I think Shuttleworth is trying to be the next Stallman. In the process, he is making political decisions, not technical ones. Oracle is OK (Java), but Microsoft isn't (C#, Mono)? How very retarded. Then again, the Debian crowd and its offsprings never did have a clue about anything Miguel De Icaza ever did, so I'm not surprised (not only that, the Linux crowd was very hostile).
Boy, am I glad I didn't jump on the Ubuntu bandwagon. I mean, not that I didn't try, but the suckage level was soooo big...
FreeBSD will have a graphical installers, IIRC what I read recently.
And then, that would suffice?
Linux has lot of PR. IBM wanted to beat Sun and it did, using Linux. Sun's dead. Good for IBM. IMHO, I would have like to have a world with more Solaris. Sun Microsystems was the principal providers of a Unix system that was used for serious commercial stuff, like CT scanners. I can't imagine the horror it would be if someone installed a piece of crap like Ubuntu on a critical device like that. The only Linux that will give that kind of commercial support Sun had, I guess, is Red Hat (but I'm not saying they are as trustworthy as Solaris...). Lo and behold, Red Hat sells per-seat licenses, and I've never heard that Stallman, the FSF, the GPL church goers complain.
The part I don't really understand is, if Linux is so fucking good, how come it's one security breach after another? How come Debian's servers got hacked twice? So, you see, the criteria for "good" is a flexible one...
I'd like to add that some facets of FreeBSD's problem are really Unix problems (that includes Linux).
For instance, is ports building relied on some sort of modern exception-handling mechanism, then we could have a system that automagically transversed upwards the edges of the graph starting from where the build tool threw the exception, instead of a system that simply signals that it borked.
Anyway, for me I think FreeBSD, since it separates the package database from the potential tools, offers a much better future perspective for creating dependency-tracking installation software than the hard-coded ones of dpkg and rpm. These systems are nothing but another layer of complexity - if it weren't for that millionaire that created the Ubuntu team that piggybacks on Debian's legion of packagers, that approach would be long gone by now. Does anyone remember the pathetic situation Debian was in, which was the major reason Ubuntu even came into existence?...At the time, someone here on/. even produced a graph tracking number-of-packages versus time-to-deliver, and it showed clearly that Debian's assembly line was stalling in an exponential fashion, IIRC, as more software was being brought into the distro (Woody, was it?)
So, to sum it up, I remain non-plus'd. I see no real good arguments, except anecdotes (some of them betraying lacking system-administration skills. In fact, I wish people would come out and just admit the real reason they perceive the purported superiority of Linux package management systems is because of the impatient and the childish "immediatism", because, frankly adults can't wait 5 or 10 minutes for a port to install (no, do not multiply 20,000 ports x 10 minutes, that is not how FreeBSD installation and upgrading works - not *all* your ports phase of of sync with upstream at the same time, do not be a moron).
As an example, install FreeBSD 8.1 (the latest stable release) and add the binary GNOME packages during the installation. Then compare updating the base system (two built-in commands, a short download, plus a reboot) with updating GNOME
Wait, dude, if you have any experience on BSD you know GNOME software is a major offender. Dependencies ahoy!, and no attempt to write portable Unix software. In fact, they've stated they plan to be Linux-only. In fact, wasn't Ulrich a certain Gnome guy who told everybody to fuck off on lists?
All this self-centric brokenware linuxisms in FreeBSD will probably go away Real Soon Now as the systems moves further and further away from GNU stuff, such as moving to llvm, etc.
Man, stuff in linux breaks so much, they couldn't get any standardization project going (Linux Standard Base or whatever). And congrats to Debian: the system relies on literally a thousand packaging ant-army that then feeds the result of its labor to the termite-army of Ubuntu, that feeds on the ant-army and then, with luck, upgrades won't break. Sure, standard, do-like-everyone-else installs are monitored by a legion of packagers (what they call "developers"), but walk toward the edge...Many have reported here - stuff breaks in Ubuntu (Debian is not much mentioned anymore). Problem is, you are dependent upon the Holy Packager and you are tool-bound. If apt pukes, you haven't a chance.
