Leaving the Desktop Market

[Michael Sinatra]

On 04/01/2014 07:46, dteske at FreeBSD.org wrote:

> Eitan,
> 
> While I understand your frustration, VICOR is using FreeBSD as a Desktop since
> FreeBSD 2.2. We don't use sound and we are fine relying on vesa.
> 
> While I understand that the things you listed are actual short-comings for normal
> Desktop users,  I think it's the wrong decision to say that we should be backing
> out *any* functionality that would make the Desktop any more difficult to
> produce.
> 
> As it stands, it would take me weeks just to count the number of workstations
> that are running a GUI, rely on one of the existing video drivers (nv, radeon,
> mach64, etc.) and use lots of Desktop ports.

I have three FreeBSD desktops (one at work, one at home-office, and one
for the usual messing around).  They're all running 9.2, with Windows
for Unix(TM)...uh, I mean KDE v4.12.3 as the GUI.  Yes, I actually like KDE.

I also have a machine at home running Debian Wheezy, also with KDE, and
I have 2-3 mac devices that actually run MacOS (I have a few mac minis
that run Free- and OpenBSD).  The minis work exceptionally well as
FreeBSD workstations.  Each of the FreeBSD systems I have is my go-to
workstation--it's where I do most of my work.  Only if I can't do
something (or don't want to run it on FreeBSD--e.g. Flash), do I use the
Mac.  The Debian box I just use for messing around--nothing serious.

My home FreeBSD workstation has perfect sound, excellent graphics
(nvidia), and I can even watch a lot of video using Firefox, since video
is increasingly becoming HTML5-based.  For me it "just works."

The whole combination that makes up my environment can be challenging to
keep up-to-date, but it's getting a lot easier with pkgng and
portmaster.  I would hate to see this stuff, which I find very useful,
and helps me both at work and home, to be "ripped out" of the OS.

I have been using FreeBSD on the desktop since 1997, when I had two
workstations on my desk (FreeBSD and RedHat) and I let them duke it out
to see who would win.  FreeBSD won then, and even though I continue to
keep a Linux desktop around for fun, FreeBSD still wins on the basis of
usability, stability, security, etc.

michael

PS. My current KDE wallpaper for my work office machine is the Windows
XP green hillside with blue sky background.  It's giving people fits here.