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"Yes, other people had Y2K bugs, but I managed to produce an S1G bug" [from his announcement].

What better charity then a non profit orginization who makes one of the best Free OS's ever made.

click here for information.

Quite frankly, that sounds like a very poor design. If you are changing your internal APIs so often and don't have a good abstraction layer in place for basic driver work, then you're shooting yourself in the foot. The internal APIs being in a "constant state of flux" shows that you need to get your heads out of the implementation detail, step back, and do some actual design work first.

As for the kernel API being in a constant state of flux, I believe that the poster didn't mean it that litterally. Sure, some things do change over time, but I find most of the stuff to be very clear and well documented (note, I'm not a FreeBSD kernel hacker/developer). I also find the newbus scheme a very compelling infrastructure for driver development.

Plus, if you read the announcement w.r.t. the delay well, new features shall be backported from 5.0 to 4.x in the meantime.

In fact the time between 4.0 and 5.0 won't be that exceptional. 2.0 to 3.0 took 4 years (1994 to 1998). See this page for a nice overview of past releases. Note that 4.0 -> 5.0 will be a relatively large jump compared to past major releases.

On Freebsd-security they got this spam from ptc.com. Not often you get spam with an 1-888-782-3776 number, from a computer software company filled with technical people who should know better.

It is not often the Spam marketing company Aprimo has the VP of sales:
"Before Aprimo? Marketing, we faced challenges in arranging our executive conferences and product seminars because we had disparate databases and inconsistent lead and project management systems. We now have a targeted audience that we go after with an integrated marketing program. We anticipate that the new marketing management system will be responsible for an increase in sales from the executive conferences and product seminars this year."

-John D. Stuart
Senior VP Worldwide Field Marketing
PTC

I just spent 4 rounds with PTC.com, makers of Pro E.

The worldwide Vice President of marketing John Stuart:
1) Does not know what spam is
2) feels the advertising campaign goal is to contact as many people as possible.

The head of sales, Dan:
1) Does not know what spam is, and even AFTER given a definition.
2) Thinks that spam works, because, well, I called, didn't I?
3) Spam does not cost anyone any money.
4) FreeBSD must have a marketing partnership with PTC.

Does calling 1-888-782-3776 and letting know that SPAM is bad work?

1. BSD doesn't have runlevels. You've got single-user mode and multi-user mode. FWIW, I have yet to see a Linux distribution with a usable single-user mode.
2. Although BSD doesn't have run-levels, it does have per-service (init.d style) scripts available as an option if you want to use them. See /usr/local/etc/rc.d for example.
3. BSD has rc.conf which is a huge list of shell variables (effectively; some are defaults), which is sourced by the individual script that uses it.

-Dom

"No one has treaded here," said Evan Quinn, of the Hurwitz Group. "You are talking about changing the paradigm of how business and software works. They will provide an example for the rest of the industry regarding how to implement Web services."

Mr. Quinn, your attention is invited to:
here,
here,
or here
to see where the ground has been tread, the flag has been planted, and the ground has been tilled regarding paradigm changes and setting the example.
MSDOS...stolen idea.
Windows...stolen idea(Amiga)
MS Word...Wordperfect
Access...yep they invented databases too.
Excel...they added a gui.
the list goes on. The only innovation from Redmond has been from the Marketing department. But I preach to the choir.
Point is, if you really believe what you are saying to be true, I am sorry for you.

Have a nice day.

Nothing wrong with warez sites. Not that I ever download warez, since I prefer to use FreeBSD, X Windows & Gnome for anything that resembles a workstation. Unless, its for someone who doesn't know anything about using *nix, so I'll usually install a version of windoze. But still, when it comes to mp3s, there is some music I'd like to have, though doesn't deserve my money. On the other hand, music I like and listen to regulary deserves my money, so when I have the money, I make sure the artists get some money by buying the CDs. Even still, most of that money goes to the producers, but at least the artists get some.

Maybe its time for people who like mp3s to start to convince bands for running an Internet feature, where you can download music freely, but if you like it -- send a donation. Then again, most people would rather save their money so it wouldn't exactly work.

