FreeBSD For The iMac And Other Eye-Openers

Anonymous Coward writes: "In this interview, part III, over at GNULinux.com you can read what Jordan Hubbard, CEO of FreeBSD Inc., has to say about the future of FreeBSD. '[...] Finally, the notion of the PC is changing. One could even argue that the PC has widened to encompass the PowerPC, because there are all these iMacs on peoples' desks, and according to the original mandate we should be looking at those iMacs, too, which is what we're doing,' sounds pretty sweet." This article provides a positive (but sober) overview of recent and anticipated progress from the devil-suit side of free software. You might also be interested in Jordan's answer to the question, "Can FreeBSD scale to the PDA?"

Comments

Of course it can scale down!

[SecretAsianMan]

Lots of work by many experienced gurus has already gone into adapting FreeBSD for small applications. Currently, there is a development kit known as PicoBSD that enables one to automatically build floppy images that contain a minimal FreeBSD. Other people have created their own custom embedded versions of FreeBSD; the tight integration and cleanness of FreeBSD and its source tree make it quite easy for even an amateur to roll his/her own version. I myself am currently working on an improved development kit for building embeddded versions of FreeBSD quickly and easily. It's output is currently running off of an 8MB DiskOnChip on the desk to my right.

For more information, see Small FreeBSD Home Page. It's a bit outdated, but work is still actively going on. A maintainer is currently working on improving the site. To get at the very heart of things, subscribe to the freebsd-small mailing list (info here) or read the archive.

See the forest. Forget the trees.

[tpv]

their point is to make the best possible BSD for the x86

You could more say their point was to make the best BSD for the x86, but even that's no quite true.
386BSD came out, and the FreeBSD guys (who obviously weren't FreeBSD guys then) thought "Cool, UNIX for the masses. And it's free. We like this." But 386BSD never went anywhere. It jumped out of the blocks, but then stopped, and so FreeBSD started where 386BSD left off.

Their goal was to provide UNIX for the people out there. That meant providing BSD for the common hardware, the x86. It wasn't that they thought other platforms weren't good, or didn't deserve FreeBSD, it was (as I understand it) more a case of saying "We want to provide the best unix to the most people" and to devote their limited reources to small platforms was counter-productive.
FreeBSD was never supposed to be x86 for the sake of x86, any more than Linux was (which started off in 386 assembly). It was (and is) x86 because that's where people most needed it. Despite running on many architectures, Linux is still most popular on x86. It's where the market is. FreeBSD is highly pragmatic - don't do it cause it's cool, do it cause it acheives a purpose.
So, the conclusion then is, if the FreeBSD team feels that pouring some of the effort into a new architecture is going to provide greater overall benefit to the users, then it is within their original goals to do so.

x86 was a starting point, not an end.

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