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This is the precise reason that I switched to FreeBSD 5 years ago. CVSup for the whole system rocks! Linux was never very good at being coordinated enough to get out of my way.

I'm not saying Linux is bad, just that it wasn't for me!

If you read Dyson's explanation for leaving, you'll see he is quite the pessimist with regard to basically any project he's not working on. He's an extremely intelligent man, but he isn't criticizing a lot of the time on merit.

It also shows that his viewpoint hasn't changed in the few years since he's left. There are several very key architectural changes that make FreeBSD much less like a traditional monolithic kernel. One of the biggest is the changes, planned for a long time, that are now to be implemented with help from the BSDi people and the BSD/OS SMPng (5.0) kernel. Priority levels (splhigh(), splx(), etc.) are disappearing and will be replaced by very mutexes allowing much better SMP. Along with this, the interrupt model will be changing to interrupt threads, where each interrupt gets its own lightweight kernel thread.

In addition, pthreads are to be reimplimented using scheduler activations and (probably) a hybrid kernel/user thread model where the ratio of actual "processes" to threads will not be 1:1 like LinuxThreads or 1:many like the current pthreads implementation; the ratio will most likely be many:many which would allow for much nicer scaling than either of the other.

Don't look at things as short-sightedly as John Dyson likes to. There's a lot going on at a very fundamental level to improve what he thinks wouldn't be improved.

--

You went about installing FreeBSD the long and hard way! All it take is only 2 floppies with images put onto them (kern.flp and mfsroot.flp). The floppies will boot the kernel then you have the option of installing off the CD's, FTP, or network.
RTFM:
FreeBSD Handbook Installation Guide and the FreeBSD Newbie install for screenshots with play-by-play instructions (screenshots are for 2.2.5, but they look the same for 4.0).

You went about installing FreeBSD the long and hard way! All it take is only 2 floppies with images put onto them (kern.flp and mfsroot.flp). The floppies will boot the kernel then you have the option of installing off the CD's, FTP, or network.
RTFM:
FreeBSD Handbook Installation Guide and the FreeBSD Newbie install for screenshots with play-by-play instructions (screenshots are for 2.2.5, but they look the same for 4.0).

You can also fetch and run CVSup very quickly and easily (as root) by issuing pkg_add -r cvsupit, which will go get the CVSupit package (a CVSup wrapped for easy installation and use), install it, and prompt you for what to do next.

Although these instructions are specific to FreeBSD, CVSup is an excellent tool for dealing with any source tree, including the other BSDs.

HTH!

You can also fetch and run CVSup very quickly and easily (as root) by issuing pkg_add -r cvsupit, which will go get the CVSupit package (a CVSup wrapped for easy installation and use), install it, and prompt you for what to do next.

Although these instructions are specific to FreeBSD, CVSup is an excellent tool for dealing with any source tree, including the other BSDs.

HTH!

No HOWTO's, but many resources do exist. Here are the resources for FreeBSD:

1) Resources for Newbies
2) FreeBSD Tutorials
3) Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X
4) FreeBSD Handbook
5) FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages

No HOWTO's, but many resources do exist. Here are the resources for FreeBSD:

1) Resources for Newbies
2) FreeBSD Tutorials
3) Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X
4) FreeBSD Handbook
5) FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages

No HOWTO's, but many resources do exist. Here are the resources for FreeBSD:

1) Resources for Newbies
2) FreeBSD Tutorials
3) Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X
4) FreeBSD Handbook
5) FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages

No HOWTO's, but many resources do exist. Here are the resources for FreeBSD:

1) Resources for Newbies
2) FreeBSD Tutorials
3) Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X
4) FreeBSD Handbook
5) FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages

No HOWTO's, but many resources do exist. Here are the resources for FreeBSD:

1) Resources for Newbies
2) FreeBSD Tutorials
3) Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X
4) FreeBSD Handbook
5) FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages

No HOWTO's, but many resources do exist. Here are the resources for FreeBSD:

1) Resources for Newbies
2) FreeBSD Tutorials
3) Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X
4) FreeBSD Handbook
5) FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages

Correct. In fact, this article was written before the merger took place. As proof, here is an early version of the article I sent to -advocacy for comments on January 27th.

FireWire may 'work', but I have yet to see this with my own eyes.

