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BSDJoe writes "The June daemonnews newsletter has been posted" Included in this issue are an introduction to the ports system, a length tutorial devoted to writing writing a CAM SCSI controller driver, and a great editorial about how to attract users without dumbing down.

BSDJoe writes "The June daemonnews newsletter has been posted" Included in this issue are an introduction to the ports system, a length tutorial devoted to writing writing a CAM SCSI controller driver, and a great editorial about how to attract users without dumbing down.

BSDJoe writes "The June daemonnews newsletter has been posted" Included in this issue are an introduction to the ports system, a length tutorial devoted to writing writing a CAM SCSI controller driver, and a great editorial about how to attract users without dumbing down.

BSDJoe writes "The June daemonnews newsletter has been posted" Included in this issue are an introduction to the ports system, a length tutorial devoted to writing writing a CAM SCSI controller driver, and a great editorial about how to attract users without dumbing down.

pestel writes: "BSDI has acquired Telenet System Solutions, a hardware supplier that sells systems built using BSD. You can see the press release over at Daily Daemon News. Good news for BSD people looking for hardware from workstations to huge servers." Built using BSD? Well, built for BSD rather. Interesting news for VA Linux; remember, competitors in the rearview mirror may be closer than they appear...

DaemonNews for May is now hot off the presses^Wweb server. Feature articles this month include a BSD viewpoint on Spring Comdex, an overview of what to do post-installation, and an investigation of the viability of RAIDframe.

DaemonNews for May is now hot off the presses^Wweb server. Feature articles this month include a BSD viewpoint on Spring Comdex, an overview of what to do post-installation, and an investigation of the viability of RAIDframe.

DaemonNews for May is now hot off the presses^Wweb server. Feature articles this month include a BSD viewpoint on Spring Comdex, an overview of what to do post-installation, and an investigation of the viability of RAIDframe.

DaemonNews for May is now hot off the presses^Wweb server. Feature articles this month include a BSD viewpoint on Spring Comdex, an overview of what to do post-installation, and an investigation of the viability of RAIDframe.

Bob Bruce writes: "There will be a BSD BOF (Birds Of a Feather meeting) at Spring Comdex, on Wednesday April 19 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. The BOF is at the Essex Inn at Grant Park, Chicago. You do not need to be a Comdex attendee to come along, everyone is welcome." Read on for more details.

Bob continues: "There will be speakers from BSD/OS, Darwin, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. This is a great opportunity to meet some of the leaders in the BSD community. There will be plenty of technical information available. Whether you are a BSD expert, a newbie, or just thinking of switching over, you can get your questions answered."

"Several BSD celebrities will be attending, including Chris Coleman, an editor of Daemonnews, and cartoonist Susannah Coleman, creator of Darby Daemon, who will be signing prints."

"We will have installation CDROMs, BSD paraphernalia, and free food and beer. We will even have free Daemon horns!"

"This BOF is being co-sponsored by BSDi and Daemon News."

Another month, another issue of DaemonNews. Highlights this month include a report from ApacheCon 2000, an interview with the NetBSD Foundation about the BSDI/Walnut Creek merger, Greg Lehey's Daemon's Advocate column, and the latest article in the "Managing Websites using Unix" series.

Claes Leufven was one of the first to write in with the news that FreeBSD 4.0 is now available for download. Features added to 4.0 since it diverged from 3.x include: IPv6 and IPSec support built in (courtesy of the KAME project), OpenSSL and OpenSSH are integrated in to the base system, jail(2) ("chroot(2) on steroids") to help build secure environments, many, many NFS bug fixes and performance improvements, bug fixes and performance improvements to the VM subsystem, netware file and client connection support, gcc upgraded to 2.95.2 as the base compiler, better support for laptops, a much more complete threads library. . . see the Alpha or i386 release notes for more details. And before you all rush off to upgrade your production servers, read on for a brief message from Jordan Hubbard, FreeBSD's Release Engineer, and to find out where to download the release from.

"As with all FreeBSD releases ending in .0, the project recommends that production environments wait at least one or two releases after it before moving mission-critical services over. These dot-zero releases are primarily aimed at the developers and early adopters who are willing to work on refining the technology until it's production-ready. The 4-stable branch will also not be created until just before 4.1 is released, the period following a .0 release being the best time to collect serious feedback before branching the tree."

For a static list of mirrors, see this section in the FreeBSD Handbook. Alternatively, try Gavin Cameron's automatically updating list of mirror sites.

