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FreeBSD 4.1.1 vs. Linux 2.4
A reader writes: "This byte.com
article finds byte.com's Linux guru wondering why he isn't running
FreeBSD. 'Linux 2.4.0 is available for no money. So is FreeBSD. Linux uses
advanced hardware, so does FreeBSD. FreeBSD is more stable and
faster than Linux, in my opinion. We penguinistas sometimes believe
we are having more fun than anybody. But then I lean over the fence
and discover the FreeBSD folks are having a hell of a party, too. And
their OS is as fast as I have seen.
I have to ask myself why I don't just switch my server to FreeBSD.'"
All the BSD documentation you need comes with the installation. I'm not kidding. The FreeBSD man pages are complete, comprehensive and the number one reason why I run it over Linux.
Linux documentation s u c k s.
Now, if man pages arent enough for you then, sure, Linux-My-First-Day-With-Linux-HOWTOs are for you.
Actually, pkg_version -c will tell you exactly what needs to be done to upgrade a port.
/usr/ports/news/slrn
Here's an example from my system...
pathwalker% pkg_version -c
#
# slrn
# needs updating (index has 0.9.6.3)
#
cd
make && pkg_delete -f slrn-0.9.6.2
make install
--
There are really only two reasons I use linux, and they're not particularly technical. In technical terms I consider them to both be powerful modern unix's with rapidly evolving perfomance and facilities. BSD has a bit more heritage, Linux may have more developers, but I could probably be happy on either.
My first reason is the silly one. In the early days of Linux the *BSD crowd (plus SCO) were amazingly smug and arrogant. Very much, "Why are you weenies playing with your toy? No wonder you can't handle BSD.". Sure, this wasn't the whole community, but the BSD camp (at least here) was
full of "serious sys-admins" with this attitude.
Perhaps Linux has actually helped BSD realize that attracting new users is a useful part of an OS community?
The second part is focus and energy. And to an extent it's related to the user base. BSD people (used to?) focus heavily on servers and tweaked code. Interested in optimisation of performance and stability rather than agressive experimentation. I love the linux communities willingness to make agressive core changes and happily tilt at windmills. When Linus said, "let's target the desktop" most people thought he was totally nuts. But now with things like Gnome, KDE unix actually exists again as a reasonable, and improving, desktop. Likewise linux pushing to PDA's, super-computers, clusters...it's all very exciting.
Sure, BSD is capable of all these things as well. But I still think it was Linux that set the pace and forced BSD to come out of its shell and match it.
Come on already.
If you haven't figured it out, I'll let you in on a secret: the various BSD distributions excel at non-desktop uses. Unless you really *ARE* an 31337 h4x0r, there is not much point in running them on the desktop. Right now I'm using Windows on my desktop, in fact (although this is primarily because my Thinkpad's screen is hosed -- I do prefer Linux).
Meanwhile, if you run Linux in a very high-load, high-availability environment, I can almost guarantee that you will have more little problems than with FreeBSD. When every little problem turns into a page or an email in the middle of the night, you have to become a little wary of
Linux. I like Linux. I hack on Linux. I sure as hell don't run web server farms or firewalls on Linux. Choose the right tool for the job.
Your argument about books in the local bookstore is also spurious. It indicates that your bookstore isn't very good. Look for 'The Design and Implementation of the 4.4 BSD Operating System' or 'Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls'. All of these are well written and illustrate what's going on. I'll go so far as to say they do it better than any of the Linux books do. Look in the canonical Unix sysadmin's handbook, the purple 'Unix System Administrator's Handbook, 3rd edition'. What representative OSes have they chosen? FreeBSD, Linux, HP-UX, and Solaris. That's pretty mainstream, dude.
I don't think you're wrong to use Linux instead of *BSD on the desktop. I think you're wrong to compare them at all. BSD is for servers.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
And I've been saying it for years.
In every single instance where I've noted a difference between the BSD utility and the corresponding GNU utility, I've preferred teh BSD way. The options (none of that --fifty-charactar-option-string-instead-of-two, the information (e.g., ftp status line), man pages instead of that moronic info system, etc.
A linux kerenel with BSD utilities might interest me (but why bother?), but certainly not the other way around.
hawk
That certainly explains the relative popularity of Linux versus the *BSDs.
People do infact care if their sweat turns into corporate welfare. They might not care to protect their code in the most agressive manner possible. They don't need to.
That's something that gets glossed over by the pro-BSD camp. Most Free Software coders are more moderate than RMS and are accomodated well by the available licences.
All the BSD licences do is make it easier for Robber Barons to extract the equivalent of corporate welfare out of the generosity of Free Software coders. OTOH, the LGPL allows component sharing and the perpetuation of standards without giving corporations a free ride when it comes to embrace and extend (Winsock anyone?).
Most reasons to favor the BSDL over the LGPL are highly suspect. Also, there is usually no real need.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You cannot license reference implementation under GPL, as far as I understand, since GPL is not a free license.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
The Debian Linux distro is supposed to become kernel agnostic, at least between the Linux and Hurd kernels. You'll be able to use either kernel in the relative comfort of your familiar Debian environment. Would it be so hard for someone to take that in the *BSD direction as well?
a xxx 666 (the xxx were actual letters) license plate, maybe I should switch to BSD
pictures, please...
I almost agree with you - I don't see the need for (most) servers to have a sound card. However, I disagree with your idea of using FreeBSD only for a server OS.
Recently, my wife's hard drive took a nosedive. It was no big deal, because her /home was NFS-mounted from our FreeBSD LAN server. All she lost was the Debian installation she'd been using, and a quick (well, as quick as a network install over ISDN gets) re-install and she was back up and running.
I decided to try an experiment, though. I wiped the freshly-installed Debian and replaced it with FreeBSD, adding the appropriate packages for X, gdm, Netscape (the Linux version running in compatibility mode), WindowMaker, etc. Know what? She didn't notice a thing. Her desktop looked, acted, and sounded exactly like it did before.
The only think she eventually discovered was that her mouse no longer gets jumpy during heavy loading - all of her apps even stay responsive (if slower) until the load goes back down.
I asked her if she wanted Linux back. She said that she missed having a little stuffed Tux on top of her monitor, so I bought her a stuffed Chuck. Now she's completely happy with her rock-solid desktop which never goes down, bogs, or otherwise interrupts her usage.
I like FreeBSD for the desktop. Almost every app you'd ever want is available from the ports collection, and almost every Linux app runs perfectly (except for the ones requiring kernel modules that haven't been ported yet). What more could you ask for?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That seems pretty nice. It is a little more complicated in FreeBSD.
The middle bunch of steps on making a new kernel are optional, only needed in the unlikely event that you want something not compiled into the GENERIC kernel, but recomended as you seldom need anywhere close to all the stuff that is in GENERIC.
By following the handbook directions you can get the stable branch, the bleeding-edge branch, or one of the numbered releases, or a stable branch for a older major version. There are a few other choices as well.
It has packages, and ports. Mostly just the ports are enough. They are trivial to use (for example "cd /usr/ports/lang/smalltalk; make install" will fetch source for smalltalk, and all the packages it needs, patch them and install them).
If all you are afaid of is how to replace apt-get and apt-install, that one is easy. Try "cd /usr/ports/[catagory]/[thing]; make install". That's it. It'll find any dependent packages, and make them, download source from any of N place, apply and FreeBSD patches, and do the install.
/usr/ports is one of the coolest things about FreeBSD. I do have to admit that mergemaster isn't too bad either.
Enjoy.
Have you looked at the /usr/ports/x11/gnome "meta-port" for the GNOME integrated X11 desktop? Seems like what you want. I assume there is a KDE one as well.
That's a copout. I've been thinking of trying a Linux. Convince me Debian is the one.
I don't know of a way, there might be one. I havn't done many source upgrades, so it hasn't been an issue until lately. I havn't checked the handbook.
That is that the mergemaster step does. Deals with conf files you havn't touched, and gives you diff's for the rest.
I like to compile my world. I like to know for a fact that if I patch someting and recompile the only change is the patch.
It is faster for me to do that then download a new install image, and I have a 256K Frame-Relay, and a relitavly slow CPU. It seems like a better tradeoff to deal in compressed source then whole binary images.
Well, feel free to tell me how the other ones does it better. I wasn't saying FreeBSD is the ultimate, just that it ain't bad. I know for a fact it's VM system isn't as good as NetBSD's (NetBSD's UVM rocks, even if it needs to be tuned), it isn't as secure as OpenBSD, and you can't buy support for it as easily as BSD/OS. I've even heard Linux has a thing or two it's good at too :-)
And, besides, often "X is faster than Y" is better phrased as "release N of X is faster than release M of Y" - release M+1 of Y may well catch up to, or beat, release N of X (and then release N+1 of X may surpass release M+1 of Y, and then release M+1 of Y may surpass release N+1 of X, and so on, and so forth).
First of all I think this benchmark is unfair. Even that being the case linux showed it can outperform Freebsd in mysql and sendmail. I believe this test was unfair in the following ways: 1) The author used the latest version of Freebsd, yet did not specifiy what distro of Linux he used. For this to be really fair, I think he should have used say RedHat 7.0 (with patches) (or any other distro based on glibc 2.2 compiled with -i686 extentions). 2) There are a number of well documented performance (bad paging) and stability issues with Kernel 2.4.0 which all have been corrected in 2.4.1-AC3. Because of this I think it would be more fair to either test 2.4.1-AC3 or wait until 2.4.2 and retest. 3) He should of used apache 1.3.17. 1.3.17 finally adds some Linux specific hooks to take advantage of v2.2+ kernels (see for details: http://www.apacheweek.com/issues/01-02-02). Now before the Freebsd crowd jumps up and down, I ask you to check the apache history file for all the Freebsd kernel hooks in 1.3.x apache compared to linux. On top of this, it would seem that the Linux kernel 2.4 adds even more functionality that apache could take advantage, but at this time does not. 4) I would like to see if using the version of Mysql and sendmail that comes with redhat 7 changes the results at all. These applications have been compiled with the 2.96 compiler which is supposed to effect performence to some degree. In summary I don't think this was a apples to apples comparision as the author used the latest and greatest Freebsd (not just the kernel) against an unknown Linux distro. I would be interested to see if Linux couldn't also pull ahead of freebsd in webserving with Kernel: 2.4.1-AC3, apache 1.3.17 and glibc2-i686.
-- You can be a geeklord too
It's very common among people who have been used to being 'superior' to their peers for as long as they can remember. Great athletes, unusually intelligent people, great artists etc very often turn out to be arrogant assholes, with little or no patience for people they consider less talented. It is just a bit more pronounced in good coders, because a highly analytical mind often comes with a lack of interest/talent for empathy and social interaction.
