Informix Native FreeBSD Port
AC wrote in to say, "It seems that Informix are considering a port
to FreeBSD. Cindy Munns at Informix has written to comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
asking for people interested in a port to e-mail her with your name, your
company, the number of users, and so on." I've seen this message,
but it doesn't seem to have hit Deja yet. However, I've tracked down
a variant from Cindy in comp.databases.informix. Informix
for Linux already works under FreeBSD's Linux ABI, but it's great that
they're considering a native version. And remember, there's no point
mailing them if you're not genuinely interested...
If only more companies would start going around asking alternative OS users if they would like a port.........
This shouldn't take too much work, right guys?
;)
(remember "I just typed 'make'"?
Linux could use to learn a thing or two from this... Wouldn't it be great when people said "We're considering doing a Linux port of XYZ Commercial Software", it ran on platforms besides x86? Now, a lot of apps do, but there's nothing wrong with a few more.
Being locked permanently into x86 binary compatibility would suck (although the Crusoe sounds pretty cool here), just as being locked into Linux binary comatibility would suck.
It reminds me of a fortune (the specs are somewhat dated, but multiply by the relevant ones by 16 or so and bear with me):
Imagine that Cray computer decides to make a personal computer. It has
a 150 MHz processor, 200 megabytes of RAM, 1500 megabytes of disk
storage, a screen resolution of 4096 x 4096 pixels, relies entirely on
voice recognition for input, fits in your shirt pocket and costs $300.
What's the first question that the computer community asks?
"Is it PC compatible?"
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I'm glad someone's starting to test the BSD waters. Far too many companies are ignoring the popular UNIX variants and just putting all their efforts into Linux. I'm all for diversity among operating systems, and so I notice there is simply too much attention given to one platform. Finally, someone's starting to notice the world doesn't revolve around either Linux or Windows.
---
---
Remember when "Truth, Justice, & the American Way" wasn't contradictory?
The best part about commercial software providers wanting to port to FreeBSD is that it makes porting to Darwin and MacOS X from there practically trivial, especially for server apps.
This can only be a Good Thing. I truly believe that "Unix for the masses" -- both in terms of actual ease-of-use and total installed base -- is going to come from Apple first; then GNU/Linux and the BSD's will rapidly improve on what they've accomplished, and Global Domination will come that much sooner.
--Anonymous cowards are working on a massively multiplayer persistent shared immersive reality based on open standards and globally distributed free servers.
Considering that BSD has 14 years on Linux, seems to me more that Linix the newcomer recently fragmenting the market.
How compatible are BSD and Linux at the source code level? What about the BSDs themselves? Do they all support the same basic interfaces and drivers?
Does anyone have experience with porting large amounts of software from Linux to BSD or vice-versa?
How does BSD "steal from linux"? Anyone selling non-free BSD software will probably port it to linux, because the linux market is so much bigger. On the other hand, any free software which is written for BSD can be adapted to Linux.
Free unices are (pretty much) source-compatible. By expanding the free unix market, BSD attracts more free software development, which *helps* linux.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
BDS is one of the leading coin and commercial laundry equipment companies in North America.
The Mainstream media havent discovered *BSD yet, simple as that. Driven by all the coverage and the "Windows alternative" hype, Linux distributors have done their best to make Linux installable by means of of 5 mouse clicks. They are leaving your disk cluttered with hundreds of packages that you just dont need, running dozens of processes you dont know, and start up in a twisted fashion noone can comprehend. To turn such a Linux box into a respectable server, youll have to work your way through all those SysV-Init scripts, which are being filled with variables from nebulous places, to finally disable the daemons you dont need. When youve done that, a fresh FreeBSD install will look so clean to you, it will instantly turn you into a believer.
Linux may make a nice Workstation, but on the server side, Ive made the change to BSD:
And Linus says fragmentation is OK.
He said that at LinuxWorld.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Its up on the Internet....you just need to know where to look.
The SGI people had it up at LinuxWorld.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
What a scandalous twisting of history.
FreeBSD and BSD in general is much odler than Linux.
