[svlug] BAFUG: Was Reminder: SVLUG mailing list server failure risk, gap in backups

[Rick Moen]

Steve Litt wrote:

> Jesse,
> 
> Recent events in the Linux world have made FreeBSD and PC-BSD much more
> relevant. Here in Orlando we're trying to start a BSD group too, and
> GoLUG is on record as being BSD-welcome.

I think the biggest obstacle to *BSD's good health over the last decade has
been hardware support.  The BSDs continue to lag, and the problem has gotten
worse.  This is tragic:  As Jesse and Josef can attest, I'm a BSD fan (and
sometime user, as far back as 386BSD and earlier VAX implementations during
summer sessions at Evans Hall, UCB, where I completely failed to love vi and
roff).  There are things Linux coders can do to help alleviate the hardware
support problem:  For example, one of the most important SCSI driver sets in
the Linux kernel (Adaptec?) has always been kept dual-licensed, available as
either GPLv2 or new-BSD.  

Hey, fellahs, I hope this doesn't qualify me for burning at the stake, but
I'm afraid my nostalgia for BSD userspace utilities ain't what it used to
be.  Recently, I tried to do some real work with the BSD versions of awk and
sed on (*cough*) OS X, and they now seem just gratuitously dopey in the
extra limitations I have to work around.  Rather too much like wearing the
hair shirt for my (spoiled) perspective, and I find myself wanting my GNU
versions back.

If that means I'm (selectively) a bloatware fan, so be it.

Meanwhile, Steve, although I wish a prosperous voyage and every happiness to 
all the BSDs including without discrimination Theo's, I fear you'll find 
the limited hardware support a real headache.  You might even miss the GNU
suite in the initial install, though of course it can be added.

Me, I prefer to see Linux kernel-based systems without the Freedesktop.org
cruft.  And that includes even udev and D-Bus.  Like, I recently had a
horrible suspicion that distros are now compiling core X.org packages to
require both of those things, and I now find that it's true:
https://packages.debian.org/wheezy/xserver-xorg-core

I'm sorry, but merely running X11 should not absolutely require that you
have a dynamic /dev manager daemon running and automagically populating the
device-file tree, nor should there be any absolute requirement that a system
message bus be present and operational.  Nothing about the X protocol has
ever required either of those things, and it's madness to compile the X
server daemons so that they do.  

This creeping featuritis caught me by surprise, because I'll readily admit I
wasn't watching the unwanted dependencies glomming onto my systems like a
school of ramoras.  But it's gotten my attention now.

See, Steve, I continue to more-or-less agree with your scruffy nerf-herding
collection of rebels trying to free Linux distros of systemd (or failing
that, to mass-flee to FreeBSD), _but_ I also continue to think you've zoned
in on the wrong problem.  The rot is broader than that, and a comprehensive
approach to restoring modular function and avoidance of excessively
tight-coupled and tangled dependency trees needs to address much more than
just init choice.  The init fight was just the symptom.