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The sad thing is not that a lot of people don't know what spyware or DRM are, or why they're bad. The sad thing is that a lot of people do, yet nothing is really accomplished. The cnet article is good because it raises many important points about the nature of Vista and trusted computing. And it will sit on that server with no fanfare. This will not be an important story to anyone, newspapers will not pick it up and nor will computing magazines.

We will get nowhere beyond this article, which takes no stand; makes only polite suggestions and queries.

``Something is fishy here. Should we be concerned?" A shallow question with hollow convictions and the full-bodied echo of defeat.

Trusted Computing is not about security. We know what it's really about, it's about IP. You don't need an unjustified mess to be secure. Security is just the excuse. It's about patents and trademarks and copyrights. It's not about security, because security benefits people. Trusted Computing benefits companies. It's about money and control. It's about their control over our money.

The article will sit there and rot and no one will take it further, because no one wants to risk offending the advertisers. No one wants to risk slowing a cashflow.

These kinds of things are vital, important issues. They concern our very rights as citizens and as human beings. The important part of Intellectual Property is not the latter, it's the former, it's about control of the former. Companies -- inhuman, non-being concepts on paper and ink -- subvert the rights of living people to think and explore.

We can do nothing. How do you adhere to your morals and convictions and fight something that will adhere to nothing? We are powerless to affect change and every day more restraints and ludicrous laws are passed on us and our rights are signed away for profit. For the benefit of people already in life's favor.

But it's not a big deal, right? When you're allowed to read a book is a not a big deal. What you're not allowed to say is not a big deal. What you're allowed to even think is not a big deal.

It's so depressing.

You do not need windows to play games. You may need windows to play games designed to run on Windows though. But if you're dumping windows, you no longer have a need for those games.

That's why Cedega exists, right? Surely there are people out there who keep them in business. Probably all those Linux using CS1.6 players.

Linux, as it exists today, is a philosophical choice. I'm not supporting Redmond or any of the companies that butter their bread using that damnable product.

Please point out what "philosophy" Linux states, besides hating Microsoft? If you're looking for the UNIX philosophy, you need to be using real UNIX, i.e. 4.3BSD derived systems such as FreeBSD. I'm very interested in hearing about what, if any, positive philosophies Linux provides; as the userbase seems to reflect a mantra of endless hatrid towards the Microsoft Corporation (which may or may not be appropriate; irrelevant).

Also, please do not bother replying if your primary intent is to be Zealous; there's just no point.

Surely the biggest stumbling block for FreeBSD on small, cheap devices isn't support for wireless, so much as the neglected port to ARM? Oh how I long to run FreeBSD on an NSLU2! And I don't think they are doing much better with the other embedded CPU architectures, either ...

Well, most of Linux work is done by people paid to do the work. I don't think anyone sensible thinks that Free Software should only be done "Only for the Love of it".

However, FreeBSD people seem to have taken a slippery slope on other issues here. To gain wireless support, they have allowed Unmodifiable binary code into FreeBSD!

*BSD camp has long taken the position that BSD is more free than GPL Licenced code. Now it seems that BSD camp is accepting unmodifiable binary-only code as part of FreeBSD, as long as it is added by a developer under contract not to release it as open source...

Mirrors can be found here and here .
A FreeBSD port can also be found here, made by the guy who helped with the FreeBSD XBOX port.

Mirrors can be found here and here.
A FreeBSD port can also be found here, made by the guy who helped with the FreeBSD XBOX port.

http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/freebsd-license.h tml

...is how to stop it from listening on port 123/UDP. Any suggestions? And yes, I did read the fine manual.

I use FreeBSD and the hardware drivers just work. I can take the drive out my computer and put it in any random computer and it will just work. All I have to do is tell Xorg which graphics card I am using. If I wanted to routinely move between computers, I could rip the graphics card detection script off of FreeSBIE and aoutodetect the graphics card. Having a large list of supported components does not preclude an OS from working easily.

If I were Apple I would not be affraid of people using my OS on cheapo computers, causing hardware compatability problems, but I would be affraid of of people, that have no clue what they're doing, try to assemble computers, then put my OS on them. Most modern computers support most modern hardware without much fanfare, but computers don't work if you plug your RAM in backwards, forget to plug the fan in on the processor's heatsink, get the wrong ram speed, kill your BIOS trying to flash it, etc...

