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Here are the details. Pair.com didn't give him $20,000 USD to just make something up as he goes along.

Yahoo! and Apple already contribute to FreeBSD (core team interview).

Even with their update, the entry level Macs are still not even remotely competetive with today's cutting edge Intel machines. Apple fanatics, I don't understand why you continue to waste your money on such machines. Take a look at the configurations of the following machines:

Apple eMac
1.25GHz PowerPC G4, 256MB DDR SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100, SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
17-inch (16-inch viewable) flat CRT
ATI Radeon 9200 32MB
Mac OSX
= $999

Dell Dimension 2400
2.4GHz Celeron, 256MB DDR SDRAM
80GB Ultra ATA/100, DVR+RW optical drive
17-inch (16-inch visible) CRT
Intel 3D Extreme Graphics
Windows XP
= $679

I specced the Dell to be similar to the high-end eMac. Suprise, suprise - it's $320 cheaper. The Intel equivalent is even $120 cheaper than the low-end $799 eMac! What's up with that?

But if we go ahead and spend the extra $300 on an Intel based machine, we get some really flashy upgrades that start to compete with Apple's high-end G5 offerings. For example, we can easily get a 3GHz hyperthreading Pentium 4 (which is 2 processors in one - an effective clockspeed of 6GHz assuming 100% efficiency running parallel tasks). For example:

Dell Dimension 4600
3GHz Pentium 4 with hyperthreading, 512MB DDR SDRAM
120GB Ultra ATA/100, DVD+RW optical drive
17-inch (16-inch visible) CRT
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 128MB graphics card
Windows XP
= $998

Ta-da. Conclusion: Apple is still really bad value for money. For the same price as an entry-level Apple system, you could get a significantly powerful workstation capable of handling anything you throw at it - including games. If you're willing to go a step further and build your own machine from components (gasps from the Apple audience), you can get an even higher specced machine for about the same money.

An ultra-high end computer is $1000 if you're willing to shop around. Nobody should settle for anything less, or for overexpensive, underpowered solutions like eMacs. You don't even have to run Windows if you don't want to. Gnome and KDE await you on Linux and FreeBSD (on which Mac OSX was originally based).

On the other hand, (good) PRs are very important. I've been (I am still) very critical about the quality of gentoo (my roommate uses it, and since he is a *nix novice, I had the pleasure/pain of figuring out some stuff in gentoo), but I saw on their forums developers (ebuild-maintainers to be precise) complaining about the lack of bugreports.

So I was thinking about how us non-ubergeeks could contribute in a helpful way, and I think a separate section on bsdforums (say "PR Candidates") could be created, where we, users would test out some things to make 100% sure it is really a bug, it is reproducable, etc. before we submit it. Originator would be bsdforums, the threads could be used as reference, and thread participants would volunteer to test out the patches sent back.

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. I mean 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? Don't you wish you could get one of these? 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!

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. I mean 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? Don't you wish you could get one of these? 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!

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-chat/20 03-December/001746.html

TGFG (Thank God for Google).

One later poster seems informed: As for the origin of the group name: Yes, it came from the DECSystem-10/20 culture, where "wheel" was shorthand for "administrator."

The replies to the other 2 PRs were more than exemplary. I got replies (and patches) in less than 2 hours for my reports on wine not compiling and amarok using using up all kern.maxproc. This, of course, doesn't mean that src folks are as much diligent as ports folks are, but the few times I browsed the -current and other mailing lists, devs. seemed friendly and helpful most of the time. Just my 2cents.

The replies to the other 2 PRs were more than exemplary. I got replies (and patches) in less than 2 hours for my reports on wine not compiling and amarok using using up all kern.maxproc. This, of course, doesn't mean that src folks are as much diligent as ports folks are, but the few times I browsed the -current and other mailing lists, devs. seemed friendly and helpful most of the time. Just my 2cents.

And, as phk says, you'll get much more, than just some binary updates.

Link is broken. A real picture is here.