The csh has been replaced by tcsh in the stable releases, but on all my boxes I replaced I use a statically linked version of bash as rootshell.
Drivers DO cause problems sometimes. The PCM driver for instance worked perfectly for mostowners of a SB-Live card, just on my particular hardware configuration it caused a kernel panic. Recently fixed in release 4.2. This kind of bugs are spotted and thus fixed sooner with moer widely used OS-es like linux.
let me ask you this, how do you plan on getting the source to sed on a debian,redhat,slack,etc system? Much easier on FreeBSD system. /stand/sysinstall? Can it do specific packages? Are all packages available via /ports available with /stand/sysinstall?
Umm... apt-get source sed? The level of ignorance in both these camps is ridiculous...
~luge
P.S. Honest question: How good is
IAAL,BIANLY
As for socialized medicine, I would say that the reason is stupid mothers getting high on crack or having abortions rather than the health-care system. Really. At my job I make $30K, when my son was born, he had some problems, and we got to _choose_ which hospital to take him too. Not which hospital in town, but which hospital in the whole U.S. That doesn't happen with socialized medicine.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I have never seen anyone say that they use BSD because of userland stuff, except possibly for the initscripts. Even if it is part of what BSD _is_, doesn't mean its part of what makes BSD good. I actually think that the userland part of BSD is what is holding back its acceptance somewhat. Really, when someone installs a sun box, what is the first thing they do? Install the GNU system. Why? because the tools that ship aren't nearly as user-friendly. The GNU userland is the best UNIX toolset I've ever worked with.
Engineering and the Ultimate
I'm guessing that's because you don't hammer professionally. If you know a good carpenter, you'll find that they have tons of similar tools, each with a special purpose.
Engineering and the Ultimate
1) Linux is actually starting to emerge on most of these platforms
2) Linux can generally take better advantage of the hardware on the machines it runs on. NetBSD may support more architectures, but Linux supports more architectures well. That's probably just because of the number of people running it.
Engineering and the Ultimate
If you are running a server, when does it have time to be compiling packages?
Engineering and the Ultimate
You're missing the point. With a binary distribution mechanism, you can simply run the update, which takes 10 seconds, and then restart, which takes about 2. So, you are basically degraded for 10 seconds, and down for two. With source-only distribution, you've got to spend lots of time compiling. Depending on the package, this could take hours, especially on a loaded server. So, instead of measure degraded performance in seconds, its hours.
Engineering and the Ultimate
If you're having difficulty with the installer, I suggest taking a look and ensuring that all your hardware is on the supported hardware list (http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/install-hw.html). FreeBSD can definitely be picky about the hardware that it runs on. Also, you might try doing just a basic install, then cvsup'ing to get everything else.
I've often thought that FreeBSD could be a super easy Desktop OS with little work.
/. people have to mention the ports collection and how cool it is. Then, all the Debian people counter with how cool apt-get is. Both are very cool, but I have to say that FreeBSD continually impresses me with how complete the ports are.
Everytime someone mentions FreeBSD on
Some kind of a meta port that installs a userfriendly desktop along with a standard set of apps would be super cool.
I've always had an easier time of getting hardware working in FreeBSD than Linux, including soundcards and my video capture card (just add "device pcm" to the kernel config file for 99% of sound cards)
In my years of running both FreeBSD and Linux, I've only had one hardware snafu with BSD (if anyone can help, it's the integrated sound on the FIC AZ11 Mainboard. It only plays noise.:-( No IRQ conflicts that I can find)
I'd love to package a FreeBSD/GNUstep port with a nice installer for FreeBSD, but I lack a lot of programming experience. If anyone knows of a project similar to this, I'd love to hear about it, or if not, someone might be interested in forming a group?
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Godwin's law ain't named Hitler's law, so let's not inadvertantly honor Stalin in any way. How 'bout Maxwell's law?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The problem with Windows is that it continues to get better and get worse at the same time.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Well, the 4GB cap on memory with an Intel processor on Linux is causing me some headaches at the moment (massive database stuff). If FreeBSD can do 768GB, I'm so there.
-"Zow"
Being an open-source developer myself, I would personally never release any of my code under anything but the GPL. And I encourage all the coders I talk with to do the same.
I see your point about making your code as free as possible, but I also don't want to see someone else taking my work, "embracing and extending" upon it, and then profiting off a piece of software that I originally intended to be free for everyone. The GPL guarantees that what I intended to be free will stay free.
And yes, communism has thankfully failed with politics, but socialism is doing quite well. Check out most of Europe, and then ponder why America, as the only developed nation without socialized medicine, has a higher infant mortality rate then Thailand.
You use pkg_delete? I have always just installed one port over the old. Why? Because once you cvsup the port, make deinstall fails to work. pkg_delete and all the pkg_* commands are a pain because they demand the exact *version* of the package in the name. Basically I use ports as an autobuild mechanism, but the package management may as well not exist. Funny thing, my system hasn't keeled over for it yet. I don't miss having to --nodeps every other RPM on my redhat box or deal with debian's weird notions of meta-packages like that perl debacle (which is still about as confusing as can be).
I usually recommend freebsd to people who like slackware. I call it "slackware done right". You get all the benefits of manual control and compiling everything from scratch, with lots of automation for the rote tasks -- like compiling everything from scratch.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Dated? The ports collection almost invariably tracks the very same sources Linux compiles from (and often has to apply patches to remove linuxisms from the code). Granted, ports aren't updated as quickly as linux packages are made, but it's a stretch and a half to call them outdated. You *have* updated your ports tree with cvsup, haven't you?
And isn't it nice BSD will run just about anything Linux can? Quake III for Linux runs just as fast under BSD as Linux (some say faster).
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Debian has tossed around the idea of a BSD distribution, but the idea usually dies off quickly. Debian GNU/BSD is unlikely. Although the BSD license gives Debian every right to fork the codebase and GPL it, it not only be a public relations disaster for Debian in garnering the ill will of the BSD developer community, the split would become technically enforced as well, since the GNU fork would find itself having to backport any changes made to the BSD codebase. I don't think Debian would be stupid enough to GPL a distro of BSD.
Yes, BSD has packages. Not great, but serviceable. BSD doesn't need apt, it has ports, which is based on a perfectly good dependency-management tool with support for pre and post-installation and hooks at any point of the build and install process. It's called make.
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> I installed freebsd on a box and I couldnt get the newest version of apache for it...
S O-IMAGES/. Personally I install from FTP, but I've always had mad bandwidth whenever I've installed.
/usr/ports/www/apache13 contains apache 1.3.14. I haven't run cvsup since 17 was released a week ago (which immediately followed 14, there was no 15 or 16). Checking http://www.freebsd.org/ports, i see that the current apache package (and therefore port) is indeed 1.3.17. apache is compiled from the exact same codebase as apache for linux. it is likely to be bug-for-bug compatible.
/usr/ports/www/mod_php4 contains PHP 4.04pl1, exactly the current version of PHP.
sshd is configured by default to disallow direct logins of root, you are expected to su. This is fixable, one starts by reading the documentation for sshd. Don't mean to be snippy, but that's a feature.
ISO images of FreeBSD are available at ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/I
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I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Just a note: step 5 and 6 have changed, they are now:
/usr/src
:)
5. cd
6. make kernel KERNEL=YOUR_KERN_CONF
7. make installkernel KERNEL=YOUR_KERN_CONF
One neat thing about FreeBSD's process is that it makes it easier to keep multiple kernel configs around. Linux's lets you save a kernel configuration file, but it clobbers an old build of a different configuration when you use the new configuration.
oh btw, you kinda forgot make world
apt-get upgrade is still pretty neat though, cvsup is nice for syncing the sources, but not too useful at telling you what's changed and upgrading single ports or pieces of userland at a time.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
> Some kind of a meta port that installs a userfriendly desktop along with a standard set of apps would be super cool.
/usr/ports/x11/kde2 and /usr/ports/x11/gnome? They're there. Takes freakin forever to compile it all, but they're there.
/usr/ports/devel/gnustep. Not too useful by itself, better to just install the windowmaker port and it'll install gnustep too.
You mean like
GNUstep already exists for FreeBSD BTW.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
If they didn't GPL the kernel, just perhaps the term GNU /BSD is a little mistaken. God damn people, read what I say for once.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
This is precisely why I won't use any of the BSD variants. Their persistent belief that somehow, their licence is a good idea and that the GPL is a bad idea.
Saying the BSD licence is freer than the GPL is like saying a place without laws against kidnapping is freer than a place without.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Saying the BSD licence is more free than the GPL is like saying that a state without laws against kidnapping is more free than a state that does have them.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
People have been taking code under the BSD licence, doing essentially nothing to it, spend tons of money on marketing, and reap the rewards. The only thing that brought free software out of the closet that those who would steal from the public domain shoved it into was the GPL. If it weren't for that licence, nobody would even know free software existed.
Your argument is ridiculous and stupid.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
2 points:
/usr/ports/www/apache;make install. That's it. The current version is available within several days of the release.
a) You can always get the newest version of apache and php for bsd. Get a current version of the ports tree(use cvsup), cd
b) You can't ssh in as root because it's a *really* stupid thing to allow people to do. The BSDs, IMO, come with a far more sensible security setup than Linuxen and other SysV style Unices, e.g. group wheel, jail(), kernel security levels, etc. Security tends to make doing stupid things harder, that's pretty much the idea.
-lx
They all have their strong points, and their weak points. MS's various offerings are easier for people with little experience to use/admin. You can buy excellent support for Solaris. OpenBSD is very secure. NetBSD will run on just about anything.
Both FreeBSD and Linux are attempting to fill the niche of "fast feature-full Unix". FreeBSD (at least by these benchmarks) is a bit better at the fast part, but I think that Linux is more feature-full, and has better commercial support.
It really doesn't matter, anyway. Having two free Unixes that run well on PC hardware is better than just one. If every box out there was a Linux box, when (when, not if) somebody finds a new remote exploit, then everybody would be vulnerable. Similarly, an all-FreeBSD world isn't good either. A mix of different operating systems, all slightly better at their own little tasks, is more robust than a homogeneous environment. It was poor performance compared to NT that spurred many of the improvements in 2.4. It will be a wonderfull thing if 2.6 becomes better because FreeBSD's VM kicked the 2.4 VM's ass. It will also be a wonderful thing if FreeBSD can benifit from friendly competition with Linux (those mail scores seem a bit low. tsk. tsk. tsk.).
Competition and cooperation between the free OS's will lead to better free OS's. Encourage both as much as you can. Just remember that FUD spreading or any other pissing contest is not healthy competition.
