Slashdot Mirror

The complaint of many people who don't want to switch to BSD from Linux is that there aren't binary packages available and that they don't want to compile everything in ports. This article demonstrates that, indeed, using the ports collection, it is possible to check out and install binary packages using the pkg-* utilities.

There are tons of really neat things about FreeBSD; I won't list them here because they're probably quite off topic. But for anybody interested in learning more; feel free to contact me and/or check out the FreeBSD handbook and the FreeBSD diary.

And you can even find the Bittorrent client.

Why do you put up with it then?

Gentoo (my choice of distro), Debian (just make sure you run 'unstable' if you want the latest stuff), or of course any one of the *BSDs. (FreeBSD)

I know I'll probably get flamed for this, but dependencies problems are why I've started using the BSDs. Maintaining one FreeBSD server and two NetBSD servers takes about as long as maintaining one Red Hat 9 Linux server.

Plenty of people
have gotten it to work

Running a BSD based wireless router off a floppy has been possible with PicoBSD for years. I fail to see how WiFiBSD accomplishes anything, aside from distributing the floppy image, which has already been done by theWall

...and whilst that was a nice informative article, it was also noticeably linux specific (of course, you couldn't be trolling - not with a closing line like that).
This being the BSD area of /., I think a few BSD targetted articles on configuring WAPs
might be more apt.

That said, this WiFiBSD thing looks like a nice little development. Could well come in handy.

The service I'm using, DanmarkFon, has suffered from intermitent failures for months. Unfortunately I signed a 1 year contract with them, so I'll have to stay with this for 4 months.

Poul-Henning Kamp, FreeBSD committer

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

I searched for and eventually found some relevant history. It turns out that gets() was part of the "portable C library" written by Mike Lesk and released with version 6 of Unix. fgets() is part of stdio, which was written by Dennis Ritchie and released with version 7. Most of the "portable C library" seems to have been changed or discarded, but gets() lives on.

And accelerating :)
(Gnu)plot of growth

Fortunatelly for me, my wife is an IT professional and can appreciate both the advantages of this setup (our CDs are instantly available throughout the house, we can remotely retrieve caller-id information on last calls, setup customized alarm response scenarios, and so on) and the inevitable bugs (the first friends to ring our doorbell were were greeted by an answering machine message).

However, getting the behavior of the system just right took us more than a year, I am still being very conservative when I tweak something (I am never introducing changes to it before leaving for a vacation), and there were times where we discussed the system's interface over a graphical depiction of state machine diagram. I am sure the /. crowd thinks this is the way to go, but I also think there will be people who might find such a setup a bit bewildering.

Diomidis Spinellis - Code Reading: The Open Source Perspective
#include "/dev/tty"

I rather think that having won the ' Look and Feel' lawsuit (Remember that? You must be an old geek too then!), they can't really sue - they created the precendent that allows Evolution to exist!

Incidentally, as I believe in education, all Americans please note: that is irony. Just having a shitty day is not irony ;-)

J.

There are multiple vulnerabilities in the Linux 2.4 kernel.

Get your patch here, here, or here.

BTW, there are no security patches required for OpenBSD 3.3 yet.

Head over to the FreeBSD website and read the Porter's Handbook. That will explain everything you need to know to get it added to the ports tree. It's actually quite simple.

...or FreeBSD

Well, the odds of getting a new GPL'd program into the FreeBSD base system hover very near zero. On the other hand, if you want to get added to the ports collection, that's fairly easy. All you need to do is follow the instrucations in the FreeBSD Porter's Handbook.

-- Brooks

Linux is the only free OS? What about FreeBSD and GNU's Hurd krnel?

Because FreeBSD doesn't ship Perl as standard part of their distribution anymore, it'll be likely that your utils will not get included in any BSD software because it would pull in Perl. It may be a reason for Linux distributions too for not using your num-utils. Debian may be the only distribution which relies on Perl.

Yes, Perl is no longer a part of the base FreeBSD installation (as long as for 5.x). It is a port instead - like UUCP and some others. And Perl is ALWAYS installed by DEFAULT!

Please, check your facts before posting ...
... ah, but this IS slashdot, or?

I'm not sure where we'd go, though... Maybe BeOS (gasp!) or something...

Or FreeBSD, OpenBSD, or NetBSD would all be options, considering they came from the Berkeley BSD base of code, not the AT&T System Unix code.

Indeed. Not only that, but since the line between OS and IE is so blurry, its so easy to wright these click and "oh shit" scripts. Some Operating Systems simply run the OS as a userspace program, the way it was meant to be. Of course, certain other operating systems limit what software users can install in the first place.

Oh, you just want the ipv6 patch I made from it? Go ahead, take it. Just go to your xmms 1.2.7 source root and do a patch -p0, oh well, y'all know the drill.

Have fun listening :)

never mind... You can get the shar file at gnats. The id in gnats is ports/54685. For lazy people, a clickable link to gnats here.

In addition to NetBSD and OpenBSD, even FreeBSD will soon be runnable on the PPC.

Now, CVS is less than perfect, but considering the entirety of FreeBSD is developed using it [...]

A lot of FreeBSD development occurs using Perforce. See for example this and the mailing lists here.

Here's a good comparision of source control systems.

Now, CVS is less than perfect, but considering the entirety of FreeBSD is developed using it [...]

A lot of FreeBSD development occurs using Perforce. See for example this and the mailing lists here.

