Idea for FreeBSD

[Stefan Lambrev]

Adrian Penisoara wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2008 at 2:36 PM, Stefan Lambrev
> <stefan.lambrev at moneybookers.com> wrote:
>   
>>>> First let me reiterate a few things. I started in FreeBSD and it will
>>>> always be my first love. Second, keep in mind that Solaris is a
>>>> commercial
>>>> product and must be viewed as such.
>>>>
>>>>         
>>>  Good point. Like it happened in the Linux world, we should also have
>>> some commercially backed versions of [Free]BSD in order to get better
>>> visibility and business support (which, in the end, counts a lot).
>>> That's why I've been thinking for some time about starting up the
>>> EnterpriseBSD project (see http://launchpad.net/enterprisebsd). I
>>> believe PC-BSD is a good start for the desktop.
>>>
>>>       
>> There is commercial support for FreeBSD out there.
>> Actually the problem is that misinformed people are still spreading the lie
>> that there is not...
>>     
>
> OK, I will reword that a bit: I believe having also a "business" face
> for the business market will help a lot in increasing visibility.
>
>   
>> Also the example with Linux is very bad, where you have a "stable" version
>> only in enterprise RH or SuSe
>> and the vanilla kernel is only for development and beta testing .. I do not
>> want to see this happens to FreeBSD
>>     
>
>  I'm not sure where is that remark headed to. And I don't think
> (re)packaging a business-centric version would harm -- please correct
> me if I'm wrong.
>   
The problem with "enterprise" is that they ship their own kernel which 
is heavily modified.
If you want enterprise go for OSX :) I think it's the best enterprise 
BSDish system ;)
Also there are more packages for FreeBSD available then for RH, and I 
can assure you that
all programs that you actually use (like ssh, apache, perl and etc) you 
have to manually compile to fit your needs.
>   
>>>  While we're at it, I wish we could leverage the posibility for the
>>> admin to manually start the service at the CLI, no matter whether the
>>> service has been enabled or not -- that is the "<svc>_enable" keyword
>>> should have effect only in the bootup/automatic contexts.
>>>
>>>       
>> Like keywords - forcestart forcerestart forcestop ?!?!
>>     
>
> Yes, I am always reminded of that :).
> Well, to tell you the truth, I do not know of any other OS which
> requires prefixing with "force" the start/stop actions in order to act
> on the service at the command line, and personally I wish it weren't
> the case.
>   
Well I bet you can find this in most linux distros that copy FreeBSD. 
What about gentoo?
Anyway I think that the beauty of the current rc/ng system in freebsd is 
that it's very easy to understand and use it.
Not like those nasty XML config files that makes you blind.
There are small fixes that can be applied to make the system even 
better, but rewriting it just for the sport looks like wasting too much 
power :)
But after all FreeBSD innovate do not imitate ;)

Anyway it's may be just me, but I do not think that the rc system in 
freebsd is the showstopper, that needs funding or more ppl looking at it.
And btw burdening the rc subsystem to monitor your daemons is overkill 
too. It will never work as good as real monitoring software,
and will only bloat things. There are tons of utilities that can do this.

-cut-

-- 

Best Wishes,
Stefan Lambrev
ICQ# 24134177