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. I mean 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? Don't you wish you could get one of these? 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!

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. I mean 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? Don't you wish you could get one of these? 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!

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. I mean 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? Don't you wish you could get one of these? 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!

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. I mean 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? Don't you wish you could get one of these? 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!

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. I mean 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? Don't you wish you could get one of these? 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!

Bah! You know the only real open source babe is the divine Ceren!

Fact: babes do not use Linux, they use BSD.

Open Source solution that doesn't infringe on SCO's IP

Why bother developing for a platoform based on on a dead operating system with less than 3% marketshare? Did I also mention that its user base is mainly homosexuals?

Slashdot posting a positive article about a Windows OS? [regardless of the fact its years away from release, and still in extremely early alpha stages]. Slashdot, this is so unlike you. Where are the backhand comments against M$? Where are the links with Better Operating systems? I'm ashamed of you. Where's your prejudice? Where's your bias?

I didn't post this as AC, so I must not be trolling.

Purple-haired moonbabes run LINUX! And that's good enough for me.
props to the Ceren/BSD troll.

You just can't take *BSD seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You BSD groupies need to find some 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 . I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass ?!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Lt. Gay Ellis you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of Linux if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight deamon or a gay looking goat ! Don't you wish you could get one of these ? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty !

Join the campaign for more cute open source purple-haired moonbabes today!

You just can't take *BSD seriously when its fronted by losers like these. Would you buy software from them? I don't think so! You BSD groupies need to find some 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 . I mean are you telling me you wouldn't like to get your hands on this ass ?!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Lt. Gay Ellis you could have people queuing up to buy open source products. Could you really refuse to buy a copy of Linux if she told you to? Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight deamon or a gay looking goat ! Don't you wish you could get one of these ? Personally I know I would give my right arm to get this close to such a divine beauty !

Join the campaign for more cute open source purple-haired moonbabes today!

Just wondering how FreeBSD can call it a full Tier1 support when they dont support older platforms [...]?

Admittedly the lack of SCSI on Ultra-1 and Ultra-2 boxes keeps it off older 64-bit systems for the most part.

and no video support

Are you up to date? The web page claims sunblade 100 fully supported.

That's not too difficult.

For that matter, take it one step further and install the portupgrade utility. Want to install something? "portinstall name-of-port". Doesn't quite find what you want? "portinstall directory/name-of-port"(though I rarely have this problem). Want to remove it? "pkg_deinstall name-and-version"(which is easily found in /var/db/pkg on default installs).

Want to recompile everything that's out of date? CVSup your ports tree, then "portupgrade -a" and go on vacation.

I would have to agree about using packages. One gripe I have about building from source is
that most packages do not have "make uninstall".

I would have to agree about using packages. One gripe I have about building from source is
that most packages do not have "make uninstall".

I would have to agree about using packages. One gripe I have about building from source is
that most packages do not have "make uninstall".

And any RedHat user won't really understand what the BSD user is talking about and will just keep on using binary rpms found from google or rpmfind. In a desparate moment one will use any rpm that seems to do the trick - nevermind security, PGP sigs, all that stuff...

Seriously speaking, building from source is the UNIX way in my opinion. There is just something very heart warming and satisfying about seeing all the compiler messages scroll every time you install a package. (And try installing the native Java from BSD ports - several hours of pure joy!)

Perhaps I'm not the only one who feels this way.

Two teenagers who broke into a FTP server, downloaded a FreeBSD ISO and played with it were convicted Friday of violating the dead under an ancient Scottish law used by prosecutors for the first time in more than a century.

Sonny Devlin, 17, of Edinburgh, and his 15-year-old companion, who could not be named as a minor, were found guilty in the High Court of "violation of a sepulcher" for their acts on the ftp.freebsd.org server in June last year. Both had pleaded innocent.

The crime, which incorporates the Latin term for a burial place, carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment -- one that is unlikely to be given to the youths when they are sentenced April 20.

