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FreeBSD To See Better Laptop Support With Investment Backed By AMD, Dell & Framework. (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 21 hours ago by 101@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] wolf@lemmy.zip 19 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Very happy to read that, but honestly, when reading "$1 million USD" as investment sum, it reads more like an advertisement stunt than a real investment. (Like, 2 senior developers for one year?)

We need more diversity in Open Source operating systems for desktops, laptops and any of the *BSDs is a great candidate. (Would love to see Haiku getting some sponsorship or even ReactOS!)

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 4 points 13 hours ago

I think they port FreeBSD's network card drivers to Haiku. So this may affect it positively too.

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

The shittiness of that stack of laptops in the photo hurts my soul

[–] bhamlin@lemmy.world 4 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I dunno, it looks like two framework laptops and a modern macbook pro. They could be doing far worse if that's what those are.

[–] Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

This photo?

[–] RageAgainstTheRich@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago

Should be an international war crime. Who the hell stacks laptops like that...

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 53 points 20 hours ago (2 children)

Cool 😎 Anything developed fro FreeBSD can be ported to Linux if needed.
Unfortunately improvements made on Linux can't be ported back.
This is due to the license terms, But this is also the reason IBM, Google and many others have to contribute back to Linux, and Apple doesn't to FreeBSD.

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 18 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

playstation run on freebsd too

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 21 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (2 children)

I was completely unaware of that, but it checks out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_4_system_software
No doubt FreeBSD benefit big corps, but big corps have problems benefiting FreeBSD.

[–] bruhduh@lemmy.world 6 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_system_software playstation 3 too, also Nintendo switch using some parts of freebsd as I've heard

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 14 points 17 hours ago

No they don't, Netflix and NetApp and I think somebody else have contributed back significantly.

Also a system intended to run exactly one application in one moment with direct access to hardware is likely not very rich on possible contributions.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

Apple doesn't use that much of FreeBSD, and what they use hasn't been updated in ages.

And I don't think there's much sense porting FreeBSD device drivers to Linux, I think they are different enough. And the article is about things most important for device drivers and other kernel-level things.

[–] Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 18 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

MacOS and iOS have Freebsd inside their kernel. The reason it doesn't appear to have been updated in ages is the problem listed by the OP: The BSD license meant that Apple could take without ever giving back. Which is what they did.

[–] leisesprecher@feddit.org 17 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

First of all the nitpicky stuff: Mac OS never used anything FreeBSD in the kernel. The kernel is XNU/mach, FreeBSD only supplies the user land. Pedantic, but we have a cliche to defend.

Anyway, I think you got the update part backwards. Apple doesn't update its side of the deal. MacOS ships with old bsd apps, simply because apple doesn't care all that much about it.

[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world -2 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3446231/how-closely-are-mac-os-x-and-bsd-related

of the major subsystems of the kernel, only the network stack and the VFS were still truly BSD.

So there were parts of the kernel taken directly from FreeBSD, and OSX was designed around it.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 9 points 18 hours ago

So there were parts of the kernel taken directly from FreeBSD

That would also be true for Windows NT, and many other systems to be honest, because BSD is where TCP/IP support in Unix originated, it had the best implementation (or maybe not the best, but the de-facto reference one).

and OSX was designed around it

No, that's not true, you are not paying attention.

It has its userland (that'd be Unix tools like cp, ls and find) from some fossilized version of FreeBSD and not updated a lot since that. It's not much. How do you think, would FreeBSD benefit from their fixes in ls? It's the other way around, FreeBSD's userland is much better.

Their actual kernel (XNU) sources they, despite not being obligated, release from time to time.

But say they used Linux, there still would be nothing to force them to release their drivers' sources or their GUI's sources (which are closed).

You could have made your case with Sony (I'm still not sure if that'd be of much use), but not with Apple.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

I've said in another comment that you got it wrong and how. It's the other way around with things not getting updated - the stuff in MacOS is old, not the stuff in FreeBSD. But that doesn't matter, because what Apple took from FreeBSD it actually does release among other things from time to time under their own license, only it's of no use for anyone, because their real proprietary strength is the Cocoa layer and GUI. If they used Linux, they would still not be obligated to release the sources for those. I think you see the problem with your reasoning, knowing that.

[–] nroth@lemmy.world 14 points 20 hours ago (3 children)

But why?

[–] rc__buggy@sh.itjust.works 14 points 18 hours ago

There are BSD shops out there. Not everyone wants to live under GPL restrictions.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago

Other than the obvious reasons that Linux is not everyone's piece of cake - just to have alternatives ready in case it becomes like Chrome.

[–] lnxtx@feddit.nl 6 points 18 hours ago

Helping FreeBSD stay afloat. But maybe there is a license issue from companies point of view: BSD-2-Clause vs. GPL v2.

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 11 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Cool, bsd works fine for laptops, but the power management is pretty shit.

Also the wifi support too.

Otherwise I love my freebsd thinkpad, works great when plugged in, but again the wifi is painfully slow.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Can't they just port the Linux drivers?

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 8 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Easier said than done, and they can't copy because gpl.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 4 points 14 hours ago

Ahh right, BSD vs. GPL license.

[–] IllNess@infosec.pub 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Can the drivers be ported with a different license if it is not included with the BSD licensed operating system?

[–] InverseParallax@lemmy.world 5 points 12 hours ago

Absolutely.

They partly were, they're just not given nearly the same attention and are often terribly outdated and less engineered.

Also they aren't tested as thoroughly, there was a call for hardware by the FreeBSD team not that long ago that I can't find, they simply don't have the same kind of resources.

Most FreeBSD dev is focused on server hardware like for Netflix and its ilk, I don't know many other people who use it as a daily driver.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 3 points 14 hours ago

worked well for apple.