Yes, I can get still photos off my DV camera. But, I can't capture movies.

ftp://ftp.uec.ac.jp/pub/firewire/

I remember reading a post that compared FireWire and the DV parts to the RS-232 spec...and how fractured the RS-232 implementation is. I can't find it, but I did find one making a comment about all the DV encoding options.
http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=75 961+81135+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd-hard ware/19990131.freebsd-hardware

and one making a reference to the landmines of IP with respect to Firewire.
http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=55 282+59269+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd-hard ware/19990131.freebsd-hardware

So, to make a DVD to FireWire work with all the options looks like a quagmire of problems like getting a current loopback terminal to work with a Windows CE device.

FireWire may 'work', but I have yet to see this with my own eyes.

Yes, I can get still photos off my DV camera. But, I can't capture movies.

ftp://ftp.uec.ac.jp/pub/firewire/

I remember reading a post that compared FireWire and the DV parts to the RS-232 spec...and how fractured the RS-232 implementation is. I can't find it, but I did find one making a comment about all the DV encoding options.
http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=75 961+81135+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd-hard ware/19990131.freebsd-hardware

and one making a reference to the landmines of IP with respect to Firewire.
http://www.FreeBSD.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=55 282+59269+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd-hard ware/19990131.freebsd-hardware

So, to make a DVD to FireWire work with all the options looks like a quagmire of problems like getting a current loopback terminal to work with a Windows CE device.

Usually there are folks around who know the open software in that area pretty good. Sometimes there are even people around who might be able to write it themselves, if they had the time/funding to do it.

Aside from that, I found some gems in the FreeBSD ports collection:

Look here

Browse the math, biology etc categories.

Of course you won't find applications for all problems, some stuff (I used to work for LabControl and their partner Chemical Concepts) is not only complicated and needs experience, but often is pretty boring, which nobody would do for free.

Usually there are folks around who know the open software in that area pretty good. Sometimes there are even people around who might be able to write it themselves, if they had the time/funding to do it.

Aside from that, I found some gems in the FreeBSD ports collection:

Look here

Browse the math, biology etc categories.

Of course you won't find applications for all problems, some stuff (I used to work for LabControl and their partner Chemical Concepts) is not only complicated and needs experience, but often is pretty boring, which nobody would do for free.

I'm actually using FreeBSD.

most people that are Christians are not true Christians. They do not attend Church twice a week and pray every night

A 'true Christian' (your term, not mine) would go to Church more frequently than twice a week (how about twice a day?), and would pray more regularly than every night. A true Christian would praise God with everything he says and does.

A place where Christianity is taboo has a much larger proportion of programmers than almost any other website I know of.

Christianity is not a taboo on Slashdot, what rubbish. However, Slashdot is a Linux website and discussions of Christianity would be off-topic. In fact, Slashdot gives a free platform from which Christians (such as myself) are able to air our views. Try Advogato and The Stile Project for even less coverage of Christian issues. You will then realise how tolerant Slashdot is to the discussion of Christianity and Christian issues.

Fourth: a farmhand is likely to have grown up in Middle America, a place of strong moral fiber, and to be free from many of the evil influences that the city brings.

Utter nonsense, trollboy. Middle America is a place of very poor moral fibre - it is an inherently racist region and a region ruled by violence. Guns (the tools Satan uses to turn man against his fellow man) are widespread in America, and the majority of Americans worship the ideals of consumerism rather than God. It is down to individual choice whether or not to follow Evil, and in this respect no region is better than any other. As far as "evil influences" of cities, surely cities have more churches per area than small less densely populated villages, therefore cities are intrinsically holy?

Most people with a Computer Science degree are lucky to remain with the slightest few sheds of religion that have not been indoctrinated out of them.

Hello? Computer Science degrees make no attempts influence people's religious views. While they may indoctrinate people that Python is better than Perl, Solaris is better than BSD, vi is better than EMACS and Microsoft is better than everything put together, these are not religous arguments. They are trivial.

Please, think before you post next time.

They did not and cannot remove it from the actual implementations of FreeBSD, NetBSD, etc.

Just one more reason to use FreeBSD instead of NetBSD (click to read the licenses) because FreeBSD got rid of the ad clause in its license.

