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31

General / Re: Copyfree Software

« on: March 09, 2011, 12:37:07 PM »

I used to multiboot between 13 different OSes including various Linux distros, all three BSD's, GNU HURD, and Windows XP and Vista (7 wasn't out yet). At the end I wiped them all out and put OpenSolaris on that system because OpenSolaris is pretty awesome.

I might switch to that instead of Ubuntu eventually because I like what I've read about ZFS.

But I can't think of any other reason not to go BSD unless BSD supports that as well for the /home partition or whatever you call it in BSD.

You can do ZFS on root, however it doesn't multiboot very well because it works best on a GPT partitioned disk, and most OSes (including Windows) can't boot off anything but MBR on most systems.

FreeBSD lets you mount ZFS partitions with a limited set of features.  (As does NetBSD, and to some degree pretty much every major OS except Windows and OpenBSD.)  FreeBSD 8.2's "improved ZFS" is actually just Zpool version 15 (`zpool upgrade -v`), while Solaris 11 is at least v31, which means absence of Solaris FS features like ZFS-level encryption, deduplication, RAID-Z 3, etc.  However, you can bring FreeBSD 8.2 up to Zpool v28 via a patch, and that's already included in FreeBSD 9-CURRENT.

I tend to stay away from FS-dependent tricks to keep my work portable, and in ZFS's case for license purity as well.  OpenBSD is great for conservative grouches like me.  Though I still have big dreams that DragonFly's HAMMER would catch up to ZFS someday, and, because of its licensing, become the universal FS that works on everything - Windows, OpenBSD, Linux, Solaris, AIX, etc.  But I'm not holding my breath... 

I use ZFS root on GPT partitions on all my FreeBSD systems.

ZFS's license may be impure, but it's not viral like GPL is, so in that sense I find it more tolerable than for example GCC. I'm patiently awaiting 9.0-RELEASE, I don't want to patch an 8.2 system and break backward compatibility in case I need to roll back.

Maybe someday HAMMER will outperform and outfeature ZFS, but it doesn't look like it's going to be soon. Such a shame that Btrfs isn't free (fucking Linux).

32

General / Re: Copyfree Software

« on: March 08, 2011, 11:08:35 PM »

I used 3 separate disks. One of them had Sun's hacked-up GRUB (needed for ZFS support), one had a normal GRUB, and one had the normal Windows bootloader (though I added entries to other OSes to it).


Opensolaris had pretty good package management for the most part, a big improvement over Solaris Express, had a totally different package management that was more like most Linux distros on the front end, and didn't give me any weird or stupid package dependency issues. The software available wasn't usually very limiting, though it did take a while to find a working Blender binary. The service management was pretty easy too, and the snapshotting (works like Apple's TimeMachine but on the local disk) was well implemented. The transactional and rollbackable upgrades were really cool as well, I've never used another OS that offered anything like it except for the FreeBSD install I did manually to achieve the same effect. It had its hassles but for the most part it was pretty trouble-free. I only stopped using it because of the Oracle deal. I still keep an eye on OpenIndiana and IllumOS. The licensing is not as free as BSD but it's less than GPL and is GPL-incompatible (sort of? there's disagreement). Play with it a little bit, OpenSolaris is different in a number of ways from Solaris. After you dig in deeper than the initial sickeningly ubuntuesque GNOME default there's some neat stuff there that I would like to see default in other operating systems.

33

The Polling Pit / Re: Compulsory clothing

« on: March 08, 2011, 10:52:20 PM »

I read the link, and even after the umpteenth time I've read it I still can't find an answer to my actual question.

34

General / Re: Locking threads

« on: March 08, 2011, 10:50:27 PM »

When I read the subject my first thought was multiprocessor synchronization. XP

35

The Polling Pit / Re: Compulsory clothing

« on: March 08, 2011, 05:09:38 PM »

You answered a question I did not ask. Please answer the one that I did.

36

General / Re: Copyfree Software

« on: March 08, 2011, 11:54:43 AM »

I used to multiboot between 13 different OSes including various Linux distros, all three BSD's, GNU HURD, and Windows XP and Vista (7 wasn't out yet). At the end I wiped them all out and put OpenSolaris on that system because OpenSolaris is pretty awesome.

37

General / Re: Copyfree Software

« on: March 08, 2011, 12:31:45 AM »

A valid reason to dual-boot is to test if you can run the OS on your hardware and see how well it runs in order to evaluate using it as a full-time operating system. Dual-booting in the long run doesn't usually work out because you always end up using one or the other system and the other one is just taking up space on your partition table.

