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_Most_ programmers with any measurable breadth can sit back and shake their head. Sorry!

I completely agree that most programmers still agree with your point of view. That's why so much software is still full of security holes, crashes so frequently, requires hundreds of megabytes of memory, and misses so many deadlines.

struggling to grip with a wide variety of blindlingly obvious fact.

Yes, the facts are blindingly obvious.

You're probably using it incorrectly. Remember to set the PACKAGESITE variable to ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packa ges-4-stable/Latest/
or whatever you want your directory to be. The default is the directory of your release... which would be why it didn't seem to updated until the next release...

First, getting BSD up and running as a desktop requires a bit of work and a certain comfort level working with the command line.

The instant workstation meta-port may take some of the pain (fun :) out of the experience :

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/desktop-summary.html

what I really want before wiping windows off my box is a throrough HW compatibility list

See the Hardware Notes page. This page is for 5.2.1 because 5.3 is still in beta, but you can get the latest page off of CVS or on the beta ISO.

While this page isn't thorough, it should meet most people's needs. Thoroughness would require a vastly larger document. For example, not every USB flash drive is listed, but 9999 out of the 10,000 available will work with FreeBSD out of the box.

If you have hardware that is not mentioned, then ask about it on a support forum.

The FreeBSD install process is easy. Check here to see if the stuff in your box is listed. I am almost positive that box will work.

Beta 6 is out the mailing list post

"I see no BSD on the list"

"firewall configuration"

Status of PF on FreeBSD

From what I can gather, it looks like FreeBSD is moving towards using PF as the default firewall (not sure about the timeframe), with IPF and IPFW retained for backwards compatability. It's available as a kernel module/port for NetBSD, and I believe DragonFly has imported it into the base system recently.

It can do some very spiffy things. It might be a good idea to try it out, particularly since you don't have to change OSes anymore. :)

the mailing list post

Not quite accurate "We will add at least one more beta (BETA6)to accomodate testing."

where did you get this info from?

the schedule only shows up to beta5, then a release candidate.

Also, dependency hell was changed to use-flag hell. When Midnight Commander installs (I don't know if it still does) XFree86 as a dependency, there is a problem. In FreeBSD, it is the task of the port maintainer to configure a port that is good for 99% of the users. Everything has sane defaults, while still preserving flexibility: most ports offer a nice ncurses based menu for switching off or on different knobs. In gentoo I had to know what a particular use flag does: in case of motif, I found the extremely redundant info: "This use flag will install motif on your system" - well, thank you very much! On FreeBSD I have to remember one thing: if I interested in configuring a port differently than the port maintainer did, I can look into the usually well commented Makefile (takes less than half a minute).

And don't start me on documentation. I saw a PR (problem report) about one description file of a port, coming from FDP (FreeBSD Documentation Project). The COMMENT in bold was considered a bug:

Description

The COMMENT for the x11/kdelibs3 port is (for KDE 3.2):

<b>This is the base set of libraries needed by KDE programs</b>

It is bad practice to start a COMMENT with 'This is the', since this could be
prefixed to almost all comments and has no informational value.

Fix

I suggest to change the COMMENT to:

Base set of libraries needed by KDE programs

So yeah, I know what you're talking about :)

ps.I studied literature (finished Univ. last year) - and switched to linux after a virus wiped out most of my very important docs in windows 2 years ago. I have never had any computer training. I loved RH 7.3 (my first linux), and I liked Mandrake even better (till 9.1). Then came debian, but still, there was this urge to try out another distro, and then another, and so on. Since I tried FreeBSD last year in september, I realized that this was exactly what I was looking for. Simple, user-friendly, very fast Unix-like OS, which is easier to learn (because of the documantation AND its consistency) for a newbie like myself than any other linux distro I have tried.

Things licensed as Open Source do better on "just the facts" vs hype. Maybe it's because their audiences would take them to task if they did otherwise, but description of things such as GCC, Wikipedia , the Linux kernel, the GIMP, to name just a few, are completely factual. Not entirely free of marketing but tolerable are the Linux site's description of Linux, OpenSSH, bzip2, Project Gutenberg, and an XWindows organization X.org.

