
think disklabel and fdisk are powerful tools. If you want the
Windows-replacement hopeful, stick with Linux.
--
Andrew Hesford
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