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Anyways, jdk-1.3 is coming, in fact, it's already there, but only at pre-alpha stage. :)

But you're right, java support is quite bad. But again, interest in java for the fbsd people is recent, and it's great to have anything at all, for that matter.. :)

--

Anyways, jdk-1.3 is coming, in fact, it's already there, but only at pre-alpha stage. :)

But you're right, java support is quite bad. But again, interest in java for the fbsd people is recent, and it's great to have anything at all, for that matter.. :)

--

http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/contrib.html#CONTR IB-WHAT this link will put it quite clear- programmers are wanted to work on important things, not political.

As for not using software based soley on its license, if you aren't doing any real work with the source (contributing back, making derivatives) is just plain stupid. Who cares?

If you're having difficulty with the installer, I suggest taking a look and ensuring that all your hardware is on the supported hardware list (http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/install-hw.html). FreeBSD can definitely be picky about the hardware that it runs on. Also, you might try doing just a basic install, then cvsup'ing to get everything else.

i can confirm that the usb floppy that came with my sony z505r is indeed bootable. that's how i started the install of FreeBSD.

So? Whatcha want? A cookie? I doubt you contributed anything to make that a reality.

Now if you have been following the FreeBSD 5.0 branch you'd realize that FreeBSD's SMP is going to be far superior to Linux's. FreeBSD 5.0 SMP

I've always had a bitch of a time finding the solutions I need under linux, probally because there are 90 million different ways to do things. That could be good or bad, depending on your viewpoint.

This maybe isn't strictly an answer to the question, but if you're interested in the future of threading under free Unixes in general it might be worth looking at the direction FreeBSD is heading in. They plan to use a scheduler activations based system, instead of the process-per-thread, LWP or user space thread model. I suspect it to be quite a way off before a working version is included in a FreeBSD release but it does look very promising. See http://people.FreeBSD.org/~jasone/kse/.

A while back there was a message thread on the FreeBSD Stable mailing list dealing with a comparison of heat output (Linux vs FreeBSD) on the same SMP enabled box. Discussion got down into the internals of when to sleep a processor.

Snatched from thread: "Under SMP, there is more than one cpu. If one cpu is asleep in a HLT, and the other one changes the run queues, there is nothing to wake up the sleeping CPU even though there is now a job in the queue. So.. we let the cpu spin looking at the "queue not empty" bits so it never gets caught sleeping on the job." Peter Wemm peter@netplex.com.au

Thread is a little dated but quite relevant to why power management is not a good idea on server class machines.
FreeBSD -Stable messsage

Linux is the only thing out there that scales down well enough with enough features to run on embedded systems and that you do not have to pay for

No it's not. Linux There are several freely-available embedded OSes. One of them is eCos. Hell, another is FreeBSD. Et cetera, et cetera...

You really need to step outside of your FUD-lined linux cage every once and a while.

--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)

True, Sun does not actively provide support to all of the other platforms -- but the people who write those platforms generally do (and who better?)... For example, the BlackDown distro of the JVM supports Debian, RedHat, Slackware, and SuSe for x86, PowerPC, Alpha, and SPARC. Besides, Sun support for that PLATFORM would only be necessary if your are writing the VM. The java binary is the same regardless of platform.

Then try freeBSD and you'll sense the freedom. Microsoft, in spite of a certain technical efficacy concerning gazing at its own navel, has become like a piggy drowning in its own mud hole.

And a number of companies, including BSDi and those listed here, here, here, here, here, here would probably disagree.

Keep in mind that this dont mean anything. Intel chips outperform SPARCS mhz for mhz in all the important benchmarks.

Yeah, the video game dept. Does anyone realize that there is a difference between designing a machine for multitasking vs. number crunching? Intel chips are faster for a single thread of execution, but their scalability suck hind tit. Sun machines on the other hand don't excute each thread all that fast in comparison, but my God! Have you seen that sucker when you ramp up the number of processes/threads?!

The Intel machine was dead long ago, even with Linux. (Linux is more stable, but still doesn't scale Intel hardware. See FreeBSD for an excellent attempt at Intel scalability.) Sun machines don't even sweat it under the most extreme loads! Compare that to the puny Intel servers which start throwing GPFs (translated to SEGFAULTS in the Unix world), nasty processor exceptions, and sometimes even lock-up. Surfice it to say, Intel boxes suck for servers, and Sun boxes suck for video games. End of story.

>Use Debian, cause it's the right thing to do.

