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This Napster thing looks kinda neat, but I would be a bit worried about giving the world access to my disk.

Indeed. Given the track record of things like the Windows ICQ client and the RealPlayer, you should be cautious about downloading the latest and greatest binary-only client for some closed protocol.

You could probably run the client chroot()ed to a directory containing only MP3s, and as the user nobody. FreeBSD 4.0 (which AFAIK is a development version) has a jail() system call which might be appropriate.

Never used it, huh? FreeBSD has had SMP support since v3.0.

FreeBSD SMP Kernel

(I know, gtk is in the ports tree, but it is never up to date).

According to the X11-toolkits page in the FreeBSD ports collection, the current version in the collection is 1.2.6. and, according to the GTK web site and the GTK mirror FTP site I tried, at least, the current version is 1.2.6. (The main site was being too slow; maybe 1.2.7 just came out, but....)

FreeBSD works pretty well for me as a workstation OS; it appeared to be less of a pain to get my plug-and-play ISA sound card to work on it than it would be on Debian 2.1 (the 2.0[.x] kernel patch didn't work out of the box, and I didn't particularly want to spend a lot of time doing kernel debugging; I guess I could've tried the isapnptools stuff, but, at that point, I already had a free OS that handled the sound card, so...).

Your mileage may vary - others may find some particular Linux distribution (or some particular non-free OS, or even some particular non-UNIX-flavored OS) better as a workstation OS, or, for that matter, as a server OS, for their purpose than one of the BSDs, and others might find one of the BSDs better, and so on.

For those interested in other mentions regarding FreeBSD in the press, you can find pointers at http://www.freebsd.org/news/press.html.

PS: This color scheme is icky.

> Stop playing hippie counterculture wannabe and unite the 'nix community

BSD is hippie counterculture?
I wouldn't say the BSD has a "not invented here" syndrome either.

Maybe you should do some reading.
BSD.org
FreeBSD
OpenBSD
NetBSD

Uh.

FreeBSD Handbook
Mailing list, Handbook and FAQ searches(Years and years worth of mailing list archives)
"FreeBSD for the lazy and Hopeless"
A comprehensive guide to FreeBSD(sort of dated but still applicable)
FreeBSD Tutorials

If you already have hte system installed -- there is probably a bunch of information in /usr/share/doc as well. Now, there isn't as much info on how to get going as linux -- but there is a lot of info for FreeBSD out there (I can't say the same thing for other *BSD's unfortunately). On a side note, 2.2.7 is as BSDish as you can get.
----------

Uh.

FreeBSD Handbook
Mailing list, Handbook and FAQ searches(Years and years worth of mailing list archives)
"FreeBSD for the lazy and Hopeless"
A comprehensive guide to FreeBSD(sort of dated but still applicable)
FreeBSD Tutorials

If you already have hte system installed -- there is probably a bunch of information in /usr/share/doc as well. Now, there isn't as much info on how to get going as linux -- but there is a lot of info for FreeBSD out there (I can't say the same thing for other *BSD's unfortunately). On a side note, 2.2.7 is as BSDish as you can get.
----------

Uh.

FreeBSD Handbook
Mailing list, Handbook and FAQ searches(Years and years worth of mailing list archives)
"FreeBSD for the lazy and Hopeless"
A comprehensive guide to FreeBSD(sort of dated but still applicable)
FreeBSD Tutorials

If you already have hte system installed -- there is probably a bunch of information in /usr/share/doc as well. Now, there isn't as much info on how to get going as linux -- but there is a lot of info for FreeBSD out there (I can't say the same thing for other *BSD's unfortunately). On a side note, 2.2.7 is as BSDish as you can get.
----------

It is not free at the moment but will be soon. I guess it is about as "free" as the GPL at the moment. FYI her is the link to the code with the copyright.
But I can see by your sarcasm that your insterest is not the truth, but spewing bullshit is.

Ikan.

This means I can convert another few of my friends to the Lite Side. Provided Loki this time doesn't screw up Linux Mode as they did with Myth2 (parsing procfs).

