2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore?

[Chad Perrin]

On Thu, Jul 21, 2011 at 01:11:12PM -0400, Daniel Staal wrote:
> On Thu, July 21, 2011 12:13 pm, Jamie Paul Griffin wrote:
> >
> > Adding a variety of devices to a tablet still wouldn't make it an
> > attractive option for me. I can't imagine doing my CS degree course-work
> > on one of them, it would be a nightmare. I even found working on a laptop
> > frustrating given the length of study sessions sometimes.
> 
> As I said elsewhere in that email, I don't expect everyone to do so.  I
> just know several who have.  As tablets and such get more powerful and the
> connection systems get better it will become a more appealing option for
> more and more users.
> 
> But for a large number of non-technical users, I can see it being the most
> appealing option already.

If all they want is a toy with a Web browser and an email client, I guess
that works for them.  I don't know if they really count for purposes of
discussing the possible replacement of desktops and laptops, though,
because what they really need is not a general-purpose personal computer
at all.


> >
> > Also, due to the nature of the course-work I absolutely could not work
> > with anything other than UNIX and so I have to select my hardware around
> > my choice of OS which of course is FreeBSD.
> 
> Which nicely brings us back to where this thread started: What needs to
> happen to make sure FreeBSD stays relevant as computing moves to these
> devices?  ;)  (Or should FreeBSD try to be relevant to the end-user at
> all?  Part of what makes this an appealing option is increased 'cloud
> computing', and FreeBSD has an obviously relevant place in that, as a
> high-performance and high-reliability server platform.)

Getting FreeBSD on my Android smartphone without losing basic
functionality (support for all the hardware on the thing, essentially)
would be a good start.  I'd take NetBSD or OpenBSD, too.

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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