The last recorded court case on this charge was in 1899, when William Coutts faced six such charges.

Coutts was jailed for six months for digging up coffins to use for other burials.

The law was most often used in the first part of the 19th century to prosecute "body-snatchers" who removed corpses for use as anatomical specimens.

Witnesses told the court the defendants broke into the site on a dare to download the ISO, which was in a mummified state.

The pair then installed it, and Devlin, who admitted that he had been drinking heavily before the incident, installed Linux software as though it could run on the dying OS.

Devlin and his co-defendant stared straight ahead as the verdict was delivered, but several of their relatives broke down in tears in the public gallery.

Two teenagers who broke into a FTP server, downloaded a FreeBSD ISO and played with it were convicted Friday of violating the dead under an ancient Scottish law used by prosecutors for the first time in more than a century.

Sonny Devlin, 17, of Edinburgh, and his 15-year-old companion, who could not be named as a minor, were found guilty in the High Court of "violation of a sepulcher" for their acts on the ftp.freebsd.org server in June last year. Both had pleaded innocent.

The crime, which incorporates the Latin term for a burial place, carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment -- one that is unlikely to be given to the youths when they are sentenced April 20.

The last recorded court case on this charge was in 1899, when William Coutts faced six such charges.

Coutts was jailed for six months for digging up coffins to use for other burials.

The law was most often used in the first part of the 19th century to prosecute "body-snatchers" who removed corpses for use as anatomical specimens.

Witnesses told the court the defendants broke into the site on a dare to download the ISO, which was in a mummified state.

The pair then installed it back and forth, and Devlin, who admitted that he had been drinking heavily before the incident, installed Linux software as though it could run on the dying OS.

Devlin and his co-defendant stared straight ahead as the verdict was delivered, but several of their relatives broke down in tears in the public gallery.

Myself and my partner have for the last 13 years been doing our best to raise our adopted son in the fine traditions of GNU/Linux and free software. Imagine my horror when, upon arriving home early from work yesterday, I caught my boy touching himself while looking at pictures like this!

Further examination of his hard drive (made easy by the numerous exploits possible with the Linux kernel) we discovered references to a despicable non-GNU OS and other subversive material.

What should we do? How can we guide our boy away from filth like this and back to the true GNU way?

-- Richard

Myself and my partner have for the last 13 years been doing our best to raise our adopted son in the fine traditions of GNU/Linux and free software. Imagine my horror when, upon arriving home early from work yesterday, I caught my boy touching himself while looking at pictures like this!

Further examination of his hard drive (made easy by the numerous exploits possible with the Linux kernel) we discovered references to a despicable non-GNU OS and other subversive material.

What should we do? How can we guide our boy away from filth like this and back to the true GNU way?

-- Richard

I think part of the issue is that P2P programs are at least partly marketed to people who want to find MP3s instead of getting the music themselves(or software, etc., but my introduction to P2P was in music-only Napster days). If they are advertising their services as aids in breaking the law(international law, no less), that's a problem.

I have no direct experience with BitTorrent(I know, geek--), but from what I've heard, more of the material to be found there is legitimate in such redistribution - for Linux ISOs, a number of the distros are probably quite thankful that some of the onus is taken off of their own servers - in addition to the fact that if the download is coming from several sources, it often gets around bottlenecks. I know modern P2P apps do that too, but it's not presented so strongly as a focus.

Now, people could certainly use Kazaa or similar programs to distribute their legitimate files, but this is not what it's known for, and all the disclaimers in the world won't change that.

It greatly depends on how you market it. Example: By touting a brute-force password cracker as a security tool - to ensure that the passwords on your system aren't too easily cracked - you are highlighting a positive aspect[1]; but if you describe it as a cracking tool, i.e. something with which to gain entry into a system without knowing the proper credentials, you are deliberately assisting in a crime[2]. See my sig, but that might be known as conspiracy to commit a crime depending on how it's looked at. It's certainly aiding and abetting any hypothetical criminal that wants to break into someone else's system.