I'd be happy to give FreeBSD a try, but I'm only going to do it when it's distributed by Debian. Yes folks, I'm afraid I'm another one of those apt-thing bigots. I've no particular desire to go clambering up the FreeBSD learning curve for its own sake, any more than I'm interested in doing the same with other Linux distros. Debian FreeBSD sounds like a fine idea to me, though.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
Please explain how a corporation can 'capture' *BSD? Does the code suddenly disappear when a corporation distribute a binary without releasing the source?
Je ne parle pas francais.
1) One of the points with free software and napster is that me using/sharing the music/software has no effect on you. You don't lose anything by me sharing the music because you can still sell your copy. I keep hearing this argument cropping up again and again. Does it dawn on you yet what I'm trying to get at?
Microsoft using the BSD TCP/IP stack has no effect on *BSD. The code doesn't magically disappear because Microsoft use it.
How is this different from Redhat using GPL code? Or is the objection mostly because Microsoft is using the code?
In both cases, you have commercial entities using code, in such a way which the license allows them too.
instead of coding themselves, it took less time to take someone else's free code, change the license and sell it.
2) On the BIND thread, some people are suggesting forking the code and slapping the GPL on it. How is that different? Both times you go against the implicit wishes of the original author.
If it was Linux code it would be called theft
RMS calls it misuse, not theft.
Do you even code, or are you mostly one of those cheerleaders who don't contribute anything but flames?
Je ne parle pas francais.
Yes. Does UserFriendly ring a bell?
Je ne parle pas francais.
Where's the source?
I'm confused. So, the BSD people had rewrite the TCP/IP when Microsoft started using the BSD TCP/IP? Or did the fact that Microsoft starting using the BSD TCP/IP have NO EFFECT on *BSD at all?
Je ne parle pas francais.
out of curiousity, what were the bottlenecks in the linux kernel when you were poking with the performance and scalability tests?
:)
i have found smb on solaris/sparc to outperform smb on linux/i686 with approximately equal horsepower (333 ultrasparc2 vs. pentium 2 450).
i think it was the case that the memory bus and i/o bus were less latent AND had higher bandwidth on the sun than on the intel, but i never really got down to profiling it... (not to mention level 2 cache latency differences) all this aside, i had a feeling that it was actually none of these things (but rather the very efficient network stack in solaris 8) to blame...
i'm very curious to see your assessment
Peter
"Yes, this is not a real benchmark. But at least it shows some evidence."
/bsd/i) {
/linux/i) {
I.e. Yes, it is not valid to draw conclusions from, but I'm going to do it anyway?
Hint: Fake Benchmarks = spurious results (spurious means doubtful or unreliable).
Trusting them is bad.
Allow me to demontrate:
I will use the following non-scientific perl code to benchmark:
my $i;
if(`uname -r` =~
for($j = 0; $j 100;
}
print "The result is $i!\n";
}
if(`uname -r` =~
print "The result is some big number!\n";
}
Then I time that under linux and *bsd. Strangely, it goes much, much faster under linux. Sure, I've never claimed that it's a good benchmark, but at least it does show some evidence that linux is better than *bsd.
You'd think that people would be familiar enough with science that bad methods completely invalidate your data. (It stems from the fact that to be ignorant is better than to be wrong.)
They laughed at Einstein. They laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. -- C. Sagan
more games area available for linux that wont run to well under FreeBSD ...
You have been caught in the hype of Linux, and missed the BSD boat.
Mainly I use Linux at this point because of the package management. Sure you can say BSD has the ports, but that is not really package management like rpm or deb. I know that not everyone like package manangement, but it is actually a benifit to some of us.
I do wonder why Linux does some of the things that it does. In particular why it is so common in the linux community to make it so difficult on upgrade. libc5 to glibc rpm 3 to rpm 4, etc. I hav ealso noticed that FreeBSD uses a better system configuration. Baasically on FreeBSD I am told that you have one config file that sets up weather or not to run X and weather or not to run inetd and all the services etc, where as Linux distros usually have so many in the rc scripts. This could be changed, but for some reason we like sys V style??
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Only 'flamers' flame!
Freebsd already has an apt-thing type thing. It's called "the ports tree".. for example:
/usr/ports/graphics/Mesa3
cd
make install
The Makefile will fetch everything needed to compile mesa, then build and install it. When you want to get rid of it, just make deinstall. And it's got a mechanism for updating the ports too. See the freebsd handbook for that though.
Interesting. I've often found the opposite. Whenever I have a problem I need to solve, I go to one of two places:
The FreeBSD Diary or the FreeBSD Handbook.
I like the diary because it's a collection of problems/solutions that actual users have run into. It's very practical. The Hanbook is basically the official documentation for FreeBSD. I like the Handbook, because whatever it says, is the way it is. I don't have to worry about "Will this How-To work for my distro?", because there is only one FreeBSD.
I've always had a bitch of a time finding the solutions I need under linux, probally because there are 90 million different ways to do things. That could be good or bad, depending on your viewpoint.
Your statement implies that only geeks that care first and foremost for the technical superiority of every aspect of the kernel, and its most direct subsystems, can be "True Unix Lovers". That's just arrogance. Plenty of extremely talented programmers, who "get" Unix and love it over anything else, would prefer Linux over FreeBSD simply because accessibility, support, ease of installation, and software availability are far more important criteria.
If the shoe fits, wear it.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
I suppose you can argue this, but what is an example of software that doesn't require frequent updates and maintenance?
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
perl -e 'print "Hello world\n"' does everything I need, and requires no frequent updates or maintenance, but it's not relevant to the issue of network security.
My basic point is that any sufficiently useful, networked program is going to require updates and long term maintenance. Only time increases stability and security, but only asymptotically. At all times does the sysadmin need to keep a careful watch. There are no software exceptions to this; not Linux, not Windows NT/2000, not OpenBSD, not Solaris, not anything.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
The problem with the Ramen worm was not with Red Hat, but with sysadmins that don't frequently update and maintain their systems. If you don't do that, it doesn't really matter what OS you use.
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In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
FreeBSD may be better than Linux for what it tries to be (which is a lot).
After a failed install of FreeBSD 3.1, I now have FreeBSD 4.2 running, though with a slight bit of trouble. However, 3.1 was a disaster, not because of the software problems that prevented it from being installed, but because of the attitude problems I encountered asking questions about it to resolve the problems. It is because of that I cannot choose to go with FreeBSD for project where it does seem to be technically superior.
As in the commercial business software sector, the free open software sector needs support, too. And FreeBSD is more lacking in this area than Linux is (though both certainly are), at least from the perspective of someone like myself who is already more familiar with Linux. Support for free open software comes online in places like IRC (analogous to an 800 code toll free number for fast responses to simple questions), USENET, and various mailing lists. However, I found all of these had lots of people with attitude. As expected, IRC was the worst.
Case in point. FreeBSD 3.1 didn't install on my system and stopped at an error message saying it could not find the CDROM (but it booted from it, and Linux, OpenBSD and Windows used that CDROM just fine). Lots of people said my hardware was broken (it was not). Lots more people said FreeBSD didn't support ATAPI CDROM on the IDE secondary master and followed that up with reasons why not, such as it was in violation of the standards (I went and looked, and no it is not). Ultimately it turns out the FreeBSD kernel works fine with such a CDROM; it was the installer program that failed. By the time I did find out, I was so disgusted by the people, I decided to not finish doing the install.
I came back with the release of 4.2. I ran into a simple problem and I immediately knew a way around the problem. But I wanted to avoid that workaround if I could. The problem was I had planned for 8 partitions, but disklabel only let me do 7 (partition "c" not counted). I asked on IRC if this was indeed a real limit or if there was a way to work around it. I had lots of wrong replies, including one person who said that was a limitation of SCSI (odd, since I'm using IDE). The most common was that my hardware was broken. Lots of people replied "I installed fine with one partition" even though I never asked "How many partitions did you install with?". Eventually, about an hour after I first asked, and 3 channel visits later, one person (thank you Metrol) finally provided me with documentation that showed there was indeed such a limit. So I went and changed my strategy to accomodate the limit (including a re-install of OpenBSD the same way since I was comparing these). But it left me with a renewed disgust for the FreeBSD community.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
--Ben
There can never be a GNU/BSD. BSD's nature as an integrated OS prevents it. The kernel and userland are designed to be integrated. Linux's nature as just a kernel LENDS itself to being packaged with other people's userland utilities (Whence distributions are born as everyone thinks their choice of userland is better.) The Debian developer who first thought up the idea of a GNU/BSD was forced to rethink his position. His misunderstandings about BSD's development were pointed out to him and made him change his mind. Follow the original thread on the matter.
If ls is ls and tcsh is tcsh, then what does it matter what userland you use? Or did you think tcsh isn't really tcsh on BSD?
But maybe the BSD folks don't want to do things the Debian way. (For example, I believe the /etc directory in a Debian GNU/Linux system
looks very different from /etc in a BSD system. The BSD folks probably like it just the way it is.)
It's not the "Debian way" but the SysV way. Debian, like just about every other Linux distro (Except Slackware which is BSDish) out there uses a SysV style init. BSD, being BSD, naturally uses the BSD style init. You just have limited Unix experience, which is ok, but your frame of reference suffers for it.
They still have a chance at winning me over: they just need to code up a BSD version of apt-get. (This implies Debian-style packages... does BSD even have packages?)
Be careful there, that's almost inflamatory. Of COURSE it does. The much touted Ports Collection is the preferred way to install third party programs, but pre-compiled packages (themselves made from Ports) are available. Does it really matter if you type "apt-get install postfix" or "pkg_add -r postfix" (for example)?
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My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
That is that the mergemaster step does. Deals with conf files you havn't touched, and gives you diff's for the rest.
Just to point out that mergemaster is specifically for upgrading FreeBSD's /etc. Third party (ie, "local") apps config files are installed in (typically) /usr/local/etc. Ports/Packages handles upgrades by installing the vendor supplied config files as "foo.conf.default". You would "cp foo.conf.default foo.conf" and edit it. Since "foo.conf" isn't in the Package List, it won't be deleted when you pkg_delete a program before "make install"ing a new version. You would then wind up with a NEW "foo.conf.default" which you would use to merge in any config changes into YOUR "foo.conf".
Automatic upgrades are not to be trusted IMHO. Software configs _and_ behavior can change from release to release. Blindly running any command that updates software without my knowing ahead of time what I'm installing is asking for trouble.
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My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
"make world" isn't about GNOME or Ports. It's how a source based upgrade of the OS is done. If you want the latest GNOME package, you get the latest GNOME package, period.