Have a look on how FreeBSD does handle this:
Instead of having only one tree, there are two: the -stable and the -current. -current is the tree with the newest features and active development going on, the tree which might, or might not, compile, the tree which might, or might not, break your system. The -stable tree is the tree in which everything works, which has no real new active development (all development is done in -current), only merges from the -current track are coming back into it.

For more information, see http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/current-stable.html

Is really here. Not to mention that ftp.freebsd.org isn't in the US of A anymore (traceroute it, no, really!). There are also the wonderful contributions of the Japanese FreeBSD users, like PAO, acpi, ... (There are tons of Japanese FreeBSD books). The list goes on.

Of course, given the centralized source of packages (ports), and the quality of the documentation there (especially the FreeBSD handbook) FreeBSD is really a pretty good place for Newbies to begin their foray into Open Source. Hell FreeBSD was where I started, and at this point I don't own any windows machines, save my old laptop.

Of course, given the centralized source of packages (ports), and the quality of the documentation there (especially the FreeBSD handbook) FreeBSD is really a pretty good place for Newbies to begin their foray into Open Source. Hell FreeBSD was where I started, and at this point I don't own any windows machines, save my old laptop.

Of course, given the centralized source of packages (ports), and the quality of the documentation there (especially the FreeBSD handbook) FreeBSD is really a pretty good place for Newbies to begin their foray into Open Source. Hell FreeBSD was where I started, and at this point I don't own any windows machines, save my old laptop.

Of course, given the centralized source of packages (ports), and the quality of the documentation there (especially the FreeBSD handbook) FreeBSD is really a pretty good place for Newbies to begin their foray into Open Source. Hell FreeBSD was where I started, and at this point I don't own any windows machines, save my old laptop.

Of course, given the centralized source of packages (ports), and the quality of the documentation there (especially the FreeBSD handbook) FreeBSD is really a pretty good place for Newbies to begin their foray into Open Source. Hell FreeBSD was where I started, and at this point I don't own any windows machines, save my old laptop.

I am relatively young to the scene myself, but let's take a walk down memory lane say six years ago. Back in those days the Linux Howto's, especially the Installation Howto, were essentially Slackware Howto's. (The book I used to figure out how to install Linux was essentially the Howto's printed out.) My PC's BIOS from that era did not support booting from an ATAPI CD Rom drive. Hard drives were much smaller but the EIDE ones were coming up against a succession of limits, limits in where a kernel could be located and still be seen by a bootloader. For Linux there was a well-defined path introducing newbies: you installed and created a custom bootdisk. Linux installation instructions also told how to edit the kernel for the bootdisk floppy to change the root partition location.

From my newbie perspective, this was installation Nirvana! I didn't have to worry about LILO if I didn't want to. From the perspective of other people sharing the PC I used, other than taking up hard drive space, they didn't have to know Linux existed. And Linux could be installed in an extended partition not just a primary partition. Keep in mind that hard drives were a lot smaller then, so for dual-boot setups it was nice to be able to dedicate some more room for the Windows C: drive. And not only that but since everyone did the custom bootdisk compiling as a rite of passage, people could compile bootdisks to help others if the default floppy didn't have the right drivers.

Now from what I have read of the FreeBSD community's thoughts, they couldn't care less about such concerns. The ISP I used back then was hosted on a collection of FreeBSD boxes, abandoning a more monolothic solution with an SGI server, because the ISP's lead technical person knew how to do it. FreeBSD is more like an industrial consortium as far as the core developers go, and at least at that time there was a huge emphasis on stuff related to running ISPs. From their perspective it was laughable to devote much effort to support the most unreliable medium of all, a floppy, for custom booting a machine. And someone like an ISP wouldn't be using EIDE, they'd be using SCSI. 528MB limit, "get some real hardware, kid" I'd imagine they'd think. And they'd have their internal network and their own procedures for mass replicating setups to many machines.

