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Let me add to that list:

- A kick ass mascot that your girlfriend would like.

- Netgraph: try it and never look back.

One bad point that hasn't been mention: nvidia-freebsd-amd64's non-existance. This long-lasting feud seems to be resolved but Nvidia has yet to show the goodie.

Let me add to that list:

- A kick ass mascot that your girlfriend would like.

- Netgraph: try it and never look back.

One bad point that hasn't been mention: nvidia-freebsd-amd64's non-existance. This long-lasting feud seems to be resolved but Nvidia has yet to show the goodie.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/linuxemu.html

Setting ssh to a port higher than 1023 is a bad idea. There are examples with code floating about of how to undermine a crashed ssh that is running on a high port.

If you need to run ssh on a high port you should bind it to 127.0.0.1 on a low port
Normally it is easier to find an unused port

FreeBSD security has a thread on it on this topic going right now. The general consensus of the list seems to be that if you move off of port 22 to remove log spam, you need to start coming up with a log monitoring solution that works for your servers.

It's easier to have one system for everyone than to special-case a one-time-password system for my username.

Depending on your OS, it can be pretty easy.

I guess you've never heard of SSL-protected POP3/IMAP? Or even HTTPS for webmail?

I guess you've never heard of keyloggers? With OTP, you could literally stand next to me and write down my username and password as I enter it, but that would get you nothing.

It's not my goal to convert you to OTP. I just wanted to point out that there are good compromises between password authentication and secure keys.

Windows is a downgrade. A variety of upgrades are available for free. Here are links to just two, Google can help find the others.

http://www.debian.org/

http://www.freebsd.org/

http://elbitz.net/home.php is good, but they only open up registering every now and then (I remember I waited like 2 months to get my user). In general, though I just use the same popular torrent sites for everything else I get for books, too and I've gotten 6.28GB that way. Also, appear to have just found a .pdf with a huge list of ebook sites (and one for how to swear in all languages!). Haven't tried any of them, but go for it:
O'Reilly online http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/ | http://sysadmin.oreilly.com/ Computer books and manuals http://www.hoganbooks.com/freebook/webbooks.html | http://www.informit.com/itlibrary/ | http://www.fore.com/support/manuals/home/home.htm | http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/webbuy/freebooks.html The Network Book http://www.cs.columbia.edu/netbook/ Some #bookwarez.efnet.irc links http://www.extrema.net/books/links.shtml Some #bookwarez.efnet.irc fiction http://194.58.154.90:4431/enscifi/ Pimpas online books (Indonesia) http://202.159.16.55/~pimpa2000 | http://202.159.15.46/~om-pimpa/buku Security, privacy and cryptography http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~rivest/crypto-security.html | http://www.oberlin.edu/~brchkind/cyphernomicon/ My own misc online reading material http://www.eastcoastfx.com/docs/admin-guides/ | http://www.eastcoastfx.com/~jorn/reading/ Computer books http://solaris.inorg.chem.msu.ru/cs-books/ | http://sweetrude.net/~cab/books/ | http://alaska.mine.nu/books/ | http://poprocks.dyn.ns.ca/dave/books/ | http://58-160.skarland.uaf.edu/books/ | http://202.186.247.194/~ebook/ | http://hooligans.org/reference/ Linux documentation http://www.linuxdoc.org/docs.html FreeBSD documentation http://www.freebsd.org/tutorials/ Sun documentation http://osiris.imw.tu-clausthal.de:8888/ | http://uran.vvsu.ru:8888/ SGI documentation http://newton.unicc.chalmers.se/ebt-bin/nph-dweb/dynaweb;td=2 | http://techpubs.sgi.com/library/tpl/cgi-bin/init.cgi IBM Online Redbooks http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ Digital Unix documentation http://www.unix.digital.com/faqs/publications/base_doc/DOCUMENTATION/V40D_HTML/V40D_HTML/LIBRARY.HTM Filesystem Hierarchy Standard http://www.pathname.com/fhs/2.0/fhs-toc.html | http://www.linuxbase.com/ UNIX stuff http://ww

No idea, but here's a couple I found after a quick google:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-i386/2007-March/005177.html

http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-questions@freebsd.org/msg95551.html

I didn't look closely, so might be worthless. Good luck.