Here's a good comparision of source control systems.

"senior cadre with established public reputations for excellence across the entire Unix community will be directly quoted in the body of the book."

"senior contributors must not only be the best, but be known to be the best."

"I have done the heavy lifting in the writing and research department"

Surely this is a mistake. It must be ... It has to be, becaise we all know: BSD Is Dying

Did someone forget to give this guy the memo?

Define "best"

I think the reason that there are different BSDs is that there is no "best" for everyone.

There's no need for a unified BSD because the source to all of them is free for use with almost no restrictions, so every flavor of BSD can benefit from the others.

Isn't that true of *any* solid server OS?

There's always those virus/worm/exploit things. It's my observation that Windows has quite a few.

It looks like the latest FreeBSD (4.8) has a one and the previous release (4.7) had a few.

The last OpenBSD (3.2) had 14. The new version of OpenBSD (3.3) has been out for over 2 months and doesn't have any yet. That's pretty impressive.

Interesting that several of the flaws in FreeBSD and OpenBSD are the same bug.

Isn't that true of *any* solid server OS?

There's always those virus/worm/exploit things. It's my observation that Windows has quite a few.

It looks like the latest FreeBSD (4.8) has a one and the previous release (4.7) had a few.

The last OpenBSD (3.2) had 14. The new version of OpenBSD (3.3) has been out for over 2 months and doesn't have any yet. That's pretty impressive.

Interesting that several of the flaws in FreeBSD and OpenBSD are the same bug.

1 4m t3h l337x0r! I r3vers3 3ngin33r3d teh d3v17!

• Microsoft updates Windows via Windows Update
• Debian updates Linux via apt-get
• The FreeBSD Project updates FreeBSD via make world
• The Santa Cruz Operation updates SCO UNIX via lawsuits
• Other hot upgrade methods will be brought to you by Slashdot as we receive further information from our sources here at /.

3DLabs have released linux drivers for their for Wildcat III and Wildcat 4 Graphics accelerators. Being closed source they'll taint your kernel, but what the heck.

The heck is that we can't port them to other systems and platforms

The FreeBSD project has an "Early Adopters Guide."

I'm smart enough to infer from the term "Early Adopter" that this probably isn't quite ready for production use, but the less educated people can find sentences like "While suitable for testing and experimentation, these features may not be ready for production use." in the guide to help clue them in.

Good objective articles despite extremetech's review is more than 8 months old now. Interested slashdot readers can look at the progress of fine grained SMP and advanced multi-threading system (KSE), two features which made me try this great operating system.

5.1 is not in the stable branch yet, but 5.2/3 show great promises.

Good objective articles despite extremetech's review is more than 8 months old now. Interested slashdot readers can look at the progress of fine grained SMP and advanced multi-threading system (KSE), two features which made me try this great operating system.

5.1 is not in the stable branch yet, but 5.2/3 show great promises.

...in a copyright sense BSD is very definitely not UNIX

One detail that the lawsuit did clarify is the naming: in the 1980s, BSD was known as ``BSD UNIX''. With the elimination of the last vestige of AT&T code from BSD, it also lost the right to the name UNIX. Thus you will see references in book titles to ``the 4.3BSD UNIX operating system'' and ``the 4.4BSD operating system''.

So what is really the difference between, say, Debian Linux and FreeBSD? For the average user, the difference is surprisingly small: Both are UNIX-like operating systems. (Emphasis mine.)

-uso.

...in a copyright sense BSD is very definitely not UNIX

One detail that the lawsuit did clarify is the naming: in the 1980s, BSD was known as ``BSD UNIX''. With the elimination of the last vestige of AT&T code from BSD, it also lost the right to the name UNIX. Thus you will see references in book titles to ``the 4.3BSD UNIX operating system'' and ``the 4.4BSD operating system''.

So what is really the difference between, say, Debian Linux and FreeBSD? For the average user, the difference is surprisingly small: Both are UNIX-like operating systems. (Emphasis mine.)

-uso.

...in a copyright sense BSD is very definitely not UNIX

One detail that the lawsuit did clarify is the naming: in the 1980s, BSD was known as ``BSD UNIX''. With the elimination of the last vestige of AT&T code from BSD, it also lost the right to the name UNIX. Thus you will see references in book titles to ``the 4.3BSD UNIX operating system'' and ``the 4.4BSD operating system''.

So what is really the difference between, say, Debian Linux and FreeBSD? For the average user, the difference is surprisingly small: Both are UNIX-like operating systems. (Emphasis mine.)

-uso.

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot [freebsd.org] like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl ! Doesn't she [madchat.org] make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser . Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her !

With sexy chicks [spilth.org] like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her [kurtspace.com] in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she [kurtspace.com] is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these [drexel.edu]? Join the campaign for more cute [madchat.org] open source babes [madchat.org] today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot [freebsd.org] like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl ! Doesn't she [madchat.org] make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser . Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her !

With sexy chicks [spilth.org] like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her [kurtspace.com] in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she [kurtspace.com] is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these [drexel.edu]? Join the campaign for more cute [madchat.org] open source babes [madchat.org] today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! 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 cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

With sexy chicks like the lovely Ceren you will have people queuing up to buy open source products. Look! This guy can't get in there fast enough with her in the doorway! Come on, you must admit she is better than an overweight penguin! Don't you wish you could get one of these? Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!