Care to try a smarter package manager? Then try SuSE's or Mandriva's SMART -they use SAT solvers. If Debian is so advanced, why isn't it using a SAT solver, because that is what the theory demmands. Mandriva will warn you, though, that your dependency tree might come out looking like a little non-orthodox after using the installer with the SAT solver. No wonder no-one uses it, and it lies relegated to some obscure corner of the Known Intertubes. No, the reason apt sort-of-works is not because it's so well-designed. It's really the reason pyramids were built: they were made possible through slave-working. At least, with FreeBSD, I know what I'm buying: there it is, it's just a system to make makefiles easier on the user. So it means I get whatever (solid) dependency-tracking bsd make has (or don't "makes" have one? then why are we using them?).
Today, there more than one tool in FreeBSD to handle port dependency tracking. Like I said in another post, if make's topological sorting produces another graph, then I can probably try a fix from another angle, because your solution is not tool-bound, like apt. Has anyone read apt's source code? I tried some years ago...very helpful comments, such as "Oh! Shit!"...Although, today portmanager is so good, that the only real trouble I recently had was a Java circular dependency issue, that I solved with a binary install (portmanager will install all of a ports dependencies before the port is installed - makes can have you walking up a branch to a dependency, fix, then back to reinstall - there's method to the madness (infrequent), if you want to do it like a Real Unix Dude).
Separation from userland third-party software to base system is a plus. Much harder to end up in a dead end street. At least your kernel isn't screwed (I mentioned in another posts - search for academic papers on package managers - you'll find non-anecdotal reports of major breakage with apt/dpkg based systems - as in Oh, we fucked up the kernel kinda-of-breakage. Don't take my word for it, please.
I have a question: have you used portmanager for upgrading ports? portmanager will update all the port's dependencies *before* upgrading the ports. It's really good.
These days in FreeBSD you do binary system upgrades, you know? If you're running servers, than you don't have a gazillion ports installed...do ya? It sounds like a bunch of people here played with FreeBSD for 2 days than said "reading the handbook is too hard - let's go install Leenoox!"
(mailing lists? are your reading what you are typing? mailing lists? This isn't 1988.)
I suppose the *really* **smart** thing to do is to wade through countless and dispersed PHP forums, googling non-stop, instead of going to *one* central place, right?
Because, like newsgroups, if a technology is old, it's bad, right? (Just like the hp 12c calculator, I guess - so bad...why is it still around?).
We *need* forums in which we can put avatars and smileys, right dude? Otherwise, it's not optimal, right?
I think you're framing things the wrong way... "A has this tools, and I can do X with it. Do you have X? Than you can't do X. Therefore, I conclude you suck." No, can't do X, but can do Y, which is equivalent to X, except it relies on B, which you never admitted in your premise.
I'm not a sysadmin, but I guess that If a FreeBSD admin wanted lots of "images" he would create lots of "jails".
Before VirtualBox, there used to be 2 virtualization softwares for desktop FreeBSD. One was Win4BSD, from Virtual Bridges. They have redone their product line, and that product is no more, I think. And there was another product too, but I forget.
Sure, the hardware/laptop situation is worse in FreeBSD, but can't you do a bit of cherry-picking when you are shopping for a new laptop? Or is it really a fact that no-one uses FreeBSD on a laptop?
Notebooks are tricky, they have lots of brand new hardware and even Linux is a liability if your not careful. Most of them are made to work with Windows, you know that...
My laptop 3D acceleration is buggy sucks and the system uses less bits for color than Windows 7 would use. Should I conclude that Linux sucks? If that is the criterion, then the only decent Unix for laptops is Mac OS X.
Search for academic papers of package management. You'll find evidence that's not anecdote - actually registered and tracked - of a Debian system that uninstalled kernel packages when asked to update something else, because apt went haywire on dependency hell.
I really don't have a reference for you, it was years ago.
Anyway, bsd make does a topological sort on dependencies. My guess on why things seem to break much less than when I used Debian, is because, since the graph can have many topological sorts, and I am not tool-bound to do things a certain way, I can fix stuff if things go awry attempting another approach. If in Debian there's apt, in FreeBSD there are more tools. The package database is just a package database. It's not a Central Dogma. People are free to design and create what they feel are better tools - and a few have done so - and that's why we have more choice in FreeBSD. Another aspect I like is language diversity. It seems FreeBSD developers are much more open to accept other programming languages, as long as the tool works. Nobody says, for example, you can't use Ruby because a central committee disapproves of it (OpenBSD, in this respect, I don't like - they seem much to stuck on C).