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My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
It doesn't EMULATE anything:
1) Most "Linux software" isn't "Linux software" but "Unix software" and compiles and runs on FreeBSD just fine.
2) FreeBSD has Linux BINARY support, so if the source isn't available (StarOffice, VMWare, etc) you can still run your choice of programs. It doesn't do this via "emulation" but by translating Linux syscalls into FreeBSD syscalls where everything is executed natively.
3) It would be _more_ accurate to say that FreeBSD emulates Linux as opposed to "emulating Linux software", but it's still wrong (See #2.)
Yes, your comment was pro-BSD, which is good, but your information is bad, which is not.
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My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
A beta is out: http://www.freebsd.org/java/dists/12.html.
Somewhere at http://www.bsdi.com/java/ I read that they would be offering their Java 2 implementation for FreeBSD as well. Can't find it right now, though.
tux vs bsd devil celebrity deathmatch?
look at http://www.rageout.net/takeittux.jpg for evidence.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
If I had to choose between one of the current Linux distros' fancy but often slow installers and FreeBSD, my choice would go to the latter. It is a simple, yet elegant and very fast installation routine that works without any hiccups.
I have to take exception to this claim. I tried FreeBSD for the first time a few weeks ago, and since then, my only real gripe is with how awful the install was.
Woe to you if you try to configure the network via DHCP and the server doesn't respond, because it will completely screw up your install: subsequent attempts to configure the network will silently fail, and all the time you're wondering what's wrong with these network settings! REBOOT!
Woe to you if one of the FTP servers won't resolve. It'll sit there almost until the brink of eternity, determined to resolve this name, and if you try to interrupt it it will NOT take you back to the server selection screen, but rather REBOOT!
Woe to you if you get halfway through the install and the file transfer hangs. Just like above, you're forced to REBOOT and start over.
I've had a great time with FreeBSD, but their installer is their weakest point as far as I'm concerned.
--
since when does linux run photoshop?
War is necrophilia.
Having Linux be the most popular free OS kernel and under the GPL is good for everyone, including the BSDs. It's insurance that control of the free OS world won't be captured by some corporation(s). It strongly encourages hardware vendors to make driver source code available. (You may not want to use GPL'ed driver code in *BSD directly, but it's still better to have that to look at than nothing at all...) And the popularity of Linux has driven the development of lots of userland software that, naturally, also runs on *BSD.
Don't wish Linux dead. It's the best thing that ever happened to *BSD.
As far as documentation for FreeBSD goes: http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/ Unlike Linux, freebsd has a standard documentation place. Whereas in Linux you must go and find the documentation for the specific distribution, in freebsd its all there. apt-get might be all good and all but imo using ports and /usr/src for upgrading and isntalling new programs is alot cleaner and better than installing everything as 386 optimized binaries (ala debian)
©o,,o©©o,,o©©©o,
[simon@forth simon]$ grep cvs /etc/services
cvspserver 2401/tcp # CVS client/server operations
cvspserver 2401/udp # CVS client/server operations
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
you want people to try your OS, guess what jackass, they have to atleast get in installed
Unfortunately, you've completely missed the point, jackass. If getting into the mainstream (whatever that is, and assuming FreeBSD's not already there) means that we have to endlessly pacify all the clueless wannabes who don't know PCI from AIDS but want to be 1337 and run our OS, then by all means you can have your mainstreamity.
My point was that FreeBSD is a tool by smart people for smart people -- what Unix is supposed to be. The FreeBSD community expects you to either be intelligent enough to learn from the (quite good, but not for dumbasses) pre-existing newbie material, or to have learned Unix from somewhere else (I used Linux for a few years first). That is to say, we're more into making high quality software than holding the hands of people that really shouldn't be associating with us in the first place. You can have all the Linux for Dummies books you want -- FreeBSD however is not for dummies.
As for installs: to anyone who knows anything about computers and especially those who have installed some OS before, the FreeBSD install is dirt-simple. Minus file copying time, it takes as little as 2 minutes to install FreeBSD if you've done it a few times before.
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Most open source developers would rather not have their code end up in Windows
I beg to differ. IMNSHO, most open source developers (myself included) care less about who is percieved to be 'good' or 'evil' at the time and more about getting quality code out into the world. We wish to improve the state of the art of software and make our improvements available to anyone who wants to use them. So what if Microsoft uses my elegant, high-quality, BSD-licensed Foo Protocol code? The code still performs the same function for me and my community of developers; it has not been damaged by commercial use. In fact, many more people out there are benefitting from something that I wrote instead of suffering from some other, possibly dismal, implementation.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
FreeBSD is a pure server OS
No. Freebsd is just another free Unix. It may be used more as a server OS (IMHO because there is less hand-holding for newbies), but it's range of applications is more or less the same as that of Linux. A great majority of the software that compiles and runs on Linux will also compile and run on FreeBSD, equally well.
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
On the daemon front, I've seen books available by mail, none in the bookstores
... and port them yourself. Of course you can do that, because you're a g0d l337 ha>0r d00d, right? Otherwise you'd be running Windows
Look in other bookstores. I've seen "The Complete FreeBSD", by Greg Lehey, which is quite a resourceful tome for anyone new to FreeBSD, in two of the three major bookstores here. And this is in Oklahoma, even.
What you do get is the suggestion to take the drivers
This isn't just a BSD phenomena. What is one of Linus's more recent famous sayings? "Talk is cheap. Show me the code."
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SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
You, my friend, are insance. How could anyone *like* those god-awful SysV startup scripts? BSD-initscripts all the way!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
If you do everything just because everyone else does, you might as well run Windows ;)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'd be happy to give Linux a try, but I'm only going to do it when it's distributed by Microsoft. Yes folks, I'm afraid I'm another one of those ActiveUpdate bigots. I've no particular desire to go clambering up the Linux learning curve for its own sake, any more than I'm interested in doing the same with Windows NT. MIcrosoft Linux sounds like a fine idea to me, though.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
For "fastest, most cleanly written OS" I'd have to give the award to BeOS or QNX. Certianly not any *NIX.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
You /. junkies are sounding like MS monkeys. Can we get past the whole "Be isn't making any money" business. With deals from Sony, Intel, etc (just read BeNews for god's sake) Be isn't going anywhere soon. Besides, that is entirely irrelevant. BeOS is good technology. The company may not be doing well, but BeOS is good technology. Pointing out the status of the company in order to argue the quality of an OS is exactly something Microsoft would do. ("Would you rather use an OS built by a global corperation, or by a bunch of weekend-hackers?")
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I was spoofing the post of they guy I was replying to! He used apt-get as the only reason not to try FreeBSD and didn't want the learning curve of another OS. Sounds exactly like a Microsoft user. Also, I DO agree that Active Update is cool, in fact, BeOS has something that does this for Tracker (the desktop; hopefully it will be extended to other things) in that it downloads OpenTracker, compiles it, and installs it on your system while you're still browsing the Internet. Let's see ActiveUpdate do that ;)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It's easy to see, but its a pain to manage all the symlinks. Config files like this are probably where GUIs make the most sense, since they are both easy to manage *and* can give all the info at a glance of the screen. Still, with grep and all, BSD init is nearly as easy to see and definately more easy to manage.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
But it is nice to see an article that represents the differences between the two well. I agree that Linux often has faster support for the latest and greatest hardware, which is why I use it on my desktop, but I wouldn't think of using anything besides FreeBSD in a server environment (commerical UNIXes aside). There really wasn't anything new in this article, as we've know that FreeBSD's network stack and VM subsystems are a lot more mature (and faster, yay!) than Linux's, but I will say that I've seen some impressive improvements with the release of 2.4.0 and now 2.4.1.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/contrib.html#CONTR IB-WHAT this link will put it quite clear- programmers are wanted to work on important things, not political.
As for not using software based soley on its license, if you aren't doing any real work with the source (contributing back, making derivatives) is just plain stupid. Who cares?
-bugg
Sure, you could argue that there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but there's really no reason not to, if you feel like it.
-bugg
Of course, who do you want to believe? The people who are very familiar with the OS, or the people who use something else? (You could indeed argue that we're biased, but heck, most of us have used both in depth)
learning about BSD from Linux users is like learning about Linux from http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/news/msnw/Li nuxMyths.asp here.
-bugg
And, we can see how much we would have gained by using the GPL. We would never have had Apple to deal with messing with our software, and who wants Darwin? Who cares that we're getting free software donated back to everyone for technical merits, not legal?
-bugg
Do you use a big hammer for big nails and a small hammer for small nails? Do you have different hammers for aluminium nails, for steel nails, for iron nails?
Me, I like to find one good hammer, and use it for all nails. Because it's all just nails anyway.
-bugg
a little problem...
CVS does NOT work behind a M$ firewall (or at least i didn't find a way to make it work)
with apt-get (or the redhat equiv) i can export http_proxy and ftp_proxy and everything is a-ok.
I searched (a little) in the CVS docs but i couldn't find what protocol/port it uses.
:(
--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
- Tux vs BSD devil
Oooo, that'd make a great celebrity deathmatch!I've seen some impressive improvements with the release of 2.4.0 and now 2.4.1
:-) ) benchmark current records for 2, 4, and 8 processor IA32 machines. Tux 2.0 is out, and its major feature is performance improvements :).
The least of which is khttpd, which (like IIS) handles static web requests in kernel space, and (unlike IIS) passes more security sensitive dynamic content requests to a userlevel server, such as Red Hat's Tux.
Tux 1.0 holds the Specweb (also used by IIS for five years until MS got their arse whopped by Tux
I'd be interested in a benchmark of the fastest webs ervers avliable on both platform - say, Tux versus Zeus (easily the best proprietary webserver) on Free BSD. As for Apache... well, the mods I use work with Tux, so this benchmark doesn't interest me. Or the web portion of it anyway.
If Wordperfect 5.1 under DOS does everything you need it to, then it's a perfect example of software that `doesn't require frequent updates and maintenance.'
I'd give Debian a try, but only when it has FreeBSD's unique update system, called cvsup.
Really, read a bit on cvsup, and you'll see how apt-thing is a pale shadow of it. Nothing comes close to cvsup w.r.t ease of use for keeping the whole OS up-to-date.
The thing about the GPL is that you don't give up any rights to your own code. The teacher has the right to release the class's code under any license the school will let him get away with.
However, unless you signed something, you own your own code, and the fact that it's been released under the GPL by someone else doesn't mean that you can't release it yourself under any license you choose.
Of course, if it was developed on the school's equipment they may claim rights to it.