It's been planned for some time, and on March 4 at a user group meeting in the Netherlands, Jordan Hubbard let slip the news that the ink was dry, and Walnut Creek CDROM, a big player in the development and promotion of FreeBSD, and BSDi are merging. Obviously, this has big implications for FreeBSD. You can read what's been written so far at this DaemonNews article. Later today we'll have an interview with Walnut Creek president, Bob Bruce. If you've got questions, then you know the drill. . . Oh, OK. If you don't know the drill, post them here, let the moderators moderate them up, and I'll make sure they get an airing later.

I snarfed this from Daily DaemonNews, and it's very cool. If you administer a bunch of PC Unix servers (BSD, Linux, whatever) you probably miss the serial console that proper servers have. Once the OS is booting you can get serial output, but that doesn't help for modifying the BIOS. For that you need a monitor and keyboard. Enter the PC Weasel, an ISA board that pretends to be an MDA card, but actually stuffs the display out a serial port, and takes keyboard input and plugs it in to the keyboard buffer. So no need for a monitor now, just a serial connection. Probably the best thing is that if you buy one, you automatically get a source license for the microcontroller code, so you can customise it all you want.

gsutter writes, "The March 2000 issue of the Daemon News ezine has been published at daemonnews.org. Articles include a description of the Netgraph networking subsystem and an introduction to IPC. Check it out. "

Wes Peters writes (via DaemonNews): " I bought an ABIT BP6 dual Celeron (socket 370) motherboard today, to work SMP projects with FreeBSD. While poking through the user manual, I was pleasantly surprised to find the following in section 1-5.

Dual Processor Knowledge You Should Know

For best performance, you should use an OS (Operating System) that supports multi-processors. The following OSes can support multi-processor functions: Microsoft Windows(R) NT (3.5x, 4.x and 5.x), SCO Unix, FreeBSD 3.0 or later, Linux, etc.

(emphasis added) This is the first specific mention of BSD I've seen in a PC hardware manual. This board comes strongly recommended."

A few bits and pieces on the BSD front in the recent past. Scott Bartram announced that JDK 1.1.8 is now available for NetBSD-current/i386. Over at LinuxWorld, Jonathan Bresler sent in this e-mail about BSD related activities. Sun are releasing source code for NFS under the SISSL (and boosting funding for a Linux only effort to implement v4, sigh). Anti Basic wants you to know that you can now pre-order FreeBSD 4.0 from the FreeBSD Mall. And finally, this month's edition of DaemonNews hit the stands a few days ago, including a particularly interesting article by Greg Lehey, outlining his work on software RAID, Vinum.

A few bits and pieces on the BSD front in the recent past. Scott Bartram announced that JDK 1.1.8 is now available for NetBSD-current/i386. Over at LinuxWorld, Jonathan Bresler sent in this e-mail about BSD related activities. Sun are releasing source code for NFS under the SISSL (and boosting funding for a Linux only effort to implement v4, sigh). Anti Basic wants you to know that you can now pre-order FreeBSD 4.0 from the FreeBSD Mall. And finally, this month's edition of DaemonNews hit the stands a few days ago, including a particularly interesting article by Greg Lehey, outlining his work on software RAID, Vinum.

Over at DaemonNews is an excellent explanation of the FreeBSD VM design, from Matt Dillon, who's been doing a great deal of work on it recently. It's rare to see good descriptions of the internals (or parts of the internals) of any OS OS (that's "Open Source Operating System") so this is particularly welcome. As is customary, there are a number of other excellent articles over at DaemonNews, including a new Darby Daemon adventure.

Over at DaemonNews is an excellent explanation of the FreeBSD VM design, from Matt Dillon, who's been doing a great deal of work on it recently. It's rare to see good descriptions of the internals (or parts of the internals) of any OS OS (that's "Open Source Operating System") so this is particularly welcome. As is customary, there are a number of other excellent articles over at DaemonNews, including a new Darby Daemon adventure.

Over at DaemonNews is an excellent explanation of the FreeBSD VM design, from Matt Dillon, who's been doing a great deal of work on it recently. It's rare to see good descriptions of the internals (or parts of the internals) of any OS OS (that's "Open Source Operating System") so this is particularly welcome. As is customary, there are a number of other excellent articles over at DaemonNews, including a new Darby Daemon adventure.

From Wes Peters, via DaemonNews. Intel's InBusiness Storage Station is a network file server in-a-box. Intel, despite their investment in Linux companies, is using FreeBSD as their OS of choice, as they are now stating. Of particular interest is their Mean Time Between Failure, 77,244 hours, or a shade under 9 years. That's probably a little on the low side, but quite respectable nonetheless.

