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Actually, Apple's kernel is a collection of parts from BSD, Mach, and IOKit. It's a monolithic kernel like Mach 2.5, not a microkernel like Mach 3.0, although some parts from the Mach 3.0 code base were supposedly used.

IOkit is written in the "embedded subset" of C++, an idea from 1999 that never caught on. Drivers are loadable kernel modules, as with Linux, but the structure is quite different.

Any driver can crash the kernel. It's not a microkernel at all.

There really are very few political forces that shape things between the BSD's, whereas the amount of cooperation is actually quite strong and pleasant. Hyping up the politics myth only does a disservice to everyone.

That's funny when you consider that the reference development platform for the apache team is FreeBSD. Same for bind and sendmail, btw.

No. If you choose Linux, you are stuck with Apache, but if you choose Apache you don't need to use Linux. There are other free OSes that run Apache, but there's no easy way to run Linux with the second most popular web server.

I'm not sure what is really involved by this, but a FreeBSD security bulletin was released today addressing this topic (including a kernel patch and work-around) so I highly doubt this is simply a stunt.

So did you friend. http://www.freebsd.org/

http://people.freebsd.org/~kensmith/5.4-torrent/

"The point is, except for GNU/Linux, there is no Java in the Libre *Nix arena."

Eh? What about http://www.freebsd.org/java/? Works pretty damn well for me, running little things like Tomcat and JBoss...

As someone with all the answers you'll obviously know how you can download and compile the "open" Java source on OpenBSD without violating the licence. Except that ... you can't.

Why not? Source is right there. You can download, you can hack it, you can even share the patches. You just can't redistribute the binaries.

So what was your issue again?

Interesting seeing the ten or so responses saying that the ports system is perfect... I installed 5.3 a month ago, and ran CVSup on the ports collection, and it messed up dozens of ports. When I tried to compile them, I got messages about libraries already existing that were out of date, and that I should remove the old library and rebuild it and then try building the package again. So I try that, and then that library has 8 things that depend on it, ad nauseum.

Also, things like this indicate that in fact, there are many ports that are broken.

Note that I'm not trying to say anything bad about FBSD, I love the system and use it as my primary desktop OS. But the ports system most certainly is not perfect. It seems to be best when the release you're using is relatively new (e.g. right now), though.

Not dropped, relegated to tier 2.

See here.

With so many design flaws and performance problems (see posting by Scott Long) I am not sure why anyone in their right mind would consider using 5.x/6.x in a production application ?.
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=14345 +0+current/freebsd-performance

"Programming instructions" for machines that power much of Internet already available.

I've been running 5.4 since Friday, when the source was tagged. cvsup is wonderful. :)

You network-install it, right from the three floppies

Click here or here or even here

FreeBSD 5.3 didn't like my hard disk (already reported by someone else as this bug), and it seems to still be open. :(

For those of us with AMD64 systems try this one:
http://people.freebsd.org/~kensmith/5.4-torrent/5. 4-RELEASE-amd64-all.torrent
I'm going to test it's stability against my gentoo and ubuntu amd64 solutions. I'm currently happy with neither. Not necessarily because of the distros themselves. But from the lack of 64-bit support from certain apps.

That handbook section covers all the stuff I've mentioned above. The Handbook is your friend.

The FreeBSD 5.4 Release is dedicated to the memory of Cameron Grant. Cameron was an active FreeBSD Developer and principal architect of the sound driver subsystem despite his physical handicap. His is a superb example of human spirit dominating over adversity. Cameron was an inspiration to those who met him; he will be fondly remembered and sorely missed.

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/announce.html

Help promote their new torrent option, seed it for a bit me me and the 5 others doing it currently.

http://people.freebsd.org/~kensmith/5.4-torrent/

if you can, join the all seeds ; )

##### Disk One #####

##### Disk Two #####

Of course, in their infinate wisdom, the coders of slashdot have decided to make my life difficult with their damn lameness filters

##### Disk One #####

##### Disk Two #####

Of course, in their infinate wisdom, the coders of slashdot have decided to make my life difficult with their damn lameness filters

As fast as they are fixed, which in reality ends up being comparable to Linux, just listen on the appropriate mailing lists and follow the step-by step instructions. There are also some automated utilities in the ports collection that ease security updates. The BSD ports system will take care of most of your packaging concerns as well since it is an actively updated collection, although most require compilation from source there is the binary alternative, package, which should be easy enough for most RPM folk I would imagine.