- T

Sorry, sir

From Phoronix:

"The tests that were carried out under FreeBSD 7.2, FreeBSD 8.0 RC1, and Ubuntu 9.10 Alpha 6 included timed ImageMagick compilation"

From freebsd-current mailing list:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to ask that the FreeBSD 8.0-RC1 ISO-s free from the
> debugging features (WITNESS, malloc debugging, etc.)? Or these
> services are still being active?

They are gone, for the most part. r197065: http://svn.freebsd.org/viewvc/base?view=revision&revision=197065

Remove extra debugging support that is turned on for head but turned off for stable branches:

- shift to MALLOC_PRODUCTION
- turn off automatic crash dumps
- Remove kernel debuggers, INVARIANTS*[1], WITNESS* from
GENERIC kernel config files[2]


[1] INVARIANTS* left on for ia64 by request marcel
[2] sun4v was left as-is

Debug? No, Sir.
1, 2

Anyone actually familiar with the FreeBSD development and release process would know that a release candidate has a considerable amount of debugging options turned on.

On Sep-10, most debugging was disabled: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-all/2009-September/013399.html

On Sep-17, there was the last commit before 8.0-RC1: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-all/2009-September/013645.html

Anyone familiar with the FreeBSD development and release process would know that there are no fixed rules rules when certain stuff happens and there are no sweeping changes like turning off debugging between a late RC and the actual release. (Other debugging stuff like kernel and module symbols are kept for the release.)

Anyone actually familiar with the FreeBSD development and release process would know that a release candidate has a considerable amount of debugging options turned on.

On Sep-10, most debugging was disabled: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-all/2009-September/013399.html

On Sep-17, there was the last commit before 8.0-RC1: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-all/2009-September/013645.html

Anyone familiar with the FreeBSD development and release process would know that there are no fixed rules rules when certain stuff happens and there are no sweeping changes like turning off debugging between a late RC and the actual release. (Other debugging stuff like kernel and module symbols are kept for the release.)

A bit dated,

http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/os-mysql.png

There have been a lot of cases (the linksys modding scene for instance) in which the lack of GPL would have meant no release of source or tools. There are a variety of other examples.

In other words, thank God we've got Richard Stallman to use the legal system to beat people into submission, and force them to do exactly what WE want them to do. It might be unfortunate, but given that said people work for corporations, they're not as equal as we are, and hence, their wellbeing doesn't count.

I love the smell of freedom, don't you?

At this point BSD is basically an also-ran

Yep. Marginal, dead, and completely irrelevant; just like Netcraft said. I guess that's why FreeBSD is ranked 13th on DistroWatch. It might also have something to do with why NetBSD just had a new release last month, or OpenBSD having its' most recent release in May. It's probably also why Theo de Raadt gave a keynote speech about OpenBSD's development process in May, as well.

Because, you know, they're fringe, dead, irrelevant operating systems. Nobody uses them.

That's also why we've kept seeing stories like this crop up in the trade press over the last three months or so; because the GPL is just such an awesome, business-friendly license. Everyone just loves the freedom that their Uncle Richard has provided for them; I really can't imagine where we'd be if it wasn't for him.

not on the same level as linux or supported in anything like the same way in terms of FOSS and commercial software.

Yeah. Too bad World of Warcraft doesn't run on it. Having to surf the Web without Flash really hurts, too. Like you said, FreeBSD is so irrelevant, it doesn't even have 3D video card drivers.

There have been a lot of cases (the linksys modding scene for instance) in which the lack of GPL would have meant no release of source or tools. There are a variety of other examples.

In other words, thank God we've got Richard Stallman to use the legal system to beat people into submission, and force them to do exactly what WE want them to do. It might be unfortunate, but given that said people work for corporations, they're not as equal as we are, and hence, their wellbeing doesn't count.