Laz writes "I just checked this out on daily.daemonnews.org. Apparently Linus Torvalds has written a patch to the FreeBSD kernel that has been submitted. "

Daemon News, the Adventures of Darby Daemon are now in their final episode. Given the content, a lesser man than I might try and make a "horn" joke about now.

howardjp writes "The December Edition of Daemon News is out! There are some cool articles on OpenSSH as well as Applixware. "

The folks over at DaemonNews are running a review of Applixware, the 'Office Productivity Suite'. Featuring all the standard components (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, and so on), it's been available for Linux for a while now. However, this is the first time native binaries have been produced for FreeBSD. Read the review to find out whether it was worth waiting for.

The folks over at DaemonNews are running a review of Applixware, the 'Office Productivity Suite'. Featuring all the standard components (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation tool, and so on), it's been available for Linux for a while now. However, this is the first time native binaries have been produced for FreeBSD. Read the review to find out whether it was worth waiting for.

wozz writes "The new edition of DaemonNews is up. Features on setting up a FreeBSD lab, Commercial use of BSD/Linux as well as Newbies Corner, Adventures in BSD, Answerman, Darby, and the Daemon's Advocate."

Many people wrote in with this, but Mephistopholies was first. Daemon News, the monthly magazine for all things BSD, now boasts a daily news service, called, unsurprisingly, Daily Daemon News. Read on for some personal opinion.

The number one FAQ is probably going to be "Aren't Slashdot and Daemon News competitors now?"

Well, maybe. But to see this in just those terms is to ignore the wider point.

Which is, of course, that the various sites all have the same aim -- to provide a forum where BSD afficionados can discuss events relating to the different BSD operating systems, outside of the more traditional (and rigid) mailing list framework.

It's a major milestone in the development of the BSDs that they now generate enough news to support daily sections on several different sites. This would have been impossible a few years ago, and difficult even 10 or 12 months back. The BSD projects continue to grow, despite carping from a small minority that they are doomed.

Obviously, you can expect to see similar stories cropping up on Slashdot, Daily Daemon News, and other sites (such as FreeBSD Rocks). What will differentiate the sites more than anything else is the quality of the discussion that ensues. With my slashdot.org hat on I'd like to see Slashdot leading the way in generating high quality discussion. But with my freebsd.org hat on, I think it's far more important that quality discussion is promoted wherever, and in the wider scheme of things that's much more important than the site that happens to be hosting the discussion.

Many people wrote in with this, but Mephistopholies was first. Daemon News, the monthly magazine for all things BSD, now boasts a daily news service, called, unsurprisingly, Daily Daemon News. Read on for some personal opinion.

The number one FAQ is probably going to be "Aren't Slashdot and Daemon News competitors now?"

Well, maybe. But to see this in just those terms is to ignore the wider point.

Which is, of course, that the various sites all have the same aim -- to provide a forum where BSD afficionados can discuss events relating to the different BSD operating systems, outside of the more traditional (and rigid) mailing list framework.

It's a major milestone in the development of the BSDs that they now generate enough news to support daily sections on several different sites. This would have been impossible a few years ago, and difficult even 10 or 12 months back. The BSD projects continue to grow, despite carping from a small minority that they are doomed.

Obviously, you can expect to see similar stories cropping up on Slashdot, Daily Daemon News, and other sites (such as FreeBSD Rocks). What will differentiate the sites more than anything else is the quality of the discussion that ensues. With my slashdot.org hat on I'd like to see Slashdot leading the way in generating high quality discussion. But with my freebsd.org hat on, I think it's far more important that quality discussion is promoted wherever, and in the wider scheme of things that's much more important than the site that happens to be hosting the discussion.

Anonymous Coward writes "Daemon News has published an article that attempts to clear up misconceptions about FreeBSD. The article is primarily aimed at Slashdot readers based on the comments made in postings. " Well written, informative, and makes things much more clear.

Anonymous Coward writes "Daemon News has published an article that attempts to clear up misconceptions about FreeBSD. The article is primarily aimed at Slashdot readers based on the comments made in postings. " Well written, informative, and makes things much more clear.

