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Interview with Matthew Dillon of DragonFly BSD
JigSaw writes "Well-known FreeBSD/DragonFly/Linux/Amiga system hacker Matthew Dillon discusses a number of interesting points regarding where the BSDs are going, the status and goals of his latest project DragonFly BSD, the status of his innovative Backplane distributed database, his exciting plans to develop DragonFly into a transparently cluster-capable system implementing native SSI (Single System Image) which is something that no other operating system can do today, and more."
No, but its dying
1. Please tell us about the general status of DragonFly BSD.
Matthew Dillon: The project has been going very well. We've primarily been focused on the 'guts' of the system during this initial period, and you can get a fair idea of the work that has been accomplished so far by looking at the Diary page on our site.
Most of the work so far has been to operating systems internals. The work has been a combination of new work, like our light weight kernel threading core, plus selective backports from FreeBSD-5 to keep the system's device drivers up to date (e.g. such as the USB subsystem).
From a userland perspective we have maintained a FreeBSD style environment, so DragonFly basically runs everything that FreeBSD-4.x can run. The packaging system probably won't be done until the second release so we are at the moment leveraging off of FreeBSD's ports system for user apps. Everything you'd expect of a BSD system (X, mozilla, etc) is available to DragonFly users.
The first release is slated for some time in mid-June, hopefully before the USENIX Technical Conference. That will be the 1.0 release. We've been fairly careful to maintain as high a level of reliability as possible during development and I think we've done a pretty good job meeting that goal. The first release is intended to be more of a technology showpiece then an integrated end-user platform.
2. Are you using any bits and pieces from FreeBSD-5, or you only strictly importing/exporting to FreeBSD-4 codebase?
Matthew Dillon: DragonFly began as a fork off of FreeBSD-4, because that was the most reliable starting point and because we wanted to do major core pieces of the system quite differently from the direction FreeBSD-5 took. For example, we are focused on more of a compartmentalized threading model to scale to SMP rather then the mutex model that FreeBSD-5 has chosen to use. But the FreeBSD-4 codebase is of strictly limited utility as a source of new code and maintainance updates. FreeBSD developers are doing nearly all new coding in the FreeBSD-5 branch.
So, basically, we are doing the major core pieces of the OS differently, such as our significantly evolved threading and messaging subsystems, but we are also maintaining a FreeBSD-5 compatible (or mostly compatible) device driver API in order to be able to bring in all the excellent device driver work that has gone into FreeBSD-5. It's simple logic, really... we don't have the manpower to be able to accomplish both our infrastructure goals *AND* be able to maintain pace with new PC hardware at the same time. This methodology allows us to proceed on both fronts by focusing our own new work on the infrastructure and bringing in FreeBSD-5's device driver work. This isn't to say that we don't do some of our own DD work, but the vast majority of it is take from FreeBSD-5 by design.
3. What is the primary goal of dragonfly, servers or desktops?
Matthew Dillon: Both. When it comes right down to it the idea of targeting a system to the 'server' is simply another word for 'reliability and scaleability', and the idea of targeting a system to the 'desktop' is simply another word for 'out of the box GUI'. It's not really an either-or deal. All UNIX systems, including Linux, the BSD's, DragonFly... basically use the same desktop components so supporting a desktop environment comes down to being able to provide integrated solutions that work out of the box.
It is extraordinarily difficult to make GUIs work out of the box on PCs due to the wide variability in hardware and peripherals, but at the same time technology has continued to progress over the years towards standards that actually make this easier to accomplish. At some point the standards going in one direction will meet the software going in the other and systems such as Linux and the BSDs (including DragonFly) will be able to approach the out-of-the-box compatibility that took Microsoft billions of dollars of development to accomplish.
It's dead, but for some reason it continues to walk around!
Must be infected with a virus....
Wow, funny. No really, it's so original and clever, how do you come up with this gold? Do share your secret with us.
Suppose you have BSD installed on /dev/hda5.
/dev/hda5
Boot into Linux and do
mke2fs
Your BSD problems are solved.
Umm, BSDs controlling the kernel and libc and other core software, it is far more common in BSD to break binary compatibility over releases.
And if you think the Linux kernel breaks userspace binary compatibility you can just stay in your corner with your head up your anus.
women are overrated. A hand and a bottle of lotion works better and doesn't smell like fish.