This was the only game they were hanging on to. :)

Now, this may be a stupid thing to ask (this is not meant to be flamebait), but why is a publication called "LinuxWorld" covering BSD events? Don't get me wrong, I think it's great the FreeBSD is getting more exposure, I just find it odd that Linux related websites are covering non-Linux things. Are we going to see Linux kernel updates on www.freebsd.org soon? Am I going to find articles about hang gliding on Segfault? Will Slashdot be showing recipes for chicken wings?

--

Walnut Creek CDROM is www.cdrom.com. They're one of the principal sponsors of FreeBSD (and also support slackware, I don't know how extensively), and make their money selling stuff.

Check out the webpage (kind of an obvious place to look for your information ;-). The OS is FreeBSD and the machine is a single-CPU Xeon, which quite happily maxes out the network bandwidth serving up to 5000 users at once.

Machine configuration information is here (again, you could have found it for yourself in about 2 seconds of looking, but what the hell ;-)

Transfer stats for the machine are here (This one you can probably be excused for not finding yourself..)

There is no sparc port of FreeBSD. FreeBSD runs only on i386 and alpha platforms.

There was, at one point, a SPARC port project, but I think it may have died out (the link to it on the Projects page on the FreeBSD Web site is broken). (I have the vague impression that Sun was encouraging it for use on, perhaps, some UltraSPARC-based boards they sold, but may have lost interest.)

I think there may also be an IA-64 port in progress.

As a long time BSD biggot [grin], I feel that I'm somewhat qualified to speak on this one...

Quite simply, one of the biggest misconceptions about the BSD's is that OpenBSD is more secure than all other OS's period. OpenBSD is more secure than any other OS out of the "box"--you can install the latest version and have a damn highly-secure box without any fuss. But FreeBSD or NetBSD can be(and properly patched and config'd and etc ARE) just as secure. By no means should you think that FreeBSD (or NetBSD for that matter) is not a secure OS. It just requires a little more work out of the "box" to fully secure it.

FreeBSD is definately where you should start, I agreee 100%. Even though they've recently opened their driver database for the rest of the BSD's, you're so much more likely to get FreeBSD running on your existing hardware than any of the others.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give the BSD newbie is to head to Walnut Creek's site and go ahead and pay for the subscription. About 4 times a year you get the latest FreeBSD delivered right to your door on a CD, which is extremely handy for handing out to friends who have seen the light :) And, you're supporting some great software (and the development of some future great software)!

As for WHY you should make the switch, just wait till you see the screaming performance. Something about a magic TCP stack, i dunno ;) but the Daemon just simply smokes with Apache.

---------
Question: How do I leverage the power of the internet?

If you ask Google "What the best operating system in the world?", and all of a sudden the link order changes:

1. Welcome to Microsoft's Homepage
2. The Linux Home Page
3. The FreeBSD Project

1. Yahoo!
2. altavista.digital.com (huh? what's with the old addy?)
3. www.metacrawler.com

Google's team may have been being just a bit silly, but OTOH, they can't make a handler for every possible approach to the questions they want to answer differently.

Looking for sense in search engine data and results is like making a psychoanalysis of an IRC bot.

Try using this sample .procmailrc. That's just a few lines of my procmailrc which sorts mail from all sorts of lists into different folders.

Richard Stallman believes that not having access to source code causes material (and psychosocial) harm. Under the GPL, anyone who takes and modifies your code cannot turn it into a proprietary product. He views this is for the good of mankind.

Bill Joy, on the other hand, believes that making just the APIs available is good enough. The FreeBSD license means that you are allowed to develop proprietary software (contrast this with Debian).

For those Java developers who side with Stallman on this issue, a GNU Java compiler does exist.

A question about the CD ISO image... CD image

I would think that it would be sensible to have the CD-image updated to include the latest KDE (which missed the CD) and other software that just missed the boat. This shouldn't warrant a major update of the software obviously, as they provide the software on their ftp site for you to download and upgrade the 2.3 installation anyway!

Just thought this would make things simpler overall. Does COL come with the latest gtk+ etc? I am glad to read that it doesn't come with the Gnome Desktop, although when Gnome becomes more stable I would hope that COL would start to include it in the distribution.