Apple has a really good image of dependability in a field known for a lack thereof. Computers assembled by the neighbor kid, that have only one screw holding the mainboard in, and brand new computers, with 64MB of RAM in them, are far more likely to ruin that than winmodems and MediaGX processors.

I use FreeBSD and the hardware drivers just work. I can take the drive out my computer and put it in any random computer and it will just work. All I have to do is tell Xorg which graphics card I am using. If I wanted to routinely move between computers, I could rip the graphics card detection script off of FreeSBIE and aoutodetect the graphics card. Having a large list of supported components does not preclude an OS from working easily.

If I were Apple I would not be affraid of people using my OS on cheapo computers, causing hardware compatability problems, but I would be affraid of of people, that have no clue what they're doing, try to assemble computers, then put my OS on them. Most modern computers support most modern hardware without much fanfare, but computers don't work if you plug your RAM in backwards, forget to plug the fan in on the processor's heatsink, get the wrong ram speed, kill your BIOS trying to flash it, etc...

Apple has a really good image of dependability in a field known for a lack thereof. Computers assembled by the neighbor kid, that have only one screw holding the mainboard in, and brand new computers, with 64MB of RAM in them, are far more likely to ruin that than winmodems and MediaGX processors.

That's FreeBSD, not NetBSD.

As of this writing, the following processors are supported:

* AMD Athlon64 ("Clawhammer"). *
AMD Opteron ("Sledgehammer").

There were plenty of proposed enhancements for FreeBSD. So far, I haven't heard a single progress update regarding any of these. Is there a deadline or similar required completion date? It would really be great to see a few of these in FreeBSD (such as UFS journalling, for example). What happened?

If you make an open source OS that is blindingly simple to install and use, you won't get any money from your support contracts.

Try FreeBSD.

You instal "base system" - mean, lean, coherent, well tuned system. Everything you need to run and maintain OS in some 100MB. You do not get any other application installed by default. You can select some groups of packages to be installed if you wish from sysinstall. Like documentation, Xorg, ports system, ....

*Then* you either:

- install ports (another 100MB) and compile and install all packages by doing cd into apropriate subdirectory and typing "make install"
like:
#cd /usr/ports/www/firefox
#make install
There are some 13307 applications ported at the moment

- install desired package from internet by running
#pkg_add -r firefox

- run sysinstall select "configure" from menu, select "install packages", select install source (CD, DVD, internet, NFS, ... whatever) and select from among packages those, and ONLY those, you want to install.

- run kpackage or other graphical tools and browse and install any desired application.

Configuration files are simple, well organized and well documented. Example: My .xinitrc file is 1 line long, in RedHat Linux, last time I looked (RH 8.0?), .xinitrc was 800 lines long. Try to tweak such file by hand.

And the documentation is superb.
See handbook http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/index.html

See ported applications
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html

You do not get YAST with FreeBSD, there is sysinstall to do configuration

All programs in ports system are downloaded from authors site (or a mirror), then patches are applied and the programs are compiled the way *original* authors wanted them compiled. Patches are always as small as possible (together some 100MB for all 13307 programs).
- So kde-lite looks exactly like kde developement team wanted them look, not like in RedHat, where kde is heavily modified (BlueCurve).
- So location of files and compile options for vim are exactly like the default options in vanilla vim

Try FreeBSD.

You instal "base system" - mean, lean, coherent, well tuned system. Everything you need to run and maintain OS in some 100MB. You do not get any other application installed by default. You can select some groups of packages to be installed if you wish from sysinstall. Like documentation, Xorg, ports system, ....

*Then* you either:

- install ports (another 100MB) and compile and install all packages by doing cd into apropriate subdirectory and typing "make install"
like:
#cd /usr/ports/www/firefox
#make install
There are some 13307 applications ported at the moment

- install desired package from internet by running
#pkg_add -r firefox

- run sysinstall select "configure" from menu, select "install packages", select install source (CD, DVD, internet, NFS, ... whatever) and select from among packages those, and ONLY those, you want to install.

- run kpackage or other graphical tools and browse and install any desired application.

Configuration files are simple, well organized and well documented. Example: My .xinitrc file is 1 line long, in RedHat Linux, last time I looked (RH 8.0?), .xinitrc was 800 lines long. Try to tweak such file by hand.