I love the smell of freedom, don't you?

At this point BSD is basically an also-ran

Yep. Marginal, dead, and completely irrelevant; just like Netcraft said. I guess that's why FreeBSD is ranked 13th on DistroWatch. It might also have something to do with why NetBSD just had a new release last month, or OpenBSD having its' most recent release in May. It's probably also why Theo de Raadt gave a keynote speech about OpenBSD's development process in May, as well.

Because, you know, they're fringe, dead, irrelevant operating systems. Nobody uses them.

That's also why we've kept seeing stories like this crop up in the trade press over the last three months or so; because the GPL is just such an awesome, business-friendly license. Everyone just loves the freedom that their Uncle Richard has provided for them; I really can't imagine where we'd be if it wasn't for him.

not on the same level as linux or supported in anything like the same way in terms of FOSS and commercial software.

Yeah. Too bad World of Warcraft doesn't run on it. Having to surf the Web without Flash really hurts, too. Like you said, FreeBSD is so irrelevant, it doesn't even have 3D video card drivers.

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=3689&highlight=zfs+remote+backup

Although I still keep it around as well, I upgraded from Windows XP around nine months ago now.

Stability and security are better than ever, and the price of the upgrade was probably the single best part, as well. I thoroughly recommend it. Except for occasionally going into XP to play World of Warcraft, for the most part, I haven't looked back.

No, it's called direct access (the DA in DASD, and also the reason for the FreeBSD device name for SCSI hard disks). If you're talking about RAM, though, it's acceptable to call it random access.

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=3689

We did something similar using off-the-shelf hardware, FreeBSD, and ZFS. Ours came out to just under $10,000 CDN, but we used 3Ware RAID controllers instead of generic SATA controllers, Tyan server-class motherboards, server-grade redundant/modular PSU, and Intel multi-port gigabit NICs.

It's still a lot less expensive than some of the backup systems I've seen school districts "convinced" to use.

Not a lawyer. IMO.

Problem being that without a license, nobody else is permitted to distribute your software. Depending on your and their local laws, they might not be allowed to copy or run it. And if the software causes any damages, you're quite likely liable for them. So, to protect both yourself and the recipient, always specify an explicit license.

The other part is that licenses need not be complicated. The Simplified BSD and MIT licenses are about as trivial as it gets: keep this label, and don't sue me bro. The GNU GPL is much longer, because it's approaching a harder problem: making sure that people who extend your software don't limit their users.

If you're going to expect cross-sharing to happen, you might as well go with the GPL, which makes it explicit. Otherwise you're giving with no guarantee that the other guy will give back. Under the BSD, Netgear gets to pick what they share and what they don't. Obviously they'll share stuff of little value to decrease maintenance costs, and not share code of high value, trading maintenance cost for exclusivity.

Since I am not tying any requirements to the code, I am sharing the code. To place an obligation on the code that someone must share back with me would not be sharing. It would be closer to barter in my opinion.

However, most projects (regardless of license) tend to be receptive to these changes.

Receptive how? If you're keeping your development process closed, the project doesn't know what you're doing, and if they do, they don't know how, so they couldn't accomodate you if they wanted.

The "receptive" part is that I know of few projects that would not be receptive to a company attempting to donate code to the project. It may not be accepted, but the project is probably not going to get angry about it.

Yes, they can. An example is a list of requirements Nvidia needs to support their module on FreeBSD amd64. The company just needs to explain why they need hooks or what the code they are donating provides.

I would not have thought that machine names could arouse such a passion.
Why Should I Care What Color the Bikeshed Is?
From http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/misc.html#BIKESHED-PAINTING:
"The really, really short answer is that you should not. The somewhat longer answer is that just because you are capable of building a bikeshed does not mean you should stop others from building one just because you do not like the color they plan to paint it. This is a metaphor indicating that you need not argue about every little feature just because you know enough to do so. Some people have commented that the amount of noise generated by a change is inversely proportional to the complexity of the change."

Has anyone ever analyzed why Linux took off and BSD didn't, and what role the license played in this?