[1]: I have such a utility on my FreeBSD box to test local passwords. I believe it's in the ports collection as security/crack but I don't have access to the box at this second to check.
[2]: It also would involve some additional steps to circumvent security measures that try to prevent a brute-force approach; the utility I use, IIRC, relies on access to the passwd file and not the usual login procedures, which impose a timeout on a failed password attempt. Unless you are using this ONLY to test robustness of a system you administer and/or own, there's no legitimate reason to attempt to bypass this routine.

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. I mean 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? Don't you wish you could get one of these? 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!

...booth babes as hot as Ceren?

Merely my brief experience with Gentoo, when they first upgraded glibc (from 2.2 to 2.3 iirc) and broke half the packages, then downgraded it again and broke everything else. This is really a pet peeve: aren't minor versions supposed to be compatible? And a zillion similar but smaller-scale annoyances, well expressed by Bill Paul many years ago and the years haven't eased the pain all that much.

And BSDs are more likely to introduce binary incompatibilities

Clearly you haven't used the BSDs. You may have library incompatibilities between major versions, but just install the earlier "compat libraries" and you're set. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4 to FreeBSD 5 -- a huge upgrade, over 2 years in the making -- and all my software just worked, even complex stuff like KDE and Mozilla that had been compiled under 4.x.

Merely my brief experience with Gentoo, when they first upgraded glibc (from 2.2 to 2.3 iirc) and broke half the packages, then downgraded it again and broke everything else. This is really a pet peeve: aren't minor versions supposed to be compatible? And a zillion similar but smaller-scale annoyances, well expressed by Bill Paul many years ago and the years haven't eased the pain all that much.

And BSDs are more likely to introduce binary incompatibilities

Clearly you haven't used the BSDs. You may have library incompatibilities between major versions, but just install the earlier "compat libraries" and you're set. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4 to FreeBSD 5 -- a huge upgrade, over 2 years in the making -- and all my software just worked, even complex stuff like KDE and Mozilla that had been compiled under 4.x.

Thttpd is good for some things, but don't think it's a full alternative to Apache. We use thttpd to serve http on ftp2.freebsd.org, and for something like this it is great, because speed is all we care about. On the other hand if verstatility is an issue, stick with Apache. It is not bloated and will perform really well if properly configured.

My personal take on tools that claim to be small, fast, secure and "better than what the rest of the world uses" is that you try them, then sooner or later end up switching back to the "old school" - I've done it with both qmail/sendmail and djbdns/bind...

Merely my brief experience with Gentoo, when they first upgraded glibc (from 2.2 to 2.3 iirc) and broke half the packages, then downgraded it again and broke everything else. This is really a pet peeve: aren't minor versions supposed to be compatible? And a zillion similar but smaller-scale annoyances, well expressed by Bill Paul many years ago and the years haven't eased the pain all that much.

And BSDs are more likely to introduce binary incompatibilities

Clearly you haven't used the BSDs. You may have library incompatibilities between major versions, but just install the earlier "compat libraries" and you're set. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4 to FreeBSD 5 -- a huge upgrade, over 2 years in the making -- and all my software just worked, even complex stuff like KDE and Mozilla that had been compiled under 4.x.

For people who've never done this before (such as myself), this is an intimidating operation; care to walk me through it?

First, RTFM:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/cutting-edge.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/makeworld.html

I run 4-STABLE on all of my boxes, so this will be a bit different for 5. Create /etc/make.conf. You can look at /etc/defaults/make.conf and in the handbook for more details:

CFLAGS=-O -pipe
NOPROFILE=true
NO_BIND=true
NO_SENDMAIL=t rue

SUPHOST=cvsupXX.freebsd.org
SUP_UPDATE=yes
SUP =/usr/local/bin/cvsup
SUPFLAGS=-g -L2
SUPFILE=/usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supf ile
PORTSSUPFILE=/usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports- supfi le

Replace SUPHOST with your CVSup mirror. See the handbook for more info. The NO_BIND and NO_SENDMAIL lines keep buildworld from building BIND and Sendmail, respectively, since I use djbdns and qmail.

