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who loves BSD! I still do!

in other news pkgsrc on SFU updated, the new pf from obsd/3.8 is getting ported, there is also a kernel emulator for fbsd/5+ and a smbus implementation. matlab works too and some people might be interested in a list of translations for the `of course it runs netbsd' motto.

what else can be said, its great that *the* bsd is still alive

who loves BSD! I still do!

in other news pkgsrc on SFU updated, the new pf from obsd/3.8 is getting ported, there is also a kernel emulator for fbsd/5+ and a smbus implementation. matlab works too and some people might be interested in a list of translations for the `of course it runs netbsd' motto.

what else can be said, its great that *the* bsd is still alive

• The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
• The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
• The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
• The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Clarifying freedom 0, it includes the unambiguous statement,

The freedom to use a program means the freedom for any kind of person or organization to use it on any kind of computer system, for any kind of overall job, and without being required to communicate subsequently with the developer or any other specific entity.
[emphasis mine]

That clearly means technical portability, and also prohibits "DeActivation" features (phone home to decide whether to run) in any free product. But even if one ignores the portability requirement, "DeActivation" features of the operating system, for instance, revoke freedom 0 for anything running on that O/S. (Perhaps there is a loophole for editions of Windows that don't include DeActivation.) I am sure Richard Stallman has much more to say about this.

Robert Storey of DistroWatch paraphrased a speech by Stallman as follows:

Freedom Zero would seem to be a no-brainer. Even proprietary software allows you to run it as you like, right? Actually, not necessarily. More and more, we are seeing programs which - if you bother to read the fine print before you click on "I agree" - impose restrictions on the user. Windows XP, for example, insists on "product activation" which is tied to the hardware - change your motherboard, and it might stop working. Or consider Oracle, popular database software which is licensed "per processor" - buy one copy, install it on a dual-processor machine and you will be in violation of your licensing terms. There are other proprietary programs which expire after a certain date, or can only be run a limited number of times, or are deliberately crippled in some other way (you might as well call it "crippleware").
[emphasis mine]

Openz has a similar take:

The purpose of these protection mechanisms is ostensibly to minimise software 'piracy', but the reality is that it doesn't have any effect whatsoever on piracy and really an attempt to maximise revenue by restricting how people use the software.
[emphasis mine]

The opposite of freedom is restriction. It's not possible to run on Windows alone and claim freedom under GNU's definition. It's doubly impossible if you're talking about DeActivated Windows such as XP.

An Anonymous User has written about what this means in reality:

• Activation often has problems with some hardware and OS configurations. It is infuriating when something that does not affect the program itself prevents it from running because the stupid activation scheme cannot deal with it properly.
• Upgrading hardware and re-installs can easily become a nightmare when involving software requiring acti

So, out of curiosity, are you more into the NetBSD logo then? I didn't like it much at all at first, but on the other hand it might look better in 10 years than most.

OpenBSD can run Linux binaries, and WINE is available, too. I don't use either facility, so I can't comment on how well it all works, but it might just work. NetBSD has this page with screenshots, among other things demoing Linux and Windows apps running under NetBSD. NetBSD and OpenBSD are closely related enough that if something works on one, chances are it will work on the other, or can be made to work without too large an effort.

Of course, there's always VMWare and the likes. QEMU also runs on OpenBSD. And, of course, the bulk of the popular open source software.

Still, not all is well. I run Linux on my laptop, and there's a reason for that: hardware support (especially power management). The server is happily on OpenBSD, though.

While Xen appears as a neat package, why choose Xen instead of vservers?

Perhaps because vservers lack some of the neat features of Xen, such as on-the-fly instance migration and full iptables support?

Furthermore, vservers is, for the foreseeable future, a Linux-only project. So far, NetBSD and Solaris have been ported to Xen, and basic support for FreeBSD as a guest host is available. Once Intel VT and AMD Pacifica are available, Xen will also support Windows XP SP2.

Given just these benefits (and Xen has many more), it's no surprise that Xen appeals to more people and applications.

Carefully concealed on the NetBSD site: Significant changes from NetBSD 2.0 to 3.0

I wonder if the standard response, "send a patch" on #freebsd convinced away from FreeBSD.