See the Explaining BSD document on the FreeBSD site, particularly the mention of the AT&T court case against BSDI. That said, BSD has "taken off" - it's used in many embedded devices and in many roles as a server OS. For example, Yahoo! rely on FreeBSD as their principal server OS, as do many other companies with large numbers of webservers such as web hosting outfits (Pair Networks for example). Mac OS X undoubtedly bigger than Linux in terms of desktop usage, and is based on a 4.3BSD core which has been updated with code from NetBSD and FreeBSD.

I can't see any reference to the latest BIND vulnerability being fixed by Apple in the Mac OS X Server. It's vulnerable and has been fixed by other vendors so why not?

The FreeBSD man page says "A wall command appeared in PWB UNIX" (my link), and the OpenBSD man page says "A wall command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX" (again, my link).

So... mid- to late 70s at the latest.

(I think it'll be a cold day in hell when the BSDs move away from GCC.)

Oh, really! Time to buy me a new coat.

Don't forget the nice Dtrace on FreeBSD. Great stuff for servers.

I've long been immensely frustrated that you can't get kernel-space ZFS (sorry FUSE) compiled into a Linux kernel because of inane licensing issues*....

Well it is a good thing FreeBSD does not have a restrictive license like that. FreeBSD 8.0 will have ZFS with zpool 13, and here is how to use it.

http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSQuickStartGuide

Cheers!

Really? You run 10 TB array on Windows vista. nuff said - http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=3689

And get FF plugin to avoid 8 pages clicks http://www.teesoft.info/content/view/68/1/lang,en/

Disclaimer: I'm one of regular contributor and part of mod team @ the official freebsd forum.

Every few months, the Mac web is bombarded with open pleas to Apple, askingnay, demandingthat Apple swap out the Mach-based kernel that Mac OS X runs on, XNU/Darwin, with Linux. This, of course, ends in with Apple stoically continuing development of XNU/Darwin while fanboys dry their eyes and limp home after their flamewars. The cycle then repeats itself again a few months later like clockwork. The truth of the matter, however, is that Apple will never replace XNU/Darwin with Linux.

Tearing XNU/Darwin out from OS X and replacing it with Linux would be winding the clock back almost twenty-five years. Mach, which comprises a large percentage of XNU/Darwin's XNU kernel, was a microkernel research project developed at Carnegie-Mellon University in the Eighties, overseen by Avie Tevanian, who usually worked on it while playing Depeche Mode and Tears For Fears and ushered it through various revisions at NeXT and, ultimately, Apple.

This continuity of development has given Apple a tight integration between the kernel, libraries, utilities, and higher-level frameworks. Linux would throw that synergy right out the window, making Apple dependent on an entirely unregulated development team, and forcing Apple to play catch-up with their specific needs after every major upgrade to Linux. Apple would have to hire Linus Torvalds in order to recreate the creator/creation dynamic they have now. And as Linus has stated several times, he'll never go work for a company doing Linux.

Perhaps one reason Linux users bleat so unceasingly for Apple to switch kernels stems from a pre-NeXT project the company ran called MkLinux. MkLinux was a version of Mach running Linux as a process. The project was sponsored by both Apple and OSF/1 and ran on Apple's first generation Power Macs and some early second-generation Power Macs. Performance was about 20% less than a native Linux would have been, but that wasn't the point; Apple was looking at different ways to create a modern operating system in the dark times of Copland before NeXT was even a gleam in their eyes.

After Apple's operating system woes came to a head in 1997, MkLinux was all but forgotten by everyone except the long-time Apple engineers tasked with updating OPENSTEP alongside their NeXT counterparts. It was a non-starter, but it was the first taste of Linux anywhere near a Mac; it would be years later that Linux/PPC or the swatch of PowerPC versions of more popular distributions like Debian, Fedora, SUSE, and YellowDog came to Apple motherboards.