Check out this link regarding packages and ports.

Using CVSup and then Rebuilding "world"

Using CVSup and then Rebuilding "world"

Microsoft is switching to LINUX! Jetzt hilf uns Gott! Well we could go with this little beastie guy too.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and hazard a guess that if I said, 'NetBSD,'

I believe the encrypted session has to be disabled on the server end in windows2k3.

Encrypted session, or packet signing?

IIRC, the encrypted session is a proprietary M$ extension to CIFS/SMB that the samba guys haven't (hadn't) implemented (reverse-engineered) yet.

Recent versions of the FreeBSD smbfs (client VFS) do packet signing, so that might have been reverse-engineered, at least on the client side.

If you have to turn packet signing off on the server to connect from Tiger, presumably Tiger hasn't picked that up.

Pirate away :). FreeBSD 5.3 FreeBSD 4.11

Pirate away :). FreeBSD 5.3 FreeBSD 4.11

Try this and either this or this: it's not quite the real thing, but it's as near as you're going to get for the time being. And you will certainly get to "dump Windows but not all of your hardware".

These updates come out roughly once a month and usually are several security fixes rolled up into one.

Unfortunately, while Apple collects several security fixes together into a single update package, they aren't following the obvious approach of handling all of the known issues at each point. This security issue was reported over three weeks ago, but doesn't seem to have been patched yet.

I'm a beginning FreeBSD user and I've discovered that the Unix way is both smart and dumb.

It's smart because it works. It's stupid because it's not user friendly. And often it doesn't work.

FOR FUCK'S SAKE, just because you old-timers are used to making a drawing by putting pieces of graphite on paper with a microscope, doesn't mean it's easy to learn when you're new to it. Build a pencil. It's not as efficient but it's the right time for it.

The biggest problem with installing on a FreeBSD system is that you have to KNOW and REMEMBER so much. There's so many different ways of "installing"/putting files all over the place that you can't use FreeBSD as an operating system once you've read the The Unix and Internet Fundamentals HOWTO and the FreeBSD Handbook

No, that's not enough, it's never enough. There's always an exception to how things are done normally. This package can't install, that port needs gmake instead of make, how do you find out? Not by reading the manual or the installation instructions but because you googled for the error message and someone somewhere had the same problem, and google just happened to index it. It vaguely points you into the right direction and by having above average computer knowledge and above average analytical skills are you able to figure things out MAYBE.

So many tens of thousands of smart people must have stopped using FreeBSD because of all this stupid unusable crap, such a loss for the community.

On the other hand, as I understand it. MacOS X, Darwin and OpenDarwin install/dock programs in one directory. THIS IS GREAT!

Granted, I'm new to UNIX but I still think this is the way to go. Off the top of my head I can think of several reasons:
- When you delete the dir, you KNOW all the files of that program are gone. No "uninstalling" procedure that can go wrong.
- It's easier to create a fine-grained security fence around a single directory than multiple files spread out all over the system.
- Everything is a file, isn't that the UNIX way? If you use the traditional package/ports way of program installation you need to rely on the "magical package manager wizard program" to help you find everything back and delete it. ON THE OTHER HAND with "a program is a directory" you'll have the peace of mind and purity of how things work in the real world. A tool in the real world is mostly also an enclosed system, a thing. PEACE OF MIND PEOPLE? Who isn't frustrated sometimes by PCs?

As I said, just from the top of my head.

I predict that all the traditionalists will have all kinds of reasons that the old ways have to be held on to forever at all costs, but look at the end-result of this. Look at the situation from afar. All new power users of non-Darwin are frustrated by installing programs. I wasn't able to figure out FreeBSD on my own, I needed lots and lots of documentation, among a lot of other things. I WAS able to figure out Windows on my own and I probably won't have trouble with my future Mac. The only problem with Mac OSX is that Mac hardware doesn't have ECC memory, except the server line and Mac OSX isn't copyleft, so in theory they can become evil like MS.

At the moment I need FreeBSD for it's jails. I just have 1 PC so I need a jailed FBSD as a router. However, when I get another PC I WILL switch to something else which has application directories. The most usable operating system in existance at the moment proved it's a good thing.

Can somebody tell me if there's a FreeBSD or OpenBSD fork which uses application dirs which runs on i386. Maybe even something which has jails as well?

