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FreeBSD Vows to Compete with Desktop Linux
AlanS2002 writes "FreeBSD developer Scott Long is being reported as saying that FreeBSD is quickly approaching feature parity with Linux. Apparently this is being achieved through efforts to more tightly integrate GNOME with FreeBSD, with one of the priorities being to 'GNOME's hardware abstraction layer--which handles hardware-specific code--working with FreeBSD'."
To head off some confusion: This isn't about the FreeBSD base system; it's about third party code (like GNOME and KDE) in the FreeBSD ports tree. The FreeBSD base system already has feature parity with Linux (ok, there are a few things Linux has which we don't, but there are also things we have and Linux doesn't) -- the problem now is to get groups like GNOME and KDE to use the features we're making available to them.
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In ports. KDE have been tightly integrated with FreeBSD for years.
There are separate teams working on KDE and GNOME integration. It just so happens that the interview was conducted with a GNOME on FreeBSD developer, so the focus was on GNOME. Be assured that FreeBSD's KDE integration is very good and will be even further improved on in the future. DesktopBSD, for example, features KDE as the default desktop.
Also, KDE is officially a cross-platform environment, with KDE4 being developed not only on Linux and FreeBSD but also on MS Windows. I don't know what the officiall position is for GNOME, but from what I hear they are a pretty Linux-centric project.
Ack. When is this rumor going to die?
OS X, back when it was called NEXTSTEP, forked off of BSD 8 years before FreeBSD did, even before 4.4lite came on the scene. You can trace its lineage yourself, if you'd like. Since then, there's been a lot of code borrowing but everyone borrows from FreeBSD and FreeBSD is far from the only OS whose code Darwin has borrowed. Using just that to say that Darwin is based on FreeBSD would make little more sense than using the same fact to claim that GNU/Linux and Windows XP are based on FreeBSD.
But as to your point about BSD in general beating Linux to the desktop with OS X, yeah, you're right. I think Apple showed how it really needs to be done, too. In my experience with trying to teach people to use Linux, the thing that consistently hurts Linux on the desktop is what I'd call its unixyness - stuff like complicated directory hierarchies based on abbreviated names only serves to intimidate the non-geek; even if you tell them they don't need to care about anything outside their home directory, they still know it's there. A lot of Linux's celebrated choices are bad; too. The moment a user ever has to care about QT vs GTK+ and figure out why they are behaving a bit differently, or what the heck CUPS is, or any of that, Linux starts to feel like a border town on the edge of the Wild.
OS X, back when it was called NEXTSTEP, forked off of BSD 8 years before FreeBSD did, even before 4.4lite came on the scene. You can trace its lineage yourself, if you'd like. Since then, there's been a lot of code borrowing but everyone borrows from FreeBSD and FreeBSD is far from the only OS whose code Darwin has borrowed. Using just that to say that Darwin is based on FreeBSD would make little more sense than using the same fact to claim that GNU/Linux and Windows XP are based on FreeBSD.
Referenced from the site you mention yourself is the BSD family tree.
If you had bothered to look at it, you'd have noticed that:
Darwin is based on Rhapsody, NetBSD 1.4 and FreeBSD 3.2
OS X 10.2 imported code from FreeBSD 4.4
OS X 10.3 imported code from FreeBSD 5.1
If you had ever bothered to use a FreeBSD 5.x machine for a while, and used a machine with OS X for a while from the shell, you'd have noticed how the userland is virtually identical, to a level way beyond how some linux distributions are similar..
Where OS X really did not derive from FreeBSD at all is at the kernel level and of course the gui.
From the FreeBSD web site:
The FreeBSD Foundation has negotiated a license with Sun Microsystems to distribute FreeBSD binaries for the Java Runtime Environment (JRE(TM)) and Java Development Kit (JDK(TM)).
Enjoy!
Specially considering that what really matters for desktop is gnome, kde,x.org...not the kernel.
X and a desktop environment matter the most for sure.. but I think you are quite seriously underestimating the role of a kernel in this..
The kernel is involved in things hardware support, device and power management (suspend) etc, but what really matters is gnome and kde, nothing else. Gnome is not more usable under freebsd than in linux, neither the reverse.
You see.. audio/video support sortof matters for desktop use.. so does plug and play hardware support (just plugin that camera and it works..), which are indeed hardware related but specifically, usb, drm/dri and sound support are extremely important for a desktop.
Then, the scheduler can make quite a difference (optimized for throiughput versus responsiveness for example makes a big difference in how 'snappy' your desktop feels)
Then, if you open a folder in say the kde or gnome file/directory browsers, there are 3 things you desktop can do:
1. not notice changes to the directory untill you manually refresh the view
2. poll the filesystem for changes and display them once they got noticed
3. ask the kernel to send a notification when a file changes
1. is no longer an acceptable option nowadays
2. becomes very expensive when you have a lot of files in said directory, and it is always 'too late'
3. requires kernel support (it is supported in slightly different ways in Linux and FreeBSD now) but is low overhead and virtually inmediate.
As you can see, the kernel does in fact play an important role in simple things like browsing a directory already...
So, yes, it does definitely matter for both gnome and kde what kernel they are running on. A year ago the difference between Linux and FreeBSD was substantial, esp. with regards to the scheduler and support for things like fam (without having to poll for changes).. nowadays the difference is far less big.