Matthias Scheler wrote:
> 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's of course a bit comparing Apples with Oranges. You realize the NetBSD logo
has an orange flag? Anyway, a Unix-system is historically not bound to a
certain GUI which is the better design, IMHO. The DOS people sometimes think of
this a DOS + Win 3.11 == "old, bad, slow" which is just based on bad experience
with a badly designed joke. So it's much more difficult to be as consistent as
a propertiary GUI.  Neither Apple nor Microsoft have to adhere to any but their
own "standards" and they can redefine these anytime at will.

> - It includes most of those plague-ins and add-ons (natively, no binary
>   emulation required)

The term "emulation" is a bad choice because people will likely assume it's the
slow kind of emulation performed by videogame emulators, Bochs and such.
"translation" or the like would have been a much choice. As this is some unique
feature and advantage of some BSDs and NetBSD in particular, this should really
be "sold" as good as possible. The term "required" confuses me a bit as well
because as long as it works it's pretty much as seamless as possible.

> that you unfortunately need to use the Internet these days.

Like what? Flash? ;)

> - 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.

Undeniable. Unfortunally, you have to make some trade-offs as a NetBSD home
user. Albeit some of these can turn into non-issues fairly quick. I haven't
played any PC games for years which saves time, money, delays global warming
and there's plenty of fun available elsewhere. The question is, whether gaming
is a bonus or if it's a mandatory feature. That said, look at Linux, it's not
supported by the gaming industry at all despite 3D hardware acceleration. They
have to use Wine and such which means the industry has zero reason to bother
about Linux, no matter how many people don't use Windows. I suspect the amount
of games for Mac OS is also rare compared to Windows. Microsoft did at least 2
ingenious coups. The first was the MS-DOS deal with IBM, the second was DirectX
for Windows 95. The X-Box is just the result of that.

> 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.

I think, this presentation puts NetBSD in an unfair disadvantage. You don't
have to use your "old WindowMaker", that's your choice. There's KDE, GNOME,
Xfce etc. You have the choice between bloat, eye-candy and light-weight
solutions. You don't have this choice with Windows at all. I, for one, never
understood what you need a "desktop environment" for. You certainly want
interoperability between applications but beyond that I'm not a fan of
one-size-fits-all solutions. Regarding your examples, pkgsrc has a wide
palette of those. Mail: KMail, Thunderbird, Mutt etc. Safari: Fyrefawkz,
Opera, Links etc. iCal: Well, there's Sunbird at least and cron of course ;)

So I'd say Mac OS is by default the best choice for people with certain needs
and a certain taste. If people want to know how Mac OS or Windows "looks",
that's easy to show and you'll get almost the same result from every user.
Whereas NetBSD can be "invisible" up to more colourful than any other system
ever. NetBSD is from my view the best choice for a lot more people (not
necessarily in quantity but diversity) because it doesn't force a certain style
and set of apps down your throat but it's not quite Lego. That said, this is
certainly not unique to NetBSD. There are probably two classes of "operating
systems". Those with a comprehensive set of default and preferred applications
and those which come almost as bare metal but provide you with a huge catalog
of apps for you to pick and customize.

> 2.) If I compare the operating systems (NetBSD vs. Darwin) the results
>     looks a bit different:
>     Darwin:
>     + excellent Firewire support
>     + power management (e.g. fan control on my Powermac G5)

As Darwin is open-source, or is/was that just OpenDarwin, shouldn't these
features be comparatively easy to port?

>     + journaling filesystem (HFS+)
>     NetBSD:
>     + better networking (e.g. faster NFS, reliable NIS)
>     + better performance (e.g. filesystem)

Doesn't that clash with the above "+ journaling"?

>     + more reliable
>     + less XML madness (launchd(8) vs. cron(8), rc.conf(5) etc.)
>     o USB 2.0 support is faster but less reliable

The pros for NetBSD sound a bit generic, in my opinion. I mean if you see no
significant advantages i.e., consider both up-to-par and just *like* NetBSD a
lot, just say so. ;)

> 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?

Well, I'd think it's at least questionable whether someone satisfied with
a different system has sufficient motivation to make NetBSD just as good
or even better. In contrast, someone who just sees or knows about a better
system but can't or don't want to use it, might have a stronger motivation
to do this. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, I believe this question is
just a logical conclusion of the situation.

-- 
Christian