Does Desktop have a future on BSD?

Windows is not “ease of use” in terms of UX - everything works with it but the UX is terrible for too many reasons to list. The UX on MacOS and Linux is IMHO light years ahead of the UX on Windows.

Flash should have died 10 years ago; no clue why Adobe keeps it alive. It is a security nightmare.

At least on FreeBSD we can make our own UX.
 
Luckily flash is no longer a thing. It is a remnant of the dark times!

I don't think FreeBSD's desktop needs to get better. We just need to wait for everything else to get worse haha. Windows is going to disappear into the subscription cloud and Linux / Wayland is doomed to failure by falling apart into tiny niche fragments.

The year of the FreeBSD desktop will come and we don't need to write a single line of code XD.
 
rootbert said:
I would like to have more users ...
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Why? What would more users accomplish?

I think it would just accomplish more trouble. More people asking questions, needing help, being unsatisfied. Users don't contribute to a project, they use the resources of the project. Remember, FreeBSD doesn't make more money from more users (unlike Windows, Mac, and to some extent Linux, where many users pay for support contracts to companies like RedHat and SUSE). That cash flow is what keeps the developers, managers, and support people employed.

In the case of FreeBSD, a very small fraction of users are volunteer developers. But I think adding desktop users is unlikely to significantly increate the number of volunteer developers. And the funding for the foundation (which in turn pays some developers, sadly not many) doesn't come from desktop users, it comes from a very small number of large server user companies (such as Netflix).

I would like to have more developers. Not hackers, not programmers, software developers.
 
ralphbsz said:
Why? What would more users accomplish?
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This will remain a mystery until a statistically significant number of people who use MacOS and Windows move to FreeBSD.

ralphbsz said:
I would like to have more developers. Not hackers, not programmers, software developers.
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But if you don't have enough users to create demand, you cannot entice companies to write device drivers and 3rd party applications that developers require. In turn, this means you have to depend on hackers to do the thankless job of porting drivers and software from Linux.
 
shkhln said:
Somebody must nag upstream application developers to support FreeBSD.
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I actually did that for a certain C64 emulator. Of course, by creating an initial pull request on github, but well, it worked :)

As for "more developers" -- I think a lot of the FreeBSD users already do some programming. I personally didn't dive into FreeBSD base code, but I do maintain a few ports. I think anyone with a little programming background can learn that, the porters' handbook gives pretty good guidance, and I recommend setting up poudriere and using poudriere testport to check results. Desktops are all about applications, so work on ports is an important piece here :) People, adopt ports, or create new ones :)
 
shkhln said:
Somebody must nag upstream application developers to support FreeBSD. That requires numbers.
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I don't think most software developers respond to nagging. Either they have a paycheck, and respond to the needs of the organization that puts the numbers on their paycheck. Or they are hobbyists, and respond to their desires.

Aren't you contradicting yourself? Why would anyone develop anything for a platform with no users? Well, other than in-house enterprise applications, I mean.
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But it does have lots of users. Admittedly a lot less than Linux, about 100 times less in rough numbers. But the vast majority of all FreeBSD users are using it in server mode. And as I said above, developers either get paid (in which case they are probably working on server use cases, because that's where the money is), or they are volunteers (in which case they're going to work on what they find interesting). I haven't seen many developers (either commercial or open source) who do coding as a form of community service, to help unknown users.
 
ralphbsz said:
I haven't seen many developers (either commercial or open source) who do coding as a form of community service, to help unknown users.
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No "volunteer" will do that of course, if you develop in your spare time, you always develop stuff you want to use yourself. Still there are "volunteers" like me who value portable software -- so if someone approaches me telling me my software doesn't work correctly on system X, and said system is POSIX or at least close to, I do have an interest to fix that :)
 
Zirias said:
Desktops are all about applications, so work on ports is an important piece here
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Yes, but to be able to run applications, desktops must have good support for the hardware they run on. And this is the most painful issue, and where more developers would be the most helpful.

However, it is also in the area requiring the more advanced knowledge. A developer willing to write a device driver for a graphics card or whatever needs a deep knowledge in digital electronics. Nowadays processors are far more complex than a Z80 or 6502, there's a whole lot more to learn to be able to write working software.

Learning that kind of things not only takes time, but a beginner doesn't even know what he/she needs to learn, so the learning path is long and chaotic.