Lots of work by many experienced gurus has already gone into adapting FreeBSD for small applications. Currently, there is a development kit known as PicoBSD that enables one to automatically build floppy images that contain a minimal FreeBSD. Other people have created their own custom embedded versions of FreeBSD; the tight integration and cleanness of FreeBSD and its source tree make it quite easy for even an amateur to roll his/her own version. I myself am currently working on an improved development kit for building embeddded versions of FreeBSD quickly and easily. It's output is currently running off of an 8MB DiskOnChip on the desk to my right.

For more information, see Small FreeBSD Home Page. It's a bit outdated, but work is still actively going on. A maintainer is currently working on improving the site. To get at the very heart of things, subscribe to the freebsd-small mailing list (info here) or read the archive.

Lots of work by many experienced gurus has already gone into adapting FreeBSD for small applications. Currently, there is a development kit known as PicoBSD that enables one to automatically build floppy images that contain a minimal FreeBSD. Other people have created their own custom embedded versions of FreeBSD; the tight integration and cleanness of FreeBSD and its source tree make it quite easy for even an amateur to roll his/her own version. I myself am currently working on an improved development kit for building embeddded versions of FreeBSD quickly and easily. It's output is currently running off of an 8MB DiskOnChip on the desk to my right.

For more information, see Small FreeBSD Home Page. It's a bit outdated, but work is still actively going on. A maintainer is currently working on improving the site. To get at the very heart of things, subscribe to the freebsd-small mailing list (info here) or read the archive.

Lots of work by many experienced gurus has already gone into adapting FreeBSD for small applications. Currently, there is a development kit known as PicoBSD that enables one to automatically build floppy images that contain a minimal FreeBSD. Other people have created their own custom embedded versions of FreeBSD; the tight integration and cleanness of FreeBSD and its source tree make it quite easy for even an amateur to roll his/her own version. I myself am currently working on an improved development kit for building embeddded versions of FreeBSD quickly and easily. It's output is currently running off of an 8MB DiskOnChip on the desk to my right.

For more information, see Small FreeBSD Home Page. It's a bit outdated, but work is still actively going on. A maintainer is currently working on improving the site. To get at the very heart of things, subscribe to the freebsd-small mailing list (info here) or read the archive.

...Assuming you can read English.

He has no name... A lot of people think he's named Chuck though, apparently due to some misinformation from Walnut Creek. See this link

The missing piece in aleonard's chapter is about the erratic course AT&T took regarding UNIX during the 1980s. When it finally decided that it was worth promoting as a salable commodity, licensing and use restrictions tightened considerably, but they failed to extend the OS in the directions that it needed to go to meet the burgeoning needs of local and connected networks (which then became known as the Internet).

Perhaps most important was the development of NFS, which was introduced formally by Sun but based directly on work by the CSRG. Another important building block was Berkeley sockets/STREAMS. These are the things that distinguished Berkeley from AT&T UNIX in the mid-1980s and caused sysadmins who were not encumbered by AT&T purchase requirements to go with the Berkeley flavor during that foundational period. In Cuckoo's Nest, Cliff Stoll alludes to some of these differences from his work as a part-time sysadmin at LBL.

Finally seeing the commercial potential in the late 1980s, particularly driven by corporate markets moving to Oracle and other UNIX-based business applications, and the growing importance of Sun, Apollo, HP and other entrants in both the server and workstation markets, AT&T was faced with two facts in its pursuit of a payoff for its languishing UNIX product: (1) its inability to succeed in the retail systems market against more experienced competitors like HP and more eager ones like Sun; and (2) the ongoing breakup of the Bell System under MFJ III.

Consequently, AT&T sold UNIX off to Novell, in one of the classic examples of the "greater fool" theory of marketing, since Ray Noorda and his merry band in Utah had not Clue 1 about what to do with it. Novell's Univel subsidiary was set up to put together a repackaging called Unixware which never really got a foothold. The only good thing about all this for Novell was that they eventually enticed Eric Schmidt over from Sun to run the company. Schmidt, Berkeleyite to the core, flung the doors wide open to IP and eased away from IPX, and Novell has been able to find a role in the modern corporate market for servers and directories when it was almost guaranteed that the company would sink without a trace in the mid-1990s otherwise.

But the fight over the intellectual property rights of the AT&T and Berkeley flavors was heating up even in the late 1980s. Probably the best coverage of the ensuing battle was in UNIX Review columns over those years, and I hope aleonard will review those as his book project goes forward.

Through a rather complex and messy process, there was a showdown between Novell and UC Berkeley, the very end of which is described in the FreeBSD handbook capsule history.