Six years later I think we can see everyone got what they wanted. The Linux community developed critical mass and got wildly popular with newbies. The FreeBSD community was left alone by the newbies they didn't want to deal with.

- I don't have an enormous pipe to download applications. I can only get 28.8 where I live
Upgrading FreeBSD via cvsup can be done easily over a slow line. "I can't upgrade because my link is slow" is a common myth. Now downloading an install ISO or installing via FTP do take some speed/time.

- When people say 'RTFM' I actually have something to refer to
The whole handbook and many docs are located on the system post-install in /usr/share/doc/(language)/ if they are not there, you can use cvsup to get the latest Docs from the FreeBSD Documentation Project

- It's too time consuming to look up all kinds of documentation online. I know it exists, but downloading it, finding what I want, printing it, etc is annoying. I don't have another box to use while setting up BSD.
That's why there are the ``man'' and ``info'' commands, in addition to the documentation above. ``info'' has loads of manuals and other documentation, but many people don't even know it exists. Docs are also put in /usr/share/doc/ or /usr/local/share/doc/ for installed applications.

The FreeBSD project has great existing documentation. A book is nice but for some it is a waste of money. (Unless the money goes back to the project somehow, and then it's a nice donation.)

...Well, almost never. I did my first FreeBSD install last weekend. Painless install (download the two floppy images,plug in the CAT5, and away you go), bit of a steep curve to get it doing useful work. But it's not as nasty as some would lead you to belive.

Kent

My school uses a packet shaper and firewall combination. The firewall stops all incoming traffic that didn't originate from inside the firewall. Ie, i can connect to outside, but outside cannot connect in. So therefore, since i work for an ISP outside of campus, i can't get into my freebsd box to get any personal work done, while not in my dorm room(yes they block all non-originating traffic in from everything but the dorms). So therefore, Code Red would of had no effect to dorm room students, unless someone got infected on purpose. I will propose putting a limit on people, like a Gig a day or something so people won't run pr0n sites(the reason the firewall was put up).

not only is freebsd sane and impossibley stable, but for the beginning *nix user, IMO it is much easier (from a console *nix view).

granted if a person does need/want a GUI to get used to the OS, then one either Mandrake/RedHat linuxes will be perfect. however, if a person wants to learn a *nix of some kind (again starting w/ console), then freebsd is the end all solution. it is flexible enough to be used a server, it even performs well as a workstation, having the latest stable xfree86 version to date (as well as a very nice collection of window managers) available in it's ports tree (a beautifal package management system).

on the subject of the install process, the freebsd handbook tells step by step how to run the installation floppies (or grab a bootable cd) downloaded from one of their many public ftp sites. the install media can be either a cd or downloading/installing via FTP. the boot disks have a well-built kernel that seems to support damn near any known NIC (i haven't ever seen a computer unable to download the install files via ftp) (anyone had different experiences than this?). the actual instalation (tho console based) is very nice looking, very straight forward self-explanatory, allowing you to choose install options, network, hardware setup, and either a standardized (several choices) install or customized (choosing the packages install modes.

for a package-management system, freebsd originated what is call'd the 'ports tree'. this huge collection of software keeps makefiles and distro info/lists in well-organized tree of software that has been ported/approved/fixed by the freebsd team to work flawlessly on the fBSD platform. this collection is so well populated that rartely do users need to d/l tarballs and isntall software that may be for linux or or other *nix's.

on a slightly more interesting note, i read somewhere that freebsd has at times been known to run linux source/binaries faster than linux itself can, in it's linux-compatibility mode. (although i can't remember where i saw/heard this, sorry).

btw, all these opinions are coming from a linux user of only about three years, having been through slackware, redhat, debian, mandrake, and suse (in that order). i was just never able to find any distro of that os that served my needs and likes as much as freebsd has done. - uberbastard

I'd recommend you take a good look at FreeBSD. Hop over to http://www.freebsd.org/ and take a look around. In most cases, all you need to get going is a couple of floppy disks and the instructions found here. The installation disks will automagically download the entire distribution via the net.