And the documentation is superb.
See handbook http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/index.html

See ported applications
http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html

You do not get YAST with FreeBSD, there is sysinstall to do configuration

All programs in ports system are downloaded from authors site (or a mirror), then patches are applied and the programs are compiled the way *original* authors wanted them compiled. Patches are always as small as possible (together some 100MB for all 13307 programs).
- So kde-lite looks exactly like kde developement team wanted them look, not like in RedHat, where kde is heavily modified (BlueCurve).
- So location of files and compile options for vim are exactly like the default options in vanilla vim

The FreeBSD project is getting a new installer. It is being written as one of the Google Summer of Code projects.

There is a preliminary preview version (pre-alpha) available for first testing.

Note, it is based on BSDInstaller, the installer written originally for DragonFlyBSD.

The FreeBSD project is getting a new installer. It is being written as one of the Google Summer of Code projects.

There is a preliminary preview version (pre-alpha) available for first testing.

Note, it is based on BSDInstaller, the installer written originally for DragonFlyBSD.

The FreeBSD project is getting a new installer. It is being written as one of the Google Summer of Code projects.

There is a preliminary preview version (pre-alpha) available for first testing.

Note, it is based on BSDInstaller, the installer written originally for DragonFlyBSD.

No, noone is going to convince you. This isn't a sales pitch. (Why was that moded interesting? Its not).

Also, BSD is NOT linux. Read for yourself what they do. Here they are.

http://www.freebsd.org/
http://www.openbsd.org/
http://www.netbsd.org/

Yeah, don't fuck with the people who wrote nroff source for your manual pages.

Anyone got a SCO box handy?

$ man tunefs

If it doesn't say "You can tune a filesystem but you can't tune a fish", Darl deserves whatever he gets. Don't believe me? Use the nroff source, Luke.

$ cat /usr/share/man/man8/tunefs.8.gz | gzip -d

.\" Take this out and a Unix Demon will dog your steps from now until
.\" the time_t's wrap around.
.Pp
You can tune a filesystem, but you can't tune a fish.

2038's still 33 years away, Darl.

Here's a few you might have heard of:

1. Mac OS X (duh)
2. FreeBSD
3. NetBSD
4. OpenBSD
5. Yellow Dog
6. Fedora (RHL)
7. Debian
8. Gentoo

9. MS Windows

..the best guide I ever found for a new [Free]BSD user was the handbook
It's everything, all of it. I've a printed copy still sitting, bound on my shelf. It's also one of the top 10 words uttered in most #freebsd s:

[newuser] So how can I uh...
[guru] YOU CAN CHECK THE HANDBOOK

"you still have the TCP/IP traffic to deal with so that packets get TO the game."

Stateful firewalls know all they need to know about TCP/IP to handle packets on a per-connection level. The game is running on another system, so the firewall need only needs to get a packet out onto the appropriate interface. I know PF can do this at the firewall level (see the fastroute keyword). Even if it does have to use the network stack (IPFW or IPF might not be able to route independantly, I'm not sure) FreeBSD can route packets very quickly[1].

"If you RTFA this "game router" is really only adding traffic shaping/prioritization, which is something a middle of the road router can do anyway in FIRMWARE which will be lots faster than that software."

Firmware is software that gets loaded onto a general purpose processor. Usually ARM or MIPS for broadband routers, IIRC. It doesn't matter whether it comes from an EEPROM, a flash memory chip, or a hard drive. Once it's in memory it's pretty much the same. The traffic shaping available with this will be a lot more configurable, and they wrapped the OS up into an easy-to-use distribution. It's not unusual for gamers to have unused computers sitting around, given their upgrade cycle, so it would be cheaper to use this if you have the hardware.

"Also you have to use good NICs (more $$$) on the old PC, which if it is an ISA bus PC good luck finding them, and if you find then you still got a 66MHz backplane in that old Pentium."

How many spare NICs do you have? Be honest. Until they started putting them on the motherboard most computers had one and whenever the computer died the NIC was always left over.

Pretty much any NIC will do for the purposes of broadband routing. The 66 mhz bus on a Pentium is also more than you need. A 486 can handle it. I've used a 486 with ISA NICs as a firewall on a cable modem with 5 megabits downstream bandwidth.

"There are lots of complexities here, it's not something your average gamer is going to build."

An easy to use package that runs on PCs a gamer already has? All they need to do is add a NIC or two? When they spend half their time putting in new video cards and RAID arrays on their other PC? When it'll save them enough money to get more game hardware? Sounds pretty plausible to me.

