From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jul 19 06:46:58 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CB07A1065675 for ; Tue, 19 Jul 2011 06:46:58 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from kheuer2@gwdg.de) Received: from mailer-b4.gwdg.de (mailer-b4.gwdg.de [134.76.10.28]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8F6AB8FC17 for ; Tue, 19 Jul 2011 06:46:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from gwdu60.gwdg.de ([134.76.8.60]) by mailer.gwdg.de with esmtps (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1Qj3dh-0005LR-Fn for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:18:41 +0200 Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:18:41 +0200 (CEST) From: Konrad Heuer To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII X-Spam-Level: - X-Virus-Scanned: (clean) by exiscan+sophie Subject: 2020: Will BSD and Linux be relevant anymore? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2011 06:46:58 -0000 I found it very interesting to look at the thread "Lennart Poettering: BSD Isn't Relevant Anymore" and the original interview. Just to make clear: I started using FreeBSD approximately in 1994 with 2.0-RELEASE and still use FreeBSD and hope to do so a lot of years to come. But: Neither BSD nor Linux will ever have chance to conquere the desktop, despite of KDE, Gnome or anything else. In business environments there is no alternative to Windows. Microsoft successfully created Active Directory from DNS, LDAP and Kerberos with an easy-to-manage interface and - meanwhile - a seasonable server operating system like Windows Server 2008R2. It was long way for them from horrible Windows NT, but they did it. I don't see any chance to manage a large client-server-cloud with BSD or Linux as you can do with Active Directory. Additionally, and especially in the personal environment, the market will more and more move away from the traditional PC or notebook -- except for games, but that's again not an area where Linux or BSD are strong -- to tablet PCs and other mobile devices. To my mind we'll have to face a rapid change within the next years, and operating systems of the future might be Android or IOS or Windows Mobile or something similar which my base on Linux or BSD but are something different. Let's forget about BSD or Linux on the desktop and about KDE and Gnome etc. Nice to see them, but useful only for few. BSD will have to keep in and find new niches on the server market. The number of installations is not the most important figure. Functionality is important -- ZFS, HAST, CARP, jails, as already mentioned -- would be nice to see a distributed file system. So, let's continue as we did for years .. Best regards Konrad Heuer GWDG, Am Fassberg, 37077 Goettingen, Germany, kheuer2@gwdg.de