I don't want to start a FreeBSD vs. Linux war, but if you're looking for a server replacement, FreeBSD is a great choice. If you are wanting to use it on your desktop as a workstation, then perhaps Linux is the better choice, although I still wouldn't discount FreeBSD 100%.

I'd recommend you take a good look at FreeBSD. Hop over to http://www.freebsd.org/ and take a look around. In most cases, all you need to get going is a couple of floppy disks and the instructions found here. The installation disks will automagically download the entire distribution via the net.

I don't want to start a FreeBSD vs. Linux war, but if you're looking for a server replacement, FreeBSD is a great choice. If you are wanting to use it on your desktop as a workstation, then perhaps Linux is the better choice, although I still wouldn't discount FreeBSD 100%.

If you're running Intel hardware, start with something sane and stable -- FreeBSD -- http://www.freebsd.org
It has execellent support, thousands of ported applications, easy-to-use, etc.

I would also add a *BSD in the mix, if the original poster can try different distros. But if not, I tend to think that the later Mandrake installations are more focused to allowing new users jump on the Linux bandwagon ;)

Yeah, FreeBSD never has root exploits that are enabled by default.

This is an OS problem. All "reader" and "player" programs invoked from browsers should run in jails. This should have been done years ago.

Why didn't FreeBSD also get a letter? (or did it? I'm not in the lists).

I have Linux on one floppy!

OH,
I guess they are talking about all those other operating systems without FreeBSD secure levels's.

Read here

freenet:SSK@sUOkGXJDjktWahCNZmvg0sDkEKgQAgE/foldr. org/linux-2.4.7.tar.bz2
freenet:SSK@sUOkGXJDjktWahCNZmvg0sDkEKgQAgE/fold r. org/linux-2.4.7.tar.bz2.sign

What is Freenet?

I still use FreeBSD, though :)

Samba FS is only supported on Linux.

Define "supported". FreeBSD now has Boris Popov's smbfs in the CVS tree, for example; it looks as if it's been MFC'ed, so it's at least in -stable.

There's also an SMB client and server available for MacOS Classic from Thursby Software.

I guess getting smbfs to work on other unixs and mac os is pretty hard, because it's been this way for a while.

No, it hasn't. Heck, I think that one of the earliest SMB clients servers was an SMB implementation for Xenix (yeah, the version of UNIX that those people did, a long time ago) from Intel, called OpenNet or something such as that, and, as already indicated, there already exist SMB file system clients (i.e., transparent clients, not FTP-like clients) for FreeBSD and MacOS classic.

Copyright (c) 1992-2001 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD 5.0-SNAP-20010419 #1: Fri Apr 20 14:59:46 PDT 2001
root@:/usr/src/sys/compile/GUINESS-smp
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) Processor (1194.68-MHz 686-class CPU)
real memory = 1073741824 (1048576K bytes)
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor motherboard
cpu0 (BSP): apic id: 1, version: 0x00040010, at 0xfee00000
cpu1 (AP): apic id: 0, version: 0x00040010, at 0xfee00000
io0 (APIC): apic id: 2, version: 0x00170011, at 0xfec00000

Eivind.

I say : As a maintenance tool for low end boxes.

(Such as, say, the old PPC I use as a gateway to the net. 3 years old, 180 MHz, 32 meg RAM.)

On such a machine, you need something to

1. Browse local help pages;* **
2. Search the web for code and rpms;
3. Download these onto the machine.

* Bonus if it can read man and info pages, (like gnome-help-browser).
** Double bonus if it supports find string on page (unlike g-h-b).

Skipstone is nice (uses gecko and fewer gnome libs than galeon), but I found it still memory hungry and a quite bit slower than g-h-b, or legacy Netscape for Mac on the same hardware.

(The one I tried compiled against Mozilla 0.9. Although there may be good progress since, I wonder if gecko may just not be lean enough... Moz 0.9.2 is still a big memory hog on my other machine -- like 50 meg after a little browsing, where legacy Netscape would stay around 30.)