For about 18 months, it was entirely unclear whether an open UNIX would be possible; this was the period when 386BSD was basically frozen and Linux and other now-forgotten "free U**xlike" things were being worked on. And the reason that those were happening was the continuing expansion of the DOS and Windows 3.x market which brought about decreasing costs and increasing capabilities to desktop machines. Desktop UNIX on the Intel platform only really became usable with the faster late-1980s 80386, and was still basically a toy before 1990; most desktoppers were running SunOS 4.x boxen or maybe AT&T, HP or Apollo workstations to do local development and the very earliest forays into what became ISPs.

The legal battle over the status of UNIX allowed a critical mass to converge on development of Linux, which was far enough ahead in 1994 that even my Bay Area friends were probably installing it more than the BSDs (with the exception of Berkeley grads of course!). The "distribution" concept promoted most effectively by Yggdrasil and Slackware played a major role in this, because small-PC UNIX players no longer basically had to be kernel hackers by necessity.

There's also no question that the *BSD groups develop with more of the "cathedral" mode than the "bazaar" mode, but that may be an appropriate niche-ification as we go forward. Certainly those of us with more an affinity for the Berkeley flavor will continue to lean toward *BSD than Linux with its stronger SYSV heritage. But in reality, the differences really are a matter of preference, not capability.

Beta Video tapes, DAT Audio, Digital AM/FM Radio, all have been "the best" and all have simply died.

beta survives as ``betamax'' and is used heavily in the broadcasting industry, and DATs are still used by tapers and for mastering in the pro-audio world. the algorithms developed for digital radio survive in MPEG2 layer III...

and btw... walnut creek and BSDi merged back in March, so FreeBSD is effectively backed by BSDi now.

Mobile 'phones have already entirely replaced land lines for a few people I know, and have become the primary contact for many others. Around 40% of the UK population own a mobile phone, I believe Finland leads the world with over 70% usage. Extremely competative markets have put pricing within reasonable reach for many unemployed and students, even school kids. Mobile 'phones are sold in pre-packaged boxes in supermarkets.
Part of this is because most European telcos stopped charging the mobile 'phone owners for receiving calls quite some time ago. I understand that this still isn't always the case in the US?
In the UK, the coverage is very good in reasonably densely populated areas, and weak only in the very least densly populated areas of the country.
With upcoming technologies like GPRS and UMTS, mobile data will become a sensible proposition. Given that the mobile phone operators need to make 370UKP (about $590) profit from every man, woman, and child in the UK to just cover the costs of the recent radio-spectrum auction, you can bet that the companies will be heavily pushing products suitable for everyone, from accessing AOL and shopping channels to real-time video conferencing. You can also bet that the 'web pads' and the like, will be using CPUs from Transmeta and ARM, and hopefully those that aren't running EPOC will be running a free O/S.

--

it's is a nifty idea to romantisize freeBSD however, as it is currently lurking in the shadows of linux celebraty.

-Jon

I would suggest checking out FreeBSD release 4.0. There is support for IPv6 built into the default install.

Can anyone here say NIH?

First of all the TrustedBSD project is not is own separate OS.
From the TrustedBSD site:

"TrustedBSD provides a set of trusted operating system extensions to the FreeBSD operating system, targeting the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (CC). This project is still under development, and much of the code is destined to make its way back into the base FreeBSD operating system.."

Secondly, its not Linux emulation as it appears you think it is when you said:

In this situation, you wouldn't want to be emulating another OS, you'd want to stay native. I have no idea if the linux emulation will take advantage of multiple processors, but if not, you could well be losing out

Its not emulation like runnning VirtualPC's software that allows Macs to run Windows. It is Linux compatible.

As see on FreeBSD site:http://www.freebsd.org/features.html

"Compatibility modules enable programs for other operating systems to run on FreeBSD, including programs for Linux, SCO, NetBSD, and BSDI.

Result: users will not have to recompile programs already compiled for one of the compatible OS's, and will have access to a greater selection of off-the-shelf software, like the Microsoft FrontPage Server extensions for BSDI or WordPerfect for SCO."

See also the OpenBSD man page for Linux compatiblity to get more info on another BSD's linux compat.

MS Bigot?

I use a real OS - You should try one too

Who the heck is Chuck?