1 - http://people.freebsd.org/~andre/FreeBSD-5.3-Netwo rking.pdf - FreeBSD 5.3 can route 1m packets per second on a 2.8 ghz Xeon, while it's doubtful it would have to do about 1/10000 that for a cable modem on a computer about 1/50 as fast.

If you need to use Linux you can always run CentOS and save the cash. Or you could just use FreeBSD instead.

Printers supported by BSD??

Great. Now how about finishing porting FreeBSD to PowerPC

Have you taken a look at the updated PPC Project Page? It has came a long way from where it was even 6 months ago. Give it a couple more months I would say and it'll be a first class port...

I just wish it supported 7300 series machines and not just New World stuff...:(

BWP

She is the one with whome Linux is compared.

Some picture perhaps? here and here (particular this one.

When will LInux get a latex clad booth babe? We need one. Now. Errr, to take care of Linux, of course.

Perhaps some BSDers can tell us why the FreeBSD implementation is superior to the Linux one?

It's inferior. The command (mdmfs) is just a wrapper to call mdconfig, newfs, and mount. mdconfig itself is cool; it's a command to create a memory, swap, or file-backed device in /dev. Run mdconfig with the desired size, format the new device, then mount it. That's mdmfs. When a file is deleted, it doesn't know to free memory that the file occupied (though that memory will eventually be pushed to the swapfile).

Linux tmpfs allocates memory when files are created or appended to and frees memory when files are deleted. It would also be optimized for RAM instead of disk.

For the record, I'm a FreeBSD user.

By the standards of the FreeBSD project, apparently.

See http://www.freebsd.org/java/dists/15.html
who link here:
http://www.eyesbeyond.com/freebsddom/java/jdk15.ht ml

FreeBSD wasn't even mentioned until the interview. In fact, when I interviewed, I was asked, "have you ever heard of FreeBSD?" with a grimace like I was going to go, "WTF? FreeBZ whatis?" The fact I said, "Which build, the 4.x line or the newer 5.x line?" made them go, "WOW! WE FOUND ONE!"

That actually supports my point. If they went "wow, we found one" that sure sounds like they were looking for someone who knew FreeBSD, NOT someone who knew UNIX.

Sometimes there's not an RPM when we need it, but that's just a configure and a "make all && make install" away...

Not if you're packaging stuff for reproduction and distribution. On FreeBSD, installations never touch the core system. On Red Hat, there is no core system, and I eventually had to use custom RPMs and a hundred line install script to (carefully) back out several system packages and replace them with the right version, then install and configure the rest of the system. If I didn't do that, they'd get clobbered by the updater that didn't know about my "bandit" installs.

Both offer support. Both are answerable to customer pressure.

Microsoft? Answerable to customer pressure? You're pulling my leg, mate. If Microsoft was answerable to customer pressure, they'd have backed out the IE-Desktop integration in 1997, and we wouldn't STILL be fighting ActiveX and cross-zone attacks.

We can call Red Hat, call HP, get a live guy, and go, "What the heck is wrong with your HBA support an the 2.6 kernel?"

I get that kind of support from HP on Tru64 and HPUX, but not on Red Hat. There, I get "dunno, try another version"... when they call back after I've already fixed the problem myself. That's similar to the support I get from Microsoft, where their "support" people's advice left half my users unable to log on to the domain, and when I called back they told me to buy more support before they'd talk to me... no exceptions for problems *they* had caused. I got that one fixed myself before they called back with an apology and a free extension.

You can't get that with FreeBSD.

http://www.freebsd.org/commercial/consult.html

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

> If FreeBSD wants to be taken out of the hobbyist corner and shine in the corporate arena... it's got a lot of marketing work to do.

Interestingly enough, just today the first draft of a new area on the website was committed to try to bring together various whitepapers and case studies with a business orientation: see http://www.freebsd.org/marketing .

Mark Linimon

* OpenBSD is focused 100% on security. They very tightly audit their code and control what goes in the distribution. In theory it shares code with FreeBSD, but in practice it lags behind (ie: last I knew it doesn't even have multiprocessor support because of security complications).

* NetBSD is designed with portability in mind. It runs on 17 different CPU families and over 60 different machine architectures. I've a feeling that the embedded systems folks love this OS. Because of the multiplatform focus it does lag somewhat in single-platform features.