Quick quickies this evening. First, ^BR wrote in to tell us that the August DaemonNews is out. Jeff Knox noted the Oscar MP3 Player, which looks much less pricey than other stereo type MP3 components. Next, CowboyNeal has completed another round of Slashboxes for you to peruse. The updated list now includes The Listology, HotHardware, linuxdev.net, BeBits, TheBeSite, exoScience, Linux Newbie, Technocrat, MacWEEK, and Halflife.org. If you are having account problems, or have a suggested new Slashbox, contact Neal. Finally, some minor bug fixes: The date links in the Older Stuff boxes were flaking out (time zone bugs). Also, replies on extended discussion pages were being lost. My plan has several more bugs on the TODO list. Please check it before contacting me.

chris wrote in to tell us that Registration for the 3^rd Annual Atlanta Linux Showcase is open. First 100 registrations get an OS-Wars T-Shirt (I have one, they rock) brazilian brain sent us an English Translation of an Interview with Alfredo Kojima of WindowMaker fame. Scott wrote in to tell us that the July issue of Daemon News is online and Jim wrote in to tell us that the July issue of The FreeBSD 'zine is out too. geophile wrote in to tell us that Propoganda 10 is out. More excellent background images to consume your free RAM. Very yum. erios23 notified us of a new toy on jwz's webpage. BluBall sent us a Slashdot reference in Salon's Silicon Funnies. Spoofs Linux and Slashdot and even me a bit I guess (well, my name anyway). And finally chrisd (who may be biased on this one) wrote in to say that VA is one of the 10 best companies to work for (According to ZD) ranking amongst Replay, Nokia and Novell. I suspect that Nerf has something to do with it.

The monkey flying around in my butt writes " In what has got to be one of the better pieces on the Linux vs. BSD debate Wes Peters talks about both OS's, the strengths and weakness of each, and how they live together to form a symbiotic circle. "

Ken Litko wrote in to send us an article that appears over at Daemon News that compares the GPL ^[?] with the BSD ^[?] license. It tries to cover some of the differences and shed light on the different intents of the two. Some criticism of the GPL, and a good article.

Paul wrote in to point us to the GNU Jobs Page. ^BR wrote in to say that the may issue of Daemon News is out for your BSDies out there, and CaVi wrote in to say that the Linux Gazette is out (sorry that these took so long to announce... moving was a bitch). Bitscape sent us a Salon story about Coding in Vampire Mode. Mikesch noted that www.palmcolors.com is selling colored Palm Pilots rsn. Looking for new backgrounds? President John F. Kennedy wrote in to tell us that the Volume 7 of Propoganda is up. And for those who are curious, he actually did send me beer! robert@budzynski.ddns.org sent us this art gallery with fodder and dayeight sent us a photomosaic picture for you Lara Craft Perverts out there. HighJack noted that the latest version of JWZs X Screensaver distribution contains a new one that looks like those funky falling charachters from The Matrix. And finally for some crazy fun stuff, dave sent us hilarious proof that Star Trek is Satanic, and chrisd sent us one of the best ebay auction items in recent memory. Psst-this is Hemos. It was Rob's birthday on May 10-he thinks he escaped. E-mail him and tell him how much you love him.

VinceV sent us a link to a new site he's started up called Control-Escape.com which aims to be a help site for novice linux users making the migration from those less known alternative OSs from Redmond. jedgar wrote in to announce the Feb. Edition of DaemonNews and FreeBSD 'zine, and Squeezer wrote in to say that the feb. issue of Ext2 is out. (Mention one, ya gotta mention 9 more. Sheesh *grin*) Several other folks wrote in to note that The GNOME Project has released 0.99.5. Justin Clarke wrote in to show us Rioport.com which is Diamond's new site to connect Rio owners with legal MP3s. danmil noted another Slashdot reference in the mainstream- this one is in a NY times story. Now we have a few funny bits not for the Moral and Pure: the_gimp sent us a link to what is probably the most amusing patent in recent memory. Glad that's patented. Don't want that technology uncontrolled. Somewhat related, behhl sent us a site that was bound to happen- AdultLinux. You can guess what it's for. And lastly, for the strangest bit of the day, Hans sent us a link to Furniture Porn. Fear. And hide your children.

If you're bored, there's a ton of strange links on the next page, selected by the warped minds of my slashdot co-authors ;-).

tom writes various stuffed Tux's (including a 1m high one), BSD Daemons and a TeX Lion at link (under "Un*x fan shop" and "ZU DEN ARTIKELN" - unfortunately the site's in German, but they speak English). Excellent quality, IMHO.

Robert Ennals writes A writer for the guardian/observer has a mention of one of their articles being linked from slashdot and considers this honour to be the "nearest I'll get to a Nobel prize" link

Kam writes Furniture Porn. Not much else to say... link

Louis Bertrand writes The December issue of DaemonNews, the monthly ezine devoted to the three open-source BSD operating systems (FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD) is available at link

SpaceDust writes No URL on this one, and not sure if it is really a /. thing. A friend who works at EA, tells me they are currently in Beta for Sim City 3000. Supported platforms will be Windows (mid Jan) and MacOS (in 6 months) I guess Linux gets squat (though, the /. effect may convince them otherwise) It's not too much different than "SC2k" except for a couple of new buildings, an improved interface, and now you have to manage garbage as well. They're in late Beta now, it's pretty stable and most of the major problems have been resolved but it still needs some tuning.