If nothing else works, then it boils down to Makefiles (which is what ports are about, anyway). There's none of that Package Wall...In Linux distros with package management, the only way not to break things is sometimes not having the latest and greatest software.
But today's FreeBSD port tools are so good that the corner-cases are rare (I have never had stuff that absolutely refused to work, like in Debian).
People looking for a leaner desktop should rally, really check out enlightenment.
It is really decent, it's not like the rest (half-ass geek jobs) and it's robust (if it crashes for whatever reason, it recovers)./usr/ports/x11-wm/enlightenment
Do you realize you're not actually very good on your Linux selling points? Basically, you've just said that things break all - the - time in Linux upgrades. And it's true.
If you want version control on system [config] files, it is equally easy to put/etc in a git repository. Same benefits, but without relying on an obsucre file system.
You planning on branching much your config files, are you? Heh.
Oh, and I can push the same config files and their full mod history to every computer on the network. Can your fancy ZFS do that? I thought not.
I don't think you need git for that...Your idea of what ZFS is for is not even worth commenting.
What about Linux binary emulation? I remember sometime ago, there was a story about a certain Linux software running faster in FreeBSD with the emulation layer than in Linux (don't remember what it was...)
So true...For me, FreeBSD adoption went like this: Debian eventually became huge stagnant swamp. To get out of it, you had to run unstable. A big mess ensued. Enter Ubuntu, the revenge, the promise. Poor documentation. Installation breakage. 6 months later, upgrade wreckage. Fsck this, I thought.
I have installed FreeBSD once. Ports may take longer, but they are much more current then Debian ever was, and than the current Linux I use, Mandriva. You have to wait for the Package Masters...Also, with ports I have a much more fine-grained control. But let's get this out of the way: you can install packages in FreeBSD, and you do binary upgrades. There are lots of tools to handle ports. With today's speeds and RAMs, it's no big deal compiling ports. Only huge software, such as Java may take many hours (use the weekend or get the binaries and that's that..) FreeBSD takes some tweaking - because all you get is a Unix with no assumptions about what color the user favors, or which icons... -, but it's not a problem for the advanced Linux user (if you're a n00b, then there's PC-BSD, which actually should be the first approach to BSDs for the user workstation these days).
I look at today's Linux and I don't regret my choice. What's the sane choice? Fedora is an experimental platform for Red Hat. That means, from time to time, they'll make you their guinea pigs...Debian can't even be considered secure (no less than twice they had their servers hacked), and who cares about dinossaurs, anyway? Ubuntu's the new Debian. Ubuntu shoves their choices down your throat and continues the Debian tradition of delivering broken software (the new GUI, etc.) and infighting. And Ubuntu is a fantasy. The only reason it exists is because there's a money-loosing millionaire backing it up. The fantasy island one day will blow up in the fanboys' face. Mandriva I find agreeable, but they don't offer many packages, and they have too few commercial partners (so why pay?) Other distros aren't even worth mentioning.
I've used expensive proprietary mathematical software for Linux on FreeBSD, using their Linux binary layer, after the Linux upgrade destroyed library compatibility (they pride themselves in having unstable ABIs).
Linux are a mess. Each one is different, full of stupid little quirks. Libraries differ in place, version, even names. FreeBSD is just as good for the desktop. The system is sane, advances by increments, has documentation, and man pages that are actually worth reading. It's a system where decisions are not made on political bases, but technical. The noise level is much lower. One of the reasons Linux makes much more headlines (besides the PR department from Big Iron, that is) is the constant noise and turmoil. BSDs are not like that...6 months later, you learn they added a cool feature. "Thou shall not fight about bikesheds."
Linux development might get more resources. But, of course it does! Linux was part of a strategy to kill Sun Microsystems and Solaris.
With a math background any STEM area you stick your nose in will be - well, not easy - but you won't sweat the math like Physics and Engineering majors do. You'll just concentrate on the subject, the math part is already out of your way.