Particularly note Wikipedia and Google. The description of Wikipedia was made and chosen by the users. I can't think of a better testament that what users really want is just the facts. And Google understood that the last thing a person wants to do when anxious to find something quick is be forced to wait for a bunch of pointless graphics and generic ads to load. Really aggravating when on dial-up. Before Google, I got to where I knew just when to hit the stop button when loading Yahoo's main search page so I'd get the text input line and search button and miss all the extra crap they used to put on their main page.

Of course open source isn't totally above marketing. FreeBSD, Mozilla Firefox, KDE, Apache, OpenOffice all lay it on. They can point to all kinds of statistics to justify their hype, but the hype is still irritating when it catches my attention. These are easy to accept in spite of the marketspeak because I've heard from elsewhere that they're good.

Bad though some of those are, Microsoft is worse. Maybe what MS does should be called extreme marketing? In a few moments of searching, I was unable to find even a badly overblown description of just what Windows XP or MS Office is and during the search was wading through hype about MS's latest whatever: "Try the new digital music experience from Microsoft. You'll love it!"

As for throwing out the baby with the bathwater, I will spend a little time trying not to do that, but when it does happen I hope it clues the promoters in to realizing they made the waters too murky. Accepting something in spite of murk is not the way to persuade them to clean up. I like to tell them about it too. You never know when commentary might actually be heeded. I'm sorry if a good thing gets short shrift, but when time is limited, books will be judged by covers. People are often asked to try to word emails so spam filters will pass them. I feel I'm not asking too much of marketing to do the analogous.

This is the real FreeBSD arrogant ass in action. No wonder they lose people every day with people like Smorgrav.

Glass

Do not stand at my grave and weep.
I am not there, I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the mornings hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight,
I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there, I did not die.

As ever, HTH.

Sorry I can't answer your question on ULE, but thought I might point out that they now recommend against turning on PREEMPTION.

The link in the write-up is bad; here's one that works.

Solution: Take your business (and your balls) away from Microsoft.

I really wonder if MS would so have such a lax attitude towards piracy if GNU/Linux wasn't around? I'm guessing no. To many, an easily obtained, free pirated copy of XP is better than a truly free copy of GNU/Linux. Something MS is banking on since they are better off keeping eveyone possible away from GNU/Linux even if it digs into the short term bottom line.

You should at least boot if from a Compact Flash card

silent, no heat, droppable (kinda)

I've got no references for GNAA/Linux but FreeBSD has a sectionin the Handbook [freebsd.org]

And my fellow 9fan [google.com] Matthias showed me a handy reference guide [neon1.net] and bunch of scripts for the binaries you want. Well that's for non-X, my next stage of my project is trying to get my EPIA working in SVGA mode or, if I get a big enough CF card (I think a 256Mb should work and they are about $50 on ebay). I'm trying for an in car system. I already got it playing mp3s from the CD Rom 35 seconds from power.

pp

You should at least boot if from a Compact Flash card

silent, no heat, droppable (kinda)

I've got no references for GNAA/Linux but FreeBSD has a sectionin the Handbook and bunch of scripts for the binaries you want. Well that's for non-X, my next stage of my project is trying to get my EPIA working in SVGA mode or, if I get a big enough CF card (I think a 256Mb should work and they are about $50 on ebay). I'm trying for an in car system. I already got it playing mp3s from the CD Rom 35 seconds from power.

of

There are several FS like this, but you don't know of them because they require completely new FS API to work with.
With UFS2/SU we have snapshots which is a compromise; it does require any changes in the original UNIX API, and all current apps therefor work. On the other hand, it either requires a daemon or a competent user.

So, either you have UNIX or you have something else. Plan9 has many advantages, still, we use BSD, Solaris or whatever.

And yet they still haven't fixed this.

Lets have the BEST of everything in one core repository.

like This one?

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

FreeBSD's UFS2 snapshots work quite well too. You can even fsck them :)

For server skills, you might try installing FreeBSD and set up the services you need (apache, dns, dhcp, samba, etc) using the FreeBSD Handbook. The Handbook contains step-by-step instructions for all of the common services and is very well written. I used this approach in a college class I taught last semester and the students were able to set up services unassisted by the end of the class.

