Lennart Poettering: BSD Isn't Relevant Anymore

[Jerome Herman]

On 19/07/2011 08:11, Polytropon wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Jul 2011 01:39:02 +0200, Jerome Herman wrote:
>> On 19/07/2011 01:21, Gary Gatten wrote:
>>> <snip>
>>>
>>> This may get me flamed (probably will) but I'm wondering what
>>> the relationship is between FreeBSD and PC-BSD?  PERHAPS if
>>> they were to somehow join forces, share development load, etc.
>>> and "unify" the FreeBSD offerings under one roof; ie: PC-BSD and SERVER-BSD.
>> Basically, PC-BSD is just a layer of candy over an almost untouched
>> FreeBSD, so it is not the same at all than what you can see with Linux
>> distros.
> PC-BSD offers a new interactive installer, and comes with KDE
> preinstalled and preconfigured. There's also some autodetect
> magic under the hood. On sufficiently recent hardware, it works
> very well. However, its hardware requirements are _high_ above
> those of a "normal" FreeBSD system.
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>> PC-BSD offers a graphical and simple installer, and an arguably easier
>> package system.
> As far as I know, the downside of the forced interactivity
> is now gone, as there's also a command line tool for using
> PBI packages.
>
> Arguing... what is easier at manually locating software using
> a web browser, manually downloading it and interactively
> holding the installer's hand while installing software? :-)
Well, of course installing is easier. But package management is not just 
about installing.
General management tends to be a little harder, for example if you need 
a specific version of PHP-LDAP, that matches your server LDAP and your 
server SASL.
Rigid packages won't allow fine grained tweaking that you might need.

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>> Also it installs KDE and automatically makes a few decisions.
>> You can actually just use the graphical installer in order to install a
>> standard FreeBSD, even if some tricky options won't be available from
>> the installer (but you can still run sysinstall later to activate them)
> The default installation works quite well, there's only few
> things you need to configure (especially if you're not
> comfortable with the default settings). I have some friends
> being long-term PC-BSD users, it's just no _my_ cup of tea
> as I don't like KDE much.
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>> I personnally use it as an easy installer for Crypto-ZFS servers.
> The installer can even be used to install configurations that
> sysinstall can't.
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>>> I believe several flavors of Linux have successfully done
>>> this.  Perhaps for licensing reasons more than technical,
>>> but nonetheless there were two offerings each focused on
>>> either a desktop or server deployment strategy.
> But there are "mixed forms" of systems. Precisely differentiating
> between "a server" and "a PC" isn't always possible. For
> example, if you have a workstation that is used by more than
> one user, is this a PC, a _personal_ computer anymore? Or
> what if you use a laptop computer (maybe due to energy
> consumption) to act as a server, and once a week you use
> it as a desktop?
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>>> Just a thought.  I'm not married to any particular OS -
>>> it's a tool and I use what suites my needs best.  I
>>> enjoy FreeBSD and like what it stands for - I would
>>> like to see it grow; both technically and in popularity.
>> Well the PC-BSD layer gives a great installer, now the only thing needed
>> would be a great server/daemons management layer.
> And better german language support in KDE. :-)
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>> A FreeBSD distro with LDAP, ACL and MAC management would be nice though.
> You could create a port that brings all this functionality
> in one rush. Remember that the ports collection is more than
> just about installing software - it can be used to even
> bring such features to the system and configure them.
A port that would reboot in single user, use tunefs to activate ACL here 
and there, activate MAC and move most users to an LDAP auth ? I don't 
think so.
Actually I would be scared if such a port was accepted in the port tree.

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