"But wait!" whine the Linux zealots, "Apple uses the BSD kernel in Mac OS X, and that's not under their control!" And so it is not. But the portions of the FreeBSD kernel are only used to fill out Mach, and as such does not constitute a significant portion of the kernel. In fact, Apple's use of BSD code is so minute that it amounts to being a charity project that allows Apple a way of keeping FreeBSD solvent. So Apple is simply not using the FreeBSD kernel, and asking to replace XNU with the Linux kernel is therefore asking something dispropor

http://wiki.freebsd.org/VirtualBox
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/emulators/virtualbox/

I'm fairly certain thats 2.x

I don't think everything works under freebsd though.

http://wiki.freebsd.org/VirtualBox
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/emulators/virtualbox/

I'm fairly certain thats 2.x

I don't think everything works under freebsd though.

are you frakkin kidding me, all this mono runtime crap because of a stupid
notetaking app? people to stupid to use a textfile? yeah windows sucks, but you know, linux stinks as well.

http://freebsd.org/ the new linux.

Why GNU su does not support the wheel group (by Richard Stallman)

Sometimes a few of the users try to hold total power over all the rest. For example, in 1984, a few users at the MIT AI lab decided to seize power by changing the operator password on the Twenex system and keep- ing it secret from everyone else. (I was able to thwart this coup and give power back to the users by patching the kernel, but I wouldn't know how to do that in Unix.)

However, occasionally the rulers do tell someone. Under the usual su mechanism, once someone learns the root password who sympathizes with the ordinary users, he can tell the rest. The "wheel group" feature would make this impossible, and thus cement the power of the rulers.

I'm on the side of the masses, not that of the rulers. If you are used to supporting the bosses and sysadmins in whatever they do, you might find this idea strange at first.

su manpage - GNU Shell Utilities

See the dmix page, which says "Normally (without hardware mixing) you cannot use /dev/dsp multiple times directly."

I think it works in OSS; at least it works as expected in FreeBSD which uses OSS.

Open source was founded in 1998 as a way to stop talking about those things, to hush them up, bury them, put them out of people's sight. So they talk about practical advantages that come if you use free software.

(From Stallman's speech)

This is quite simply not true. The definition of what constitutes Open Source is right here, and I've virtually never seen Linus give an interview where he doesn't mention the GPL, or specifically why he likes it.

You can also read this, as well. People who advocate licenses other than the GPL are perhaps not as vocal as Stallman, but to claim that they are actively repressing or trying to bury anything is a lie, and a particularly malicious and injurious one.

In the sense that FreeBSD has excellent Linux binary compatibility and one time I fired off a jail pointed at the root directory of a Gentoo stage3 archive. It didn't work 100% correctly because Gentoo's init scripts aren't exactly designed for such things, but I could SSH into it and play around.

Wow. That's seriously impressive - I knew about the binary compatibility, but didn't expect it would bootstrap a Linux distro.

In what sense would "quite a few Linux distros [...] run perfectly" in this context?

In the sense that FreeBSD has excellent Linux binary compatibility and one time I fired off a jail pointed at the root directory of a Gentoo stage3 archive. It didn't work 100% correctly because Gentoo's init scripts aren't exactly designed for such things, but I could SSH into it and play around.

While I agree with you on FreeBSD being a fine (if not *the* finest) server OS,
it really irks me to see the "not intended for desktop use" myth being perpetuated.

The desktop *is* one of the explict targets for FreeBSD:

        "With over 20,000 ported libraries and applications, FreeBSD supports applications for desktop, server, appliance...."
                http://www.freebsd.org/about.html

      "*BSD makes a great server. It also makes a great desktop....
        *BSD has access to the same desktop tools (KDE, GNOME, Firefox, windowmanagers) as Linux.
          And ``office'' applications such as OpenOffice suite work under *BSD too."
                http://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/myths.html#server

FreeBSD 7 in fact, among other things, had *major* wireless rework done,
a feature almost exclusive to desktop use.

The aggressive demeanor of your post is shameful and in contrast with
the overall spirit of the *BSD community.

While I agree with you on FreeBSD being a fine (if not *the* finest) server OS,
it really irks me to see the "not intended for desktop use" myth being perpetuated.

