[TriLUG] Where is Linux today?

Wesley Shields wxs at atarininja.org
Wed Jun 25 10:24:09 EDT 2008


I'm still very new to the list, hope nobody minds me somewhat
hijacking this thread.  I'm looking forward to going to the meetings
when I arrive in NC in the fall.  ;)

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 10:51:07PM -0400, Tanner Lovelace wrote:
> I've now been up for 18 hours today and worked for 14 hours as an election
> judge.  So, take anything I say below with that in mind, please.
> 
> On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 5:17 PM, Crist?bal Palmer <cmp at cmpalmer.org> wrote:
> 
> > There's the problem. I don't think he implied that at all.
> 
> Really?  Oh well.
> 
> > I wrote my email precisely because I recognize how much you've put
> > into Open Source. You have more credibility and weight than most
> > people (I'd hazard even most people on this list) when it comes to
> > making arguments about Open Source. That's precisely why I thought it
> > was odd that your argument seemed to be that some proprietary stuff is
> > okay if there's a lot of Free stuff in or available for the package,
> > and furthermore the fight that the Fedora Project is fighting is
> > "tiresome". If you feel that way, then what hope is there for the
> > majority of people who don't have the commitment that you do?
> 
> Actually, I have a lot less problem with what the Fedora project
> does with codecs than I do with the other things I mentioned:
> kernel politics.  I'm about as far removed as you can get from
> kernel politics and still be involved in open source/free software,
> so if they're bothering me I have to wonder about other people too.
> But, mainly, the confrontational nature of many of the kernel
> developers has actually come close to making me switch to
> FreeBSD.  A lot of this has to do with the stance on closed
> source drivers and the stubborn refusal to delineate a driver
> interface.  But, I very, very much respect their right to do
> whatever they want with what they created, so it isn't up to
> me to tell them what to do (far from it!).  But, I've been dismayed
> enough times by it that I've seriously thought about moving
> to FreeBSD.  The main reason I haven't for my desktop
> (which, admittedly doesn't get used as much as my laptop)
> is the trouble it would take to move from my XFS filesystem
> on linux software raid.  If FreeBSD could just read that directly,
> I probably would have already switched.

I'm biased against Linux in general, so I'll not comment on the above
except to state that I believe there is read-only support for XFS in
FreeBSD 7.0.

Quote from xfs(5):
The xfs file system support first appeared in FreeBSD 7.0.

Wikipedia and other places seem to agree.  I've never used anything
other than UFS and ZFS (the occasional msdos or ext2 reading) under
FreeBSD so I have no idea if it will eat your data, light your cat on
fire or do other generally bad things.

Not that I want to hijack this thread but you may be able to migrate
away from XFS and onto something more suitable for FreeBSD use if you
want.  I think backups in case of problems are in order though.

You may also be able to try the live CD and see how it handles your
hardware.

-- WXS



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