Once you have setup /etc/make.conf, you can update the source tree by doing this:

# cd /usr/src
# make update

That will also update /usr/ports. If you want to just update ports, run make update from /usr/ports.

Once your source tree is up to date, update the system following section 21.4.1 in the handbook. I skip the single user mode part, since I do everything over SSH:

# mergemaster -p
# rm -rf /usr/obj/*
# make -j4 buildworld
# make -j4 buildkernel
# make installkernel
# make installworld
# mergemaster -i
# reboot

The order there is important. The kernel should be built after the world is built, since building the world updates the build tools (this is especially important when it has been a long time since you last updated). The kernel should also be installed before the world is installed.

You should almost always update the kernel when you update the world. If you choose not to reboot immediately after installing the new world, you might notice that tools like ps no longer work, since they don't match the kernel.

These is how I do things after several years of experience. Make sure to read and understand the handbook before doing anything. But really, it's not that hard, especially after you do it a few times.

An unrelated but very useful tip: check out the sysutils/portupgrade port.

For people who've never done this before (such as myself), this is an intimidating operation; care to walk me through it?

First, RTFM:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/cutting-edge.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/makeworld.html

I run 4-STABLE on all of my boxes, so this will be a bit different for 5. Create /etc/make.conf. You can look at /etc/defaults/make.conf and in the handbook for more details:

CFLAGS=-O -pipe
NOPROFILE=true
NO_BIND=true
NO_SENDMAIL=t rue

SUPHOST=cvsupXX.freebsd.org
SUP_UPDATE=yes
SUP =/usr/local/bin/cvsup
SUPFLAGS=-g -L2
SUPFILE=/usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supf ile
PORTSSUPFILE=/usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports- supfi le

Replace SUPHOST with your CVSup mirror. See the handbook for more info. The NO_BIND and NO_SENDMAIL lines keep buildworld from building BIND and Sendmail, respectively, since I use djbdns and qmail.

Once you have setup /etc/make.conf, you can update the source tree by doing this:

# cd /usr/src
# make update

That will also update /usr/ports. If you want to just update ports, run make update from /usr/ports.

Once your source tree is up to date, update the system following section 21.4.1 in the handbook. I skip the single user mode part, since I do everything over SSH:

# mergemaster -p
# rm -rf /usr/obj/*
# make -j4 buildworld
# make -j4 buildkernel
# make installkernel
# make installworld
# mergemaster -i
# reboot

The order there is important. The kernel should be built after the world is built, since building the world updates the build tools (this is especially important when it has been a long time since you last updated). The kernel should also be installed before the world is installed.

You should almost always update the kernel when you update the world. If you choose not to reboot immediately after installing the new world, you might notice that tools like ps no longer work, since they don't match the kernel.

These is how I do things after several years of experience. Make sure to read and understand the handbook before doing anything. But really, it's not that hard, especially after you do it a few times.

An unrelated but very useful tip: check out the sysutils/portupgrade port.

For people who've never done this before (such as myself), this is an intimidating operation; care to walk me through it?

First, RTFM:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/cutting-edge.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/makeworld.html

I run 4-STABLE on all of my boxes, so this will be a bit different for 5. Create /etc/make.conf. You can look at /etc/defaults/make.conf and in the handbook for more details:

CFLAGS=-O -pipe
NOPROFILE=true
NO_BIND=true
NO_SENDMAIL=t rue

SUPHOST=cvsupXX.freebsd.org
SUP_UPDATE=yes
SUP =/usr/local/bin/cvsup
SUPFLAGS=-g -L2
SUPFILE=/usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supf ile
PORTSSUPFILE=/usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports- supfi le

Replace SUPHOST with your CVSup mirror. See the handbook for more info. The NO_BIND and NO_SENDMAIL lines keep buildworld from building BIND and Sendmail, respectively, since I use djbdns and qmail.