Thank you very much in advance, I will do research on my own but as I said, I'm new and I would like to save some time with your help.

I also hope all the old-schoolers are not too stuck in their ways to agree with me about application dirs even just a little bit (think about the end result).

Recently, a discussion took place on a FreeBSD mailing list wether the project wanted to use GCC 4.0.0 as the system compiler. Some objections where:

• KDE would not compile cleanly
• Most of the 12.000+ ports would need manual tweaking because of other incompatibilities.
• Some C constructs have been obsoleted, requiring huge sweeps over the existing BSD code base.

If I understood it right, We won't have a GCC 4.0.0 system compiler on FreeBSD anytime soon. Installing the gcc40 port is, of course, always possible.

So I guess in your organization attachments are a privilege reserved for those who understand base64(1).

Also, how about growing files with mmap? Currently one can not mmap() beyond the end of the file on Linux...

We should all use free (though poorly functional) things, rather than things that work.

Were you implying that free software is poorly functional? Geez, every day I use free software that feel is very functional, don't you think?

I'm also a bit confused as how 'free software' = 'freedom'. So... you lose your individual freedom if you buy software?

Free Software means that the users are free to share, study, and improve the software with very little restrictions. You might want to read this; it's best to get it straight from the horse's mouth.

And, people buy Free Software all the time. Why is Red Hat still in business? Free Software has nothing to do with costs; if it costs just as much as proprietary software, I'd still buy the Free Software package if it were superior.

And dispite all the good stuff in OpenBSD, why has it not gone anywhere? Couldn't be because of leadship personality issues, could it? No way, that's unpossible!"

Sorry, You was a generic "YOU" - I have no idea what you run, but what you said might be a common sentiment. I would also debate your claim that OpenBSD hasn't got anywhere. Today, OpenBSD with CARP provides the best price/performance ratio for a firewall/router solution. (a cisco solution providing similar functionality would be _MUCH_ more expensive). Depending on usage patterns, it can also be a good solution for various services (web, dns, etc.). It even works on laptops and workstations, although that is not their primary target audience.

You can count the number of developers that were enstranged by Theo's arrogance - but there is no use for this kind of "what if" speculation. Part of the reasons that OpenBSD is a highly secure and complete OS might be due to the strong belief in meritocracy (show me your code or shut up attitude) - which some of the developers (even if this might sound surprising) may even find attractive.

OpenBSD is not without deficiencies, I don't want to claim that. One of the most notable might be SMP. SMP support was only included in the latest release, and it takes the easy to implement but not very efficient on multiple CPUs approach. However, Theo and friends are not stupid. With dual core CPUs already on the market, I have faith that they will work on resolving this situation. On the other hand, given the functionality in which OpenBSD is ahead of its competition (firewalls for instance), this is not really an issue (yet). To have load balancing and redundancy, you need multiple firewalls on a large network, not one firewall machine with multiple CPUs. Just an example.

You also missed my point: this is not about the merits of one os over another - it's about having something like this, which not only identifies goals, but openly speaks about problems as well, or something like this. For linux that is. If you followed the links in my previous post, you can see that there is a clear job description (charter for releng team), they clearly state who is responsible for what, etc. Is there something like that for linux? Or not only something "like that" but something similarly transparent and easily understandable? To me it seemed that linux release process is both more controlled and less controlled at the same time. More controlled for I always see "Linux released the latest kernel blah". Less controlled b/c well, I don't see the rules for releasing a new version clearly described anywhere. Since I strongly doubt that the problem is solely financial, I made an attempt to think of something else, and organization with transparent release engeneering process came to my mind. The issue is not FreeBSD - it is just a good example for the latter - I'm not interested discussing the merits of the software (well, that much, although I'm not using Open~, I respect Theo for what he and his friends do - therefore I try to see both sides of the story: not only the drawbacks of his personality, but its merits as well).

And dispite all the good stuff in OpenBSD, why has it not gone anywhere? Couldn't be because of leadship personality issues, could it? No way, that's unpossible!"

Sorry, You was a generic "YOU" - I have no idea what you run, but what you said might be a common sentiment. I would also debate your claim that OpenBSD hasn't got anywhere. Today, OpenBSD with CARP provides the best price/performance ratio for a firewall/router solution. (a cisco solution providing similar functionality would be _MUCH_ more expensive). Depending on usage patterns, it can also be a good solution for various services (web, dns, etc.). It even works on laptops and workstations, although that is not their primary target audience.