I would never major in Computer Science. The curriculum looks like a bunch of things you can just google for. And they're weak in math. I guess that's why we see so many web programmers theses days.
I hear a lot of Americans complaining about your "horrible" legal system, but from where I'm sitting, it looks like swell system. I wish mine was like that...The US legal system is punitive. That's great. It means corporations will try to screw consumers over just *once*. The next time would hurt so much they don't dare try it.
Now look at my legal system, and look what happened to me: I went into a store and bought a notebook (used a credit card). The next day, I returned it, because I thought it was actually a piece of shit. I didn't get my money back. In fact, they charged my credit card. So I sued. 3 months later, trial, etc., I win. What do I get? Judge gives me double what I spend on the notebook - I spend $ 2,000, they give me $4,000. I asked for $10,000, because I felt like I had been mugged (in fact, it's true) and I had to waste time, get stressed out, pissed off, etc. $4,000 is peanuts for that store. Now, screw 10 customers at $10,000/screw, you're looking at 100 thou less on the balance sheet. 100,00 begins to look like a number someone higher up in the management food chain will not like. But the judge considers that I'm trying to be a wise guy...However, in fact, getting double the amount I spent for the notebook is such peanut-money, that the only reason I actually sued was because I was acquainted on a personal level with my lawyer - she normally wouldn't bother for such a small pay (the loosing party had to pay her, of course).
Now, I imagine in America, if you try to pull that one on a customer your would seriously regret it, because the sum you'd have to pay would be punitive. Me OTOH, I would like to have sued the phone company, my Internet provider, the carpenter, the fucking bank that leaves me without access to my account via Internet, telemarketing ghosts that always come after me and a whole swarm of morons that cross my path every week, because they screw you over *every* *fucking* *day* here in Brazil. If you sit in the courts waiting for your turn, you see that phone companies and other service providers screw thousands of customers everyday, but it ends up being OK, because they make more money by screwing people than they loose when customers seek the legal system. Because it's all peanuts. Lawyers don't won't peanuts. But, peanut by peanut, I loose a lot of peanuts...
Just be glad you live in a place in which corporations fear their customers. The alternative, believe me, is much worse.
I don't know how you're able to say that you have a safe society in America. How so? 20 *million* people are considered poor there. Where's the safety net? That is a world-class shame (why? because it's such a rich nation). And 45 million without any health-care safety net? In America, if you fail, you're labeled a looser and left by the way-side. No sympathy for the poor. If you're poor, it must be because you're a bum. CEOs can fail. Celebs can fail. Poor Mr. Smith can't. No.
That is just wrong. You guys ought to emulate Canada...
And yes, your houses are too big, and your cars guzzle too much gas, get real.
I'm not saying you're wrong, because, well, a lot of people are undernourished and under-schooled to begin with. But *suppose* they weren't. Then, how would you know you're right (your hypothesis that 90% are stupid)?
I think part of the moving-down of the US dominance over the world is the moving-up of other peoples. In the 50s, a US American had a far better education than a South American. In a good school today, I have my doubts. For instance, my high school years were in Rio. In high school, my math curriculum was the same as the US curriculum. *However*, the *required reading at my school was nothing short than *10* math books - and *all* of them had theorem-proof-style writing. I haven't been able to find books like that in English. On the contrary, a lot of books for school children in the US seem to be getting dumber. I've seen books encouraging 6th graders to use a calculator! What's up with *that*, America?! That's the sure royal road to a royal major fuck-up as a nation who wants a pole position for the 21st century - I'm sure the/. crowd would agree.
To belabor my point, witness the Chinese, look how many engineers they graduate, and look how they fast they were in designing a space program. And what happened to Russians? From competing neck-and-neck with the US, they regressed to a vodka-drinking economy. So, where's the evidence? There is no evidence. Yours is a non-falsifiable hypotheses. We don't know, because we haven't tried. OTOH, we see a lot smart Indian dudes taking your place in the software biz. So the evidence seems to point the other way...
Slashdot Mirror
I think Shuttleworth is trying to be the next Stallman. In the process, he is making political decisions, not technical ones. Oracle is OK (Java), but Microsoft isn't (C#, Mono)? How very retarded. Then again, the Debian crowd and its offsprings never did have a clue about anything Miguel De Icaza ever did, so I'm not surprised (not only that, the Linux crowd was very hostile).