* FreeBSD is the "mainstream" BSD distribution. It supports a range of modern x86-32 and x86-64 hardware with multiprocessor support (and has ports to some other supported CPUs where things like multiprocessor may not work), and enjoys features like a Linux compatibility layer (so you can run Linux x86 binaries, including 3D accelerated games like Unreal Tournament 2004). For it's users, the FreeBSD Ports Tree is the greatest software repository and distribution method in the know universe (eg: "cd /usr/ports/somesoftware" make; make install; make clean" to download source code, apply any BSD-specific patches, compile and install the binaries). FreeBSD is also used by some large companies for webhosting due to it's mixture of security and performance. For example, Yahoo has always been hosted on FreeBSD, and they're only the #1 and #4 most visited website on the internet (source).

* OSX is Apple's custom version of FreeBSD that only runs on Macs. The focus here is a friendly, hugable user interface slapped over the Unixy FreeBSD core. The concept is a bit like Microsoft Bob but without making you want to kill yourself quite so badly, the implementation is not terrible. I would say more, but I'm tired of people saying how "great" OSX is then pointing to the shiny UI. A shiny UI does not a great OS make, although it certainly is no worse or better than Windows XP when it comes to running applications (provided applications are available for it).

If you're not sure which one to try, install FreeBSD with the Gnome desktop. It has the potential to be an interesting afternoon's learning experience and there is a lot of documentation to guide you if something goes wrong. Get FreeBSD from the official site or via BitTorrent (and always check the MD5's from the official site after downloading).

I really like FreeBSD - however, I'm now officially tired of messing with my computer for the sake of messing with my computer. Linux and FreeBSD have both worn out their welcome in favor of Windows XP with it's autoupdate feature. Hey, Windows XP runs Firefox AND all my games.

* OpenBSD is focused 100% on security. They very tightly audit their code and control what goes in the distribution. In theory it shares code with FreeBSD, but in practice it lags behind (ie: last I knew it doesn't even have multiprocessor support because of security complications).

* NetBSD is designed with portability in mind. It runs on 17 different CPU families and over 60 different machine architectures. I've a feeling that the embedded systems folks love this OS. Because of the multiplatform focus it does lag somewhat in single-platform features.

* FreeBSD is the "mainstream" BSD distribution. It supports a range of modern x86-32 and x86-64 hardware with multiprocessor support (and has ports to some other supported CPUs where things like multiprocessor may not work), and enjoys features like a Linux compatibility layer (so you can run Linux x86 binaries, including 3D accelerated games like Unreal Tournament 2004). For it's users, the FreeBSD Ports Tree is the greatest software repository and distribution method in the know universe (eg: "cd /usr/ports/somesoftware" make; make install; make clean" to download source code, apply any BSD-specific patches, compile and install the binaries). FreeBSD is also used by some large companies for webhosting due to it's mixture of security and performance. For example, Yahoo has always been hosted on FreeBSD, and they're only the #1 and #4 most visited website on the internet (source).

* OSX is Apple's custom version of FreeBSD that only runs on Macs. The focus here is a friendly, hugable user interface slapped over the Unixy FreeBSD core. The concept is a bit like Microsoft Bob but without making you want to kill yourself quite so badly, the implementation is not terrible. I would say more, but I'm tired of people saying how "great" OSX is then pointing to the shiny UI. A shiny UI does not a great OS make, although it certainly is no worse or better than Windows XP when it comes to running applications (provided applications are available for it).

If you're not sure which one to try, install FreeBSD with the Gnome desktop. It has the potential to be an interesting afternoon's learning experience and there is a lot of documentation to guide you if something goes wrong. Get FreeBSD from the official site or via BitTorrent (and always check the MD5's from the official site after downloading).

I really like FreeBSD - however, I'm now officially tired of messing with my computer for the sake of messing with my computer. Linux and FreeBSD have both worn out their welcome in favor of Windows XP with it's autoupdate feature. Hey, Windows XP runs Firefox AND all my games.

* OpenBSD is focused 100% on security. They very tightly audit their code and control what goes in the distribution. In theory it shares code with FreeBSD, but in practice it lags behind (ie: last I knew it doesn't even have multiprocessor support because of security complications).

* NetBSD is designed with portability in mind. It runs on 17 different CPU families and over 60 different machine architectures. I've a feeling that the embedded systems folks love this OS. Because of the multiplatform focus it does lag somewhat in single-platform features.