Josh Mast writes According to ,"> link A new opensource DOOM port has been started. "The Open Gaming Resource Engine project has been launched. This is a manifestation of the "Merger" project among members of leading DOOM source code projects, and will be an open source project. Looks nifty, maybe we'll finally have a decent port of DOOM for Linux now.

che guevara writes You bet it!!! I was surfing around on Camneerg- and saw this site that has an iMac that was hacked for a disk drive. You can get some info here, but don't try this if you don't want to void your warranty! Peace.

Brent Dearth writes ever since i got their demo tape at an underworld site, i've been searching for Market's webpage. well, i found it, and they have a couple mp3's full length for download. not really news, but i recall Hemos having good taste in music. link (sorry didn't paste)

Ben Smith writes The Onion has a silly little iMac joke in their new issue. In the left side column they have a neon blue stapler, and the caption says " New Stapler Makes All Other Staplers Look Like Worthless Shit". Good for a midday laugh.

Anonymous Coward writes Steven Hawking will appear on the Simpsons. Go figure. link

Anonymous Coward writes Kinda slow site.. (geocities) but well worth it :))))) link

Anonymous Coward writes More GNOME screenshots are available on the GNOME web site.

KeLp writes "The November issue of Daemon News just hit the wire. All can take a check it out at www.daemonnews.org Also the latest issue of the FreeBSD Quick NewsLetter it out there. Very good stuff! "

James Renken wrote in to tell us about a humorous ZD articles revolving around the destruction of those annoying office assistants. Death to Clippy! Brett Taylor wrote in to say that the October issue of Daemon News, a BSD based ezine, is now out. Bill Kilgallon sent in a link to what is unquestionably the Ultimate PalmPilot Case. And lastly, several folks wrote in to tell us that ZD now has something they call "the ultimate linux resource". Hit the link to read some notes about moderation as well as comments about future direction of Slashdot content) Ok lately, a huge number of purely Linux news items have been popping up. Slashdot can't run them all, but many of them deserve reporting. Is it worth creating another section on Slashdot which is purely Linux news? It wouldn't have any real effect on Slashdot, but it would provide a forum for the Linux news that doesn't make it on Slashdot. It also would be nice for those folks who don't care about geek humor, or the latest web CGI that slangifies a URL...

We can actually create a few of these systems, and many have been suggested lately. Several people asked for a section simply on Open Source Advocacy. We're already running Ask Slashdot in a seperate section now, is it worth doing a few more of these?

The way I see it, Slashdot will still feature the same content, but it can select it from these other sections as appropriate. Then I can make the BSD crowd happy as well as the Linux crowd. Eventually filters will be available for you to select your own mix of content. That'll be pretty excellent.

As for moderation, well, I wrote most of the moderation code yesterday. I'll start testing it with a small group of moderators some time next week. Don't email and ask for the job! The system is pretty cool. I think it's an excellent compromise of ideas that will prevent Moderator Abuse, won't take anyone a lot of time, and will allow everyone to determine how much they want to read. So if you don't want moderation, you'll just set your threshold really low, and you'll see everything just as you do now. I've got a general description of the system if you're interested in abit more details. Hopefully in the next week or 2 it'll be fully live.

I still haven't released Slash v0.3. I had some technical difficulties, so I wrote the moderation code while waiting for a test server to be usable. Still hasn't happened, so maybe I'll write some more Slash customization stuff next week :) Or maybe start planning for ALS.

Random Personal Aside #1:I installed and went through Gnome 0.3 lately. I find the panel stuff combined with Window Maker to be a quite nice combo. I just wish the .deb's for balsa, eeyes and the help stuff weren't randomly crashing. I also wish I had infinite bandwidth so I could just download the source. Oh, and infinite CPU and diskspace so I could compile and run these beasts. Gnome needs a better looking battery monitor, and my ePlus days are calling out to me.

Random Personal Aside #2: I saw Antz & Pi today. If people want a review of Antz, email and if there is some demand I'll write it. I also have to shoot a lot of film, finish a project for my design class, as well as write some code for an epoc32 this weekend for a class though, so it may fall off the bottom of the TODO.

Mats Rynge wrote in to tell us that he has created a new web site at linuxprogramming.com. It's currently a links list of programming stuff, and Mats is seeking feedback on what to do with it. Next Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote in to announe the premiere of The Daemon News, a zine dedicated to all the various BSD variations out there. Very excellent.