Well, uhhhh...if you like BSDish systems, why not just get BSD ? ;)

• FreeBSD
• NetBSD
• OpenBSD
• BSDi

The Linux "emulation" stuff works quite well with FreeBSD (have no experience with the others). However, yes, I agree that Slack is very cool and is the distro of choice if you are a Unix "purist"/BSD fan but must run Linux for whatever reason...

OK, here's something I don't understand: How do you get your network settings right if you do this?

I've tried this with PicoBSD (fits on floppy--only gives you terminal access, but it's better than nothing) and want to try it with the QNX-on-a-floppy (has gui & browser!) . However, I shove the floppy in a random machine at a public library, and it boots and then, since I'm not very networking literate, I don't know how to set things like my IP and routing info. Advice?

I saw this article this morning and decided to try SuSE. I've installed a lot of

• RedHat since version 3.
• Prior to that I used Slackware but not recently enough to comment on.
• I've also tried FreeBSD several times (the last time was pretty good: the ports system is really cool, automated tarballs: rpm, source rpms, and rpmfind all rolled into one) and
• Debian very recently (clear, informative, step by step...and VERY tedious; do you want to install ftp? do you want to configure ftp? do you want to start ftp? do you want to change that configuration? do you want to move on now? did you think you'd be done by now? do you wish you were done now? do you want to slit your wrists now?).

So, getting SuSE downloaded too all day. (I had previously started once before, so I knew to go to sourceforge where they make life a lot simpler than at SuSE where they really want you to buy a disk).

I just completed the install, and I have to say, SuSE is a very nice system in comparison with RedHat. Uses RPM, BTW, so you won't have to throw away that knowledge and you can keep benefitting from rpmfind, but it also has "yast" which is like linuxconf, except it works! It also does a lot more, from hardware config, /etc config, X config (SaX is a better way to configure X, too), to package management. And, since they use the same yast during install and for later admin, it has that nice feel of "everything I learn is useful as reference later, and if I make the wrong choice now I'll know how to fix it"

Redhat should ditch linuxconf and adopt yast (and "ports" too, while they're at it). If you are new to linux, you should give SuSE a look, I think you'll find it easier to admin. If you already use RedHat, it's not so much better that it's worth switching to, but you should not fear trying it if you are curious because it will be a painless transition. The purple lizard on the desktop is kinda cute, too, though I wish they'da spelled it Geecko?

Many of you look at the BSD license, and say, well, companies can use the code and adapt it to their propietary products. Well, DUH! that's the whole point. For most of it's life, the BSD camp has been focused on improving computer design overall, not only their system.

In most applications, you cannot just cut and paste code, you need to adapt it to fit your frame work, which makes it quite different. All that is left is the ideal on the design, which like standards, should be shared. The importance and the competitive edge is gained by the better implementation, well sometimes at least.

The BSD camp practically fueled the used of the tcp/ip protocol, greatly due to their fact that's their tcp/ip stack was freely available for others to build on, and oddly enouhg, it is still arguably the fastest performer.

Need i mention bind or apache? both improved by corporations despite their BSD license. The BSD license allows a greater corporate appeal to OSS. Great designs need to be shared ;)

And for those who some how believe that th elinux ip stack is catching up... heh, try packet capture/shaping on a linux tcp/ip stock.... not fun... the reasons why anyoen doing serious network software would not choose the linux tcp/ip stack... ask junipernetworks why their choose freebsd ;)

Well, those where my $0.25... before you blabbler away.. read a bit on the BSD mentality at freebsd.org

All software should be open under a GPL or simpler license.

For the student, geeks and computer sciences that have to actucally work with the source code/software it is 100 times easier if the code is freely (as in speech) avaiable.

For the commerical blood suckers they should fight and make money on terms of good software/support and not on marketing and a huge amount of lawyers.

I am sorry, but I don't see ANY reason that software should be closed. What vaule does closed software have? less than nothing

Just because closed software has the ability to make immoral and unethical money though slezzy business practices, doesn't mean it is right. Business can make money though open source software and services, but the companies will have to work 100 times as hard, and compete based on product/service rather than lawyers/marketing.

Ohh you can see the rant building up in his eyes, lets get out of here, it is about to go off

• Have there been any projects to build a completely secure OS?

