Re: [TUHS] FreeBSD behind the times? (was: Favorite unix design principles?)

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

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Since, I am an ex(1) troglodyte, I'll be happy to umpire.  (I know ed(1) is
the standard editor, but I'm willing to trade a little standardosity for
more convenience.)

On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 10:06 PM Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com> wrote:

> No worries. Maybe it’s time for a vi emacs discussion... totally kidding :)
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Jan 30, 2021, at 9:00 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >
> > I think this has gone on along enough.  Don't want it to be personal, not
> > my intent.
> >
> > Like I said it seems like a Linux vs FreeBSD thing.  Don't want that.
> > You can search the archives about Ted talking about how ext was not
> > all that (I'm a fan).
> >
> >> On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 08:52:09PM -0600, Will Senn wrote:
> >> Ha. Zfs may not be the be all and end all, but like I said, it???s
> never failed me. Whereas extX and btrfs, and, and, and have many times.
> Please don???t denigrate my knowledge, as so far as I know, we???ve never
> met, and nothing I said warrants such. The installer reminds me of
> Redhat???s old anaconda installer, I???ll grant you it???s dated. However,
> I typically install a new linux distro every week and there are many, many
> installers that are far more confusing - Open Suse and Fedora are two that
> come to mind, Debian as well. I would hazard to guess your favorite Linux
> is based on a distro that lacks a decent installer (Ubuntu and Mint are
> Debian based).
> >>
> >> Will
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >>> On Jan 30, 2021, at 8:25 PM, Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> If you like ZFS you don't understand operating systems design.  I do.
> >>> Jeff Bonwick was a stats student at Stanford when he took my OS class,
> >>> I convinced him to come to Sun.  Bill Moore worked for me.  That's the
> two
> >>> main ZFS guys and I thought I had taught them well but they let me
> down.
> >>>
> >>> ZFS doesn't use the page cache, they said it was too hard because ZFS
> >>> is compressed.  A typical file system just has block numbers, a
> compressed
> >>> one needs another int per block, it's the int that says these many
> bytes
> >>> are a block uncompressed.  It's not that hard, it is 2 ints instead of
> 1.
> >>>
> >>> In case I'm not being clear, the page cache is what everyone else uses
> >>> but ZFS has its own cache.  So if you want to mmap() a ZFS file, ZFS
> >>> has to bcopy() the data into the page cache and then spend a shit ton
> >>> of code to make sure that the page cache data is in sync with the ZFS
> >>> cache data.
> >>>
> >>> SunOS came from BSD but SunOS added mmap.  Which had the same problem,
> >>> the BSD buffer cache was exactly the same as the ZFS cache, Sun spent
> >>> years of effort to get rid of the buffer cache, everything is in the
> >>> page cache.  So ZFS was a HUGE step backwards in systems design.  Might
> >>> be the best file system ever (it is not) but it was not a good player
> >>> in the OS world.
> >>>
> >>> Those guys said that it was too hard to make a compressed file fit in
> >>> the page cache.  BitKeeper has that code and proves that it can be
> done.
> >>> Be happy to walk anyone who cares through that code, I didn't write
> that,
> >>> Wayne Scott did, but it's some of the best written code I've ever seen.
> >>> Up there with Mojo's work on the SunOS VM system.  (I'll bet that noone
> >>> takes me up on this offer, people love to argue but most don't want to
> >>> learn.  Prove me wrong, please).
> >>>
> >>> So good on you that you like ZFS and FreeBSD.  I don't and I don't for
> >>> really good reasons.
> >>>
> >>> Let's try it this way.  Get back to me when you can show me 40 people
> >>> who have installed FreeBSD on their own, with no help.  In the same
> >>> time, I can show you 40,000 people who have installed Linux on their
> >>> own, with no help.  Probably 400,000.
> >>>
> >>> Technology is great, ease of use is what gets you users.  ZFS is
> >>> great but doesn't play nice with the OS.
> >>>
> >>> That's my oh brother.
> >>>
> >>>> On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 07:47:41PM -0600, Will Senn wrote:
> >>>> Oh brother. I use FreeBSD all the time. I prefer it for its stability
> and ZFS which has NEVER let me down and I???ve done my share of stupid user
> error. Now that Linux has ZFS, it doesn???t seem as stuck in the dark ages,
> but uptime on my fbsd instance is 10x any of my Linux instances. We are
> soooo off topic, I think :). But, I???m always up for talking up FBSD. I
> use it in my classes, too and the system is much more coherent for my
> systems programming classes than linux.
> >>>>
> >>>> Will
> >>>>
> >>>> Sent from my iPhone
> >>>>
> >>>>>>> On Jan 30, 2021, at 5:11 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>>>>
> >>>>>>> On Saturday, 30 January 2021 at 14:28:54 -0800, Larry McVoy wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 04:28:26PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
> >>>>>>> If I could get the day-2-day
> >>>>>>> applications that I need to work on FreeBSD, I suspect I would be
> there in
> >>>>>>> a heartbeat.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> I dunno about that.  I tried out FreeBSD a couple of years ago when
> >>>>>> Netflix was flirting with me.  The installer hasn't seen any loving
> in
> >>>>>> 30 years it would seem.  The disk setup tool sucks just as bad as it
> >>>>>> did back in 1988.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> You could be right there, for some value of 1988 (FreeBSD came into
> >>>>> being in 1992).  The tools work without being good.  But how often do
> >>>>> you use them?  I've been using FreeBSD since the beginning, and I
> >>>>> can't recall when I last used the disk partitioning tool, though I'm
> >>>>> sure that when I did I overrode a lot of (all?) the suggestions.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> I remember when Linux was this bad in the .90ish releases.  A long
> >>>>>> time ago.  Now their install is painless, it's every bit as good as
> >>>>>> Windows and maybe better.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> FWIW, I find Microsoft "Windows" installation terminally confusing
> >>>>> (that's what you were talking about, right?).  And I've run into
> >>>>> serious problems with various Linux installations too.  That doesn't
> >>>>> make the FreeBSD tools better, but maybe it relativizes it.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> And it got that way fast, I remember doing an install on some
> >>>>>> machine around 1998 or 1999, I didn't have a mouse plugged in, no
> >>>>>> worries, you could just move around with the keyboard.  X11 came up
> >>>>>> as part of the install, the entire install was graphical and
> >>>>>> seamless.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> The FreeBSD installer *does* install X if you select it.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> FreeBSD is stuck in the 1990's in terms of user interface.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> You're still talking about the installer, aren't you?  The normal
> user
> >>>>> interface is via the shell, which hasn't changed, and for a good
> >>>>> reason.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>> They've done some good stuff in the kernel but it's not an end user
> >>>>>> system,
> >>>>>
> >>>>> There I have to agree with you.  A little TLC would go a long way.
> >>>>> But I hope that you're not advocating the "change your GUI with your
> >>>>> underwear" attitude that Microsoft, Apple and many Linux distros
> >>>>> have.  One of the reasons I don't use Linux is because every time I
> >>>>> try, the interface has changed.
> >>>>>
> >>>>> Greg
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Sent from my desktop computer.
> >>>>> Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
> >>>>> See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
> >>>>> This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
> >>>>> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> ---
> >>> Larry McVoy                     lm at mcvoy.com
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
> >
> > --
> > ---
> > Larry McVoy                     lm at mcvoy.com
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm
>

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