Subject: Re: Intel Mini?
To: None <port-i386@NetBSD.org>
From: Matthias Scheler <tron@zhadum.org.uk>
List: port-i386
Date: 10/04/2006 10:19:32
On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 04:34:51PM -0500, Jonathan A. Kollasch wrote:
> Of course you could follow the poor example of a few of the NetBSD devs
> and just use OS X. :P

Why is that a poor example? I am a NetBSD developer and I use Mac OS X
on my desktop:
- It provides an easy, consistant and comfortable user interface.
- It includes most of those plague-ins and add-ons (natively, no binary
  emulation required) that you unfortunately need to use the Internet
  these days.
- You can get applications like Roxio Toast Titanium or Apple's iLife 06
  which makes editing a video file or turning it into a DVD very easy.
  I tried the same with Windows and NetBSD in the past and it didn't work
  very well under both platforms (for different reasons).
- It supports 3D accelerated graphics very well. I can play a computer game
  without even having to close my applicatons or booting another operating
  system. For me that's really an improvement over having to boot from
  NetBSD to Windows and back depending on whether I want to play games or
  surf the web and read my e-mails securely.

Do I think that Mac OS X is better than NetBSD?
1.) This is not a valid question to start wutg. Mac OS X is a software bundle
    which includes an operating system (Darwin), a graphic user interface
    (Aqua) and a lot of applications (e.g. Mail, Safari or iCal). And for
    desktop use I definitely prefer this software bundle over competitive
    products like Windows XP, GNOME on Linux/Solaris or my old WindowMaker
    on NetBSD setup.
2.) If I compare the operating systems (NetBSD vs. Darwin) the results
    looks a bit different:
    Darwin:
    + excellent Firewire support
    o reliable but unfortunately slowish USB (2.0) support
    + power management (e.g. fan control on my Powermac G5)
    + journaling filesystem (HFS+)
    NetBSD:
    + better networking (e.g. faster NFS, reliable NIS)
    + better performance (e.g. filesystem)
    + more reliable
    + less XML madness (launchd(8) vs. cron(8), rc.conf(5) etc.)
    o USB 2.0 support is faster but less reliable

If I had the choice I would like to run Aqua on top of a NetBSD kernel
with fast and robust Firewire and USB 2.0 support, power management
and a journaling filesystem. But because I can't get that combination
I'm running NetBSD on my server and Mac OS X on my desktop.

And that combination works fine most of the time. Only Mac OS X's frequent
problems with initializing NIS and the automounter properly on system
startup are kind of annoying. But I'm trying to find the cause for this.

BTW: you are aware that the last three NetBSD releases (2.1, 3.0 and 3.0.1)
     were actually managed by developers who use Mac OS X on their desktops?
     And a lot of the active committers use Mac OS X desktops, too. Do you
     really want them to leave the project because of your ideology?

     Mac OS X is a BSD after all. And the "BSD way" has (at least for me)
     always been about tolerance. That's why the BSD license allows comercial
     and close source use.

	Kind regards

-- 
Matthias Scheler                                  http://zhadum.org.uk/