Both Linux and FreeBSD use lots of GNU stuff. However, FreeBSD doesn't use much Linux-specific (i.e. non GNU) stuff. OTOH, Linux uses lots of BSD stuff such as drivers, networking tools etc. If anyone has stolen from anyone, Linux stole from FreeBSD, not the other way round.
I prefer not to think in terms of stealing however. It is just reuse. It is very wise of Linux to reuse things that already exist instead of reinventing the wheel.
Also, UNIX prospers for 30 years now and has grown so string because there are different version competing with each other. It is the evolutionary approach. If only one single UNIX would survive, I'm sure it would die soon because of incest.
This thinking like "unify, conquer the world, fighting for domination" etc is 100% contradictory to the UNIX way, and is typical for Linux newbies/fanatics. It only hurts the "good cause".
It's comments like that from Linus that lead to Distro Hell, along the road paved with AOL CDs.
I'm not trying to start an argument here, but there are two equally valid schools of thought... (a) that fragmentation is good, (b) that fragmentation is bad.
That's why no one gives you mod points. :)
:)
I'm talking about binary compatibility. I think it's on topic, and apparently a couple of people have found it interesting. I think I sufficiently developed my analogy, and explained why binary compatibility (for the OS or the hardware platform or both) can be a bad thing.
About that last part, I completely agree. There's nothing wrong with moderating my posts, but I would rather get replies instead. And the only replies I've gotten have been Anonymous (which would have been understandable, if a moderator wanted to reply) and they were either unintelligible (repeated part of my post, and nothing else) or inflammatory (but maybe we'll still have a good discussion). So understand if I'm not really thrilled with Anonymous Coward, but at least he replies to my posts.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Sometimes the PHB's feel better knowing that there is commercial support for that 'free OS' (or the othe 'free OS'). It's easier to convince them to try it knowing that a company the PHB is familiar with from the Windows world is also working in the *BSD *nix world... If a product of quality is available for free, I'll use it (the gimp). If a product is commercially available and I KNOW it is good from my experience with it in the Windowsland, I'd be more apt to be willing to pay to use it (Opera browser).
-- 100% MS-Free as of 4-4-1999, 11:47:38 PST. "The lapdance is always better when the stripper is cryin'" Free Kevin,
When people ask that, they really mean "is it Windows compatible?" There could be a Dragonball processor inside PCs, the average person doesn't know, doesn't care, and doesn't want to know/care. If Windows ran on it and all their apps looked and worked the same, it would still be a "PC" to them and they'd be oblivious to it.
Wich Devil?
> by this argument, we should all be using sysV or whatever.
"whatever" - maybe
"sysV" - no, BSD (first distribution 1978/79) is older than System V (1983), wich was strongly influenced by BSD BTW.
I don't think products such as Postgres or MySQL are up to the task of competing with Informix, Sybsase, Oracle, or IBM in their chosen markets. There's huge amounts of third party software and suppport available, as well. Plus legacy apps.
When there's a free alternative that includes all the features and scalability of the big name databases, maybe some interest will be seen, but I doubt it... Those are such complicated beasts that company's like to have the ability to lean on the vendors... even oracle, with their historically horrible support. Ever notice that they're the 2nd highest valued pure software company after Microsoft?
I decided to try FreeBSD recently. At first I wanted a dual boot machine, but gave up because the two couldn't agree on disk partitioning (I have two SCSI drives). Then I decided to go with FreeBSD, since "it can run Linux binaries". The first Linux program I tried was xcdroast. I finally got all the libraries it required loaded (tix, Tk, tcl), and tried it. The result: Segmentation fault: core dumped. Oh well, back to Slackware 7.0 I guess.
A quick www.remarq.com search got me the post. Here: is the short script
-d
by this argument, we should all be using {YUCK} Windows NT {/YUCK} ;-)
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Nah, we'd all be using CP/M
;-)
make world, not war
- offtopic
- trollwork to distract people from trying FreeBSD
- FUD, it's no problem to dualboot *BSD and Linux, there are tons of How-Tos.
Since we are talking of FreeBSD:Go to www.freebd.org, goto "FAQ" and geep going on to "Installation", the question "Can I have more than one operation system on my PC?" and finaly to "the multi-OS page".
I'm no FreeBSD user, I don't know the FreeBSD web server very well, but I found that document in less than 2 minutes.