Obligatory BSD == "BSD is So Dead" || BSD == "BSD is Still Dead";
If you're religishitty, KILL YOURSELF!
You obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
You also obviously a BSD zealot. To you guys, BSD is always better than Linux. Nowadays you're constantly getting shot down by facts, so you've come up with a whole host of intangibles or difficult to measure properties where BSD is "better" than Linux.
BSD is cleaner than Linux.
BSD is more organised than Linux.
Linux is very bloated.
Linux is very crufty.
BSD is "designed".
BSD is more professional than Linux.
Jesus fucking christ give it a fucking rest already please? Just go about your BSD stuff and be happy. Just constantly rubbishing Linux at every opportunity just makes you look like an imbicile with Linux envy. Especially in areas where Linux may be ahead of BSD.
Yet another sickening blow has struck what's left of the *BSD community, as a soon-to-be-released report by the independent Commision for Technology Management (CTM) after a year-long study has concluded: *BSD is already dead. Here are some of the commission's findings:
.005% of internet servers. A recent attempt at a face-to-face summit in Boulder, Colorado culminated in an out-and-out fistfight between core developers. Hotel security guards broke up the melee and banned the participants from the hotel. Two of the developers were hospitalized.
Fact: DragonflyBSD, yet another offshoot of the beleaguered FreeBSD "project", is already collapsing under the weight of internal power struggles and in-fighting. "They haven't done a single decent release," notes Mark Baron, an industry watcher and columnist. "Their mailing lists read like an online version of a Jerry Springer episode, complete with food fights, swearing, name-calling, and chair-throwing." Netcraft reports that DragonflyBSD is run on exactly 0% of internet servers.
Fact: the *BSDs have balkanized yet again. There are now no less than twelve separate, competing *BSD projects, each of which has introduced fundamental incompatibilities with the other *BSDs, and frequently with Unix standards. Average number of developers in each project: fewer than five. Average number of users per project: there are no definitive numbers, but reports show that all projects are on the decline.
Fact: There are almost no FreeBSD developers left, and its use, according to Netcraft, is down to a sadly crippled
Fact: NetBSD, which claims to focus on portability (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for BSD use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our NetBSD boxes out to the backyard and shot them in the head. We're much happier running Linux."
Fact: *BSD has no support from the media. Number of Linux magazines available at bookstores: 5 (Linux Journal, Linux World, Linux Developer, Linux Format, Linux User). Number of available *BSD magazines: 0. Current count of Linux-oriented technical books: 1071. Current count of *BSD books: 6.
Fact: XFree86 is dropping support for *BSD. The remaining core group believes that the *BSDs have strayed too far from Unix standards and have become too difficult to support along with Linux and Solaris x86. "It's too much trouble," said one anonymous developer. "If they want to make their own standards, let them doing the porting for us."
Fact: Many user-level applications will no longer work under *BSD, and no one is working to change this. The GIMP, a Photoshop-like application, has not worked at all under *BSD since version 1.1 (sorry, too much trouble for such a small base, developers have said). OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office clone, has never worked under *BSD and never will. ("Why would we bother?" said developer Steven Andrews, an OpenOffice team lead.)
Fact: servers running OpenBSD, which claims to focus on security, are frequently compromised. According to Jim Markham, editor of the online security forum SecurityWatch, the few OpenBSD servers that exist on the internet have become a joke among the hacker community. "They make a game out of it," he says. "(OpenBSD leader) Theo [de Raadt] will scramble to make a new patch to fix one problem, and they've already compromised a bunch of boxes with a different exploit."
With these incontroverible facts staring (what's left of) the *BSD community in the face, they can only draw one conclusion: *BSD is already dead.
NOT A TRUE COPY. He didn't say BSD is dying!
Duh. Duhhhhhhh. Bored Moderators!
Here is an exact copy of point 7, paragraph 3, in the parent post:
"The bottom line is that *BSD is dying. It's losing out in terms of developers to Linux and losing out in market share to Windows. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dying."
Not surprisingly, that paragraph is NOT in the original.
Moderators, you were trolled, trolled, trolled!!!! And you moderated down the messengers who were trying to help you, including me.
We need a better moderation system! When was the last time you went to a party and said absolutely nothing? Yet moderators, if they want to do their duty of moderating, are not allowed to talk.