Once you have setup /etc/make.conf, you can update the source tree by doing this:

# cd /usr/src
# make update

That will also update /usr/ports. If you want to just update ports, run make update from /usr/ports.

Once your source tree is up to date, update the system following section 21.4.1 in the handbook. I skip the single user mode part, since I do everything over SSH:

# mergemaster -p
# rm -rf /usr/obj/*
# make -j4 buildworld
# make -j4 buildkernel
# make installkernel
# make installworld
# mergemaster -i
# reboot

The order there is important. The kernel should be built after the world is built, since building the world updates the build tools (this is especially important when it has been a long time since you last updated). The kernel should also be installed before the world is installed.

You should almost always update the kernel when you update the world. If you choose not to reboot immediately after installing the new world, you might notice that tools like ps no longer work, since they don't match the kernel.

These is how I do things after several years of experience. Make sure to read and understand the handbook before doing anything. But really, it's not that hard, especially after you do it a few times.

An unrelated but very useful tip: check out the sysutils/portupgrade port.

If I can't get a working XF86Config file, I generally follow the procedure in the FreeBSD handbook. It's surprisingly simple, and (usually) works just fine on Linux, although it does require some hand-editing of the generated file.

I'll drive the BSD mascot, you drive the Linux mascot.

When I want to solve a program I choose the language I will use, taking into account the abstractions and facilities it offers.

• I chose Java when I wanted to leverage the javadoc applets (doclets) to convert a Java-like syntax into UML with my UMLgraph tool.
• I chose C++ to implement the CScout refactoring browser for C programs. In this case I wanted rich and efficient data structures, with minimal speed and space overhead. CScout datasets can require more than 1GB of RAM, and runtimes can span more than a day; any overhead of object boxing, garbage collection, or bytecode interpretation would in this case be unacceptable.
• I chose Perl to
  • Convert digital photographs and GPS track logs into annotated photo albums and trip maps
  • Examine the availability of 4500 URLs cited in computer science research papers.
  • To create the diagrams and the index for my book Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective.
  In all the above cases, I needed a typeless language with a rich set of operators, functions, and libraries to minimize the time I would spend to convert my ideas into code. Ruby and Python would have served me equally well.
• Finally, I chose C to write
  • the *BSD sed implementation.
  • The socketpipe zero-overhead network pipe tool.
  • The Outwit Windows-Unix shell integration tool suite.
  • The fileprune backup file prune utility.
  • A device driver for interfacing with my home's alarm system.
  In these cases, I did not require any fancy data structures or framework APIs, but I did want tight integration with the underlying system, absolute efficiency, and minimum-fuss portability. For code that will be executed billions of times on tens of thousands of systems, spending some additional effort to provide the absolute efficiency and reasonable portability that are possible in C, is a proposition one should take into account.

#include "/dev/tty"

You should at least boot if from a Compact Flash card

silent, no heat, droppable (kinda)

I've got no references for Linux but FreeBSD has a sectionin the Handbook

And my fellow 9fan Matthias showed me a handy reference guide 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.

Merely my brief experience with Gentoo, when they first upgraded glibc (from 2.2 to 2.3 iirc) and broke half the packages, then downgraded it again and broke everything else. This is really a pet peeve: aren't minor versions supposed to be compatible? And a zillion similar but smaller-scale annoyances, well expressed by Bill Paul many years ago and the years haven't eased the pain all that much.

And BSDs are more likely to introduce binary incompatibilities

Clearly you haven't used the BSDs. You may have library incompatibilities between major versions, but just install the earlier "compat libraries" and you're set. I upgraded from FreeBSD 4 to FreeBSD 5 -- a huge upgrade, over 2 years in the making -- and all my software just worked, even complex stuff like KDE and Mozilla that had been compiled under 4.x.