For example:

Q: Are there plans to fully support EXT3 in FreeBSD? I read that it mounts it as EXT2 and that mounting it with read/write causes problems.
A: Send a patch

Q: I don't know FreeBSD coding. I want to try FreeBSD but my Linux hosting company says they won't offer FreeBSD until they can mount FreeBSD volumes using Linux--it is how they allow their users to create/delete/resize virtual EXT3 partitions from a browser.
A: Send a patch

Seems to be the standard response on #freebsd to pretty much anything asked these days unless they know your nick or you discover their secret handshake.

I hope OpenBSD and NetBSD gains more marketshare. I'd like to see a thriving BSD distro other than FreeBSD.

In particular, the pkgsrc of NetBSD looks very promising given that it supports Linux and non-NetBSD platforms. And they seem to project a more professional image (at least on the website). But at under 6,000 packages it has a lot of catching up to do.

http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/software/packa ges.html#why-pkgsrc

NetBSD

I suppose you'd use NetBSDM to hack an alien spacecraft?

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Couple this with the fact that 99% of all of the world's software is written for x86 and you have a very large inertia to overcome in order to change the ISA.

Really? Better tell the Debian guys then. They ship their distro for 10 platforms. Then there's the BSD's: NetBSD takes the cake with 49 platforms listed as stable. OpenBSD has 16 platforms and FreeBSD has 9 platforms.

I think you'll find that most software nowadays is written in a high-level language and not for a specific processor. If you have access to that source code and a compiler for your processor, then it doesn't really matter what it is. The big issue in porting is the operating system and GUI (and other) toolkits, not the CPU architecture.

2.1.6. Verified Exec

As the name suggests, Verified Exec verifies a cryptographic hash before allowing execution of binaries and scripts.

This can be used to prevent a system from running binaries or scripts which have been illegally modified or installed. In addition, Verified Exec can also be used to limit the use of script interpreters to authorized scripts only and disallow interactive use.

See the verifiedexec(4) and veriexecctl(8) manpages for more information.

Anyway, from NetBSD's side, check out the NetBSD-SoC page where you can find information and code about all accepted projects.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Actually crux is closer to ports, and slackware + pkg-src is basically the same thing.

You should only use free software and avoid unfree software.

I think that they already did.

try these :

Free Linux

Open Linux

Net Linux

If someone has a better link, please reply.

Here, I think this link is better: http://www.netbsd.org/

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

What about the toaster powered by netBSD that was shown at LinuxWorld?

FWIW, our website is being served up using the same board as in the toaster. Apache is configured for 30 simultaneous connections (which all are full) and the load average is 0.3 and the system remains very responsive via ssh. As we had suspected, we're limited 100% by bandwidth and not by NetBSD or the TS-7200 board.

My point is that it's not entirely clear which OS supports more platforms, since "supports" and "platforms" are both variables that would need to be nailed down before the conversation even begins. My own first impression is that NetBSD is still the winner, since you can actually boot into each of its listed platforms, install software from pkgsrc, and generally treat them as equals except for the obvious performance differences. Others could effectively argue the opposite, I'm sure.

...use the GPL, because that's the only way you'll ever see the improvements.

Well hell... somebody better let these guys know then.

No, noone is going to convince you. This isn't a sales pitch. (Why was that moded interesting? Its not).

Also, BSD is NOT linux. Read for yourself what they do. Here they are.

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

Here's a few you might have heard of:

1. Mac OS X (duh)
2. FreeBSD
3. NetBSD
4. OpenBSD
5. Yellow Dog
6. Fedora (RHL)
7. Debian
8. Gentoo

9. MS Windows

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

NetBSD's binary releases include support for an amazing 40 platforms and an additional 12 platforms in the source code.

No, 54 platforms with 48 as binary release.

It's currently at version 2.6.1, with aggressive testing on the new NetBSD 2.0 promising fruition by the first half of 2005.

No, it's currently at version 3.99.7 and NetBSD 2.0 was released in December 2004.

Its desktop and production applications are so limited as to be nonexistent and this isn't likely to change even after NetBSD 2.0 is released.

I wouldn't call 5400 ports in pkgsrc, which is, btw, available for 12 different OSes, "nonexistent". If the only thing you can do is to paste some old article in here, go away.

NetBSD's binary releases include support for an amazing 40 platforms and an additional 12 platforms in the source code.

No, 54 platforms with 48 as binary release.

It's currently at version 2.6.1, with aggressive testing on the new NetBSD 2.0 promising fruition by the first half of 2005.

No, it's currently at version 3.99.7 and NetBSD 2.0 was released in December 2004.

