This blog post talks about the identified reasons Ubuntu has been so successful in growth over the past few years. The post uses it as a comparison to Perl, but it holds some lessons for DragonFly. Some items we have now – a Live CD, simple install, regular release schedule – and they’ve been very useful.
On the other hand, the available applications is something that can improve – as nice as it it to build from source, immediate installation of binaries is best. Heck, some companies base their business around it. Pkgsrc is getting closer to creating an “app store” for DragonFly. We’ve got a civil community, but I’d like to figure out ways to make it even more accessible.
(Nobody mentions this when talking about Ubuntu’s success, but having a large, privately-funded company backing your open source project also helps.)
While on the subject, I would love to have a job like Jono Bacon’s. He works with all the issues that I think about.
Something that concerns me is the lack of SMP progress.. I know it’s not Matt’s current personal goal but eventually developers will be running quad core PCs.. and maybe they already are? Is there a status update on this somewhere that I missed? Last thing I remember is the framework for it to be potentially done being finished.. a couple years ago now I think. I _want_ to jump on board, but I currently have a machine with 4gb ram (need 64 bit to use it all) and a quad core CPU – I’d essencially be ‘downgrading’ to use the OS. :(
Concernedizen, 64-bit was one of the SOC projects this year, so that may make it into the upcoming release. I’m not so sure about SMP–you’d probably get better results asking on the mailing lists.
You know, if you wait until SMP’s working, you’re going to get in when all the fun parts are done. :) (I’m making the assumption that you’d want to work on that, of course.)
The things that attract me to DragonFly isn’t SMP status, but the quality of the people working on it, and the chance to be part of the group that gets there.
That being said, I’d like SMP support to be better, and it’s getting there. Aggelos and Sepeherosa have been working on getting networking out from under the Giant Lock, and other chunks of the system have been getting made multiprocessor-safe.
You can always run it in an emulator – VMWare, VirtualBox, Qemu, etc., and give it a try. I don’t think you’ll really be hurt by the current system; it’ll run pretty darn fast no matter what.