Boy, am I glad I didn't jump on the Ubuntu bandwagon. I mean, not that I didn't try, but the suckage level was soooo big...
FreeBSD will have a graphical installers, IIRC what I read recently.
And then, that would suffice?
Linux has lot of PR. IBM wanted to beat Sun and it did, using Linux. Sun's dead. Good for IBM. IMHO, I would have like to have a world with more Solaris. Sun Microsystems was the principal providers of a Unix system that was used for serious commercial stuff, like CT scanners. I can't imagine the horror it would be if someone installed a piece of crap like Ubuntu on a critical device like that. The only Linux that will give that kind of commercial support Sun had, I guess, is Red Hat (but I'm not saying they are as trustworthy as Solaris...). Lo and behold, Red Hat sells per-seat licenses, and I've never heard that Stallman, the FSF, the GPL church goers complain.
The part I don't really understand is, if Linux is so fucking good, how come it's one security breach after another? How come Debian's servers got hacked twice? So, you see, the criteria for "good" is a flexible one...
I'd like to add that some facets of FreeBSD's problem are really Unix problems (that includes Linux).
For instance, is ports building relied on some sort of modern exception-handling mechanism, then we could have a system that automagically transversed upwards the edges of the graph starting from where the build tool threw the exception, instead of a system that simply signals that it borked.
Anyway, for me I think FreeBSD, since it separates the package database from the potential tools, offers a much better future perspective for creating dependency-tracking installation software than the hard-coded ones of dpkg and rpm. These systems are nothing but another layer of complexity - if it weren't for that millionaire that created the Ubuntu team that piggybacks on Debian's legion of packagers, that approach would be long gone by now. Does anyone remember the pathetic situation Debian was in, which was the major reason Ubuntu even came into existence?...At the time, someone here on /. even produced a graph tracking number-of-packages versus time-to-deliver, and it showed clearly that Debian's assembly line was stalling in an exponential fashion, IIRC, as more software was being brought into the distro (Woody, was it?)
So, to sum it up, I remain non-plus'd. I see no real good arguments, except anecdotes (some of them betraying lacking system-administration skills. In fact, I wish people would come out and just admit the real reason they perceive the purported superiority of Linux package management systems is because of the impatient and the childish "immediatism", because, frankly adults can't wait 5 or 10 minutes for a port to install (no, do not multiply 20,000 ports x 10 minutes, that is not how FreeBSD installation and upgrading works - not *all* your ports phase of of sync with upstream at the same time, do not be a moron).
As an example, install FreeBSD 8.1 (the latest stable release) and add the binary GNOME packages during the installation. Then compare updating the base system (two built-in commands, a short download, plus a reboot) with updating GNOME
Wait, dude, if you have any experience on BSD you know GNOME software is a major offender. Dependencies ahoy!, and no attempt to write portable Unix software. In fact, they've stated they plan to be Linux-only. In fact, wasn't Ulrich a certain Gnome guy who told everybody to fuck off on lists?
All this self-centric brokenware linuxisms in FreeBSD will probably go away Real Soon Now as the systems moves further and further away from GNU stuff, such as moving to llvm, etc.
Man, stuff in linux breaks so much, they couldn't get any standardization project going (Linux Standard Base or whatever). And congrats to Debian: the system relies on literally a thousand packaging ant-army that then feeds the result of its labor to the termite-army of Ubuntu, that feeds on the ant-army and then, with luck, upgrades won't break. Sure, standard, do-like-everyone-else installs are monitored by a legion of packagers (what they call "developers"), but walk toward the edge...Many have reported here - stuff breaks in Ubuntu (Debian is not much mentioned anymore). Problem is, you are dependent upon the Holy Packager and you are tool-bound. If apt pukes, you haven't a chance.