Its desktop and production applications are so limited as to be nonexistent and this isn't likely to change even after NetBSD 2.0 is released.

I wouldn't call 5400 ports in pkgsrc, which is, btw, available for 12 different OSes, "nonexistent". If the only thing you can do is to paste some old article in here, go away.

But maybe the fact that NetBSD twice made the Internet2 land speed record holds for something, handling ~6GBit/s from host to host on a production network. See link to more data.

There are also a number of products which use the NetBSD stack: Sony PSP (other link), Avocent KVM-over-IP switches, QNX uses NetBSD's IP stack, there are several switches sold by IBM and HP that use NetBSD, many network access points and smaller routers, etc.

See the BSDrouter homepage for more data.

Dunno if that makes the stack good, but at least it seems to get used.

- Hubert

And if you actually want a good SSH, may i suggest you get it from the source?

And if you actually want a good BSD, try this one.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

Google did bring in some $90000 worth of support through their Summer of Code project.

Not to mention the remaining 1.91M they spent on other projects. FreeBSD just one of about 40 projects mentoring 400 students. The Nmap Security Scanner project is mentoring 10 of them, who have already produced great work! A list of their credentials and projects is available here. I'll give an update on their progress at my Defcon Presentation this Friday at 10AM.

Meanwhile, many of the other SoC mentors have posted details on the projects being worked on. For example,

• NetBSD
• Gaim
• Inksape
• MozDev
• WinLibre (with pics!).

* OpenBSD is focused 100% on security. They very tightly audit their code and control what goes in the distribution. In theory it shares code with FreeBSD, but in practice it lags behind (ie: last I knew it doesn't even have multiprocessor support because of security complications).

* NetBSD is designed with portability in mind. It runs on 17 different CPU families and over 60 different machine architectures. I've a feeling that the embedded systems folks love this OS. Because of the multiplatform focus it does lag somewhat in single-platform features.

* FreeBSD is the "mainstream" BSD distribution. It supports a range of modern x86-32 and x86-64 hardware with multiprocessor support (and has ports to some other supported CPUs where things like multiprocessor may not work), and enjoys features like a Linux compatibility layer (so you can run Linux x86 binaries, including 3D accelerated games like Unreal Tournament 2004). For it's users, the FreeBSD Ports Tree is the greatest software repository and distribution method in the know universe (eg: "cd /usr/ports/somesoftware" make; make install; make clean" to download source code, apply any BSD-specific patches, compile and install the binaries). FreeBSD is also used by some large companies for webhosting due to it's mixture of security and performance. For example, Yahoo has always been hosted on FreeBSD, and they're only the #1 and #4 most visited website on the internet (source).

* OSX is Apple's custom version of FreeBSD that only runs on Macs. The focus here is a friendly, hugable user interface slapped over the Unixy FreeBSD core. The concept is a bit like Microsoft Bob but without making you want to kill yourself quite so badly, the implementation is not terrible. I would say more, but I'm tired of people saying how "great" OSX is then pointing to the shiny UI. A shiny UI does not a great OS make, although it certainly is no worse or better than Windows XP when it comes to running applications (provided applications are available for it).

If you're not sure which one to try, install FreeBSD with the Gnome desktop. It has the potential to be an interesting afternoon's learning experience and there is a lot of documentation to guide you if something goes wrong. Get FreeBSD from the official site or via BitTorrent (and always check the MD5's from the official site after downloading).

I really like FreeBSD - however, I'm now officially tired of messing with my computer for the sake of messing with my computer. Linux and FreeBSD have both worn out their welcome in favor of Windows XP with it's autoupdate feature. Hey, Windows XP runs Firefox AND all my games.

And if you want a portable BSD, don't overlook NetBSD, arguably the most portable and ported modern high-performance operating system in existence.

Parent is a Linux troll.

BSD is renowned for having better documentation than Linux. Unlike on Linux where the man pages are a half-arsed effort, an after-thought, brief, confusing and full of errors, on BSD they're done properly, with skill and expertise.

They leave nothing to chance, they explain everything simply and easily, with plenty of intuitive examples and useful explanations. Yes, with BSD, you know exactly where you are and what to do.

Some of the Linux developers might think that documentation is for losers (or lusers as they like to call the people who use their software), but on BSD they realise that people might not necessarily know everything about their system, every command, every option or every file, so they treat the user with respect, explaining things which need explaining. This means that BSD is easier to use and configure, a great user experience.

