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except vmware needs linux kernel modules to run. Those can't be run inside the BSD kernel, so vmware won't run at all.

Yes, it will; this FreeBSDzine article discusses it. (Hint: just because it requires help from the kernel, that doesn't mean FreeBSD's kernel can't provide that help, even if the kernel modules in question had to be written by somebody other than the people at VMware.)

VNC is a real gem because it is truly platform independent, and can run on even the most nonUnix systems such as Windows. No need to install a bulky X server on the client machine just to run a few xterms or oclocks.

/. is beginning to look awfully similar FreeBSD zine's news section.

The new edition looks great. I like the style, very clean and easy to read. My strained eyes thank them.

They offered a cool idea for training people on problem fixing in a UNIX environment. I bet lots of other people have done this, but its still cool.

You can let someone see whats going on, i.e. commands and output, on your screen that someone else, the instructor or admin, is doing. That way you can learn too. Neat. The author, Jamie Hermans, explains it better of course, under the "Just Snooping Around... section":

By adding one line to the FreeBSD kernel recompiling and adding a few devices, you enable "snooping" on a server. Anyone logged in as (or su'd to) root can watch any other active session. This is great for literally walking someone through an install of the "latest port" or fixing that stubborn error message.

The new edition looks great. I like the style, very clean and easy to read. My strained eyes thank them.

They offered a cool idea for training people on problem fixing in a UNIX environment. I bet lots of other people have done this, but its still cool.

You can let someone see whats going on, i.e. commands and output, on your screen that someone else, the instructor or admin, is doing. That way you can learn too. Neat. The author, Jamie Hermans, explains it better of course, under the "Just Snooping Around... section":

By adding one line to the FreeBSD kernel recompiling and adding a few devices, you enable "snooping" on a server. Anyone logged in as (or su'd to) root can watch any other active session. This is great for literally walking someone through an install of the "latest port" or fixing that stubborn error message.

How can you substantiate this? The BSD community is by far the most active by scale.

when ./ posts a .00000000001 upgrade to the freaking linux kernel you sheep come out droves.

Amen to that brother! Slashdot is VERY Linux-centric. Just look at the way the ignorant zealots flocked to the Slackware story over this. Stigma is all that matters rather than maturity and performance. Anything that is remotely BSD is crucified on slashdot plus most BSD users avoid slashdot because of its one-sidedness. if you want the current BSD news check out OpenBSD Journal, Daily Daemon News, FreeBSD'zine, FreeBSD Diary, FreeBSD Rocks and OpenBSD Explained

At first much of the BSDI codebase will remain proprietary. It will only be freed as it is integrated with FreeBSD. There are some parts of the codebase that cannot be freed because the code was written under a contract that does not permit disclosure.

According the Karels the only thing that will remain proprietary is the kernel...for now. And a lot of the things they can't just put under a BSDL comes from things under NDA's.

Heh, yes well, we can't all have the (most excellent) Ports System. :)
I've built (pre 1.0) xmms from unmodified source and used it on FreeBSD without any problems.
I plan on letting SF know that they can send people to the various BSD Ports Collections (Available via FreeBSD's CVSWeb) so they can incorporate the various OS specific patches into their source.
(Such changes would exclude items that are specific to the Ports system, like overriding PATHs and make variables, etc. These items would remain in the Ports patches.)
I'll be having articles in the FreeBSDZine about FreeBSD's Ports system in the near future.

A few other good sites, are Daemon news, for all sorts of info on the *BSDs, and FreeBSD Rocks for FreeBSD information, and FreeBSD Zine for more information, and finally, to buy your own cuddly daemon, FreeBSD Mall. George

And what should Slashdot do to protect itself against bogus "news"? A recent thread on the FreeBSD advocacy list suggested flooding Slashdot with BSD press releases in the hopes that they would get on Roblimos nerves and force him to post them as "News" just to shut up the malcontents. Isn't that dishonest?

That HAPPENS to be Roblimo's suggestion. But you left that little tidbit out didn't you?

Before I go further let me assure you that my post was not meant to be hostile. I was bringing to attention the fact that the FreeBSDCon story was apparantly being rejected simply because it was BSD, and it seemed odd considering what's to come.

Slashdot was founded as a site for Geek news. Linux is predominant because that's what Rob uses, and it's his site. Still, BSD has it's place here. Slashdot apparantly thinks so too, or the soon to be announced new section wouldn't be forthcoming. Surely you saw reference to that while you were in the -Advocacy archive eh?

I wouldn't expect to see Linux stories on BSD sites(Daemonnews, FreeBSDRocks, FreeBSDZine, FreeBSD Advocacy, etc) any more than I would see BSD stories on sites such as Linux.com.

There was a FreeBSDCon story on Slashdot when it was first announced. It's NOT too much to ask to follow up on that when a full schedule of events is released.

When participants tried to register for the FreeBSD event, the hotel manager didn't know what the heck they were referring to.

Funny, I had no trouble whatsoever.

The behavior of WC CDROM is exemplary. They are the primary financial backer of the FreeBSD Project, and there's nothing shady about them booking the room. All such Conferences have Sponsers, and you see their names all over them. Why would this be any different, and why should they try to conceal their identity?

And no one who reads your comments will go read the archives for themselves. A Shame.

Have you ever worked for Microsoft? Maybe in Marketing?


- Avid Linux User and BSD Advocate.

I get slightly faster tcp/ip transfers from my FreeBSD (3.2-rel) box then my Linux (2.2.10) box on a 100 mbps network when the machines are unloaded.

As the other poster mentioned, it does scale slightly better under heavy loads. ftp.cdrom.com is a good example. I know pair.com uses FreeBSD exclusively: 57112 sites on 124 servers with 51,000,000 hits/day is a somewhat remarkable load.

Unfortunaly, I really can't find any comprehensive benchmark between the two using real-world apps. There is this test performed on stock installs which seems to heavily favor FreeBSD. The Linux and FreeBSD releases used are slightly outdated so it isn't really fair to compare to current releases. Also I noticed he was testing a 100 meg file on a system with 128 megs. This serves little purpose other than measure the disk cache speed. FreeBSD's writes are going to be slower because their filesystem is a journaling filesystem.

You won't be sorry ;) btw, if you want help trying to setup a firewall, router for a small network, try FreeBSD Diary and also try FreeBSD Zine