Once you know how to set services up in FreeBSD, you can easily port that knowledge to Linux. In most (if not all) cases, the config files have the same name, they're just stored in different locations.

For workstation skills, you might start off with one of the live CD distros like Knoppix. Just pop in the CD and boot your machine. It's a bit pokey running off the CD, but it won't touch your hard drive unless you run the installer. My 16-year-old son has been using Knoppix for several months and loves it.

I wonder if it will make it into FreeBSD 5.3, according to the schedule the Ports where frozen on the 3:rd of September; it would be nice if they regarded this a fix for the one in the Ports, otherwise I will use the latest stable XFree86 release.

As long as the S3 drivers suck, I could pick either and not really care; without better drivers my laptop mostly runs a VT100 console with a bit higher resolution thanks to vidcontrol.

http://people.freebsd.org/~bmah/pub/article.html

RELENG_5_3 hasn't been branched at the time of this (my) comment; look at cvsweb -- the selection box at the bottom of the page.

Be careful with the tags during a pre release cycle. I got burned during the 5.2 pre release cycle using (iirc) RELENG_5. It's not exactly the same as BETAX. As I understand it, work continues on RELENG_5 and it can sometimes be a little hairy in between the beta snapshots. (OTOH, it could also contain a bug fix to problems in the latest beta.)

This CVS tags helps but doesn't fill in all the blanks when there are betas floating around. We're sort of in the twilight zone. RELENG_5 had been pointing to CURRENT, now it's being preened for RELEASE, and soon after it will point to STABLE (or, rather, STABLE will point to it).

I'm not sure if RELENG_5_3 has been branched yet or not. If it hasn't, you'll find out real quick when cvsup starts deleting every file in your source tree. (Hit enter with one hand and hover over ctl-c with the other. :) )

I'm just a happy user. If I've made any mistakes above I look forward to the corrections.

K.C.

Not to sound trollish, but there's an awful lot of unfinished work on the 5.3 to-do list (http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/todo.html). Is it just that this list is unmaintained, or is 5.3 going out the door with some of these items left undone? Is this the version of 5.x that is to be considered stable?

Thanks for whatever info people have. It's hard to make technology decisions without all the facts!

CromeDome

I would probably simply wait (as others have suggested for 5.3).

though I'm running a 5.2.1 server and it runs fine--5.3 has a number of goodies like X.org default, much better SMP support, etc.

Check out the FreeBSD handbook http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/index.html for info on all things FreeBSD, as well as Linux binary support.

For Linux compatibility, you should probably start reading chapter 10 in the FreeBSD Handbook.

Some good documentation.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

* The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
* probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
* exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC. The 8139 supports bus-master
* DMA, but it has a terrible interface that nullifies any performance
* gains that bus-master DMA usually offers.

Come to think of it, it would be nice if tar just detected compression and you did not have to give it -z either! Can this be done?

Yes. bsdtar does this.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $

well, they did.

However, a lot of the features of perl are targetted towards making small programs even smaller. Take for instance my favourite hate-object: Autovivification. Perl fills in whatever you use as a hash reference to be a hash reference, so you don't have to do it yourself. Great for small, short programs where you are bulding data structures. A liability for large programs, where the problems with this (e.g, $stuff = undef; if (exists($stuff->{foo})) makes $stuff == {} - an empty hashref) makes debugging the programs harder.

Or the automatic conversion of numbers to and from strings, requiring that there are different operators for comparing strings (eq, ne, cmp) and numbers (=, !=, <=>). This is great for small, simple programs - removing the need for writing explict conversions is a boon, and automatically being able to mix data coming from a text file and a database is great. However, it gets in the way of writing generic code, and lead to small inconsistencies when one tries to work around it. As an example: Yesterday I had to write code that work with IDs in a sorted order, and had to use regexp checks to find out if it is to do numeric or string compares. That still won't be be stable for sets that mix integers and strings - fortunately, I could just disallow that for the time being.

I still love the power a language like Perl gives me. However, I've found another "language like Perl" where most of the traps are removed, the syntax is cleaned up, the standard library is object oriented and clean, the data structures are orthogonalized[1], and "normal scale code" ends up half[2] the size: Ruby.