Just thinking of replacing a RH5.2 install that has broken badly.... hangs on bootup. I want something clean and new anyway.

Anyway, I must say that the FreeBSD install was one of the easiest I have ever used. Put CD in drive, boot, select a couple of parameters (this bit is the only bit that should be improved, the devices within the computer should be autodetected) and then install! No graphical install required or needed, but it could neaten up the overall system. Installing additional software is as easy as going to the relevant ports directory and make install, and with clever ftp download from multiple sites this works like a dream (except for lesstif which fails at the apply patch step, grrr, want to run mpeg2play).

FreeBSD is the branch whose primary aim is robust 'popular' support for lots of hardware on the i386 processors. For some reason a number of people are also porting FreeBSD to Alpha and other architectures (I've never understood why they don't just use NetBSD, but to each his/her own, I guess)

Pretender wrote:

I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles.

That's pretty much it. In response to someone else's "What does this mean?" comment -- /. gets a fair number of BSD submissions, but (just like the large number of Linux submissions) most of them weren't deemed 'newsworthy' enough to justify the front page.

Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works.

I'm expecting not to have to write too many articles myself -- the number of submissions of BSD articles to /. should feed this section quite nicely. And to forestall comments from NetBSD or OpenBSD folk (and, indeed, Apple folk or BSDi folk) this section is emphatically not FreeBSD only -- I'd love to see submissions that relate to all things BSD.

I'll tell you the worst thing about this though -- like most other /. readers I used to check /. every day to see what new stories had been posted overnight. Now that I can see the incoming submission queue I can see them before they hit the main page any time I want, which takes a lot of the fun out of it :-(

If anyone's going to be around the Bay Area next week (whether or not you're going to the conference or not) drop me a line -- it'd be great to get together for a few beers and puts names to faces (I'm a Brit, and have been told that some of the beer at the conference will have been warmed especially).

N
nik@slashdot.org / nik@FreeBSD.org

Pretender wrote: I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles. That's pretty much it. In response to someone else's "What does this mean?" comment -- /. gets a fair number of BSD submissions, but (just like the large number of Linux submissions) most of them weren't deemed 'newsworthy' enough to justify the front page. Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works. I'm expecting not to have to write too many articles myself -- the number of submissions of BSD articles to /. should feed this section quite nicely. And to forestall comments from NetBSD or OpenBSD folk (and, indeed, Apple folk or BSDi folk) this section is emphatically not FreeBSD only -- I'd love to see submissions that relate to all things BSD. I'll tell you the worst thing about this though -- like most other /. readers I used to check /. every day to see what new stories had been posted overnight. Now that I can see the incoming submission queue I can see them before they hit the main page any time I want, which takes a lot of the fun out of it :-( If anyone's going to be around the Bay Area next week (whether or not you're going to the conference or not) drop me a line -- it'd be great to get together for a few beers and puts names to faces (I'm a Brit, and have been told that some of the beer at the conference will have been warmed especially). N nik@slashdot.org / nik@FreeBSD.org

The gogo encoder is in the FreeBSD ports collection. A fine Japanese contribution by the way. This is from the Description

gogo, 'Gogo no coder' (which means 'afternoon coder'), is a very fast MP3 encoder based on lame-3.23 which is optimized for MMX, K6-2 3DNow! and Intel PentiumIII SSE. The latter is available when FreeBSD supports SSE. (Linux supports it.)

*** DON'T OVERCLOCK YOUR K6-2 ***
Gogo heavily uses the 3DNow! unit that almost is asleep usual, and the CPU becomes very hot even in normal clock. So overclock may cause serious internal errors or crazy results. Also, this may be same on PentiumIII.

You can download it from here. Other related interesting stuff like icecast , vic and vat has been ported to FreeBSD.
Feel free to try.

The gogo encoder is in the FreeBSD ports collection. A fine Japanese contribution by the way. This is from the Description

gogo, 'Gogo no coder' (which means 'afternoon coder'), is a very fast MP3 encoder based on lame-3.23 which is optimized for MMX, K6-2 3DNow! and Intel PentiumIII SSE. The latter is available when FreeBSD supports SSE. (Linux supports it.)