I guess you're saying that if it isn't GNU its craaap! I guess Solaris, AIX, IRIX, and HP-UX all suck too since they are SVR4 descendents with BSD extensions. Installing a new compiler won't break your kernel compilation unless you do something like RH did with 7.0 :)
But what annoys me most - the sources are packed together and split in chunks. So if you need the sources of sed, you have to download the sources of the whole /usr/bin!!!
Were you breast fed till you were nine? If you just want to cvsup sed then "cd /usr/src/usr.bin/sed; make all install". Baboom! That easy. FreeBSD also has all the most up-to-date GNU utilities in the ports tree if you want them. gmake, etc.
You sir, are a fuck-twit.
So it's flamebait to post a POSITIVE review of FreeBSD? My God, you must love censorship.
You're wrong. NetBSD runs on over 30 Platforms! From now on, go read before you post.
So? Whatcha want? A cookie? I doubt you contributed anything to make that a reality.
Now if you have been following the FreeBSD 5.0 branch you'd realize that FreeBSD's SMP is going to be far superior to Linux's. FreeBSD 5.0 SMP
Sure can, go read about mergemaster.
You can do many of the things mentioned (and more!) with /stand/sysinstall.
"FreeBSD was a peaceful home, but a little too boring, too staid. Linux is where the action was, where major progress was being made. There's no doubt that if you're looking for excitement and innovation, Linux is the place to be."
Yet, he claims "Since stability was paramount" as justification for not using the most aggressive optimization during compilation as well as refererences to the "patched together" feel of Linux.
From here, its hard for me to swallow the irony of praising the maturity and polish of *BSD and then going on to talk about these wonderful "NEW" things his gentoo distribution will have.
The one thing I don't like about FreeBSD is its use of the UFS filesystem. While UFS is more reliable and rugged than ext2, it's also mind-numbingly slow. It's possible to use a special UFS extension called soft updates, which is able to speed up the filesystem by aggregating IO operations into bigger chunks. While soft updates improves UFS tremendously, I can't say that UFS really outperforms ext2 in any way. Of course, it's more reliable, so FreeBSD ends up beating Linux in the filesystem war. Again, at least this is true when comparing older Linux 2.2 distributions to FreeBSD.
Indeed, this problem has been discussed times and times again: comparing ext2 in async mode (the default) and ffs in sync mode (the default) is comparing apples and oranges. You just have to see the results after a crash. The best comparison is with ffs in async mode, which shows no speed difference, or with softupdates, which is still more secure. The slowest filesystem I know is ext2 in sync mode: it syncs everything (while ffs syncs only metadata), so tar xf takes hours. Softupdates is hardly a special extention now-a-days; Not only is it more reliable, it can handle files bigger than 2GB :)
Now, if you talk about the future, when is coming the fsck-free version of soft-updates? I've seen it announced for 5.0. After all reiserFS was only introduced in 2.4.1 :-) By the way, I've seen a while ago a post on slashdot by a guy who was actually just intending to do that for Linux: fsck free softupdates, because this would be faster than a journaling file system!
I'm rambling I suppose but it's clear he's on the band-wagon.
FreeBSD is a pure server OS.
Really?
BSD Desktop edition
BSD Desktop Edition - Includes FreeBSD, The Complete FreeBSD Book, ApplixWare Office Suite 5.0, and Partition Magic (Special Edition)
Now that you know that BSD is a desktop OS, you don't need to run Linux, do you?
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
Because Linux' ext2fs doesn't do synchronous metadata updates (like FreeBSD's FFS) as default (ext2fs is incredible slow if it does this.)
Wich is fatal in case of crashes - there's a great chance you will lose mail if a crash happens after mail was received and bevor update drained the buffers.
To make the benchmark more fair (i.e. with same functionality on both OS) Byte should mount the filesystems with the spool and mail directories with synchronous metadata updates and repeat the test.
We might see bigger differences in the other benchmarks as well...
I'd like to find one link of solid evidence that Microsoft has ever used BSD code. I'd love for it to be true -- it would truly show the success of open source and the fulfillment of BSD's goal (that good code be used, regardless of the license.)
Keep in mind that the BSD license, until fairly recently (certainly until after the creation of NT/2k tcp/ip and kerberos code) did have an advertising clause. Can you find one instance where Microsoft fulfilled that? A multinational corporation like Microsoft doesn't take free code without dotting all its legal Is and crossing all its legal Ts.
As much as I'd like to believe that Microsoft did use BSD code, I can't do so without some proof. Too many people, it seems, have no such restrictions. Find me some proof so I can believe.
Jeremy
Looking for a Python IRC bot?
This public service announcement was brought to you by the letter 3 and the number e.
-c.
--
Casey
More scratches on the cave wall, thanks be to anonymity.
Nevertheless, I still would like to give it a try, so I'm going to put a little more effort into it next time and see if I can get it to work. btw, it doesn't want to install on a logical partition, so I'm having to use a second -- no, third -- drive for it. Then I'll boot it with grub :)
Since the potential payoff is very limited for me, I'm not much interested in learning my way around the BSD world. I'm spending my time learning my way around the Debian world, and I love it. The only possible way you would get me to run BSD would be if BSD were more like Debian.
Debian isn't particularly hard to get up and running, and once it's up it is so easy to administer. Did someone find a security hole in BIND this week? Fine; with a single command you can get and install the fixed version. In fact, with a single command you can get all the latest stuff. (The command is "apt-get upgrade" and you can specify which mirror it should get the stuff from; I use the University of New Mexico, for example. You can choose from "stable", "testing", and "unstable"; for servers you would probably only use "stable".)
The Debian project not only has the "Debian GNU/Linux" distro, they also have "Debian GNU/HURD". I can't think of any reason why the BSD folks couldn't make their own "Debian GNU/BSD" distro, and if they did, I would be willing to run servers with that. Why not? The vast majority of your day-to-day work is with system utilities, most of which come from the GNU project. If I were running BSD, I could still have my tcsh, the arguments to ls wouldn't be any different, and so on. How often do you really care which kernel you are running?
But maybe the BSD folks don't want to do things the Debian way. (For example, I believe the /etc directory in a Debian GNU/Linux system looks very different from /etc in a BSD system. The BSD folks probably like it just the way it is.) They still have a chance at winning me over: they just need to code up a BSD version of apt-get. (This implies Debian-style packages... does BSD even have packages?)
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
After getting hacked, we switched our servers from Redhat to OpenBSD. Part of this was the security audit/out of box security, and part was the belief that a more obscure system is safer. We got his with a rootkit, and avoiding Redhat/NT means we are out of the mainstream and less likely to get slammed.
I would never go back. We still have Linux boxes for Development because the Redhat KDE Workstation install is a dream, but for a server, wow, I love BSD.
The BSD methodology is more sane. The startup process is cleaner and easier to manage. My system is more organized. The Ports are terrific.
For a Workstation where I want the newest toys, I might use Linux because it always gets the whiz-bang features, although I may toss FreeBSD on a box to play with.
However, with OpenBSD I know what's up, with Linux, I find that millions of things install everywhere. Besides, my OpenBSD FTP install now takes about 10 minutes after I learned the install process, the Redhat one still takes forever with it crashing about half the time.
I realize that Redhat != Linux, but it is the most common distribution and aims for the corporate market. I feel like the Redhat system is held together with chewing gum with rediculous numbers of scripts that are hacks to hold different systems together. I should try Debian, but OpenBSD has done what I want and I look foward to trying FreeBSD. I've done NetBSD and OpenBSD systems, and they have been less aggravation than Linux installs.
I love BSD now, and I won't go back.
Alex
Here's an article where a guy started working on his own Linux distro, converted to FreeBSD, then came back to Linux. Rather interesting, and a fair look at the pros and cons of each OS.
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
"Actually, if security is your #1 concern, OpenBSD is your best candidate. Speed appears to be the FreeBSD specialty."
Gah! Brain fart on my part. I meant OpenBSD, I typed FreeBSD. I can't believe I did that...
"Always try new things; the OS world is richer now than it has been in years thanks to the free software movement. Don't become a zealot if you can help it; it stops you from being open-minded."
Absolutely! Always be willing to dive into the unknown, and come up with more insight than you had before.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Same old question as OS decisions ALWAYS come down to.
What do you want it to do?
Do you want to run the latest open source programs on the latest hardware? Linux has better hardware support than anyone.
Do you want a support stream that you're willing to pay for, and need to run Unix on Intel? Sun's support is remarkably good.
Do you want the fastest and most cleanly written OS that's being developed? *BSD is your candidate.
If security is your #1 concern, FreeBSD specifically is the beast for you.
If you want to deploy a corporate desktop environment, WinNT is probably the only option you'll be given. (and may be the best!)
If all you want to do is play games, get Win98SE.
In other words, GET THE BEST TOOL FOR THE TASK AT HAND.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
*rofl*
This has always been an argument Linux users love to ridicule in Windows users... now the shoe is on the other foot!
No, it does not.
Clearly you are having a very hard time understanding my point. My point was that the Linux community is largely made up of hippocrites, not that one should always choose the technically superior technology.
Linux community has traditionally scoffed at issues like ease of install and the usability of the user interface. They made fun of Windows users that valued user experience over technical superiority. In the face of FreeBSD, they highlight usability issues because of Linux's technical inferiority. You can't have it both ways.
Personally, I don't see a real use for Linux. That would be because it does not match the things I value in an operating system. I am in the middle of replacing my only Linux component--my firewall--with OpenBSD. My clients are Windows 2000, and my servers are Solaris. Different OSes for different needs, all of which are better than Linux for each of those needs.
Oh, and with respect to the other joker who said...
yet another "all slashdotters must thing alike" comment (disguised as an "all linux users must think alike" comment).
Generalization is critical to human thinking and discorse. You have a valid point only if one or more of the following is true:
I never said "all" of anything. I used the term "Linux users" as a generalization of the concept I use in this post of "Linux community". This is a perfectly valid generalization as long as the things I say are true with respect to much of the Linux community, regardless of its truth with respect to any particular member of the Linux community.
I hope you now better understand the role of generalization in human discourse.
In what way is the SMP support of Linux 2.4 mature? :)
Also, you're implying that mature performs better.
I, for one, can't understand your reasoning.
Regards, Tommy
A majority of my friends use FreeBSD, not Linux. You gotta choose friends :)
Regards, Tommy
This caught my eye:
Umm, didn't they pass the TB/day mark a while back (or at least go past it once)? Further, I could have sworn they did a hardware upgrade too (to a SMP Xeon box IIRC). FreeBSD is cool, but 1 TB/day is pushing a ppro 200/1G ram system a little hard for any OS...--
Fuck Censorship.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
We will write a tux vs daemon fighting game
You could do a mod for GNOME vs KDE: Battle of the Desktops with Tux and the BSD daemon. Or you could just try XTux.