I still use Perl for work (for legacy reasons), and I still use Perl for one-liners and throwaway conversion scripts.

But I could easily live without it, and I feel it inappropriate for any new project that end up more than a hundred lines.

Eivind.

[1] For instance, hashes can use any sort of object as a key, not just scalars. Arrays can contain any sort of object. There is no distinction between an array and an arrayref (there is no way to declare anything but a ref), numbers and strings can both be compared with <=>, etc.

[2] The style code I write when doing "clean perl" end up fairly exactly half the size when directly translated to Ruby. Code I write directly in Ruby is generally even more succint, due to using Ruby idioms. See CVSFile-0.2.tar.gz for an example of code I've had this experience with.

BSD vs. Linux.

Apache is extremely complicated and therefore a potentail rats nest of potential security holes. Please don't get me wrong here: I like Apache very much for its great flexibility, yet I helped a lot of security aware companies to migrate to thttpd because they wanted a code base that could be scrutinized in a reasonable amount of time. Most web apps really don't need the flexibility of Apache anyway, and those who do, will have to be run in secure environments like, say, jails or other virtualized environments.

Good News Everyone!
Turns out that *BSD is stronger than ever!
According to an Inernetnews article, Netcraft has confirmed that *BSD has "dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
There has been a steady increase in *BSD developers over the past decade.
There are currently 307 FreeBSD developers as of the 2004 core team election.
You can read more about FreeBSD here

If you would like to try out a BSD, you can download: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, or DragonflyBSD
Enjoy!

Good News Everyone!
Turns out that *BSD is stronger than ever!
According to an Inernetnews article, Netcraft has confirmed that *BSD has "dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
There has been a steady increase in *BSD developers over the past decade.
There are currently 307 FreeBSD developers as of the 2004 core team election.
You can read more about FreeBSD here

If you would like to try out a BSD, you can download: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, or DragonflyBSD
Enjoy!

Good News Everyone!
Turns out that *BSD is stronger than ever!
According to an Inernetnews article, Netcraft has confirmed that *BSD has "dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
There has been a steady increase in *BSD developers over the past decade.
There are currently 307 FreeBSD developers as of the 2004 core team election.
You can read more about FreeBSD here

If you would like to try out a BSD, you can download: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, or DragonflyBSD
Enjoy!

Shut up retard. You may have noticed that the article was for OpenBSD not FreeBSD. You're cut+paste troll is for FreeBSD. Even if you were talking about OpenBSD, why did they patch the OS then? Cuz it's still under active development, that's why. In fact, OpenBSD 3.6 is due Nov 1st. FreeBSD 5.3 will be out a few weeks. DragonFly BSD released 1.0 one month ago.

BSD is dying my ass.

Shut up retard. You may have noticed that the article was for OpenBSD not FreeBSD. You're cut+paste troll is for FreeBSD. Even if you were talking about OpenBSD, why did they patch the OS then? Cuz it's still under active development, that's why. In fact, OpenBSD 3.6 is due Nov 1st. FreeBSD 5.3 will be out a few weeks. DragonFly BSD released 1.0 one month ago.

BSD is dying my ass.

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Please show your support for Ceren in this poll of Geek Babes!

Is it any wonder people think Linux users are a bunch of flaming homosexuals when its fronted by obviously gay losers like these?! BSD has a mascot who leaves us in no doubt that this is the OS for real men! If Linux had more hot chicks and gorgeous babes then maybe it would be able to compete with BSD! Hell this girl should be a model!

Linux is a joke as long as it continues to lack sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she excite you? I know this little hottie puts me in need of a cold shower! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little minx. Don't you wish the guy in this pic was you? Are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass?! Wouldn't this just make your Christmas?! Yes doctor, this uber babe definitely gets my pulse racing! Oh how I envy the lucky girl in this shot! Linux has nothing that can possibly compete. Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin or a gay looking goat! Wouldn't this be more liklely to influence your choice of OS?

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of BSD if she told you to? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty!

Don't be a fag! Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

$Id: ceren.html,v 9.0 2004/08/01 16:01:34 ceren_rocks Exp $