* FreeBSD is the "mainstream" BSD distribution. It supports a range of modern x86-32 and x86-64 hardware with multiprocessor support (and has ports to some other supported CPUs where things like multiprocessor may not work), and enjoys features like a Linux compatibility layer (so you can run Linux x86 binaries, including 3D accelerated games like Unreal Tournament 2004). For it's users, the FreeBSD Ports Tree is the greatest software repository and distribution method in the know universe (eg: "cd /usr/ports/somesoftware" make; make install; make clean" to download source code, apply any BSD-specific patches, compile and install the binaries). FreeBSD is also used by some large companies for webhosting due to it's mixture of security and performance. For example, Yahoo has always been hosted on FreeBSD, and they're only the #1 and #4 most visited website on the internet (source).

* OSX is Apple's custom version of FreeBSD that only runs on Macs. The focus here is a friendly, hugable user interface slapped over the Unixy FreeBSD core. The concept is a bit like Microsoft Bob but without making you want to kill yourself quite so badly, the implementation is not terrible. I would say more, but I'm tired of people saying how "great" OSX is then pointing to the shiny UI. A shiny UI does not a great OS make, although it certainly is no worse or better than Windows XP when it comes to running applications (provided applications are available for it).

If you're not sure which one to try, install FreeBSD with the Gnome desktop. It has the potential to be an interesting afternoon's learning experience and there is a lot of documentation to guide you if something goes wrong. Get FreeBSD from the official site or via BitTorrent (and always check the MD5's from the official site after downloading).

I really like FreeBSD - however, I'm now officially tired of messing with my computer for the sake of messing with my computer. Linux and FreeBSD have both worn out their welcome in favor of Windows XP with it's autoupdate feature. Hey, Windows XP runs Firefox AND all my games.

* OpenBSD is focused 100% on security. They very tightly audit their code and control what goes in the distribution. In theory it shares code with FreeBSD, but in practice it lags behind (ie: last I knew it doesn't even have multiprocessor support because of security complications).

* NetBSD is designed with portability in mind. It runs on 17 different CPU families and over 60 different machine architectures. I've a feeling that the embedded systems folks love this OS. Because of the multiplatform focus it does lag somewhat in single-platform features.

* FreeBSD is the "mainstream" BSD distribution. It supports a range of modern x86-32 and x86-64 hardware with multiprocessor support (and has ports to some other supported CPUs where things like multiprocessor may not work), and enjoys features like a Linux compatibility layer (so you can run Linux x86 binaries, including 3D accelerated games like Unreal Tournament 2004). For it's users, the FreeBSD Ports Tree is the greatest software repository and distribution method in the know universe (eg: "cd /usr/ports/somesoftware" make; make install; make clean" to download source code, apply any BSD-specific patches, compile and install the binaries). FreeBSD is also used by some large companies for webhosting due to it's mixture of security and performance. For example, Yahoo has always been hosted on FreeBSD, and they're only the #1 and #4 most visited website on the internet (source).

* OSX is Apple's custom version of FreeBSD that only runs on Macs. The focus here is a friendly, hugable user interface slapped over the Unixy FreeBSD core. The concept is a bit like Microsoft Bob but without making you want to kill yourself quite so badly, the implementation is not terrible. I would say more, but I'm tired of people saying how "great" OSX is then pointing to the shiny UI. A shiny UI does not a great OS make, although it certainly is no worse or better than Windows XP when it comes to running applications (provided applications are available for it).

If you're not sure which one to try, install FreeBSD with the Gnome desktop. It has the potential to be an interesting afternoon's learning experience and there is a lot of documentation to guide you if something goes wrong. Get FreeBSD from the official site or via BitTorrent (and always check the MD5's from the official site after downloading).

I really like FreeBSD - however, I'm now officially tired of messing with my computer for the sake of messing with my computer. Linux and FreeBSD have both worn out their welcome in favor of Windows XP with it's autoupdate feature. Hey, Windows XP runs Firefox AND all my games.

* OpenBSD is focused 100% on security. They very tightly audit their code and control what goes in the distribution. In theory it shares code with FreeBSD, but in practice it lags behind (ie: last I knew it doesn't even have multiprocessor support because of security complications).

* NetBSD is designed with portability in mind. It runs on 17 different CPU families and over 60 different machine architectures. I've a feeling that the embedded systems folks love this OS. Because of the multiplatform focus it does lag somewhat in single-platform features.