Care to try a smarter package manager? Then try SuSE's or Mandriva's SMART -they use SAT solvers. If Debian is so advanced, why isn't it using a SAT solver, because that is what the theory demmands. Mandriva will warn you, though, that your dependency tree might come out looking like a little non-orthodox after using the installer with the SAT solver. No wonder no-one uses it, and it lies relegated to some obscure corner of the Known Intertubes. No, the reason apt sort-of-works is not because it's so well-designed. It's really the reason pyramids were built: they were made possible through slave-working. At least, with FreeBSD, I know what I'm buying: there it is, it's just a system to make makefiles easier on the user. So it means I get whatever (solid) dependency-tracking bsd make has (or don't "makes" have one? then why are we using them?).
Today, there more than one tool in FreeBSD to handle port dependency tracking. Like I said in another post, if make's topological sorting produces another graph, then I can probably try a fix from another angle, because your solution is not tool-bound, like apt. Has anyone read apt's source code? I tried some years ago...very helpful comments, such as "Oh! Shit!"...Although, today portmanager is so good, that the only real trouble I recently had was a Java circular dependency issue, that I solved with a binary install (portmanager will install all of a ports dependencies before the port is installed - makes can have you walking up a branch to a dependency, fix, then back to reinstall - there's method to the madness (infrequent), if you want to do it like a Real Unix Dude).
Separation from userland third-party software to base system is a plus. Much harder to end up in a dead end street. At least your kernel isn't screwed (I mentioned in another posts - search for academic papers on package managers - you'll find non-anecdotal reports of major breakage with apt/dpkg based systems - as in Oh, we fucked up the kernel kinda-of-breakage. Don't take my word for it, please.
I have a question: have you used portmanager for upgrading ports? portmanager will update all the port's dependencies *before* upgrading the ports. It's really good.
These days in FreeBSD you do binary system upgrades, you know?
If you're running servers, than you don't have a gazillion ports installed...do ya?
It sounds like a bunch of people here played with FreeBSD for 2 days than said "reading the handbook is too hard - let's go install Leenoox!"
Every OS is as stable as the user.
Yeah, my mom's OS is stable as hell. Last I visited her, she was running Windows XP unpatched!
(mailing lists? are your reading what you are typing? mailing lists? This isn't 1988.)
I suppose the *really* **smart** thing to do is to wade through countless and dispersed PHP forums, googling non-stop, instead of going to *one* central place, right?
Because, like newsgroups, if a technology is old, it's bad, right? (Just like the hp 12c calculator, I guess - so bad...why is it still around?).
We *need* forums in which we can put avatars and smileys, right dude? Otherwise, it's not optimal, right?
I mean, text, WTF, that's so 90s...
I think you're framing things the wrong way... "A has this tools, and I can do X with it. Do you have X? Than you can't do X. Therefore, I conclude you suck." No, can't do X, but can do Y, which is equivalent to X, except it relies on B, which you never admitted in your premise.
I'm not a sysadmin, but I guess that If a FreeBSD admin wanted lots of "images" he would create lots of "jails".
Not to speak of tiny useless packages that were the rite of passage of many Debian "developers".
At least, on FreeBSD, the ports count is honest and not just jive...
If you want current software, run unstable.
If you want current software on a stable system, trash that Debian unstable and run FreeBSD.
(over 20,000 ports frequently updated)
Before VirtualBox, there used to be 2 virtualization softwares for desktop FreeBSD. One was Win4BSD, from Virtual Bridges. They have redone their product line, and that product is no more, I think. And there was another product too, but I forget.
Anyways, VMWare works with FreeBSD too: http://www.vmware.com/support/ws55/doc/new_guest_tools_ws.html
s/your/you're/ goddamn English phonetics...
Sure, the hardware/laptop situation is worse in FreeBSD, but can't you do a bit of cherry-picking when you are shopping for a new laptop? Or is it really a fact that no-one uses FreeBSD on a laptop?
Notebooks are tricky, they have lots of brand new hardware and even Linux is a liability if your not careful. Most of them are made to work with Windows, you know that...
My laptop 3D acceleration is buggy sucks and the system uses less bits for color than Windows 7 would use. Should I conclude that Linux sucks? If that is the criterion, then the only decent Unix for laptops is Mac OS X.
Search for academic papers of package management. You'll find evidence that's not anecdote - actually registered and tracked - of a Debian system that uninstalled kernel packages when asked to update something else, because apt went haywire on dependency hell.
I really don't have a reference for you, it was years ago.