Sure, OpenBSD. (Super simplified history coming up.) Several years ago, they took the FreeBSD source tree and began combing it for insecurities and weaknesses. It now ships very tightly closed up by default, with most daemons off, SSL and SSH included as part of the core OS, etc. They haven't gone to the lengths you describe (I don't think), mainly because they need to maintain POSIX compliance and source-level compatibility with other Unixes and *BSD's. Definitely worth looking into if security is your passion.

darren

Paul.

Well, the software I used isn't open source.
I'm using MegaPEG LE which came with my copy of Premiere.

The web server is all open source (Roxen on FreeBSD) if that makes you feel better...

Lets do the news 1st.

Looks like FreeBSD is going to branch out!
FreeBSD-i18n Dedicated to internationalizing FreeBSD (hopefully the disable will be better addressed in this release...code for the blind, the deaf, etc.)
FreeBSD-PPC Dedicated to making FreeBSD run on PPC platforms.
The web pages don't show it yet...but go for instructions on how to get on a list.

>This kinda attitude seems prevalent across among the posts to this article and I find it somewhat annoying.

Hate to break this to ya, but the big reason there WAS a split in OpenBSD's case is it *WAS* personality.

There was a big thread about this on daily.daemonnews.org, but it got deleted by the people who run the site.

The thread went into acusations involving the FBI, malicious code deletion, etc la.

It all reminds me of what the head of EE told me in college. Most technical staffers are never fired/let go because of their lack of technical skills, but because of personality/personal issues. This thread has the 'annoying' comments about personal loyalities because there is much truth to them.

WAHOO!!! I've been waiting a long time for someone to pick up the pace with Alpha! Took a while, but hopefully this is it!! Excellent news for us Alpha Linux users!!!

LONG LIVE ALPHA LINUX and FreeBSD too!

sample of Commercial Appliances based on FreeBSD -
Nokia Firewall/VPN Appliances
Internet Devices, Inc. - Products Overview

router/dialup/etc ... - FreeBSD on a Floppy...
PicoBSD

Commercial Embedded BSD from BSDI

Because Linux is divided into a kernel and discrete components, such as the C library, bash, command line utilities, etc., which can be easily separated and replaced with something else.

And BSD is divided into a kernel (made of descrete components), and a user land made of descrete components like the C library, various shells, command line utilities, etc., which can be easily replaced with other things.

Try again. Neither Linux nor BSD has an advantage in this area.

With *BSD, the OS distribution gives strong incentive to use what is provided in /usr/src and /usr/ports, to the exclusion of software not provided.

Well, yes FreeBSD at least provides a strong incentave to use what is provided, namely making it dirt simple to use that stuff. It doesn't make it any harder to use non-ports stuff then any other Unixlike OS. You can even use the FreeBSD package manager (which allows dependnecy tracking, and easy uninstall) with non-ports software. Of corse if you did, it would be a tiny step to make it "ports software" (namely a few text files).

But I have installed a lot of non-ports stuff on my FreeBSD box (mostly snapshots of newer-the-ports stuff). I don't see how it diffres from installing a "too-new-to-be-RPMed" package in Red Hat.

I would say no advantage between Linux or BSD in this area.

You're always going to have source code for something hanging around, and probably not something you intended to keep, and certainly not tarred and gzipped!

Yes, unless you master the mystical "rm" command, you will still have the tarballs after you "make clean" (rm /usr/ports/distfiles/* works pretty good). I do wonder why there isn't a cron job to clean old files out of /usr/ports/distfiles, but this is definitly someting almost anyone ought to be able to do on their own if they wish.

To build an embedded Linux operating system, all you need to do is build a Linux kernel, build a libc (e.g. glibc2 or newlib, and build whatever other tools you need, then combine them into a nice binary distribution. Even without a package mangler.
I can't even begin to conceive of how one would build such a thing with *BSD without seriously disturbing the OS installation hosting the build process. I'm sure it could be done, but if it were that easy, someone would have done it by now.

I think the general thery under BSD would be to compile a kernel, libc, and the other tools you need, put them in in a binary distrubution (see the "mfsroot" tools). Even without the package manager, if it is offensave or useless to you.

For examples look at PicoBSD, the 1.44MB distribution, or maybe at the BSD in Juniper's M-series $100k+ routers, or at the BSD in Ascend's GRF routers. Or IBM's ePIPE, or Whissle's InterJet. Or, hell, the X-Terminals I built in 1992.

Again, Linux and BSD are pretty much the same in this regard.