I recently installed Debian. Do the Debian folks have anything like the FreeBSD handbook available? I am finding Debian documentation difficult to locate. Every time I need to install something I have to sift through Deja and Google searches looking for clues.

Heck, if you click on "Support" at the Debian home page, it just tells you about the mailing lists and bug reporting system. Tell me there's more. I'm having fun with it, but I could have a lot more.

I wonder how long it'll take to turn samba admin into a 'control panel', and be done with Dave.

Be done with DAVE (if by that you mean, as I suspect is the case, Thursby Software's DAVE) for people using it as an SMB server, that is. For people using DAVE as a client, you'd need to have something like the smbfs for FreeBSD ported to MacOS X. (I don't know how hard it is to port a FreeBSD file system to the MacOS X kernel; I'm assuming here that it'd be easier than porting the Linux smbfs.)

Sun is NOT funding FreeBSD to any sun4x architecture. The FreeBSD/SPARC port was started in 97 by Jason Evans, who, at the time worked for Sun MicroElectronics (SME). SME had approached the FreeBSD core offering monetary compensation for FreeBSD on sun4u's. The core team turned down this offer with jkh saying that SME's offer was not of major interest since to be of long term use of FreeBSD, such a proposal would need to include support for a number of years from someone internal to Sun. Eventually Jason Evans left Sun and the port remained largely untouched since October 10, 1998. The core team's response was reasonable at the time. Now if Sun came with an identical offer today, you bet that gorilla vagina thats grafted on your right hand they'd pounce on it now. David O'Brien and some others have been tinkering with it since early 2000 though.

As of late, Jason Evans has been working on the KSE project

To throw in a bit of dramatic irony, while the FreeBSD/SPARC port was in its ragnarok, Sun signed that deal with Red Hat :|

Meandering abit offtopic but oh well...

http://people.freebsd.org/~jasone/smp/

You can find an exceptionally detailed answer at http://people.freebsd.org/~alex/libh/ which should give you a very good idea of where the FreeBSD distribution is headed, in the manner of granular, custimizable upgrades. JKH wrote a wonderful paper that covers this.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

FreeBSD has had USB support since 3.3 iirc. Go check LINT, search FreeBSD.org, look at FreeBSD Diary and the FreeBSD Handbook for further information about setting up your FreeBSD box. I'm sure you'll see just how solid it is.

FreeBSD has had USB support since 3.3 iirc. Go check LINT, search FreeBSD.org, look at FreeBSD Diary and the FreeBSD Handbook for further information about setting up your FreeBSD box. I'm sure you'll see just how solid it is.

Just wanted to make it known that not all Christians get their panties in a twist about silly stuff like cartoon daemon logos :)

I think you meant here - http://www.freebsd.org

It's not that fucking difficult.

--

It's been done, and applied to NFS and others, for quite a while. The freebsd-announce mailing list would be a good place to check for more; substantial work on it has been done for several months.

As for Linux, it's soomething that just came into 2.4 with one of the TUX patches in Q3 2000, as far as I know (source: http://boudicca.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/200 0week36/0979.html)

"He's as blind as he can be, just see what he wants to see, nowhere man can you see me at all?"

Your criteria is "small, fast, and compatible" not to mention "freely hacked"

Yet BSD is a BETTER choice based on your criteria.
Small - PicoBSD is a fully functioning Unix OS on a floppy.
Fast - BSD on benchmarks runs FASTER than linux. 10-30% faster.
Compatible - The result of the X86Open group (creation of a common binary format for X86 unixes) was a Linux ELF format. Thusly products like FreeBSD can run Linux binaries. And, FreeBSD can run Quake III linux binaries FASTER than Linux does. And, it is well known and accepted that NetBSD is ported to more platforms.

And, "freely hackable", the BSD license allows the user of the code to commericalize their product without the worry of having to release the IP the company uses in the product. The code is MUCH more free to do what a human wants to than other licenses.

Looking at 2 'linux' projects that are willing to admit they used the pioneering work of NetBSD are the dreamcast port (acknolodge the boot code is NetBSD inspired) and Linux on WinCE

Linux may 'work well', but in the world of computer code, the BSD tree is BETTER!

• Although there is a FreeBSD smp project, they expect support only by mid-2001...

No, I was not joking. It was an eaiser link than this web interface to the CVS logs.

But, be my guest. Download the CVS of the BSD tree and look through the code. Or go to http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ and look for yourself.

Or to NetBSD and see the one change by Mr. Sanchez. do a search for wsanchez

The choice of link does not change the fact that Apple HAS contributed back to BSD.