Like Tetris? Like drugs? Ever try combining them?
Will I retire or break 10K?
My understanding is that gcc does not do as good a job optimizing as some other compilers.
actually, gcc is one of the most proficient optimizing compilers around. i also dont see how "not scientific" translates to "any dumb mistake is permissible" -- if a floating point operation (which was certainly optimized away by ANY compiler) changed the results, how is it "all the same" ?
All in all, this is the best comparison between FreeBSD and Linux I've seen yet.
because it gives the results you want?
The first rule of Slashdot is nobody talks about Slashdot.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
TeX, vi, anything that can abstract itself away from hardware to run portably and is mature enough for it's users not desperately upgrading each week.
> I've set up my make.conf to keep every last bit on my system completely up to date - 3rd party software included - with just that one make world.
/usr/obj was located). In this case I mount /usr/[src|obj] from a pre-built machine so I can just installworld.
Please post your make.conf file.
I fail to see exactly what I am supposed to do to keep the ~200 ports I use current. I guess I am doing something wrong here. I cvsup the base system and the port tree weekly. I make world/mergemaster weekly too. But keeping the *installed* versions of ported applications up-to-date is not something that scales well (I can see it working for a few dozen of libraries/utilities/servers/applications). For instance, objects file space needed for the compile of what I use is more than my avalaible disk space (around 5Gb free). I could not do this every night anyway, as the compile is way longer than a single night (on a K7/550)
> The only people who think apt is better than freebsd's cvsup and make are the people who dont understand it. Since Lunix users dont understand much of anything, I'm not surprised this debate always seems to visit slasshdot.
Beeing arrogant don't make you smart or 31337.
cvsup + make is of little help to keep my 486 gateway up to date (A single kernel compile take 3 hours on it. I once let a make world running on it serveral days. It never finished, because the load broke the disk where
cvsup is a fantastic tool, but keeping a binary system up-to-date with FreeBSD can be a difficult task (Hint: mozilla needs 1.2Gb of disk space to compile. Hint: all ports are not atomically updated, so you ends up with several versions of the same libraries. Hint: compiles sometimes break. Hint: some ports changed name and location)
I am quite tired of people *pretending* not understanding some the advantages of apt over cvsup/make for third party install. apt is not superior to cvsup/ports and cvsup/ports is not superior to apt. Those are different tools with strenght and weaknesses.
Anyway, show us your make.conf.
Cheers,
--fredx
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
Dude, think up.
> cvsup myPortsFileWithOnePortPerLine
You have a thick skull, don't you ? This will only keep the source of the ports current. Of course I already have the whole port tree current. I am supposed to blindly 'make -DBATCH -DFORCE_PKG_REGISTER reinstall' the 200 ports every night too ? It seem that your answer is yes. Is that better than apt-get to keep a system current ? Hardly. Why ? Because 1/ it takes forever on low end machines 2/ it breaks often because it does not respect dependancies or when multiple versions of the same pakage are installed [read pkg_version man page one of those days] 3/ it uses gigabytes of disk space.
It is people like you that give BSDs users their bad reputation.
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
I live in India where Linux is easily available. Almost every month some PC mag. has a linux distro on it and costs just 2.5$ or so. To date... having gone to the biggest bookstores I haven't come across any book carrying FreeBSD. There's a LUG in every city in India, and every guy who uses is *nix is using linux. Everyone would then naturally want to use linux then.
I have 2 FreeBSD boxes at home. 1 (3.4) is my firewall/webserver/natd box. The other (4.2) is my mp3 jukebox. (I chose webplay and it rules!)
I have never had a problem with an MP3 played over Samba skipping, and my firewall/file server box is a lowly P133. The jukebox is a P200.
For the record I just set up a Debian partition on another box, so that I can become an educated BSD snob. ;)
I personally think that the good folks at Debian should dump the Hurd and work on Debian with a BSD Kernel (GNU/BSD?).
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I hardly think that a mortality rate of 29 is less than a mortality rate of 7. The country with the best rate is bermuda with 4 and Japan with 4. The last time I checked Japan was not socialistic. hmmmmm... Next time check your facts before being stupid.
Probably a bit redundant now, maybe I'll be reiterating what everyone else has said - but here are my experiences with linux and freebsd as server operating systems.
;-)
At one job I had, we had 36 linux boxes, all loaded with Redhat 6.2. They were used for fairly hefty DNA sequencing, replacing a much smaller set of dual processor linux machines, which got binned because they kept crashing continually (certainly down to earlier 2.2.x SMP - my home SMP machine has been fine ever since I put 2.4.0-testX on it). These linux boxes would _consistently_ fall over if they went far enough into swap (512mb in each one), or just decided to be upset about life for no apparent reason. There was never a time at which all of them were working, the networking would glitch from time to time, and I absolutely hated being involved with them. They were _very_ heavily hit though.
At this point, after such a damning description, I should probably point out that I love Linux, I've been using it at home now since about '94 - with very few problems at all, bar a few buggy kernel versions and the usual disarray when libc changes
Very shortly after being involved with the linux machines, I changed job - and ended up working at a place with a big freeBSD machine. 4 CPU, 2GB ram, two raid shelves. The raiding system used was software, as at the time of installation a driver for freebsd to talk to the raid cards didn't exist (it does now) - spread across 18 disks, 9 per shelf. The system in question was hosting an entire Virtual ISP. Over 100,000 active email users, each with webspace ability (though in practise I think only about 40,000 had done anything with it), and it handled the DNS for several hundred domains. The services were tuned to 150 exim processes, 150 apache daemons, a mysql server (ick - spit), as many ftp daemons as required, and of course the DNS server. It was using two network cards because it was so busy the initial first one (100mbit) had flooded. Despite the massive IO load the machine was seeing (remember the freebsd kernel was handling a raid 10 setup - thats a mirrored pair of stripes for those who haven't come across the higher numbers) from all the apache/exim servers hitting the disks, despite the number of mails it was processing at times, and despite the fact that many of the web users had hungry CGI processes, the machine was totally _solid_, and whats more - was under perfomance capacity by quite a margin.
That's why I would use FreeBSD for a server, every single time (or OpenBSD for things like pure DNS servers - also extremely reliable). These are not comparable tasks for the servers to perform - but they _were_ servers.
Im sure other people might have reversed stories of Linux triumphing, but thats my personal experience.
I'll leave you with one final nugget of personal experience. Around the time of Suse 6.0, can't remember which linux kernel that would be, I owned a cyrix 300 with linux on it, an ancient 486 dx2-66, a 33mhz HP9000 model 400 of some description, and a 33mhz SGI Indigo. The linux machine was the only with a 100mbit NIC in it, and I gave them all turns at being an NFS server for another machine I was setting up. Can you guess which was the slowest for NFS?
Sorry Linux, I _love_ you as a desktop OS, but there's an awful lot of catching up still to be done in the server area, where *BSD really rules like a king.
All IMHO!
james
--
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
Server, coporate, enterprise, whatever... Does it play quake3 at blazing speeds?
You posted this in the FreeBSD thread. Who do you think most people are going to root for? DUH! This is like asking if M$ software is any good in a Linux mailing list, asking life-long M$ users if Linux is too hard to use, and checking with a Cisco employee to see if 3COM's products are any good...
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
Back in the day (not long ago), Moshe WAS right - but they have obviously upgraded...
The problem with capped Karma is it only goes down...
SIG: HUP
On the other hand, having documentation with such gems as the following puts MySQL on pretty shaky ground:
The most flamage you'll find among BSD "users" is right here, where anything not in the green+white coloscheme is an invitation to flame. Open and Free are both very nice operating systems, and are very similar to Linux in many ways. Most of the S/W is only a recompile away on BSD, and they're Unix in every way but the trademark.
If you're interested in trying one of them out, I'd reccomend using Slackware Linux for a while. Its installation, its init scripts and its package management are very similar to what you'll find in FBSD. It's about the closest distro to any of the BSDs you'll see in fact, and it doesn't trade off any speed, security or stability to be that way.
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
Fist Prost
"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."
-Jaron Lanier
RE: And what's this about no sound drivers? When was the last time you actually used a FreeBSD machine?
/dev/hdc from C:\
A while back - I tried installing it on my machine. It didn't recognise the sound card, and I couldn't get any of its sound drivers to work. And again, my complaint isn't about how godlike FreeBSD is or isn't - I'm talking about degree of available help for those of us who, as some charming troll mentioned somewhere else in this thread, are c0ckg0bblers not 3l337 d00dz or whatever, and wouldn't know ws023d/24 from
No matter how good you are at something, your competencies scale way down if you sidestep to an unfamiliar platform - hence it's pretty key to try and get support going, yeah?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I'm not running a server.
Your argument may very well be "well, in that case run Linux". There's nothing to say that I don't want to run a pure BSD system, but want to enjoy my sound card as well. I have a laptop, which most variants of Linux have problems with, even, and the "generic Soundblaster driver" doesn't work.
I realise you're making a specific point response to something I've said, and what you say is TOTALLY valid. But as a developer and enthusiast, I like something I can run on a lot of different machines, and which I can play around with, yeah?
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I used to use BSD. I loved it, still do. There's just one problem with it. Software! All you Linux lovers (one of which I too have become) write for Linux. Sometimes as an afterthought you'll port to BSD. Granted BSD does have an awesome ports collection, it's just a tad outdated. Plus lots of stuff will compile on BSD and on Linux, but a lot of software won't. That's the sole reason I switched over. Software...
;-)
With a lot of new Linux 2.4 kernel improvments taken directly from BSD, Linux is shaping up to be as good a bet as BSD with the added benfit of all the programmers writing Linux code. But I still think the Daemon is cooler than Tux.
ahhh....but can it play Quake?
Yes
And who does Loki align itself with when they develop stuff?
BSD, of course
http://slashdot.org/bsd/00/08/15/1541250.shtml
Ranessin
It was the RedHat "ramen" worm that made me switch. I switched to FreeBSD 4.0. Other than the hastle of copying over 3GB files, it went very smoothly. I think he's right about the speed. Remote sessions seem much faster now. OK enough advocacy already.
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
I've been tweakin linux kernels for a long time. Yet when it comes down to the dirty of having the server uptimes its always been freebsd (or BSDi). Good god i love linux for its nifty features, but when the same webserver on the same box, craps out every day on linux (2.2 or 2.4, tweaked), and lasts forever on freebsd, the problem answered itself. I wish linux had the stability in my application, but when 24/7 non-stop is my job, i'll stick to freebsd. Not as fast, not as pretty, or krad. but hey, it works. You may say my application is poor, or my hardware choice is poor, but when it comes down to explaining why the site was down to the CTO, "linux is cooler and faster" just doesn't cut it :)
The big wigs have solaris reliably as a minimum, with :) Intel/linux prices in mind, that leaves my only option to freebsd/bsdi at this point.
