Larry the BSD Guy
FOSS Force editor Christine Hall beat me to the punch — that’s the luck of the draw (or lack thereof on my part) in my having a column appearing later in the week — on what she hopes to see in 2016 in the FOSS realm. So I’m taking a page from her playbook and, as a new PC-BSD user, I have a wish list for what I’d like to see on *BSD going forward into the new year.
First things first: I know that the wide number of variants in the BSD family are primarily aimed at servers. That said, it’s clearly understandable that with the exception of PC-BSD and BSD variants like GhostBSD, desktop/laptop users are not the primary focus in the BSD constellation.
It’s almost Christmas, which means that the day isn’t far off when ol’ Father Time rolls the odometer over yet again. This, of course, is the time of year when news writers like to publish lists, partly because they’re easier to write than real news stories. It’s not that we’re lazy, mind you, we’re just too busy shopping and decorating and drinking egg nog…especially drinking egg nog. We love drinking egg nog.
For a while they seemed to come almost in a measured release. They ranged from polite, insightful and informative, to a collateral-damage-be-damned raging and slashing diatribe. Some I would read; some I would not. No one takes a spitting, enraged person seriously unless they bear a weapon. Spitting, angry people tend to come forward with an obvious emotional outburst, most times presenting only the emotional aspect of what they have to say. Facts can be either few or “facts” from that writer’s point of view. Not a lot of us pay attention to someone presenting themselves in such a way. Maybe in a Donald-Trump-train-wreck sort of way, but as serious or meaningful presentations, that just doesn’t happen.
When all browsers are on board, it’s certain that high traffic websites will adopt WebP as their graphics format of choice. Google is already converting most if not all graphics uploaded to Google+ to WebP to deliver to browsers supporting the format.
First things first: Remember when I said I didn’t have access to Michael Larabel’s fine set of Phoronix tools to do diagnostic hardware comparisons? Well, while looking around for something else in BSD’s very cool AppCafe, I found them — Phoronix tools available for BSD users. So while I go sit in the corner with a pointy hat, I will apologize for that error.
Node-RED: One of the biggest features of this release is support for 