They take (BSD allows this though), but they don't give back.
Really?
Here they talk about Net and FreeBSD getting code back from Apple.
How about wsanchez@FreeBSD.org who works for Apple and has committ privilage to FreeBSD? (as per FreeBSD's own web site.

Looks like Apple money *IS* being used to support BSD.

They take (BSD allows this though), but they don't give back.
Really?
Here they talk about Net and FreeBSD getting code back from Apple.
How about wsanchez@FreeBSD.org who works for Apple and has committ privilage to FreeBSD? (as per FreeBSD's own web site.

Looks like Apple money *IS* being used to support BSD.

They take (BSD allows this though), but they don't give back.
Really?
Here they talk about Net and FreeBSD getting code back from Apple.
How about wsanchez@FreeBSD.org who works for Apple and has committ privilage to FreeBSD? (as per FreeBSD's own web site.

Looks like Apple money *IS* being used to support BSD.

Screw calculators. Download the X-based Sliderule program that's in the 'packages' section of ftp.freebsd.org and build it.

Not sure if it even will build under Linux, but it builds properly under all the BSD-based free Unixes.

It's really cool.

Sit down, you're in for a shock:

• FreeBSD/PowerPC Project
• FreeBSD/SPARC Project

Sit down, you're in for a shock:

• FreeBSD/PowerPC Project
• FreeBSD/SPARC Project

Okay, here are the links you'll need when picking out a free software laptop:

Linux:
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-lapto p/
http://www.linux.org/hardware/laptop.html

FreeBSD:
http://www.cse.ucsc.edu/~dkulp/fbsd/laptop.html
http://www.jp.freebsd.org/PAO/LAPTOP_SURVEY/index. html

OpenBSD:
http://www.openbsd.org/i386-laptop.html
http://www.monkey.org/openbsd-mobile

NetBSD:
http://www.reedmedia.net/misc/netbsd/laptops-and-n etbsd.html
http://newsletter.toshiba-tro.de/netbsd/

X window system LCD configs:
http://www.sanpei.org/Laptop-X/note-list.html
http://www.sanpei.org/Laptop-X/Laptop-X/

Notebook survey for graphics/PCMCIA
http://hci.ucsd.edu/dsf/notebooks.html

If anyone has any other links for other free software OSes, please post them :)
--posted anonymously to avoid karma whoring.

Try the PAO distribution. There is a special distro knocking around for laptops of FreeBSD called PAO available at http://www.jp.freebsd.org/PAO/ which is a Japanese site. The only problems I've ever had with the BSDs is PCMCIA ethernet cards when I'm trying to install over the network. Apart from that, they're great. I had OpenBSD on an old cruddy AMD X5 latop for years, and that same machine is now running NetBSD perfectly. ;-)

With PAO in particular, a lot of the work is now going to go into developing the FreeBSD PCMCIA framework, so eventually, no special distro required - just wack in the CD and 20 minutes later boot into 5.x-STABLE! ;-)

I'm pretty sure BSD does not.

FreeBSD does

Jim said:
I'm pretty sure BSD does not.

You would be wrong.

FreeBSD

NetBSD

BSD/OS

OpenBSD does not. But don't perpetuate the falsehood that all BSD does not.

Note that the Debian folk once had the (arguably deranged!) counter-idea of doing the opposite, namely using FreeBSD as kernel for Gnu/Debian/FreeBSD.

I'd contend that neither approach is the least bit "deranged;" I'm actually quite surprised that, with all the BSD connections, Slackware has never headed to using Ports as its package management system...

First, let's look at the numbers...

The Core team is listed here.

Of them, only Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith are BSDi employees, both having come over with WC. Jordan of course has been there since FreeBSD's inception and beyond, and Mike was only recently voted into Core by popular vote of the...

...Developers list is listed here. Though this is the authoritative list. The handbook page lists 232 total developers.

Three of them come to mind as BSDi employees, though I can only think of 2 without browsing the entire list: Jim Mock and Bill Swingle. My appologies to the third and anyone that I don't know by name.

That is easily neither "most" nor a "very large number", even if I'm way off. But wait! There's MORE!

The list of Additional Contributers is here. This is anyone (Including yours truly) who over the years has had something committed to FreeBSD in the form of code (src), documentation (doc and www) or ports (ports). There are 1135 documented contributers. That's a total of 1357 people who provide you with FreeBSD. (Contributers come and go, and there are also those who may not be listed, but it's a pretty good number, and is probably much higher.)