Anyway, bsd make does a topological sort on dependencies. My guess on why things seem to break much less than when I used Debian, is because, since the graph can have many topological sorts, and I am not tool-bound to do things a certain way, I can fix stuff if things go awry attempting another approach. If in Debian there's apt, in FreeBSD there are more tools. The package database is just a package database. It's not a Central Dogma. People are free to design and create what they feel are better tools - and a few have done so - and that's why we have more choice in FreeBSD. Another aspect I like is language diversity. It seems FreeBSD developers are much more open to accept other programming languages, as long as the tool works. Nobody says, for example, you can't use Ruby because a central committee disapproves of it (OpenBSD, in this respect, I don't like - they seem much to stuck on C).
If nothing else works, then it boils down to Makefiles (which is what ports are about, anyway). There's none of that Package Wall...In Linux distros with package management, the only way not to break things is sometimes not having the latest and greatest software.
But today's FreeBSD port tools are so good that the corner-cases are rare (I have never had stuff that absolutely refused to work, like in Debian).
People looking for a leaner desktop should rally, really check out enlightenment.
It is really decent, it's not like the rest (half-ass geek jobs) and it's robust (if it crashes for whatever reason, it recovers). /usr/ports/x11-wm/enlightenment
What's minitube? Enlighten us.
Do you realize you're not actually very good on your Linux selling points? Basically, you've just said that things break all - the - time in Linux upgrades. And it's true.
You planning on branching much your config files, are you? Heh.
I don't think you need git for that...Your idea of what ZFS is for is not even worth commenting.
What about Linux binary emulation?
I remember sometime ago, there was a story about a certain Linux software running faster in FreeBSD with the emulation layer than in Linux (don't remember what it was...)
So true...For me, FreeBSD adoption went like this: Debian eventually became huge stagnant swamp. To get out of it, you had to run unstable. A big mess ensued. Enter Ubuntu, the revenge, the promise. Poor documentation. Installation breakage. 6 months later, upgrade wreckage. Fsck this, I thought.
I have installed FreeBSD once. Ports may take longer, but they are much more current then Debian ever was, and than the current Linux I use, Mandriva. You have to wait for the Package Masters...Also, with ports I have a much more fine-grained control. But let's get this out of the way: you can install packages in FreeBSD, and you do binary upgrades. There are lots of tools to handle ports. With today's speeds and RAMs, it's no big deal compiling ports. Only huge software, such as Java may take many hours (use the weekend or get the binaries and that's that..) FreeBSD takes some tweaking - because all you get is a Unix with no assumptions about what color the user favors, or which icons... -, but it's not a problem for the advanced Linux user (if you're a n00b, then there's PC-BSD, which actually should be the first approach to BSDs for the user workstation these days).
I look at today's Linux and I don't regret my choice. What's the sane choice? Fedora is an experimental platform for Red Hat. That means, from time to time, they'll make you their guinea pigs...Debian can't even be considered secure (no less than twice they had their servers hacked), and who cares about dinossaurs, anyway? Ubuntu's the new Debian. Ubuntu shoves their choices down your throat and continues the Debian tradition of delivering broken software (the new GUI, etc.) and infighting. And Ubuntu is a fantasy. The only reason it exists is because there's a money-loosing millionaire backing it up. The fantasy island one day will blow up in the fanboys' face. Mandriva I find agreeable, but they don't offer many packages, and they have too few commercial partners (so why pay?) Other distros aren't even worth mentioning.
I've used expensive proprietary mathematical software for Linux on FreeBSD, using their Linux binary layer, after the Linux upgrade destroyed library compatibility (they pride themselves in having unstable ABIs).
Linux are a mess. Each one is different, full of stupid little quirks. Libraries differ in place, version, even names. FreeBSD is just as good for the desktop. The system is sane, advances by increments, has documentation, and man pages that are actually worth reading. It's a system where decisions are not made on political bases, but technical. The noise level is much lower. One of the reasons Linux makes much more headlines (besides the PR department from Big Iron, that is) is the constant noise and turmoil. BSDs are not like that...6 months later, you learn they added a cool feature. "Thou shall not fight about bikesheds."
Linux development might get more resources. But, of course it does! Linux was part of a strategy to kill Sun Microsystems and Solaris.