*** DON'T OVERCLOCK YOUR K6-2 ***
Gogo heavily uses the 3DNow! unit that almost is asleep usual, and the CPU becomes very hot even in normal clock. So overclock may cause serious internal errors or crazy results. Also, this may be same on PentiumIII.

You can download it from here. Other related interesting stuff like icecast , vic and vat has been ported to FreeBSD.
Feel free to try.

The gogo encoder is in the FreeBSD ports collection. A fine Japanese contribution by the way. This is from the Description

gogo, 'Gogo no coder' (which means 'afternoon coder'), is a very fast MP3 encoder based on lame-3.23 which is optimized for MMX, K6-2 3DNow! and Intel PentiumIII SSE. The latter is available when FreeBSD supports SSE. (Linux supports it.)

*** DON'T OVERCLOCK YOUR K6-2 ***
Gogo heavily uses the 3DNow! unit that almost is asleep usual, and the CPU becomes very hot even in normal clock. So overclock may cause serious internal errors or crazy results. Also, this may be same on PentiumIII.

You can download it from here. Other related interesting stuff like icecast , vic and vat has been ported to FreeBSD.
Feel free to try.

The gogo encoder is in the FreeBSD ports collection. A fine Japanese contribution by the way. This is from the Description

gogo, 'Gogo no coder' (which means 'afternoon coder'), is a very fast MP3 encoder based on lame-3.23 which is optimized for MMX, K6-2 3DNow! and Intel PentiumIII SSE. The latter is available when FreeBSD supports SSE. (Linux supports it.)

*** DON'T OVERCLOCK YOUR K6-2 ***
Gogo heavily uses the 3DNow! unit that almost is asleep usual, and the CPU becomes very hot even in normal clock. So overclock may cause serious internal errors or crazy results. Also, this may be same on PentiumIII.

You can download it from here. Other related interesting stuff like icecast , vic and vat has been ported to FreeBSD.
Feel free to try.

The gogo encoder is in the FreeBSD ports collection. A fine Japanese contribution by the way. This is from the Description

gogo, 'Gogo no coder' (which means 'afternoon coder'), is a very fast MP3 encoder based on lame-3.23 which is optimized for MMX, K6-2 3DNow! and Intel PentiumIII SSE. The latter is available when FreeBSD supports SSE. (Linux supports it.)

*** DON'T OVERCLOCK YOUR K6-2 ***
Gogo heavily uses the 3DNow! unit that almost is asleep usual, and the CPU becomes very hot even in normal clock. So overclock may cause serious internal errors or crazy results. Also, this may be same on PentiumIII.

You can download it from here. Other related interesting stuff like icecast , vic and vat has been ported to FreeBSD.
Feel free to try.

The gogo encoder is in the FreeBSD ports collection. A fine Japanese contribution by the way. This is from the Description

gogo, 'Gogo no coder' (which means 'afternoon coder'), is a very fast MP3 encoder based on lame-3.23 which is optimized for MMX, K6-2 3DNow! and Intel PentiumIII SSE. The latter is available when FreeBSD supports SSE. (Linux supports it.)

*** DON'T OVERCLOCK YOUR K6-2 ***
Gogo heavily uses the 3DNow! unit that almost is asleep usual, and the CPU becomes very hot even in normal clock. So overclock may cause serious internal errors or crazy results. Also, this may be same on PentiumIII.

You can download it from here. Other related interesting stuff like icecast , vic and vat has been ported to FreeBSD.
Feel free to try.

The gogo encoder is in the FreeBSD ports collection. A fine Japanese contribution by the way. This is from the Description

gogo, 'Gogo no coder' (which means 'afternoon coder'), is a very fast MP3 encoder based on lame-3.23 which is optimized for MMX, K6-2 3DNow! and Intel PentiumIII SSE. The latter is available when FreeBSD supports SSE. (Linux supports it.)

*** DON'T OVERCLOCK YOUR K6-2 ***
Gogo heavily uses the 3DNow! unit that almost is asleep usual, and the CPU becomes very hot even in normal clock. So overclock may cause serious internal errors or crazy results. Also, this may be same on PentiumIII.