===sam=== free nessus vulnerability scan = www.vulnerabilities.org
I installed freebsd on a box and I couldnt get the newest version of apache for it... This is why I will be using linux, I would rather have it be BSD, but its sad that I couldnt get the newest version of php either, this bugged me. I also couldnt log in as root via ssh, why? I like BSD, but I really like the idea of linux, its so much easier and the software is more current. Then again BSD is rock solid and their version of apache isnt always going to have the same bugs as the other ports... What do you guys/girls think? should I just use bsd, or should I use linux with the new kernel? Where can I get ISO's for the dist. you suggest? Do they come as secure by default? I can install Freebsd and have it be secure with nothing open, redhat, well it cant. I would like to set up a linux box for a server, but it doesnt seem to want to happen with out much work, and I know that people will argue about how easy it is with linux, but thats not always true. Can anyone help?
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Well, this may be the reality, but I'd like to pretend in my utopian vision of the computing industry that more often then not, BSD code integrated into commercial products makes the world a better place. :)
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
If the result of my code ending up in Windows was to make Windows faster, more stable, or safer to use in conjunction with other operating systems, I'm all for it.
Part of my job as a Unix admin/integrator is dealing with Windows, and if I can do something to release fellow admins/integrators from the same hell I go through when one of these things breaks, all the better. I don't want a Windows-free world, I want a world where everything works properly.
--
All men are great
before declaring war
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
Much of FreeBSD 5's kernel development is focussed on improving SMP performance, particularly with respect to the TCP/IP stack. I don't know how long it will take for it to be declared stable, but I've had no real problems with the version that shipped in the 6-CD BSD box I found at Staples.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
Yes, I can. That is what free includes; the right to f#$% up a good thing. I don't think that Microsoft messing up a piece of code has anything to do with the license. I fully condone the right for people to use my code in whatever way they want. If they want to print it out and wipe their a$$ with it, good for them. I hope it makes them happy. And if they do, I sure as hell don't want a copy with any of the added sh^t on it.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
for they are subtle and quick to anger."
Wow, you sure did blow away everything I said with that. How did I miss that huge blindspot in my logic? Oh, wait. I didn't.
Yes, I know they are able to just sell your code without changing anything. But, they will almost never succeed at locking everyone into using their code that way. Because people will still be able to get yours for free. Remember, you have chosen what gets done with the code you wrote. Nothing, and I mean nothing, will change that unless you do it yourself (and even then -- good luck getting that opensource code locked down).
If they spend the money on marketing, I wish them all the returns in the world. They are putting something into it that I didn't and getting something out of it; which I should have no right to try and claim. I gave them my code to do with as they wanted. People can do that under the GPL just as well. I don't see a part saying anything about you seeing any of that money. Just the opposite in fact. Linux distros are the perfect picture of this. They don't change anything but they resell the programs. It doesn't profit the author any. He may get some code back later, but the same thing happens in the BSD world... we just don't force people to send the code to us. If they want their code to go far, they will try and get it added to the main base -- or distribute it themselves. It doesn't matter.
If it wasn't for the GPL "... nobody would even know free software existed." lol, that is a good one. I don't even need to respond to that. Free software has existed as long as computers have been around. No one needs the press to tell them it exists to justify its existence.
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
---
"Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins,
for they are subtle and quick to anger."
768 GB of RAM? Is that a typo?
Was that a joke?
The situations where Linux beats up on FreeBSD are rare. I know. I've seen a couple of them in live production. Most people won't. Ever.
You are exaggerating the importance of SMP, I think. Yes, 2.4 (and even 2.2) have Real SMP support, as opposed to FreeBSD 4 and earlier's "one processor for kernel space, one for user space" approach. (If that's not the God's honest truth, then it's somewhat pathetic that a quad-CPU box running threaded apps at 4.0 utilization only utilized two processors in the deployment I'm thinking of) Most users won't have to care about this if they're running x86 hardware. I have seen very few sites that needed scalable SMP and couldn't afford a Sun or Sequent box at the heart of their business. (and I simply don't trust Intel hardware for applications where I can only afford to spec a single unit in production; for clustering and server farms, it's fine)
Moreover, FreeBSD 5's SMP support is likely to be on a par with 2.4's. That's pretty damn good. I haven't seen many commodity 8-way Intel boxes, and I've never seen any non-Sequent 64-way x86 machines. Ever. (I've used plenty of the rest)
On dual-processor machines, especially webservers, I have watched FreeBSD kick the crap out of Linux. On quads, Linux does indeed beat up on FreeBSD. But most people are not purchasing 4- or 8-way chassis with an eye to expansion, the way people do with Suns (eg. 4500's with a single processor board, etc).
What worries me is that the same people who consider your post 'informative' are the ones most likely to come to the wrong conclusion.
Oh well. Anyone who believes everything they read on Slashdot shouldn't be making purchasing decisions anyways...
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
How about mature, working SMP support?
I swear, all these comments along the lines of "well, FreeBSD might be better for big servers, but..." comments crack me up. Fact is, Linux (particularly the 2.4 series kernels) trounces FreeBSD when it comes to scaling on high-end (read: SMP) x86 hardware.
FreeBSD is probably still better for single-cpu boxes (think Hotmail or Yahoo's server farms), though I haven't yet tested FreeBSD against a 2.4 kernel in this configuration.
Don't take this as a flame against FreeBSD; I cut my teeth on netbsd and 386BSD back in the day. I just find the lack of proper SMP support is a showstopper when it comes to deploying Free/OpenBSD in many environments.
-Isaac
I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. For Entertainment Purposes Only.
What religious war? They're just 3 different OS-es for different situations. FreeBSD sacrifices some portability for better performance and ease of use on the intel PC. NetBSD sacrifices some raw performance and ease of use for the broadest possible portability, and OpenBSD sacrifices some performace, ease of use and new- or exotic hardware support for more guaranteed security.
It is nothing like windows versus linux, or linux distro A versus linux distro B. When lots of people say they don't like Theo de Raadth, that doesn't make it a holy war.
He explicitely said that these benchmarks are not scientific and are merely his opinion. Therefore, this error is permissible. Besides, this optimization depends highly on the compiler used. My understanding is that gcc does not do as good a job optimizing as some other compilers. Furthermore, even if this stuff did get optimized out, I don't see how it would change the outcome of this comparison.
All in all, this is the best comparison between FreeBSD and Linux I've seen yet. Everything else I've heard up until now was basically anecdotal evidence and hearsay. Yes, this is not a real benchmark. But at least it shows some evidence.
Notice how he says that tweaking Linux improved performance a lot. If anything, this shows that out of the box, FreeBSD is better tweaked for a server than Linux, which makes sence -- FreeBSD is primarily a server OS, while Linux is targeted for both desktop and server, and different distributions configure the kernel differently. What I would like to see is a benchmark of fully-tweaked Linux (once 2.4.x tree stabilizes) and fully-tweaked FreeBSD.
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
hey man , you should try windows.
tons of books and lots of sound drivers.
Hardly, why would I have been asking if I didn't already feel that way. My impressions were already "colored".
In which case, your example of your teacher is rather pointless, since it would seem you had already made up your mind about the GPL - just as he had about the BSD license.
My point with repeating this story, was that most GPL people are like this.
This is a ridiculous generalization. Have you talked with a majority of GPL supporters? Or even a small proportion? This is like me saying, "Most BSD supporters are fascists." No supporting arguments, no personal experience - just a blatantly provocative generalization.
And the GPL itself has the same attitude. You WILL do it our way, or we will find a way to FORCE you to comply.
That's just ridiculous. If you don't use GPL'd code in your own code, you have no problem. If you DO use GPL'd code in your own code, you should at least repect the license the author of that code put on it.
Trying to make me look like a childish person throwing a mindless tantrum is a nice tactic -- but it doesn't work in civilized society.
More than anything, this sentence makes me think of a teenager saying, "I'm not a kid! Don't treat me like one!" Please, grow up and respect the fact that some people like the GPL more than the BSD license, just as you prefer the opposite.
Linux support and documentation isn't the best out there. OpenBSD, for instance, has some of the best man pages I've come across. And the book, "Building Linux and OpenBSD Firewalls" was more than enough to help me install and configure a nicely tuned daemon firewall box.
However, not everyone goes about searching for information the same way, which in the end was my main point. For some, answers will come quickly through *BSD channels. For others, a particular Linux site may be everything they'll ever need. When I was playing around with different installs on a spare box, I never could find the information needed to get a particular sound card working, or to adjust this or that feature under FreeBSD, whereas I happened upon the solutions quickly for the current Debian setup I have now.
So, as I said originally, the main reason I use Linux isn't because of it's technological superiority or even better support, just that the layout of the user support channels happens to suit me better than it might someone else.
"
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"
A while ago I was issued a Dell Inspiron 7500. After taking a good hard look at the Linux distros out there (I was running Debian on my desktop at the time, I decided to put FreeBSD on the laptop. These were my major reasons:
Do I think FreeBSD is ideal for everything? No. I'm typing this from a Mandrake box I set up for my roommate to use.
Have I become a BSD bigot? Possibly. As I type this I wear a FreeBSD shirt and a tattoo of Chuck, the FreeBSD daemon.
You're right to be angry about the teacher. The choice of license should have been up to you.
Why can't both licenses exist in the world simultaneously?
Personally I look at it like this:
The BSD license gives the code away for anyone to do with as they will, relying on the kindness of others to repay the gift in terms of giving code back to the community and not abusing it.
The GPL license is more greedy by demanding payment to use the code in other projects. The payment is that you have to put your code under the same license.
In truth the BSD license is the more 'free' in terms of the coder, and does reap benefits (as one person put it, Apple didn't base Darwin on GPLed code), but I wonder if the greedier way of the GPL is more benificial to allowing the code to propogate.
(I'm just trying to leave aside the idea of which is better for the user or which is better for the programmer and just looking at it in terms of which is more likely to provide more code back to the general 'pool', but personally I believe both licenses can co-exist and serve different purposes)
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
GNU/BSD? Would Debian dump the BSD userland (which is part of what BSD is) and replace it with a totally GNU userland?
--
SecretAsianMan (54.5% Slashdot pure)
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Hmmm, there is clear evidence of a typo in the article. I certainly believe they meant...
'This one is a dual CPU system with PentiumIII 900-GHz processors and 768 GBs of RAM. The disks are under a RAID controller, letting the five 18.2-TB disks be visible under RAID5.'