Further, Linux is open source and open development. Anybody can participate. BSD is far less open source, and far less open development. Ever tried to submit a patch to a *BSD kernel? Ha, good luck. There should be no question as to why the BSD kernel keeps forking.

I don't see any reason why BSD is less "open source". It is "less GPL", and arguments can be made about whether that is good or bad. But it fits ESR's Open source Definition. I've had patches accepted by various BSD groups. I've had them rejected as well, and a better fix was taken in their place. I havn't made any Linux patches, but I hope (and expect!) the result would be the same, my well-written patches would be accepted, and my flimsy half-baked hacks would be rejected, and maybe done better by someone else.

As for the forking, I remain unconvinced that Red Hat, SUSE, Debian, Slackware, Corel, Mandrake, Trustix, Storm and Yellow Dog are really signifigantly more similar then FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD. Yes, all the linuxes are a kernel that Linux blessed, plus (sometimes) patches, and diffrent config options. But the userlands are all diffrent. Just like the BSD userlands. And as far as portability goes that is about as bad. Which is to say, a slightly-more-then-minor problem for source shipped programs, but not a major huge super big showstopper problem (in either BSD or Linux!)

Even if convinced, I'm not sure it would be a wholey good thing. If userland devirsity is a good thing, why is not a little kernel diversity? I really enjoy having multi-CPU support in FreeBSD. On the other hand, when I want a really secure system, I appreciate Theo's stance that the multi-CPU stuff hasn't been around long enough to be sure there are no security-related race conditions in it.

Here we have the first non-tie. BSD is better if you are intrested in deversity at all levels. Linux is better if you want basically the same kernel everwhere, but don't care about the userland being quite so similar.

As for Linux vs. BSD, BSD advocates will say that it is technically superior in many areas, and be correct. However, Linux is far superior in at least one aspect: the manner in which it is developed. I expect BSD to be left in the dust in all technical areas that matter within a very short time, unless they can get their act together

Well, Linux does have Linus to keep everyone roughly on track. And that is a major big deal. BSD has nobody with the same leadership skills, who has stepped into the same sort of role.

On the other hand I wouldn't exactly say BSD has been left in the dust so far, and Linux has been around, what, nearly 10 years now?

Linux has gotten some really cool stuff recently (XFS, Riserfs being the most intresting), but BSD hasn't exactly been sitting still (look at the FFS soft update code, and the work-in-progress version of FFS that can do NetApp style snapshots, and live-filesystem-fscks). Linux seems to have gotten quite a leg up in fine-grained SMP, but with the recent Walnet Creak/FreeBSD/BSDI annoncment, I expect BSD can "catch up". After all Paul Borman allready did fine grain locking in Cray's TCP/IP stack, how hard could doing it twice be? :-)

My summary for this one would be "answer unclear, try agian next year". But I accept diffrent peple could judge this diffrently.

Foo. There went all my karma.

Why? It conforms to slashdot's bias. And was well written. I just happen to think it was also wrong. Now as to what happes to my karma...

P.S. you did forget to mention uLinux, the Linux that can run on non-MMU devices. I can see that being a big advantage in the embeded market. It's not something I would enjoy using, but still, it's a big deal if you can leave out a MMU and save $3 on a box that has a $50 price tag...

P.P.S. you'll note I didn't show anywhere I thought BSD was clearly better then Linux. That's because I'm not really sure there are any. There might be. There might not be. Or more to the point, each have their strengths, and weeknesses, and depending on what you need, one or the other might be better. You need to look close to decide, there is no easy answer (other then "not NT"...there, can I keep my karma? I bashed Microsoft)

I typed the wrong URL for the handbook section on kernel configuration.

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...the article in question contains multiple factual errors. The general feeling I get from reading it is that it obscures rather than clarifies the issue. FreeBSD does have a handbook which goes to some lengths to explain these things. Oh, and people, never do "make depend all install" like the article suggests. Make doesn't rescan the dependency file after the "depend" step, so the kernel is built with possibly incorrect dependency information.

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...the article in question contains multiple factual errors. The general feeling I get from reading it is that it obscures rather than clarifies the issue. FreeBSD does have a handbook which goes to some lengths to explain these things. Oh, and people, never do "make depend all install" like the article suggests. Make doesn't rescan the dependency file after the "depend" step, so the kernel is built with possibly incorrect dependency information.

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