Second, let's look at your FUD (For it is surely Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt that you are expressing)...

Walnut Creeks' position wrt FreeBSD was always clear. They distributed CDs and marketed it and provided some commercial support. There are plenty of Linux companys that do the same for Linux, yet no one cries foul there (except maybe the same breed of conspirators you come from.)

Jordan Hubbard founded FreeBSD, Inc. to handle the interests of the Project, and this responsibility is being passed to the new FreeBSD Foundation thanks to Justin Gibbs (former Core team member and current committer.) The FreeBSD trademark will transfer to the Foundation. It was held by Walnut Creek previously, but not because they "owned" it but instead to protect the name in cooperation with FreeBSD, Inc. The Foundation is totally not related to either the Core team or BSDi. Justin and his cohorts are seeking legal non-profit status.

When BSDI merged with Walnut Creek, it was clear to anyone with insight or anyone who read the Press Releases that it was only WC they were merging with. You can't merge with an operating system. FreeBSD is wholly seperate from BSDi. The only thing being merged with FreeBSD is code from BSD/OS. Where do you think SMPng is coming from? It amazes me that people still get this wrong.

Sure, there may be code in BSD/OS that's not in FreeBSD, but it was there to begin with. Also any code that BSDi has under NDAs with vendors won't be added to FreeBSD. FreeBSD gets whatever FreeBSD puts into it, end of story. If ANY company, including BSDi wants to take some or all of it and sell a closed source version, more power to them. FreeBSD will continue. It is the BSD License that makes, and keeps, FreeBSD free.

FreeBSD is only BSDi's "product" insofar as they sell CDs. FreeBSD's democratically elected Core team decides the future of the Project, not BSDi.

So it is anything but "unclear."

First, let's look at the numbers...

The Core team is listed here.

Of them, only Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith are BSDi employees, both having come over with WC. Jordan of course has been there since FreeBSD's inception and beyond, and Mike was only recently voted into Core by popular vote of the...

...Developers list is listed here. Though this is the authoritative list. The handbook page lists 232 total developers.

Three of them come to mind as BSDi employees, though I can only think of 2 without browsing the entire list: Jim Mock and Bill Swingle. My appologies to the third and anyone that I don't know by name.

That is easily neither "most" nor a "very large number", even if I'm way off. But wait! There's MORE!

The list of Additional Contributers is here. This is anyone (Including yours truly) who over the years has had something committed to FreeBSD in the form of code (src), documentation (doc and www) or ports (ports). There are 1135 documented contributers. That's a total of 1357 people who provide you with FreeBSD. (Contributers come and go, and there are also those who may not be listed, but it's a pretty good number, and is probably much higher.)

Second, let's look at your FUD (For it is surely Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt that you are expressing)...

Walnut Creeks' position wrt FreeBSD was always clear. They distributed CDs and marketed it and provided some commercial support. There are plenty of Linux companys that do the same for Linux, yet no one cries foul there (except maybe the same breed of conspirators you come from.)

Jordan Hubbard founded FreeBSD, Inc. to handle the interests of the Project, and this responsibility is being passed to the new FreeBSD Foundation thanks to Justin Gibbs (former Core team member and current committer.) The FreeBSD trademark will transfer to the Foundation. It was held by Walnut Creek previously, but not because they "owned" it but instead to protect the name in cooperation with FreeBSD, Inc. The Foundation is totally not related to either the Core team or BSDi. Justin and his cohorts are seeking legal non-profit status.

When BSDI merged with Walnut Creek, it was clear to anyone with insight or anyone who read the Press Releases that it was only WC they were merging with. You can't merge with an operating system. FreeBSD is wholly seperate from BSDi. The only thing being merged with FreeBSD is code from BSD/OS. Where do you think SMPng is coming from? It amazes me that people still get this wrong.

Sure, there may be code in BSD/OS that's not in FreeBSD, but it was there to begin with. Also any code that BSDi has under NDAs with vendors won't be added to FreeBSD. FreeBSD gets whatever FreeBSD puts into it, end of story. If ANY company, including BSDi wants to take some or all of it and sell a closed source version, more power to them. FreeBSD will continue. It is the BSD License that makes, and keeps, FreeBSD free.

FreeBSD is only BSDi's "product" insofar as they sell CDs. FreeBSD's democratically elected Core team decides the future of the Project, not BSDi.

So it is anything but "unclear."

First, let's look at the numbers...

The Core team is listed here.

Of them, only Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith are BSDi employees, both having come over with WC. Jordan of course has been there since FreeBSD's inception and beyond, and Mike was only recently voted into Core by popular vote of the...