The desktop *is* one of the explict targets for FreeBSD:

        "With over 20,000 ported libraries and applications, FreeBSD supports applications for desktop, server, appliance...."
                http://www.freebsd.org/about.html

      "*BSD makes a great server. It also makes a great desktop....
        *BSD has access to the same desktop tools (KDE, GNOME, Firefox, windowmanagers) as Linux.
          And ``office'' applications such as OpenOffice suite work under *BSD too."
                http://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/myths.html#server

FreeBSD 7 in fact, among other things, had *major* wireless rework done,
a feature almost exclusive to desktop use.

The aggressive demeanor of your post is shameful and in contrast with
the overall spirit of the *BSD community.

Everyone here only ever talks about Linux in business, but this is as much a chance for any of the BSDs to gain in government, as well. FreeBSD can be used anywhere Linux can, and also has some advantages:-

1. Potentially much simpler per-host configuration. The three files in question are /etc/rc.conf, /etc/sysctl.conf, and /boot/loader.conf. Sysvinit isn't used, and custom kernel recompilation is a lot easier than with Linux as well.

2. The ability to fully emulate the Ubuntu "user friendly," desktop; the only thing missing is Flash support at the moment, which is only going to be needed by end users. Gnome, HAL, and dbus are all present, and FreeBSD also has devd, its' own udev equivalent, which means it can handle USB devices with the same degree of ease as Linux.

3. A much freer license, which is possibly to be the major point of interest for government. The New Zealand government would be entirely free to customise the system on a per-department basis, and then sell it in its' entirety, open or closed as they chose.

Playing DVD's and video files either flat out doesn't work, or is very choppy. This is with VLC and mplayer. Unacceptable.

That's because Ubuntu's GNOME implementation is a bloated, steaming pile, and so the system generally won't have enough ram or cpu time left from it to be able to play mp3s; and that includes on contemporary systems. Granted, I also tend to consider GNOME garbage regardless of the underlying distro, to be honest; but I digress. ;)

Get FreeBSD, and install Enlightenment DR16.999. E's core takes up around 26 Mb on my system, and it's absolutely beautiful. Yes, you might have to learn a few things about how to use a computer along the way, but that won't hurt you. The handbook at freebsd.org will make things a lot easier.

Use ports during installation to get XMMS, which AFAIK isn't reliant on QT's bloatedness, as VLC is. Playback will be as smooth as silk. ;)

Want to start hald and dbus to get your usb hardware working? Assuming it's already installed, (which it will be if you use the X-User prefab distribution in sysinstall) do the following.

1. Open /etc/rc.conf.
2. Enter the two lines, hald_enable="YES", and dbus_enable="YES."
3. Run sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/hald start, or if that fails, sudo /usr/local/sbin/hald, or if you want, reboot.

Done.

Want to load the kernel module for your sound card?

1. pciconf -lv (To find out what it is; similar to lspci, but remember the args)
2. Once you know what it is, go to look up which module to load. In my case, snd_cmi, for a CMedia card.
3. Type sudo kldload snd_cmi at a prompt to load the module into the kernel.
4. Add snd_cmi_load="YES" to /boot/loader.conf to load it automatically next time.

Done. The sound module loaded directly into the kernel Just Works. ;) There's no need to screw around with third party userland abominations like ALSA or OSS, and so no risk of either of said abominations dying randomly. (As ALSA did for me over the space of a month with Ubuntu)

I know I'd be frowned on by the FreeBSD devs for saying something nasty about Linux while pimping FreeBSD, but the truth is that FreeBSD's design is light years ahead of Linux. The added, totally unnecessary complexity added in Debian distributions in particular is absolutely appalling by comparison.

Lack of added complexity means lack of additional things which can potentially cause crashes or reliability, and FreeBSD's devs fairly obviously understand that. It's equally obvious to see that Debian's developers (and Canonical) don't.

The only two things holding FreeBSD back on the desktop are sysinstall being ncurses based, and the partitioner possibly being a little more intimidating than GParted. Apart from those two minor things, it has enormous advantages.