So the next time you're frustrated trying to fix Linux, and the IRC channels tell you to RTFM, the newsgroups call you a Microsoft shill, and you wonder why TFM is so poor, or why no-one cares, remember that just around the corner is an operating system where the user comes first. BSD.

Here are some useful links:
http://freebsd.org/
http://openbsd.org/
http://netbsd.org/

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

HFS+ integration is a Google SoC project at NetBSD.

Hmm. So it does.

What I'm talking about is this post where the NetBSD team is begging for funds because they have one foot in the grave. Excuse me, my bad; we're talking about BSD, obviously they have both feet in the grave!

Time to face facts, their are only so many employed c64 users who need a unix for their commoders. The handwriting may not be on the wall for the corporately sponsored FreeBSD or for the privately funded OpenBSD, but it certainly is for Net "runs on everything too old to care about" BSD.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

... facts are facts. ;)

FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."

NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)

OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.

*BSD in general:
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

NetBSD's setup does not actually make sure everything works, it makes sure it compiles under fake hardware.

That's how NetBSD's support for some platforms got so bad.

That last sentence is wrong!

Native compiling on a [slow] platform doesn't test that "everything works" for that platform, just that the native compiler generates some code on a given model. This is especially relevant for platforms with a diverse range of hardware, including Alpha.

Cross-compiling on a fast platform reduces the turn-around time for providing software to test on slower platforms. (Why wait a week for a build to compile when you cross-compile in an hour?). The NetBSD cross-build framework offers other benefits such as allowing build an entire OS release (including install media) without requiring root privileges or fancy OS support such as loopback disk drivers. More details in my BSDCon 03 talk and build.sh paper.

Either build method does not remove the need for actually testing the resulting build on the variety of hardware available for a given platform. That is a separate and more important issue.

(Why do [AC] fanboys of some operating systems belittle functionality that their OS doesn't currently have, only to about-face and shout to the rooftops when they finally get it?)

For the undead crowd out there:

OpenBSD is affected, and was patched on the 6th of June
FreeBSD is affected, and was patched on the 6th of June
NetBSD base system is not affected, but a zlib from pkgsrc is, and was patched on the 8th of June

• A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.
• In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.
• When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.
• Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.
• Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.
• A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.
• One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.

If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:

• Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
• Products based on NetBSD
• NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
• SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
• Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
• IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629,

• A general consequence when putting code under the BSD license or releasing new code based on existing BSD-licensed code is that the code can be kept closed. E.g. when shipping hardware, there is no need to add the source.
• In contrast, when you put new code under the GPL, or write code based on a program released under the GPL, it is mandatory that you release the full source of all your changes. Many big companies have been bitten by this with Linux, see www.gpl-violations.org to find that prominent companies like Siemens, ASUS, Sitecom, Gigabyte and many others are affected and were sued over this (apparently?) difficult to follow requirement of the GPL.
• When using BSD-licensed code as a base, it's your own choice if you want to keep your changes private, of if you want to contribute them back to the community. Contributing the source has both benefits and drawbacks, which have to be considered.
• Drawbacks of opening the source are that competitors will have access to your intellectual property. When using BSD-licensed code as a base for your work, you can choose to keep your changes private. With GPL, you have to open them up, if you want to or not.
• Benefits of releasing source to the bright public may have various benefits usually found when arguing for Open Source: people can use the code and base their works on it, the code can be audited by 3rd parties for e.g. security reasons, etc.
• A particular benefit of releasing a work based on BSD-licensed code again not (only) to the bright public but especially to the original project is that the contributions can be incorporated into the project, and get maintained by the project people.
• One of the goals of the NetBSD project is to offer a complete operating system kernel available under the BSD license only. To integrate code into NetBSD, and the kernel in particular, it has to be BSD licensed. Integration into NetBSD (which of course requires releasing the source) will lead to benefits from the efforts of the NetBSD project, its community as well as the vendors supporting it.

If you want to point at various other vendors who have choosen BSD, and NetBSD in particular, to place their products on, see:

• Hardware designed for and with NetBSD
• Products based on NetBSD
• NetBSD-ready PowerPC toys: KuroBox and LinkStation
• SGI produces NetBSD-based WebCam
• Embedded NetBSD on Technologic Systems' ARM boards
• IBM built some NetBSD 1.3x based Network Computers (NSM V2R1): OS in some Java error code, pages 372, 594, 629,