You can count the number of developers that were enstranged by Theo's arrogance - but there is no use for this kind of "what if" speculation. Part of the reasons that OpenBSD is a highly secure and complete OS might be due to the strong belief in meritocracy (show me your code or shut up attitude) - which some of the developers (even if this might sound surprising) may even find attractive.

OpenBSD is not without deficiencies, I don't want to claim that. One of the most notable might be SMP. SMP support was only included in the latest release, and it takes the easy to implement but not very efficient on multiple CPUs approach. However, Theo and friends are not stupid. With dual core CPUs already on the market, I have faith that they will work on resolving this situation. On the other hand, given the functionality in which OpenBSD is ahead of its competition (firewalls for instance), this is not really an issue (yet). To have load balancing and redundancy, you need multiple firewalls on a large network, not one firewall machine with multiple CPUs. Just an example.

You also missed my point: this is not about the merits of one os over another - it's about having something like this, which not only identifies goals, but openly speaks about problems as well, or something like this. For linux that is. If you followed the links in my previous post, you can see that there is a clear job description (charter for releng team), they clearly state who is responsible for what, etc. Is there something like that for linux? Or not only something "like that" but something similarly transparent and easily understandable? To me it seemed that linux release process is both more controlled and less controlled at the same time. More controlled for I always see "Linux released the latest kernel blah". Less controlled b/c well, I don't see the rules for releasing a new version clearly described anywhere. Since I strongly doubt that the problem is solely financial, I made an attempt to think of something else, and organization with transparent release engeneering process came to my mind. The issue is not FreeBSD - it is just a good example for the latter - I'm not interested discussing the merits of the software (well, that much, although I'm not using Open~, I respect Theo for what he and his friends do - therefore I try to see both sides of the story: not only the drawbacks of his personality, but its merits as well).

Well, that would really be a problem, but despite Theo's personality (which I think might have its own charms) doesn't necessarily get in the way of development. Just think of the huge contributions OpenBSD made. Common Address Redundancy Protocol (CARP) for instance. Or their excellent firewall, pf (now present in all BSDs). Not to mention OpenSSH. And beside these standalone or highly portable applications, they released a secure and stable OS. Not 'just' a kernel. They write their own libc. They maintain a lot of software in their base system. Apache 1.3.x can be almost considered a fork, with their security/stability related patchset. Which comes down to my main point: The problem is not lack of resources, monetary or otherwise

Currently there are ~100 developers payed fulltime just to work on the kernel (at various organizations). There are none in FreeBSD. There are perhaps a dozen devs whose employers let them work on FreeBSD part-time, or there are various works that are sponsored by companies (pair network comes to mind) from time-to-time. But all in all, FreeBSD, that writes its own kernel, its own C library, and generally speaking maintains an OS (userland apps like their package management and ports system for instance, burncd - the native cd burning app of freebsd, etc.) does that with 1/50 of the resource Linux & co has just to develop the kernel.

This is not about linux vs. freebsd btw. I chose to use the latter, you chose the former, I really don't care, and I'm not willing to engage in yet another linux vs. bsd flamefest. You can argue endlessly about why linux is better, and I can do the same about FreeBSD, but I think we can agree on one point: either way, neither is that much better (lets cut down that figure to 10x - you can't possibly claim that linux is 10x better or something). In other words, my point is that it is not about (monetary) resources. It is a problem of organization imho. Less frequent releases, more API/ABI stability, a controlled release engeneering process might be a solution. Perhaps a branch split like it was done during 2.5.x (current 2.6) development. Pronounce the current 2.6.x branch STABLE, meaning introducing a POLA (policy of least astonishment in freebsd) and forbid API/ABI changes, then continue development in a new, 2.7 branch at the current pace.

I don't mean to imply that there is no release engeneering in linux kernel development whatsoever. But somehow FreeBSD's (and I assume the other BSD's as well) release engeneering seems to me a lot more transparent. Click the first few links at the top of this page to see what I mean by "controlled release engeneering process."

How many open-source graphics packages are there? One (Gimp).

Actually there are two others that turned up in a simple google:

http://www.inkscape.org/
http://www.sodipodi.com/

Without OSX and Windows, there is only one operating system left.

