FreeBSD and SSD drives

Sun Feb 13 16:57:50 UTC 2011

So... how about those solid state drives... yup.

-Modulok-

On 2/13/11, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 13, 2011 at 07:38:01AM -0500, Jerry wrote:
>>
>> "Bloat" is a purely subjective term. What one user considers bloat
>> could very well be a requirement for another use. For example, while
>> you might consider it bloat to have drivers for modern wireless "N"
>> protocol cards, many other users have a real need for them.
>
> If one OS has about a gigabyte installed size and another more like
> fifteen to twenty, and both are suitable to accomplishing everyday tasks
> for a given user, the latter is bloated.  It doesn't matter if your
> favorite 5% of the latter system is different from mine, and we consider
> different parts of the system "bloat", it's still bloated to both of us.
> This is why good design concepts like "modularity" are . . . good design
> concepts.
>
> Well, it's *one* reason, among many.
>
> Shame Microsoft never caught on to that concept.
>
>
>>
>> I have four PC present working in my home. Three are FreeBSD machines
>> and one a Win7 one. The Windows machine is essential, if for no other
>> reason than there is software that is just not available on a FreeBSD
>> platform. Or if it is available, it is of very poor quality.
>
> You use what you need.  I get that.  I never disputed it.  On the other
> hand, needing something because of a particular couple of requirements
> does not mean it's well designed.
>
>
>>
>> MS Office is a perfect example. Despite all of the rubbish the FOSS
>> community has spewed for over 10 years, OpenOffice is nothing more than
>> a poor clone of Office 97. The newly released "libreoffice" might be
>> usable someday; however, it is now only in its infancy. There is no way
>> it can be compared to a full blown MS Office 10 suite.
>
> OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice offer functionality MS Office does not,
> just as MS Office offers functionality they do not.  Different people
> have different needs, and those office suites serve slightly different
> needs.  On the other hand, OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice encompass more
> MS Office functionality than MS Office does of OpenOffice.org and
> LibreOffice functionality.  Since it became a household term (at least in
> the open source community), for instance, OpenOffice.org has supported a
> wider range of MS Office documents than MS Office, thanks to the fact
> that despite its much-ballyhooed adherence to "backwards compatibility",
> MS Office has tended to (intentionally?) break file format compatibility
> between release versions.
>
> Of course, office suites are collectively steaming garbage anyway.
>
>
>>
>> Until the FOSS can write applications that are not only compatible
>> with, but as fully functional as MS Office and similar software, as
>> well as provide drivers in a timely manner (and I am still waiting for
>> Java to be updated to the latest version so that it will work with the
>> FreeBSD version of Firefox, or for acroread9 to actually work and play
>> well with others, etc), Microsoft will always be a requirement for many
>> end users.
>
> When your criteria for success are "identical to someone else's
> software", you're just creating a rigged game, where the "someone else"
> is the only possible winner -- because its efforts are in your eyes the
> standard of excellence no matter what its efforts produce, and everyone
> else just has to play catch-up.  It has nothing to do with actual
> quality, usefulness, or productivity.
>
> It's funny you are complaining about open source developers not doing a
> good job by pointing out that closed source developers aren't doing their
> jobs, by the way.  You are aware that both components of the complete
> Java system and Adobe's PDF reader are both closed source software --
> right?
>
>
>>
>> This is in no way a condemnation of FreeBSD, or any other open-source
>> product.
>
> . . . aside from the part where you blame open source developers for all
> the ills of the world above.  Okay, so I exaggerate -- but you seem to be
> trolling rather than making a salient point.
>
>
>>
>> It is just a simple statement of fact. The majority of users, despite
>> what they may publicly proclaim, want software and hardware that just
>> works. I had installed an older nVidia GeForce GT 220 card in an older
>> PC and then discovered that there was no sound being emitted by the
>> machine. Wasting valuable time, I finally discovered that I had to
>> modify the "sysctl.conf" file. Crap like that should just not happen.
>
> I agree that there should be ways to handle such things without forcing
> minimally competent computer users to search documentation for
> information about how to use sysctl to make sound work.  Sane defaults
> and reasonable levels of autoconfiguration, at least as *options*, are
> good things.
>
> On the other hand, I wish I had the option of searching documentation and
> using a simple tool like sysctl to make graphics work on an MS Windows
> system a few years back.  Instead, I ended up having to just use a
> different 3D graphics adapter because the one I had refused to work
> properly on a given motherboard with MS Windows.  I later discovered the
> same hardware setup worked fine with Debian.
>
> There's no use pretending MS Windows never has issues with the efficacy
> of its autoconfiguration.  Most of us have used that OS quite a lot, and
> know that problems arise -- and that, unlike with open source OSes, it's
> actually fairly common to have no recourse at all when something does not
> work.
>
>
>>
>> Things should just work. If other OS's can accomplish that feat, there
>> is no reasonable reason that FreeBSD cannot attain that level of
>> usability either, unless its goal is to remain nothing more than a
>> hobbyist's toy.
>
> Things should not randomly stop working either.  If FreeBSD can manage
> that level of sanity, in the aggregate, there's no reason MS Windows
> should not be able to accomplish the same feat -- except, of course, for
> bad design.
>
>
>>
>> For the record, I have never played "Guild Wars", although there are
>> many fine games available that are not available on the FreeBSD
>> platform. And no, I am not going to blame the authors of said software
>> for that since they have an absolute right, well maybe not according to
>> the EC aka ECUSSR, but in a normal and free business climate to write
>> and publish software in whatever OS language they desire.
>
> Of course, they have a right to do so.  I wasn't even blaming them.
>
> I was just pointing out that, because my needs are more productive and
> less entertainment-oriented, there might be some difference in how I
> comparatively judge the quality of OSes.
>
> On the other hand, I have a FreeBSD laptop with Neverwinter Nights on it,
> and until she got tired of it my girlfriend had a Debian laptop with
> World of Warcraft on it, and we both use our respective systems to watch
> TV shows on Hulu from time to time.  Neither of us has played computer
> games much lately, but there's some evidence to suggest that even for
> time-wasting purposes our open source operating systems can serve
> admirably -- even achieving better frame rates for the games we've played
> than equivalent systems running MS Windows.
>
> --
> Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
>