With a math background any STEM area you stick your nose in will be - well, not easy - but you won't sweat the math like Physics and Engineering majors do. You'll just concentrate on the subject, the math part is already out of your way.
I would never major in Computer Science. The curriculum looks like a bunch of things you can just google for. And they're weak in math. I guess that's why we see so many web programmers theses days.
I hear a lot of Americans complaining about your "horrible" legal system, but from where I'm sitting, it looks like swell system. I wish mine was like that...The US legal system is punitive. That's great. It means corporations will try to screw consumers over just *once*. The next time would hurt so much they don't dare try it.
Now look at my legal system, and look what happened to me: I went into a store and bought a notebook (used a credit card). The next day, I returned it, because I thought it was actually a piece of shit. I didn't get my money back. In fact, they charged my credit card. So I sued. 3 months later, trial, etc., I win. What do I get? Judge gives me double what I spend on the notebook - I spend $ 2,000, they give me $4,000. I asked for $10,000, because I felt like I had been mugged (in fact, it's true) and I had to waste time, get stressed out, pissed off, etc. $4,000 is peanuts for that store. Now, screw 10 customers at $10,000/screw, you're looking at 100 thou less on the balance sheet. 100,00 begins to look like a number someone higher up in the management food chain will not like. But the judge considers that I'm trying to be a wise guy...However, in fact, getting double the amount I spent for the notebook is such peanut-money, that the only reason I actually sued was because I was acquainted on a personal level with my lawyer - she normally wouldn't bother for such a small pay (the loosing party had to pay her, of course).
Now, I imagine in America, if you try to pull that one on a customer your would seriously regret it, because the sum you'd have to pay would be punitive. Me OTOH, I would like to have sued the phone company, my Internet provider, the carpenter, the fucking bank that leaves me without access to my account via Internet, telemarketing ghosts that always come after me and a whole swarm of morons that cross my path every week, because they screw you over *every* *fucking* *day* here in Brazil. If you sit in the courts waiting for your turn, you see that phone companies and other service providers screw thousands of customers everyday, but it ends up being OK, because they make more money by screwing people than they loose when customers seek the legal system. Because it's all peanuts. Lawyers don't won't peanuts. But, peanut by peanut, I loose a lot of peanuts...
Just be glad you live in a place in which corporations fear their customers. The alternative, believe me, is much worse.
I don't know how you're able to say that you have a safe society in America. How so? 20 *million* people are considered poor there. Where's the safety net? That is a world-class shame (why? because it's such a rich nation). And 45 million without any health-care safety net? In America, if you fail, you're labeled a looser and left by the way-side. No sympathy for the poor. If you're poor, it must be because you're a bum. CEOs can fail. Celebs can fail. Poor Mr. Smith can't. No.
That is just wrong. You guys ought to emulate Canada...
And yes, your houses are too big, and your cars guzzle too much gas, get real.
I'm not saying you're wrong, because, well, a lot of people are undernourished and under-schooled to begin with. But *suppose* they weren't. Then, how would you know you're right (your hypothesis that 90% are stupid)?
I think part of the moving-down of the US dominance over the world is the moving-up of other peoples. In the 50s, a US American had a far better education than a South American. In a good school today, I have my doubts. For instance, my high school years were in Rio. In high school, my math curriculum was the same as the US curriculum. *However*, the *required reading at my school was nothing short than *10* math books - and *all* of them had theorem-proof-style writing. I haven't been able to find books like that in English. On the contrary, a lot of books for school children in the US seem to be getting dumber. I've seen books encouraging 6th graders to use a calculator! What's up with *that*, America?! That's the sure royal road to a royal major fuck-up as a nation who wants a pole position for the 21st century - I'm sure the /. crowd would agree.
To belabor my point, witness the Chinese, look how many engineers they graduate, and look how they fast they were in designing a space program. And what happened to Russians? From competing neck-and-neck with the US, they regressed to a vodka-drinking economy. So, where's the evidence? There is no evidence. Yours is a non-falsifiable hypotheses. We don't know, because we haven't tried. OTOH, we see a lot smart Indian dudes taking your place in the software biz. So the evidence seems to point the other way...