You can download it from here. Other related interesting stuff like icecast , vic and vat has been ported to FreeBSD.
Feel free to try.

As I recall, when just starting to learn FreeBSD a couple of years ago, the mailing list archives on www.freebsd.org were especially helpful. Any question from newbie to advanced has most likely already been asked.

Even today when I have an obscure question I can often find the answer on the mailing list archives.

They can be found here. Also, If you want to browse the archives, you can go here.
----------

As I recall, when just starting to learn FreeBSD a couple of years ago, the mailing list archives on www.freebsd.org were especially helpful. Any question from newbie to advanced has most likely already been asked.

Even today when I have an obscure question I can often find the answer on the mailing list archives.

They can be found here. Also, If you want to browse the archives, you can go here.
----------

GNOME and KDE will run on it just fine.

In fact, the FreeBSD ports collection has both ports and binary packages for KDE 1.1.2, and binary GNOME packages as well.

The KDE news page also announced the availability of KDE 1.1.2 packages for NetBSD (as well as for Solaris - interestingly enough, the announcement said that Solaris x86 was available, and that SPARC would be available shortly; x86 first?).

The OpenBSD ports status page mentions KDE; I don't see any mention of GNOME other than the libghttp GNOME HTTP client library

.. and note the cuddly PicoBSD logo :-)

BTW, FreeBSD 4.0-CURRENT users should have a look at their /usr/src/release/picobsd directory.

.. and note the cuddly PicoBSD logo :-)

BTW, FreeBSD 4.0-CURRENT users should have a look at their /usr/src/release/picobsd directory.

Assuming you will install onto a x86, I would start with FreeBSD because it will be the easiest to learn. Most help, most friendly.

Besides, the iso is available from ftp.freebsd.org. :-)

August 1991 0.01 Linux (first release, not bootable)
December 1993 0.99pl14 Linux (usable)
December 1993 FreeBSD 1.0 (patches to encumbered "Net/2" 4.3BSDLite)
November 1994 FreeBSD 2.0 First truly open source
(no legal challenges) version

This according to http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/histor y.html
and http://www.redhat.com/mirrors/L DP/LDP/gs/node3.html

So, no, an open source version of BSD was being developed contemperaneously with Linux but not released in unemcumbered form until a little later. The fear of legal challenges probably kept some developers away in the early days, and there was certainly not even a gratis version of BSD for x86 when Linus started developing Linux.
--

I will be brief:

Linux.
FreeBSD.
NetBSD.
OpenBSD.

They are all free (beer and speech). They are all Unix-like. Three of them are descended from the same code. Two of them were the same code four years ago. All of them, the last I heard, have growing user bases.

Stupid article, would probably have been ignored on Usenet, not worth mentioning on Slashdot.

http://www.instinct.org/~pgl/freebsd-i sos.html

There are a few sites out there that carry the full set of CDs, and the official distribution site has the first and most important CD image (ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub /FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES/).

--

The standard FreeBSD's APM support has done nicely on my Thinkpad. If you're looking for information on FreeBSD laptop support, you should take a look here. They have this collection of users' reports of how FreeBSD works with various laptops; There are several reports it working on a satellite, and all seemed rather positive (although it's a little hard to decipher...)

The standard FreeBSD's APM support has done nicely on my Thinkpad. If you're looking for information on FreeBSD laptop support, you should take a look here. They have this collection of users' reports of how FreeBSD works with various laptops; There are several reports it working on a satellite, and all seemed rather positive (although it's a little hard to decipher...)

I meant ftp and http. Both traffic server and squid support http and passive ftp methods. Anyway,

"When the main installation window comes up, select the Options page. On the options page change the logon name from ftp to anonymous@ftp.freebsd.org and for the password use name@ or whatever. I use reggie@."

This was ripped from a message 2 years old for 2.2.2, so you may have to modify what it says slightly. It is possible -- and now I know also for some boxes i have running delegate :).