38

The Polling Pit / Re: Compulsory clothing

« on: March 07, 2011, 06:24:06 PM »

If I'm trolling I'm a really bad troll, because I only seem to be able to irritate wtfk, who has a propensity to be difficult with people that he disagrees with and me in particular. Nobody else made a big deal about anything I said in this thread except him. Am I the troll or is he?

I have a propensity to be difficult with people who deliberately talk in circles and don't make sense.  In the big picture, that's mostly you.

Why do you talk as if any disagreement between us is because I choose to make your life more difficult? Anytime you think I'm wrong you think I'm deliberately wrong, like I actually know what's right and choose to say something else anyways. Being immature and difficult doesn't advance either of our lives in any way.

Would you like to answer the actual question that I asked?

I reject ownership of land  [...]

WTF?!  [...]

I can explain it in a different thread if you prefer.

Yes please start / link to a thread (on another BBS perhaps).

I'll make one in the No-Hijack zone soon.

39

The Polling Pit / Re: Compulsory clothing

« on: March 06, 2011, 11:57:43 PM »

I am.

40

The Polling Pit / Re: Compulsory clothing

« on: March 06, 2011, 03:44:28 PM »

If I'm trolling I'm a really bad troll, because I only seem to be able to irritate wtfk, who has a propensity to be difficult with people that he disagrees with and me in particular. Nobody else made a big deal about anything I said in this thread except him. Am I the troll or is he?

I assumed it was Sam Gunn, for saying you're this ben tucker guy after you said you spent a bunch of time arguing with him.

The ambiguity is killing me. XP

41

The Polling Pit / Re: Compulsory clothing

« on: March 06, 2011, 03:17:44 PM »

If I'm trolling I'm a really bad troll, because I only seem to be able to irritate wtfk, who has a propensity to be difficult with people that he disagrees with and me in particular. Nobody else made a big deal about anything I said in this thread except him. Am I the troll or is he?

42

General / Re: Copyfree Software

« on: March 06, 2011, 01:42:16 AM »

I expect competition from browser based UI's to push native-execution UIs to be better. They're different tools, AJAX UI's will be the general purpose ones and natively executing UIs will be for applications where sophistication and responsiveness matter. Neither one is going to completely supplant the other, AJAX UI's are just new so their growth hasn't approached their own limiting factors yet.

43

General / Re: Copyfree Software

« on: March 05, 2011, 10:48:42 PM »

What I would be hoping for instead of AJAX interfaces and such would be something more like a client-server model to most applications where zero latency between cause and effect isn't a priority, like transmission-daemon or quassel or mpd, where you could theoretically use any interface you like including web interfaces or native UI widgets to communicate with a server process that doesn't necessarily have to be on the same system. Web browsers might be a universal client with their own, standard, cross-platform, easy-to-learn language for building interfaces, but it seems silly to think that this will be the farthest extent of it, especially as new types of interfaces like touch, and voice control likely to become more mainstream as voice recognition software continues to improve. Your standard AJAX page in a web browser may become the least-common-denominator for development of UI's with native UI clients likely providing better usability.

44

The Polling Pit / Re: Compulsory clothing

« on: March 05, 2011, 10:37:43 PM »

Since you seem incapable of understanding the subtle differences between an unveiled challenge to libertarian interpersonal relational and criminal philosophy and a simple question of personal beliefs and opinion, you can only give one of two answers, "yes", or "no". Please answer the question.

45

General / Re: Copyfree Software

« on: March 05, 2011, 06:46:53 PM »

I have doubts about the feasibility of a browser replacing native applications. The responsiveness just isn't there and computation can be done much faster in native, machine-and-OS dependent code. There's definitely a lot that it can do, but we aren't there yet.

As it currently stands there aren't any serious operating systems that don't have a history of either corporate or government sponsorship, directly or indirectly. Minix I don't believe gets government grants but it's not quite a serious OS for general use yet. I think this is more an issue of, with all the government induced market insanity, this is how it gets done. I'd take a government grant as well, they'll tax me out of it in the long run anyways. OpenBSD did get military grants but as you said, probably not a lot more on the way.

By the way, does OpenBSD still have a giant kernel lock or is its SMP reasonable yet? Last I used it (4.5 I think?) the kernel was single-threaded and the amd64 edition saw only 3.2 out of 6 GB of RAM. If they've gotten beyond this I'd like to give OpenBSD another shot but I dont have any systems that don't have multiple cores anymore and I don't see much sense in running an OS that can't use them fully.