...these boxes wouldn't scale otherwise, would they ?:)
Don't obfuscate quantity for quality. Sure when I go to Borders, I see about 5x the number of books on Linux; but all but two or three of them are on "Debian for Dummies" or "Red Hat Unleashed". They aren't really technical. I can't read Debian for Dummies and understand how Linux handles those new fangled zero-copy sockets. Now there are the couple of Linux kernel books but there is also the 4.4BSD red book. It explains the whole OS! Not just the kernel. If you've ever read the needs to be updated Complete FreeBSD by Greg Lehey it's like a happy medium between r33t k3rn37 d00dz and "How to tie your shoes the Linux way."
Popularity is really not a good reason to choose something. Windows is a lot more popular than Linux. It has more users, more commercial programs, more programmers, certifications, and possibly books, training courses, and any number of other things. It doesn't make it any better, really, now does it? Yes, there are more Linux users than FreeBSD users. It doesn't really make that much of a difference.
FreeBSD already emulates most Linux software out there. It runs my SBLive natively and perfectly. I didn't install it because I wanted it to do everything Windows does, I installed it because I wanted a kick-ass Unix system to run at home. I use it for a workstation at home and have it on servers at work. It is rock solid. Easy to Upgrade? Yes every morning it cvsup's that nights changes, fixes, to the src code. Then every month I run make buildworld and make installworld and I have the latest FreeBSD every bin freshened. I used Linux since 1993, since changing to FreeBSD I've had no desire to go back. The people who are complaining about lack of documentation and resources are being silly. Besides the brand name FreeBSD books out there, there are many resources and websites with step-by-step help for newbies. IRC especially has very knowledgeable people.
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
Okay, well, this only makes sense if you have several machines (I've never seen the appeal of dual-booting unix), but there are definitely comparative advantages to each OS.
For mail servers, DHCP, DNS, NFS, firewall, NAT, etc., FreeBSD means less headaches. I've got plenty of FreeBSD boxes that have never been down except for OS upgrades or hardware moves. You can lock them in a closet and never think about it again - it's like the golden days of Novell Netware all over again. And under intense loads, say, a well-utilized IMAP or Samba server, FreeBSD keeps its chin up far longer than Linux.
However, the problem with FreeBSD is that, let's face it, the userland is just not as friendly as that in Linux. You spend days installing all the happy-fun GNU tools with useful command-line arguments and post-1970 approaches to system management, and by the time you've done that, you've kluged together a system only a mother could love. So, for day-to-day messing around, Linux can be much friendlier.
Perhaps even more importantly, the new generation of commercial software is largely just not available for FreeBSD. Want to run Oracle? Domino? You can try to shoehorn them into FreeBSD's Linux emulation environment, but I can tell you from painful experience, it's not pretty - if it works at all. And when you try to do things like linking other third-party software against the Oracle libraries under Linux emulation, you'll spend weeks up to your eyeballs in Makefiles and header files. Not worth the trouble, even for the incremental improvement in stability.
So they both have their places, and they're both well-worth learning about. But I'd be quite suspicious of someone who claims that one is a "better" OS than the other - it depends far too much on one's specific needs.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
The errors call into question his overall credibility as a 'guru'.
He states that he has introduced floating point into the C program (to make it a tad 'tougher'), when he hasn't even done that! He's trying to asssign a floating point number to a long (which is an extended int, maybe he meant double?) so the compiler is just going to chop that number to a (long) int for him, hopefully at least giving him a warning which I guess he ignored. This guy holds a masters degree in CS?
Nobody is expecting him to come up with a perfect benchmark, but 1) he could at least know something about what he's talking about before he talks about it and 2) there's plenty of existing benchmarks for web performance that he could have used rather than creating his own questionable benchmark.
For what its worth, I run FreeBSD, not Linux, so it's not that I disagree with his results, just the way they were obtained.
The article said something about Linux performing much better after hand-tuning the VM, which begs the question, seeing as how FreeBSD tunes its own VM for good default settings, why can't Linux do the same? This is just like the IDE DMA situation on BSD vs. Linux -- FreeBSD has had autodma working forever on VIA chipsets, and Linux, even in 2.4, defaults to PIO mode on IDE disks unless you enable 'highly dangerous' code. Oddly, the I/O elevator in 2.2 has a sensible out-of-the-box setting, but 2.4 requires tuning with an arcane tool called 'elvtune' or something if you want an elevator at all. Seems like a step backwards to me, regardless of how technically superior the 2.4 way is.
Unix purists go on about how the kernel should never set policy, but that's rather silly. Really, the kernel-'enforced' policy is whatever the defaults are, as most users expect the default behavior to be intelligent. People install Linux all the time and complain about how they can't do anything without getting choppy audio and mouse movement, because IDE defaults to PIO. It's rather sad that people get bad impressions of Linux because of its braindead default settings for so many things, when it's capable of doing much more.
Maybe this is work for the distros to be doing, I don't know. I suspect most of them would prefer to pass the buck as well.
It shouldn't be a matter of dumping the Hurd - if Debian dumped the Hurd, we'd lose the developers that develop the Hurd. But if you want Debian GNU/BSD, subscribe to debian-bsd@lists.debian.org and start working. The biggest problem with Debian GNU/BSD is interested workers, not anything political and certainly not anything having to do with the Hurd.
And what's this about no sound drivers? When was the last time you actually used a FreeBSD machine? Or, if you claim to be a FreeBSD user, have you not read LINT? There are tons of sound drivers. The pcm device runs many PCI and ISA cards. And what qualifies as "and the like"? My hauppauge WinTV card works better in FreeBSD than it did in Linux. The machine doesn't slow down when I watch TV. My USB mouse was spotted and configured as soon as I started the install. The ONLY thing I miss about Linux is the Nvidia drivers.
No, I'm not a FreeBSD bigot. I use both Linux and FreeBSD. If you look, I'm actually a Debian developer. They both have a place in the world. But, if you are going to post something, post facts.
J
Who moderates the meta-moderators?
From the article:
'I chose -- once again -- IBM's Netfinity 5100 server. This one is a dual CPU system with PentiumIII 900-MHz processors and 768 GBs of RAM. The disks are under a RAID controller, letting the five 18.2-GB disks be visible under RAID5.'
Damn. Makes my half a gig of RAM look very sad :)
"Mary had a crypto key, she kept it in escrow, and everything that Mary said, the Feds were sure to know."
Let's see a good clean fight.
Also on tonight's fight card:
GNOME vs. KDE
Perl vs. PHP
MySQL vs. Postgres
RMS vs. ESR
--
If FreeBSD is a server-only OS why did it get USB support before Linux did?
If FreeBSD is a server-only OS, what is PicoBSD all about?
Fact of the matter is FreeBSD serves multiple intrests as well. And it does them all reasonably well.
I've had plenty of people ask me if they should switch from MS Windows over to Linux. For some the answer is yes. But only if they're ready for the headaches that come with breaking from the pack. For others, I realise early on that they're going to be much more productive on a machine with an operating system that they're pretty much guarenteed to be able to be fixed by the local Best Buy.
It really isn't about which OS is the holy grail, perfect for all situations and godsend to all who use it. That's because such a beast doesn't exist. It's about finding the right tool for the job, and the right tool means not only the proper amount of control and features, but support and comfort for the person using it.
Despite what we geeks tell ourselves, an operating system is just a tool, not a lifestyle. Right? Right? Guys? Hello?
It's not really a matter of which is technologically superior, and I suspect that FreeBSD may in fact be so. However, in the particular style of searching for information on how to accomplish a particular task, I've always found the Linux information quicker and easier than for the FreeBSD way of doing things. Again, this doesn't mean that Linux is better, far from it. It's just easier for me to run thanks to the types of online resources I come across.
Your mileage, as always, may vary. Offer void in most major cities. Not to be taken internally, while pregnant, or running for Congress.
This, however, caught my eye:
long y;
y = 28.2839281;
x = 339829;
y = x / y;
Notice how I included some simple floating point arithmetic in the C program to make things just a tad tougher.
He admits he's no benchmark specialist, but any compiler worth its salt (and many that aren't) will optimize the floating point operations away. Also, since the result of the divide is never used, that will be optimized out, too.
I don't know what the real story is, and I do know a lot of knowledgeable people split on the Linux vs. FreeBSD issue. However, such a blatant error in benchmarking methodology gives me large doubts about this guy's credibility as a competent judge.
Popularity is really not a good reason to choose something. Windows is a lot more popular than Linux. It has more users, more commercial programs, more programmers, certifications, and possibly books, training courses, and any number of other things. It doesn't make it any better, really, now does it? Yes, there are more Linux users than FreeBSD users. It doesn't really make that much of a difference.
And besides that, FreeBSD out of the box isn't as friendly as most Linux distributions.
Care to justify that statement? Easier to learn, again, is questionable. It's easy to learn something if you have, say, a friend next door that runs the same thing. At my university, FreeBSD became very popular (much more so than Linux) because the people who took the time to help out and organize things knew FreeBSD best, and suggested people try it. Those same people who used Linux before considered FreeBSD much easier to learn. The same may apply the other way around in your area. It isn't a matter of ease, but your surroundings. If you go it alone, like I pretty much did, it ends up being a personal matter (discussed below). As for documentation, I'd say it depends on the person. The FreeBSD Handbook helped me through most of my trials, but some find it too complicated, and some find it too abstract. Greg Lehey's book is good. There're FreeBSD courses offered by BSDi, amongst others. The NetBSD documentation is technically great and complete.
Maybe when my hardware needs change, I'll run FreeBSD. If FreeBSD NFS and Linux NFS start talking to each other faster,...
The problem there is Linux NFSv3 implementation. Quite honestly it sucks.
Well, I look at it this way. I can walk into any bookstore and get an O'Reilly book detailing how to write drivers for Linux, another explaining Linux internals in detail, yet more describing for newbies how to install same. There are wonderful distributions like Debian and (well, at least when they can make a release that allows you to get the kernel to compile) RedHat, etc etc etc.
On the daemon front, I've seen books available by mail, none in the bookstores. There's certainly a lot less in terms of choice. And you can forget finding sound drivers, or the like. What you do get is the suggestion to take the drivers from the Linux people and port them yourself. Of course you can do that, because you're a g0d l337 ha>0r d00d, right? Otherwise you'd be running Windows.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
FreeBSD is a pure server OS. Nobody has to worry about the other possible applications, it is designed purely for one purpose, and one purpose alone. It does it well.
If I were running a server alone, I would use FreeBSD. For any other purpose, I would use Linux. Each have their strengths.
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
--Anticipation of a New Lover's Arrival, The