Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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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.
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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 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"'
OpenBSD and NetBSD are almost exactly the same OS, but configured differently.
/dev is quite different to Linux. BSD doesn't have /proc.
They are more similar to FreeBSD than any of the three are to Linux.
BSD
The biggest cause of differences is differing versions of the standard C libraries. All GNU/Linuxes, and GNU/HURD, use glibc. BSD has its own libc. This means that a fair few standard functions work quite differently. In particular, GNU extensions, like the %a flag for scanf, will be missing from BSD.
Porting between unixes is often a matter of spending a bit of time tweaking bits of code here and there. Porting to/from something else, like Mac, Windows or VMS, is usually a major task and probably requires a complete rewrite. But of course this depends upon the program. hello-world.c will work anywhere.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Gee, don't tell my FreeBSD partition that:
It doesn't have a /proc exactly like Linux's, but that's a different matter (and one might consider that a feature, not a bug; it's perhaps nice to have most system information readable and writable through the file system, but whether stuff unrelated to processes belongs under /proc rather than on some other pseudo-file-system, or whether it should be in a form designed for humans to read rather than for programs and shell scripts to read, is another matter).
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!
Porting between FreeBSD and other Unixes is easy, differences are minor.
/proc, sometimes strange (deviant) filesystem-layout. It has some incompatible extentions. It greatly depends on the program's author: if he has general UNIX experience then usually the program is portable. If he only knows Linux and doesn't give a damn about the rest of UNIX, probably his program is Linux specific and is harder to port.
Sometimes porting between Linux and other Unixes is more difficult, because Linux uses GNU libc, a baroque
It is sad to see so much UNIX ignorance and lack of appreciation for portability and standards amongst some Linux people these days.
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".
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.
> The BSDs' scanf conforms to ... ANSI C ...
/dev on BSD. My post wasn't supposed to say whose fault the incompatibilities were - I was just describing them to the best of my knowledge!
> so it's not their fault if some Linux software
> won't compile or run because of GNU weakening
> standards.
I stand corrected about
> GNU does the same as Microsoft when they add their
> own "features" to an official standard.
I don't accept this. For one thing, GNU extensions are very well documented in the libc info page. The words "this is a GNU extension" are everywhere. The GNU sed info page is a good example; it tells you the maximum width of lines according to POSIX, and also the maximum width which various systems will use. Compare this to the MS J++ manual which doesn't even make it clear that J++ is not Java. Remember how the ANSI standard came about; the stuff in it was originally part of people's extensions to K&R C. Do you wish we'd sticked with K&R C? Personally I have no objections to people extending a standard per se. The thing that bothers me is when they don't make it clear that their library/browser/whatever is more forgiving than the standard allows, thus encouraging people to write unportable code. glibc can hardly be accused of such sneaky extensions - the libc info page is very clear about what is part of the standard and what isn't.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'