There are in fact several open source OS's besides linux, some based on unix some not:

http://www.reactos.com/
http://www.freedos.org/
http://www.netbsd.org/
http://www.openbsd.org/
http://www.freebsd.org/

It is true that certain packages tend to dominate if they are clearly better than the others (such as Gimp or Apache) However in some areas their is still no clear 'winner' such as the battle between KDE/Gnome. This is just natural evolution in progress.

Let's see what Alan Cox had to say about the 2.6 Kernel Development cycle.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/1/3/216 After 2.6.9-ac its clear that the long 2.6.9 process worked very badly. While 2.6.10 is looking much better its long period meant the allegedly "official" base kernel was a complete pile of insecure donkey turd for months. That doesn't hurt most vendor users but it does hurt those trying to do stuff on the base kernels very badly.

Alan

Thankfully, there are better alternatives to the insecure donkey turd that is Linux.

It might earn you geek points by doing up the 2.6 kernel to create a floppy bootable solution but whats the point?

There are many well tested and feature rich solutions out there that it really just seems like re-inventing the wheel.

http://people.freebsd.org/~picobsd/picobsd.html
http://lrp.steinkuehler.net/

I think the point of the secure erasing feature is overwriting the (presumably sensitive) data with useless gibberish which looks like malformed/broken data and/or can't even be construed as a file.

Yes - see the man page for the srm command (that's the Darwin 7.0.1 man page, which is the 10.3.1 man page, but other UN*Xes include it as well).

The "Gutmann algorithm" mentioned therein is presumably the one devised by Peter Gutmann, as described in his paper Secure Deletion of Data from Magnetic and Solid-State Memory.

Not the greatest choice of wording (and spelling), in any case. Maybe "meaningless" would have been clearer?

That, or "scrambled" (which I suggested via the Website Feedback page on the Apple Website), although perhaps "scrambled" is a bit too techy.

Get the floppy images, or the iso image for the latest stable release of FreeBSD (which is currently at 5.4 RC1) and do a small install including kernel sources and ports. Copy the example make.conf file in /etc, change the processor type in it to what you own, change the compilerflags to O2 adding -funroll-loops and -ffast-math (see google or yahoo!), follow the handbook on how to build and install world and kernel (pretty easy) and then start compiling KDE or Gnome (or whatever WM you want).
Go through the list of ports to see what you can add, if using Nvidia get the port of nvidia-driver.

First time I recompiled the whole thing on my laptop I was rather surprised and very pleased at how fast the thing is. It's only now that I found out how fast the thing really can be after using Windows on it for so long... Been tracking FreeBSD 5-STABLE since the release of 5.3 (used 4-STABLE for some time before) and I'm very pleased with the performance. (hoping to get a second laptop to follow progress on 6.x)

I can't force you to use it, but I think you should give it a try. The worst it'll cost you is a few days. :-)

I found myself in a similar position only a few weeks ago. I hadn't installed linux since Red Hat 6.x, so I had been out of the loop for a while. I started with Fedora but realized that my old box is not Fedora material :) I ended up installing FreeBSD and it went smoothly. I ftped the boot disk images then installed the OS via ftp. I then added and configured KDE and few other apps. All told, installation took less than two hours, plus another hour or two in download time.

I'm running my install on a PII 300 with somewhere under 256 mb of RAM. The only unresolved problem so far is getting sound to work in KDE. I think my next project is turning this box into a firewall/router, so we'll see how that goes.

... is a great Unix book!
http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/

And most modern operating systems already use a complex set of files to keep track of Daylight Savings rules around the world.

These files are distributed as part of Arthur Olson's timezone package. On FreeBSD see tzfile(5)

Changing the timezone rules merely requires updating one file in /usr/share/zoneinfo. Heck, congress could add a hundred different daylight savings times intervals to the year and nothing would become difficult.

If you look at the zone info stuff, you'll see that some countries do a lot of kinky stuff with their time zones.

For example see the file for south america, and argentina in particular.

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/share/zo neinfo/southamerica?rev=1.12.2.9&content-type=text /x-cvsweb-markup

I seem to recall that some years back now they had some incident with their elections and a constitutional requirement to complete the process by a certain day. The government dealt with this by passing a law to change the clocks to allow sufficient time...

Lots of nontrivial projects have made do with CVS, a source code control system with limitations is much better than nothing at all.