Why FreeBSD should not adopt launchd reddit / BSD ---------------------------------------------------------------------- agentdero · 2015-08-27 15:56 As the "R Tyler" mentioned in the article who originally started trying to bring launchd in way way way way back in the day for GSoC (and then let it die), this kind of discussion is valuable IMHO. The article misses some of the original motivations for launchd in OS X which I think are useful, perhaps not in PID 1 useful, but still useful: * Support for per-user launchd daemons such that users have an isolated process manager available * IPC broker, which the author covers to some extent, but this isn't just to paper over goofiness around Mach ports. `dbus-daemon` exists in the Linux world to help mitigate a number of interprocess messaging challenges that arise when you have multiple processes running around that want to pass data around to each other. In the `#openlaunchd` somebody mentioned that Plan 9's and QNX message passing architecture are superior to Mach ports/messaging. I totally believe that but I want *something* to be present to give me named message brokerage across processes, conventional unix socket paths as a mechanism for IPC is so clunky to me nowadays.. * Interactive CLI with the process manager (`launchctl`) I find very useful. This is not an argument for launchd necessarily but rather any modern process manager I want "liveness" to for starting ad-hoc jobs or interrogating the current state of affairs. To me, launchd isn't a destination, there's a lot of warts as the article's author points out. But as Apple moves away from launchd (they've got their own new proprietary stuff going into newer versions of OS X), launchd represents a decent (IMO) starting point to explore and adapt the daemon to FreeBSD. --- I was not previously aware of [nosh](http://homepage.ntlworld.com./jon athan.deboynepollard/Softwares/nosh.html) which I'll have to check out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andys · 2015-08-27 22:30 I'd argue that most uses of "out of the box" FreeBSD are now desktop users. Server and embedded use is now niche and those users can customize as needed. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BumpitySnook · 2015-08-28 00:25 Indeed. The author just misses the point: > Well, it does make decent sense for a desktop where you want good priority scheduling and resource accounting so that applications can be kept responsive even as system events queue up. But for a server and for embedded systems, which is what FreeBSD is primarily used for? Well, why can't FreeBSD be good at being a Desktop too? And automated and consistent service management is a huge boon for creating new embedded systems without having to roll it all from scratch. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- northrupthebandgeek · 2015-08-28 06:19 Is it? The only role I really encounter FreeBSD in is as a server. I'd imagine that desktop users would prefer PC-BSD, no? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ojrac · 2015-08-28 11:51 Interesting - what do you see people running servers on if not FreeBSD? I've been looking into FreeBSD specifically as a server OS lately, so this idea was sort of a surprise. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fwaggle · 2015-08-28 12:32 I'm a FreeBSD fanboy since the late 90s, and I use Linux on my desktop inside a VBox VM because FreeBSD seems to perform like dogshit in comparison. The server is the primary place I can use FreeBSD and enjoy it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ojrac · 2015-08-28 15:45 Yeah, I'm used to thinking of servers as the main use case for FreeBSD. Nothing against desktop use, but it's not what got me interested. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vvelox · 2015-08-30 05:47 > I'd imagine that desktop users would prefer PC-BSD, no? As some one who uses FreeBSD for desktop/laptop/mediabox use, I can't think of a single reason I would choose PC-BSD over FreeBSD. It gains me exactly zero. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vvelox · 2015-08-30 05:49 > I'm a FreeBSD fanboy since the late 90s, and I use Linux on my desktop inside a VBox VM because FreeBSD seems to perform like dogshit in comparison. Interesting problem there. I've been running it since 4.4 and I've found it to consistently be nothing but snappy and under heavier load than Linux will play nicely with. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- northrupthebandgeek · 2015-08-30 05:51 I dunno. Always figured PC-BSD (and GhostBSD) to be the "desktop- oriented" BSDs. I suppose advanced users would be more inclined to go with (Free|Open|Net|DragonFly)BSD for the customizability and "clean slate". ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fwaggle · 2015-08-30 08:11 As a VBox VM in a desktop workload? I find it great on bare-metal, but in VBox w/ FreeBSD guest the acceleration took a long time to get working and then was still pretty dodgy (things weren't drawing and so on), and it takes FreeBSD about 4x as long to boot as it does a Linux guest. I have a Core i7-3630m, 4GB RAM Windows host, with 1GB allocated to each VBox VM, and I was only running them one at a time. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vvelox · 2015-08-30 10:09 Ahh, k. Wiz. Sorry, misunderstood what you meant there and was reading the reverse of it. Never tried running FreeBSD for desktop stuff inside a VM. I've done it for testing server stuff, but never desktop stuff. I am curious, why run either FreeBSD or Linux for desktop stuff inside a VM? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lua_x_ia · 2015-08-30 19:50 PC-BSD is sort of gold foil on a turd. I've ranted about this before, but the problems with FreeBSD on the desktop are access to and installation of drivers, graphical hardware management (able to see the battery level, use `powerd`, change monitor brightness/volume/etc easily), ease of use of the installer (greatly improved since 8.0 though), and, to a lesser extent, the usability of the documentation, which is very thorough but not very accessible. PC-BSD improves a whopping zero of these, and GhostBSD does slightly worse. PC-BSD installs KDE, basically, which is easy to do on FreeBSD at the touch of a button, and it "improves" on what is already one of FreeBSD's best desktop selling points -- the package manager. Where by improves, I mean tries to replace, and replaces it badly. Unfortunately I'm almost inclined to suspect this simply because it came out of iXsystems. OTOH if it would make OS X emulation easier on FreeBSD I really don't think that's a bad thing -- there are real advantages to deals with the devil. Disclaimer: by "devil" I do *not* mean to refer to Apple, OS X, Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, or any other person(s) and or product(s) associated with Apple, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries, suppliers, and/or customers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- northrupthebandgeek · 2015-08-30 20:39 Well yeah. Ubuntu, in the Linux world, also happens to be gold foil on a turd. The point is that your average end user is going to more readily flock toward that than the alternative of manually wrapping that turd in foil. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lua_x_ia · 2015-08-30 22:01 The big difference between Ubuntu and PC-BSD is that Ubuntu ships an environment targeted towards Linux (Unity), whereas PC-BSD ships an environment targeted towards Linux (KDE). FreeBSD has never been a *real* priority for KDE, which anyway is the most unstable of the desktop environments, often making big changes and breaking things -- which is bad for portability and it shows. If you really want to make a FreeBSD equivalent of Ubuntu, or even Debian, it starts with making a real desktop environment -- even if it's a minimal one -- that has FreeBSD as its *primary* platform target. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- fwaggle · 2015-08-30 22:07 No worries, you just had me all excited for a minute there that there might be a solution that let me use FreeBSD instead. :) > I am curious, why run either FreeBSD or Linux for desktop stuff inside a VM? I keep a Windows host because at the moment, gaming under Linux is just far more work than I'd like to do (FreeBSD even moreso). It's less work to put up with the braindead Windows behaviour than to muck around with getting the several games I play to function on an open source OS. I loathe dual-booting, and still do a fair amount of development work that works just as well on Linux as it does FreeBSD, but would be a bit of a pain on Windows. I can just shut down the VM when I don't want these things, and I don't have to worry about my Windows partition being polluted by things like WAMP, etc. Debian Linux actually performs rather well under VBox if you give it sufficient resources. I only used Linux for a couple of hours on this machine, but I'm pretty sure it's close to bare-metal with only minor frame lag (ie, I wouldn't want to try and watch FMV on it, or game on it, but for everything else it's fine). FreeBSD results in major tearing when moving windows around, that sort of thing. TL;DR: I'll switch to a full-time FreeBSD desktop one day, in about 50 years when gaming on FOSOSes works acceptably. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- northrupthebandgeek · 2015-08-31 00:06 > FreeBSD has never been a real priority for KDE, which anyway is the most unstable of the desktop environments More unstable than GNOME? Having used both, I find that a bit hard to believe :) > If you really want to make a FreeBSD equivalent of Ubuntu, or even Debian, it starts with making a real desktop environment -- even if it's a minimal one -- that has FreeBSD as its primary platform target. [PC-BSD is actually actively working on this.](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTY3MTc) IIRC, it's even in their repos already, albeit still in an experimental state. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lua_x_ia · 2015-08-31 00:57 >More unstable than GNOME? I don't mean software stability, rather development stability. KDE has always revamped things the fastest. GNOME 3 may be an exception, but KDE 4 was arguably a bigger change, and KDE 5 is already out for that matter. >PC-BSD is actually actively working on this. Well, that's a nice change. If it turns out to be reliable, it might actually be worth something. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- BasementTrix · 2015-08-31 18:57 While nosh sounds interesting, I can't really take it seriously until it is in the PORTS tree. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- kev009 · 2015-09-01 02:18 The out of the box defaults are better with pkg repo. Maybe this will become even less of an issue with option pacakges. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- vvelox · 2015-09-01 06:33 I've always compiled from source here, so unable to comment either way in terms of that. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Freeky · 2015-09-05 05:53 PC BSD ships with the Lumina desktop environment, not KDE. It's primarily for BSDs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ZarK-eh · 2015-09-17 15:29 Imma Desktop user trying to wrap a turd on my laptop, and I whole heatedly agree with all the points you've made! I couldn't suspend, see my battery, set button options (like closing the lid action), hibernate, or set CPU power levels (like 50% when on battery). While I've run BSD servers to a limited extent (FreeNAS, NAS4Free, True-OS) and can hack a terminal to get what I want, I don't want to do so with a desktop! I'm pretty sure there are other new users not willing to to either.