...Developers list is listed here. Though this is the authoritative list. The handbook page lists 232 total developers.

Three of them come to mind as BSDi employees, though I can only think of 2 without browsing the entire list: Jim Mock and Bill Swingle. My appologies to the third and anyone that I don't know by name.

That is easily neither "most" nor a "very large number", even if I'm way off. But wait! There's MORE!

The list of Additional Contributers is here. This is anyone (Including yours truly) who over the years has had something committed to FreeBSD in the form of code (src), documentation (doc and www) or ports (ports). There are 1135 documented contributers. That's a total of 1357 people who provide you with FreeBSD. (Contributers come and go, and there are also those who may not be listed, but it's a pretty good number, and is probably much higher.)

Second, let's look at your FUD (For it is surely Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt that you are expressing)...

Walnut Creeks' position wrt FreeBSD was always clear. They distributed CDs and marketed it and provided some commercial support. There are plenty of Linux companys that do the same for Linux, yet no one cries foul there (except maybe the same breed of conspirators you come from.)

Jordan Hubbard founded FreeBSD, Inc. to handle the interests of the Project, and this responsibility is being passed to the new FreeBSD Foundation thanks to Justin Gibbs (former Core team member and current committer.) The FreeBSD trademark will transfer to the Foundation. It was held by Walnut Creek previously, but not because they "owned" it but instead to protect the name in cooperation with FreeBSD, Inc. The Foundation is totally not related to either the Core team or BSDi. Justin and his cohorts are seeking legal non-profit status.

When BSDI merged with Walnut Creek, it was clear to anyone with insight or anyone who read the Press Releases that it was only WC they were merging with. You can't merge with an operating system. FreeBSD is wholly seperate from BSDi. The only thing being merged with FreeBSD is code from BSD/OS. Where do you think SMPng is coming from? It amazes me that people still get this wrong.

Sure, there may be code in BSD/OS that's not in FreeBSD, but it was there to begin with. Also any code that BSDi has under NDAs with vendors won't be added to FreeBSD. FreeBSD gets whatever FreeBSD puts into it, end of story. If ANY company, including BSDi wants to take some or all of it and sell a closed source version, more power to them. FreeBSD will continue. It is the BSD License that makes, and keeps, FreeBSD free.

FreeBSD is only BSDi's "product" insofar as they sell CDs. FreeBSD's democratically elected Core team decides the future of the Project, not BSDi.

So it is anything but "unclear."

First, let's look at the numbers...

The Core team is listed here.

Of them, only Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith are BSDi employees, both having come over with WC. Jordan of course has been there since FreeBSD's inception and beyond, and Mike was only recently voted into Core by popular vote of the...

...Developers list is listed here. Though this is the authoritative list. The handbook page lists 232 total developers.

Three of them come to mind as BSDi employees, though I can only think of 2 without browsing the entire list: Jim Mock and Bill Swingle. My appologies to the third and anyone that I don't know by name.

That is easily neither "most" nor a "very large number", even if I'm way off. But wait! There's MORE!

The list of Additional Contributers is here. This is anyone (Including yours truly) who over the years has had something committed to FreeBSD in the form of code (src), documentation (doc and www) or ports (ports). There are 1135 documented contributers. That's a total of 1357 people who provide you with FreeBSD. (Contributers come and go, and there are also those who may not be listed, but it's a pretty good number, and is probably much higher.)

Second, let's look at your FUD (For it is surely Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt that you are expressing)...

Walnut Creeks' position wrt FreeBSD was always clear. They distributed CDs and marketed it and provided some commercial support. There are plenty of Linux companys that do the same for Linux, yet no one cries foul there (except maybe the same breed of conspirators you come from.)

Jordan Hubbard founded FreeBSD, Inc. to handle the interests of the Project, and this responsibility is being passed to the new FreeBSD Foundation thanks to Justin Gibbs (former Core team member and current committer.) The FreeBSD trademark will transfer to the Foundation. It was held by Walnut Creek previously, but not because they "owned" it but instead to protect the name in cooperation with FreeBSD, Inc. The Foundation is totally not related to either the Core team or BSDi. Justin and his cohorts are seeking legal non-profit status.

When BSDI merged with Walnut Creek, it was clear to anyone with insight or anyone who read the Press Releases that it was only WC they were merging with. You can't merge with an operating system. FreeBSD is wholly seperate from BSDi. The only thing being merged with FreeBSD is code from BSD/OS. Where do you think SMPng is coming from? It amazes me that people still get this wrong.