* FreeBSD is the "mainstream" BSD distribution. It supports a range of modern x86-32 and x86-64 hardware with multiprocessor support (and has ports to some other supported CPUs where things like multiprocessor may not work), and enjoys features like a Linux compatibility layer (so you can run Linux x86 binaries, including 3D accelerated games like Unreal Tournament 2004). For it's users, the FreeBSD Ports Tree is the greatest software repository and distribution method in the know universe (eg: "cd /usr/ports/somesoftware" make; make install; make clean" to download source code, apply any BSD-specific patches, compile and install the binaries). FreeBSD is also used by some large companies for webhosting due to it's mixture of security and performance. For example, Yahoo has always been hosted on FreeBSD, and they're only the #1 and #4 most visited website on the internet (source).

* OSX is Apple's custom version of FreeBSD that only runs on Macs. The focus here is a friendly, hugable user interface slapped over the Unixy FreeBSD core. The concept is a bit like Microsoft Bob but without making you want to kill yourself quite so badly, the implementation is not terrible. I would say more, but I'm tired of people saying how "great" OSX is then pointing to the shiny UI. A shiny UI does not a great OS make, although it certainly is no worse or better than Windows XP when it comes to running applications (provided applications are available for it).

If you're not sure which one to try, install FreeBSD with the Gnome desktop. It has the potential to be an interesting afternoon's learning experience and there is a lot of documentation to guide you if something goes wrong. Get FreeBSD from the official site or via BitTorrent (and always check the MD5's from the official site after downloading).

I really like FreeBSD - however, I'm now officially tired of messing with my computer for the sake of messing with my computer. Linux and FreeBSD have both worn out their welcome in favor of Windows XP with it's autoupdate feature. Hey, Windows XP runs Firefox AND all my games.

FreeBSD from scratch.

You need to track security updates for kernel, base and ports and apply them in different manners

Security updates come in source only form, this is a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. You apply the patches in order, i.e. if a Sendmail vulnerability comes out first and then an openssl vulnerability next, you have to do sendmail first. This is to ensure a consistant system that won't break when you load the new kernel/userland. If you track -STABLE you won't have to worry about applying them in any different manner. Just make world and walk away.

Package management is a decade behind what rpm and dpkg have to offer

pkg_add -r. Also see the manpages for pkg_* which set the trend and since 1994 has been doing what rpm and dpkg currently do. If anything FreeBSD is ahead in package management. I think you may be complaining at the fact that most open source software today completely ignores any other OS other than linux. Just going around to different sites, I see rpm or debian's package format. Nothing for *BSD,Solaris,etc.

It's essentially a DIY kit to build an OS. I just want an OS.

And what is an OS? Its fully functional out of the box. If I'm installing FreeBSD on a server I don't need X. If i'm installing FreeBSD on my desktop, I don't need apache. Pick and choose. If you hate installing packages everytime you reinstall, use FreeBSD from scratch.

Building ports takes ages, time I don't have
Building ports takes resources. Resources I want to use for the server's core buisiness. Which is not compiling ports
Who said to build from ports (granted there are some packages which require you to build from source SSH, java, et. al), again pkg_add -r is your friend. If you require the latest then put freebsd on a second machine and build there.

Bad documentation. The official freebsd manual often explains the most time consuming, error prone way of doing things. Later you'll find out there are many convienient ports to perform common tasks.

Excuse me?

No journalled filesystems. Yeah, it's really scary to remotely kill the power of a crashed machine.

First of all, even back in the early days of UFS/FFS, a power outage wouldn't trash the filesystem. You must be thinking of ext2. Now softupdates is part of the default kernel which gives journaling-like attributes to the UFS filesystem. IIRC, full journaling should be implemented somewhere in the 6.x release.

I would also be interested to hear why you think userland is amateurish. Especially since most of everything in there has been around since 1.0 or 386BSD

You need to track security updates for kernel, base and ports and apply them in different manners

Security updates come in source only form, this is a good thing or a bad thing depending on how you look at it. You apply the patches in order, i.e. if a Sendmail vulnerability comes out first and then an openssl vulnerability next, you have to do sendmail first. This is to ensure a consistant system that won't break when you load the new kernel/userland. If you track -STABLE you won't have to worry about applying them in any different manner. Just make world and walk away.