Encompass uses gtkhtml instead. Can anyone comment on it? Will it do (1), (2) and (3) above? I still need to figure out exactly what dependencies it needs to compile. Anyway, it seems promising -- see this review and some more recent news.

FreeBSD is not a linux distro, not everyone can post changes into the system, only commiters.

Ports depends on someone figuring out how to compile various packages on new systems - no centralized point of authority (or, more importantly, blame).

At least with the FreeBSD ports it is very easy to find who has commited the port and get them to fix it or get help. It very much DOES have a central authority.

If you haven't checked it out, see what ports really is... who knows, you may like it ;-) Also, check out the manual pages.

FreeBSD is not a linux distro, not everyone can post changes into the system, only commiters.

Ports depends on someone figuring out how to compile various packages on new systems - no centralized point of authority (or, more importantly, blame).

At least with the FreeBSD ports it is very easy to find who has commited the port and get them to fix it or get help. It very much DOES have a central authority.

If you haven't checked it out, see what ports really is... who knows, you may like it ;-) Also, check out the manual pages.

Okay, *BSD so far lacks SMP support (except in Darwin/MacOS X).

btw, FreeBSD has supported SMP since FreeBSD 3.0. Yes, its SMP support has been weak (ala Linux 2.0), but FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT has much better SMP support (ala BSDI).

Okay, *BSD so far lacks SMP support (except in Darwin/MacOS X).

btw, FreeBSD has supported SMP since FreeBSD 3.0. Yes, its SMP support has been weak (ala Linux 2.0), but FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT has much better SMP support (ala BSDI).

I will also continue to support WindRiver's efforts in any way I can to ensure that the FreeBSD product line there continues and that FreeBSD can continue to be a solution which is broadly applicable to a wide array of markets.

The FreeBSD product line has reached the stage where I feel comfortable taking a job which allows me to focus more on Darwin. While I have enjoyed my time working with the people and projects at BSDi and WindRiver, I simply couldn't resist the
opportunity of working at Apple.

Nice move on his behalf as everyone needs to make a living, however I wonder a few things. How will this impact FreeBSD in the future. It's nice to for Jonathan to say he will continue to assist with the project, but what happens when his time becomes consumed at Apple, and he *has no* time for the FreeBSD project, how will FreeBSD stand up.

Another curiousity is, whether or not Apple has plans to move into another arch. Surely Jonathan could provide them with a variety of snippets on how to get it going, and if this does happen, how would FreeBSD compete with a company like Apple.

Now for the record *BSD is dying posts* will be ignored so don't bother trolling, I would like to hear perhaps from a developer what actions (if any) could, and would FreeBSD take, should Apple decide to switch into the i386 arena with Darwin.

Also I wonder how this will affect others who may be looking to focus more on themselves, as time becomes more valuable, and others decide to follow suit focusing more on a company and themselves, rather than the OS (FreeBSD). Are there backup developers, or does the team distribute the work left behind by a developer who jumped ship.

P.S. I hope the developers still aren't pissed at me these (1 2)

I will also continue to support WindRiver's efforts in any way I can to ensure that the FreeBSD product line there continues and that FreeBSD can continue to be a solution which is broadly applicable to a wide array of markets.

The FreeBSD product line has reached the stage where I feel comfortable taking a job which allows me to focus more on Darwin. While I have enjoyed my time working with the people and projects at BSDi and WindRiver, I simply couldn't resist the
opportunity of working at Apple.

Nice move on his behalf as everyone needs to make a living, however I wonder a few things. How will this impact FreeBSD in the future. It's nice to for Jonathan to say he will continue to assist with the project, but what happens when his time becomes consumed at Apple, and he *has no* time for the FreeBSD project, how will FreeBSD stand up.

Another curiousity is, whether or not Apple has plans to move into another arch. Surely Jonathan could provide them with a variety of snippets on how to get it going, and if this does happen, how would FreeBSD compete with a company like Apple.