Sure, there may be code in BSD/OS that's not in FreeBSD, but it was there to begin with. Also any code that BSDi has under NDAs with vendors won't be added to FreeBSD. FreeBSD gets whatever FreeBSD puts into it, end of story. If ANY company, including BSDi wants to take some or all of it and sell a closed source version, more power to them. FreeBSD will continue. It is the BSD License that makes, and keeps, FreeBSD free.

FreeBSD is only BSDi's "product" insofar as they sell CDs. FreeBSD's democratically elected Core team decides the future of the Project, not BSDi.

So it is anything but "unclear."

Those who do not familiar with Mr. Theo de Raadt's usual action about BSDs should know the following history about the mail filtering.

• not only NetBSD, but also FreeBSD maintain such filtering.
• the reason why the filtering exists is that Mr. de Raadt made threat that he will send mail bomb, and he never retract that. You can confirm this by mailing list archive of FreeBSD or NetBSD.
• NetBSD doesn't maintain a black-hole route to the OpenBSD project networks, but did make a black-hole route to Mr. de Raadt's network. Other OpenBSD developer should not have problem, and there are many developers who have both OpenBSD and NetBSD developers' account. For example, one of NetBSD's core member is a OpenBSD's developer.

This issue is once raised by a OpenBSD developer in DaemonNews forum which has neutral position between FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD, and its conclusion is that the forum should never have posted the topic. I don't know why Mr. de Raadt mentioned this filtering again in slashdot. Perhaps He'd like to show that he is still ready to post mail bomb to FreeBSD/NetBSD mailing list?

The FreeBSD Project (http://www.FreeBSD.org/) has at least 20 kernel programmers who usually jump at the chance to work with small and large companies to address bugs and scalability issues with FreeBSD.

We've worked with Hotmail, Yahoo and many more. Since each committer has access and the ability to modify the system, companies that choose to contact a FreeBSD developer can sometimes have thier fix in the base system in a matter of hours.

Most will do it for free, but all probably would appreciate some sort of hardware or beer donation.

--

Dummynet is part of FreeBSD. It does exactly what you are asking for:

dummynet is a system facility that permits the control of traffic going through the various network interfaces, by applying bandwidth and queue size limitations, and simulating delays and losses.

Check out the man page:
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=dummynet& apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+4.2-RELEASE&fo rmat=html

The silence on IA64 from the BSD crowd is deafening.

Low volume != silence. There is an IA64 FreeBSD port in progress, although it's in its very early stages; I don't know whether the NetBSD folk are doing anything with IA64, but they've probably at least considered it.

Am i missing something or isnt GNU/Linux required to run GNOME?

You're missing something. GNOME runs fine on other operating systems as well. FreeBSD is an example of one such operating system.

I'm afraid I just don't see why there is such a flurry of discussion to the effect that OS-X will somehow "vitalize" the usage and understanding of the BSDs. From what I hear, MacOS-X represents a "pretty light" variation on BSD, combined with a horde of MacOS-oriented graphical tools.

As such, it decidedly won't come with the hordes of CLI and console tools you'd expect to see in the typical NetBSD / FreeBSD / OpenBSD installation.

I would think it a whole lot more economical, and likely more of a "Unix-oriented" learning experience, to head to CheapBytes and order CD sets for all three of the "free" BSD variations for IA-32, perhaps along with some of the O'Reilly BSD documentation. That'll cost a whole lot less than a G3 PowerMac, nay, that, including a wall-full of documentation, might well cost less than merely getting the MacOS-X license.

Pop a floppy with PicoBSD in and reboot the machine, then leave.

Bring a boot floppy with a .bmp of something rude and move it to C: and edit system.ini (or is it win.ini?) to set it as the background in windows.

Format c:

Open Regedit and delete random keys from the registry. Reboot and see what happens.

If there is a camera connected to the thing, stick up your middle finger and take a picture. It's best to be wearing sunglasses or something to make you a little difficult to identify later. Set that image as the windows background.

Go to the games aisles, find a game you want, take it to the computer section. Open the box, pop in the CD, and play the game. If an employee asks you what you are doing, pretend to be a novice computer person and tell them you found it.

It's been a while since I've done anything like this, but I have done all of them, and a few more, including moving price tags (at places like Sam's where it is easy to do since they are held on the shelves with magnets) but these are some of the easiest.

Oh, and to remain on topic...as a prank you should go to Best Buy and ask for a Pentium 4.