What might help volunteers willing to contribute to such developments is to be coached by more experienced developers, to put road signs along their learning path and ensure the consistency and comprehensiveness of the journey.
 
pyret said:
If you already know Adobe Photoshop, which isn't available on FreeBSD
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Anyway, professional Photoshop users would *never* want to use anything else than a Mac. Some of them might use a Windows or Linux machine for other purposes, but they know so many shortcuts and tricks on Mac that make their work so much easier that they feel totaly desperate when they have to use a Windows version of Photoshop, where all these things also exist, but in a slightly different way.

Besides, you seem to consider all users have the same expectations as yourself, which is a bit excessive.

For instance, I've been using Linux on my desktop and laptop computers since 2004.
I'm now giving FreeBSD a try and find it almost equivalent.
I've also been using Linux on my laptop at work for 2 years now.
I've never missed Windows - All the opposite!
 
pyret said:
FreeBSD desktop has no future. Period. Linux is better, but it still isn't a replacement for Windows and Mac.
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Use Windows and done..from where are you posting this? in FreeBSD using links? :rolleyes: support Linux if you want(the future clone of Windows..but is my personal opinion)
or go and buy a Mac

anyway...I'have a friend(55 years old) that dont know nothing about Linux..nothing, but he want to leave Windows
I'recomend him FreeBSD, easy installer, easy to configure, easy to install some window manager
is the most close to Linux like...the time of redhat 7

no 15 sh#% steps to run a command that replace ifconfig or route
no 30 steps and problems to install a simple window manager
no 1 eye(syst#$^) that control everything and want to take control of all (and erase it)
 
shkhln said:
I think, as a community,
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You are assuming that there is *ONE* community. No, there isn't. There are various communities. There is a community of people who like to and want to run FreeBSD as a desktop (or even laptop). Fine, more power to them. There are others who use it on a server. Some are interested in small devices (Raspberry Pi and friends). Some use it on clouds, or as a virtualization host for other OSes. There are a few professional users of FreeBSD (at companies like Netflix, Jupiter and NetApp, and smaller companies, such as Terry Kennedy), but I don't think many of those are represented on this forum. They have all different interests and opinions.

I for one happen to agree with pyret: The only future of using a desktop on FreeBSD (matter-of-fact, on any OS other than the big 4, in which I include Linux and ChromeOS) is for hobbyists and evangelists. And if those people want to use it, great. Just don't think for a moment that they can speak for others.

And to be clear: in my case it is not a religious bias. While today I use only Mac's as my user environment machines, I've spent about 15 years with a Windows laptop as my primary office machine (not a problem, works fine), Linux desktops both at home and in the office, and before that lots of Unix- and particular BSD-derived GUIs. Matter-of-fact, the first GUI I used was X on a BSD flavor (Ultrix); that must have been in the mid 80s.
 
ralphbsz said:
You are assuming that there is *ONE* community. …
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I'm not defining community by interests but rather by who talks to whom. In that sense we have: mailing lists, this forum, Reddit, Twitter, some weirdos on Facebook, a couple of conferences and, maybe, local BUGs (assuming that's even a thing). While quiet technology users always vastly outnumber vocal users, it's pretty clear I'm not talking about them.
 
ralphbsz said:
The only future of using a desktop on FreeBSD (matter-of-fact, on any OS other than the big 4, in which I include Linux and ChromeOS) is for hobbyists and evangelists.
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That's totally fine. The annoying part with FreeBSD are people actively discouraging any kind of desktop development/usage. Somehow this is never an issue with OpenBSD, NetBSD or even Illumos derivatives.

(By the way, a lot of desktop FreeBSD development effort goes into maintaining various Linux compatibility layers, which are equally useful for server use cases: there are linuxkpi-based NIC drivers, for example.)
 
pyret said:
Ports do not take the place of the applications that run on desktops like Windows/Mac and even extending to Linux in some cases.

If you want to stream Hulu or Netflix on a FreeBSD desktop, you can't. If you want to run Skype on a FreeBSD desktop, you can't.
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So, you imply only closed-source proprietery crap qualifies as "applications"? Well, thanks, now I know there's no need reading more of your nonsense.
 
Some of this closed source proprietary crap is actually coming to FreeBSD, assuming we can find a Chromium-derived Widevine-enabled Linux browser which is not a total PITA to package.
 
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