Anyway, whenever I have a problem i search the extremely large mailing list archives -- where ever conceivable newbie and expert questions are asked --at http://www.freebsd.org/search/search.html
----------

For USB info: http://www.etla.net/~n_hibma/usb/usb.pl For links to this and other info: http://www.freebsd.org/projects/proje cts.html

• http://www.netbsd.org/
• http://www.openbsd.org/
• http://www.freebsd.org/

Seriously, all three contain a lot of information and links. Have fun!

The .ISO image is in the directory above the link posted in the article, so before people post asking where it is, the .ISO is in here. Only disk 1 of 4 is available as an .ISO from the main FreeBSD FTP site (Walnut Creek), as the README.TXT states:

This directory contains FreeBSD installation ISO images (the 1st CD out of every 4 CD set from Walnut Creek CDROM). This should be enough to install the full operating system, though if you're looking for the full experience or wish to support the project through your CD purchase, please see http://www.freebsdmall.com. Thanks!

If you must have the entire 4 CD set for free, I'm sure that the usual suspects will have .ISO images of all 4 CDs soon. However, if you use it, you should support good software with your purchase.

The .ISO image is in the directory above the link posted in the article, so before people post asking where it is, the .ISO is in here. Only disk 1 of 4 is available as an .ISO from the main FreeBSD FTP site (Walnut Creek), as the README.TXT states:

This directory contains FreeBSD installation ISO images (the 1st CD out of every 4 CD set from Walnut Creek CDROM). This should be enough to install the full operating system, though if you're looking for the full experience or wish to support the project through your CD purchase, please see http://www.freebsdmall.com. Thanks!

If you must have the entire 4 CD set for free, I'm sure that the usual suspects will have .ISO images of all 4 CDs soon. However, if you use it, you should support good software with your purchase.

I'm sure there have also been "bursts" of security problems coming from Solaris and AIX and (heh) IRIX too. Now it's FreeBSD's time.

Additionally, all of the root exploits I heard of in FreeBSD (VFS alias problem, FTP servers in the ports tree, FTS...) have been fixed, according to the freebsd-security-notifications mailing list.

I know. (Note: I submit patches occasionally and maintain the FreeBSD port, cf the FAQ) :-)

When it officially ships as a GLX driver, I honestly think it will make Linux look good.

I am quite sure the Matrox and eventually the nvidia hardware device driver will stay, the rest (like the GLX implemention) might be replaced by sources from SGI. We might eventually have to wait until XFree86 4, before Precision Insight puts all cards on the table and evaluation starts. When I remember correctly, they announced support for a whole bunch of cards, but were not willing to reveal which ones.

In fact SuSE does some 3d work too. Their scheme for MLX looks quite sophisticated (look here) but I don't know what is going on there right now. MLX was announced together with support for GLINT and Permedia chips.

Alas the only ones I noticed being active lately were the openprojects GLX group and the PI folks. That is why I said I doubt that the new SuSE drivers feature 3d.

www.freebsd.org/java
It's currently at version 1.1.8.
As far as using the Linux-compatible stuff, I haven't tried that yet.

He lies not. FreeBSD 3.3 Release Candidate

Then came linux and now the *bsd users have had it and are beginning to come around. I applaud them for selling and marketing and creating hype about there product which is what they should of done 20 years ago.

Ask Linus about this. The reason we couldn't "be" is because BSD was the subject of a lawsuit. I believe Linus can be quoted as saying that if such lawsuit did not exist, neither would Linux.

Linux said that linux is made up of 30 full time and over 1,000 part time programmers who work on the kernel while freebsd has only 15 guys.

More FUD. See the core team list and the FreeBSD CVS committers list. Both of these groups of people can commit directly to the CVS repository, effecting what people use in FreeBSD directly. No permission from God (Linus) or Co-God (Alan) is necessary under FreeBSD. Additionally, many people use the send-pr facility to submit patches to repair software in FreeBSD. One of the people listed in the core team or committers will then respond, and if it is "OK", the patch supplied is committed (perhaps with modifications) to the source tree.

Also, FreeBSD consists of both userland (/bin, /sbin, /usr/bin, /usr/sbin) and kernel. Since they're all kept in one place, both are constantly and consistently updated. I find this to be very beneficial to FreeBSD.