Now for the record *BSD is dying posts* will be ignored so don't bother trolling, I would like to hear perhaps from a developer what actions (if any) could, and would FreeBSD take, should Apple decide to switch into the i386 arena with Darwin.

Also I wonder how this will affect others who may be looking to focus more on themselves, as time becomes more valuable, and others decide to follow suit focusing more on a company and themselves, rather than the OS (FreeBSD). Are there backup developers, or does the team distribute the work left behind by a developer who jumped ship.

P.S. I hope the developers still aren't pissed at me these (1 2)

The one thing that 5.0-RELEASE and future 5.x releases will bring is a completely revamped kernel and SMP support. Instead of having one giant central lock, the new SMP code will introducing a scheduler lock and per-CPU idle processes. The SMP project page for FreeBSD can be found at http://people.freebsd.org/~jasone/smp/. It looks very promising... mostly when combined with a dually Athlon (or even a dually Alpha) machine :)

I believe 5.0-RELEASE will have CardBus support.

You may want to check out the mailing list archives to see the progress and which CardBus chipsets they support. The mailing list archive page can be found here and the archive search page is here.

I believe 5.0-RELEASE will have CardBus support.

You may want to check out the mailing list archives to see the progress and which CardBus chipsets they support. The mailing list archive page can be found here and the archive search page is here.

Since micheal is too lazy to fix the now-broken URL for the report, please see this location for the actual news item.

If you like Linux, FreeBSD, Apple or any other platform so much, then stay with them and shut up. There are other people who do not feel this way and they [are] concerned with those operating systems being made to look like the end-all and be-all of computing while any interest in a for-profit company must be squashed. Is it hard to understand? It is not about product it is about freedom of choice.

Amazing what your own words mean when turned around just a little bit.

---

Cough cough...

This one should work.

Here's a page that discusses FreeBSD's SMP plans for 5.0. The page also claims that the target release date is Decemeber 2001.

FreeBSD SMP Project (SMPng)

Here is how I usually install FreeBSD over my 56k dial-up (Note: I use a seperate slice to store some of the files. Other than a native FBSD slice, I know a FAT32 slice will also work.):

Download all the bin.* files from here to a directory called bin. Place bin/ on the seperate partition (If you monuted it to /mnt/tmp, then bin/ would be moved to /mnt/tmp/bin). Then download the 2 floppy images here and here. Assuming your floppy device is /dev/fd0, you can image copy the files to the floppies using the command:

dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0

(for DOS, get fdimage and use the command "C> fdimage kern.flp a:")

Then repeat that command replacing kern.flp with mfsroot.flp.

Boot off of the first floppy, and then insert the second when it asks for it. Select "File System" as the installation media, and then select the partition bin/ was placed on. For "Distributions", select "custom/bin". After it has finished installing bin, (configure any last minute options, and then) reboot. Log in as root, dial-up to the net, and then start "/stand/sysinstall". This time, select "Configure/Distributions" and mark anything else you want to install (don't install bin again). Select FTP as the installation method.

Have Fun!

Here is how I usually install FreeBSD over my 56k dial-up (Note: I use a seperate slice to store some of the files. Other than a native FBSD slice, I know a FAT32 slice will also work.):

Download all the bin.* files from here to a directory called bin. Place bin/ on the seperate partition (If you monuted it to /mnt/tmp, then bin/ would be moved to /mnt/tmp/bin). Then download the 2 floppy images here and here. Assuming your floppy device is /dev/fd0, you can image copy the files to the floppies using the command:

dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/fd0

(for DOS, get fdimage and use the command "C> fdimage kern.flp a:")

Then repeat that command replacing kern.flp with mfsroot.flp.

Boot off of the first floppy, and then insert the second when it asks for it. Select "File System" as the installation media, and then select the partition bin/ was placed on. For "Distributions", select "custom/bin". After it has finished installing bin, (configure any last minute options, and then) reboot. Log in as root, dial-up to the net, and then start "/stand/sysinstall". This time, select "Configure/Distributions" and mark anything else you want to install (don't install bin again). Select FTP as the installation method.

Have Fun!