Package management is a decade behind what rpm and dpkg have to offer

pkg_add -r. Also see the manpages for pkg_* which set the trend and since 1994 has been doing what rpm and dpkg currently do. If anything FreeBSD is ahead in package management. I think you may be complaining at the fact that most open source software today completely ignores any other OS other than linux. Just going around to different sites, I see rpm or debian's package format. Nothing for *BSD,Solaris,etc.

It's essentially a DIY kit to build an OS. I just want an OS.

And what is an OS? Its fully functional out of the box. If I'm installing FreeBSD on a server I don't need X. If i'm installing FreeBSD on my desktop, I don't need apache. Pick and choose. If you hate installing packages everytime you reinstall, use FreeBSD from scratch.

Building ports takes ages, time I don't have
Building ports takes resources. Resources I want to use for the server's core buisiness. Which is not compiling ports
Who said to build from ports (granted there are some packages which require you to build from source SSH, java, et. al), again pkg_add -r is your friend. If you require the latest then put freebsd on a second machine and build there.

Bad documentation. The official freebsd manual often explains the most time consuming, error prone way of doing things. Later you'll find out there are many convienient ports to perform common tasks.

Excuse me?

No journalled filesystems. Yeah, it's really scary to remotely kill the power of a crashed machine.

First of all, even back in the early days of UFS/FFS, a power outage wouldn't trash the filesystem. You must be thinking of ext2. Now softupdates is part of the default kernel which gives journaling-like attributes to the UFS filesystem. IIRC, full journaling should be implemented somewhere in the 6.x release.

I would also be interested to hear why you think userland is amateurish. Especially since most of everything in there has been around since 1.0 or 386BSD

Parent is a Linux troll.

BSD is renowned for having better documentation than Linux. Unlike on Linux where the man pages are a half-arsed effort, an after-thought, brief, confusing and full of errors, on BSD they're done properly, with skill and expertise.

They leave nothing to chance, they explain everything simply and easily, with plenty of intuitive examples and useful explanations. Yes, with BSD, you know exactly where you are and what to do.

Some of the Linux developers might think that documentation is for losers (or lusers as they like to call the people who use their software), but on BSD they realise that people might not necessarily know everything about their system, every command, every option or every file, so they treat the user with respect, explaining things which need explaining. This means that BSD is easier to use and configure, a great user experience.

So the next time you're frustrated trying to fix Linux, and the IRC channels tell you to RTFM, the newsgroups call you a Microsoft shill, and you wonder why TFM is so poor, or why no-one cares, remember that just around the corner is an operating system where the user comes first. BSD.

Here are some useful links:
http://freebsd.org/
http://openbsd.org/
http://netbsd.org/

4.11 supports the 386 just 5.* and above won't.

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.11R/announce.htm l

Of course you have to ask yourself the question why would you want to use a 386?

I can't think of a good reason. Well except to poke at their decision. Or unless you can't just dig down a little deeper in the dumpster to the 486's.

The kernel can be built for the 386 by following instructions in the handbook. It's not enabled by default anymore, but as long as you have a decent amount of disk space, you should be able to build it without any problem.

It's because of Beastie!

That's my story and I'm sticking with it. :-)

Most OS X users probably don't even know they're running a flavor of Linux, but they can slowly get more involved with that world while as they feel comfortable.

Since no one explicitly why OS X is not Linux: OS X is based on the Mach Microkernel and FreeBSD (a BSD Unix variant, not Linux (see section "What is Linux?").

And they accept donated hardware. FreeBSD is one:

http://www.freebsd.org/donations/

You can get a tax deductionn too.

It's not our fault you prefer the never-changing BSD and the 1-button MAC mouse.

Don't be a putz. It's not FreeBSD-6-Beta1, but it's not exactly 4.4BSD either.

http://developer.apple.com/unix/
http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/MacOSX_UNIX_TB. pdf

It's not our fault you prefer the never-changing BSD and the 1-button MAC mouse.

Don't be a putz. It's not FreeBSD-6-Beta1, but it's not exactly 4.4BSD either.

http://developer.apple.com/unix/
http://images.apple.com/macosx/pdf/MacOSX_UNIX_TB. pdf

No, that would be one foot in the living past (FreeBSD) and one foot in the dead past (Mach). Mach is considered a bad kernel design by both theorists and developers. The only reason Apple used it instead of a plain BSD kernel is Avie Tevanian and the NIH syndrome.