1. Infinitely more robust and reliable package management than anything available for Linux, in my experience.

2. A greatly simplified (and well documented) method of custom kernel configuration, in comparison with Linux, and a kernel module mechanism which is enormously simpler, as well.

3. Vastly simplified system startup. No init, no Upstart rubbish. Just YES lines in /etc/rc.conf.

4. Hald and dbus are not run by default, but only when they need to be, for USB/hotpluggable hardware. The rest of the time you can turn them off and take them out, and most people don't use them at all.

In summary, FreeBSD isn't just more user-friendly by virtue of its' much higher level of simplicity; it's an infinitely superior system to Linux overall. The single main reason for this is the fact that FreeBSD's developers aren't trying to twist UNIX into a clone of Microsoft Windows, because they know that they already have something much better.

If you're tired of Ubuntu or various other Linux distributions causing you endless headaches, I strongly invite you to visit the site , and download the cure for your frustrations.

Want to start hald and dbus to get your usb hardware working? Assuming it's already installed, (which it will be if you use the X-User prefab distribution in sysinstall) do the following.

1. Open /etc/rc.conf.
2. Enter the two lines, hald_enable="YES", and dbus_enable="YES."
3. Run sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/hald start, or if that fails, sudo /usr/local/sbin/hald, or if you want, reboot.

Done.

Want to load the kernel module for your sound card?

1. pciconf -lv (To find out what it is; similar to lspci, but remember the args)
2. Once you know what it is, go to look up which module to load. In my case, snd_cmi, for a CMedia card.
3. Type sudo kldload snd_cmi at a prompt to load the module into the kernel.
4. Add snd_cmi_load="YES" to /boot/loader.conf to load it automatically next time.

Done. The sound module loaded directly into the kernel Just Works. ;) There's no need to screw around with third party userland abominations like ALSA or OSS, and so no risk of either of said abominations dying randomly. (As ALSA did for me over the space of a month with Ubuntu)

I know I'd be frowned on by the FreeBSD devs for saying something nasty about Linux while pimping FreeBSD, but the truth is that FreeBSD's design is light years ahead of Linux. The added, totally unnecessary complexity added in Debian distributions in particular is absolutely appalling by comparison.

Lack of added complexity means lack of additional things which can potentially cause crashes or reliability, and FreeBSD's devs fairly obviously understand that. It's equally obvious to see that Debian's developers (and Canonical) don't.

The only two things holding FreeBSD back on the desktop are sysinstall being ncurses based, and the partitioner possibly being a little more intimidating than GParted. Apart from those two minor things, it has enormous advantages.

1. Infinitely more robust and reliable package management than anything available for Linux, in my experience.

2. A greatly simplified (and well documented) method of custom kernel configuration, in comparison with Linux, and a kernel module mechanism which is enormously simpler, as well.

3. Vastly simplified system startup. No init, no Upstart rubbish. Just YES lines in /etc/rc.conf.

4. Hald and dbus are not run by default, but only when they need to be, for USB/hotpluggable hardware. The rest of the time you can turn them off and take them out, and most people don't use them at all.

In summary, FreeBSD isn't just more user-friendly by virtue of its' much higher level of simplicity; it's an infinitely superior system to Linux overall. The single main reason for this is the fact that FreeBSD's developers aren't trying to twist UNIX into a clone of Microsoft Windows, because they know that they already have something much better.

If you're tired of Ubuntu or various other Linux distributions causing you endless headaches, I strongly invite you to visit the site , and download the cure for your frustrations.

Want to start hald and dbus to get your usb hardware working? Assuming it's already installed, (which it will be if you use the X-User prefab distribution in sysinstall) do the following.

1. Open /etc/rc.conf.
2. Enter the two lines, hald_enable="YES", and dbus_enable="YES."
3. Run sudo /usr/local/etc/rc.d/hald start, or if that fails, sudo /usr/local/sbin/hald, or if you want, reboot.

Done.

Want to load the kernel module for your sound card?

1. pciconf -lv (To find out what it is; similar to lspci, but remember the args)
2. Once you know what it is, go to look up which module to load. In my case, snd_cmi, for a CMedia card.
3. Type sudo kldload snd_cmi at a prompt to load the module into the kernel.
4. Add snd_cmi_load="YES" to /boot/loader.conf to load it automatically next time.

Done. The sound module loaded directly into the kernel Just Works. ;) There's no need to screw around with third party userland abominations like ALSA or OSS, and so no risk of either of said abominations dying randomly. (As ALSA did for me over the space of a month with Ubuntu)

I know I'd be frowned on by the FreeBSD devs for saying something nasty about Linux while pimping FreeBSD, but the truth is that FreeBSD's design is light years ahead of Linux. The added, totally unnecessary complexity added in Debian distributions in particular is absolutely appalling by comparison.

Lack of added complexity means lack of additional things which can potentially cause crashes or reliability, and FreeBSD's devs fairly obviously understand that. It's equally obvious to see that Debian's developers (and Canonical) don't.

The only two things holding FreeBSD back on the desktop are sysinstall being ncurses based, and the partitioner possibly being a little more intimidating than GParted. Apart from those two minor things, it has enormous advantages.

1. Infinitely more robust and reliable package management than anything available for Linux, in my experience.

2. A greatly simplified (and well documented) method of custom kernel configuration, in comparison with Linux, and a kernel module mechanism which is enormously simpler, as well.

3. Vastly simplified system startup. No init, no Upstart rubbish. Just YES lines in /etc/rc.conf.

4. Hald and dbus are not run by default, but only when they need to be, for USB/hotpluggable hardware. The rest of the time you can turn them off and take them out, and most people don't use them at all.

In summary, FreeBSD isn't just more user-friendly by virtue of its' much higher level of simplicity; it's an infinitely superior system to Linux overall. The single main reason for this is the fact that FreeBSD's developers aren't trying to twist UNIX into a clone of Microsoft Windows, because they know that they already have something much better.

If you're tired of Ubuntu or various other Linux distributions causing you endless headaches, I strongly invite you to visit the site , and download the cure for your frustrations.

You mean something like portalfs, as implemented e.g. in FreeBSD?

>You also seem to suffer from Restless Mouth Syndrome (RMS). I suggest yo try some BSD.

Thank you for the suggestion, Mikkeles. I am downloading it right now. I will give it a shot tonight. ;^)

http://www.freebsd.org/

Yes, you can.

http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests

Why would these need to be satisfied for nvidia, but noone else? Because nvidia did things a specific way and will not bend.

First you have to know where it is located
(for that you either need to install another package to (and you have to know that name too) or make sure you have Internet connection and go to freesbd.org ports page to search for the name

cd /usr/ports
make quicksearch name=packagename

You'll find the package. No need to install anything new.

Then you have open the login shell as root,
(and you must know how to do that -- it does not automagically prompt you for a password )

"apt-get install foo" doesn't hold your hand, either. Nor did rpm prompt you for a password the last time I used an RPM-based system.

Then you CD to that directory start the build
and discover that it tries to download source
code for Gnome or KDE then build it -- which
will take half a day on some machines....

welcome to the ports system

The FreeBSD maintainers aren't concerned with being trivial to use. They're more concerned with creating a powerful and flexible system.

They focus on this almost to a fault. There's a recent thread on freebsd-questions with the subject "Modern FreeBSD Installer" where a few people are complaining about how unfriendly the current installer is. There's a fairly large base of people who don't want a change to the installer because it's familiar--and once you're familiar with it, you can install the base system in about 5 minutes. But the arcane nature of the installer is such that it turns a lot of new users off from the beginning.

Keep in mind that FreeBSD is an advanced user's OS. While its documentation is really quite good, it isn't going to hold your hand once you're on the shell. Reading through the handbook ( http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports-using.html for specific information on the ports system) before or during use will help you learn a lot about the system.

Still no amd64 Nvidia though. This has been outstanding for 3 years: http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests