Slashdot Moving To FreeBSD

Newsforge, Slashdot, Freshmeat, and all Mediabuilder sites are moving to FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT for its increased SMP capabilities, this move should be completed by Beltaine (May 1st), leaving enough preparation time before the festival to sacrifice a goat to the SCSI gods.

CmdrTaco seems to be excited about the move, knowing there are several BSD experts on the network staff now.

"Linux's disorganization, and the fact it seems like a a bunch of unconnected developers tried to write an OS with no prior planning or agreements has been hard for us at Slashdot who have to work with the Operating System. To the users, there will be no difference, the upgrade will be seamless. Trish and Jim will be happy and they will stop their complaining about Linux," he said.

John Baldwin, a kernel hacker working on SMPng at BSDI's Open Source Division, said that "it should be able to handle Slashdot just fine, Are we done yet? I have things to code."

This also reflects a shift in focus for OSDN, as we are starting to move away from the politically charged Linux in favor of more reasonable, stable OSes.

You're sure to hear more about this transition in the coming weeks, along with some other important announcements.

Comments

editorial:

[ywwg]

I'd just like to say that this has been the most stupid, pointless, unfunny april fool's day in the history of mankind, or perhaps just slashdot. If you're going to do a joke, at least either invest an oddly large amount of time in the project (bonsai kitten) or make it very funny. There is a reason sites like nytimes and cnn.com don't do these stupid things, and that is because they are reputable news sites whose job it is to inform their readership. Slashdot, while not terribly reputable ("post first, fact-check later!"), still claims to be a news site. I think a certain level of maturity is called for at some point.

And if you're going to make jokes, make them funny, at least!

Tomorrow's news:

[tomcrooze]

April 1, 2001: Today will certainly be known as a sad day in Linux history. A large component of what made Linux successful, Slashdot.org will be moving to the FreeBSD distribution.

The White House has had tens of thousands of angry "Slashdotters" started to protest in DC, while 500 police and National Guard officers patroled the area. Angry comments to the police such as "You won't understand what Slashdot meant to me!" and "L33T HAXORS OWNZ J00!" were exchanged, resulting in a fiery clash that left hundreds dead. The remaining crowd set fires, destroyed property, and put all the W's back on the keyboards in the White House. Mysteriously, about 50 pairs of pants with what appears to be hot grits in them were left behind.

Even Natalie Portman tried to appease the crowd by unveiling a carved petrified-wood model of herself.

Riots in Redmond, Washington have also broken out, as thousands of pro-Microsofter's started tailgate parties and drunken orgies in the Microsoft parking lot. Bill Gates was quoted as saying "I'm too old for this [sexual activity]."

The global economy has plummeted, the moon has decided to start moving back towards earth, and Linus Torvalds is traveling by armored plane to Rob Malda to propose a Linux unification standard. Whether it will work out remains to be seen.

Humorous aspect

[CAIMLAS]

This is humorous simply because it's so 'last year' in nature. At this time last year, it seemed like linux might start to fracture. Now, things seem to be getting tighter and tighter, as the 'bad distributions' get weeded out, and the good ones take the precident. The fact that kernel 2.4 was (somewhat) recently released, bringing it quite near to par with the BSD kernel, just adds to the humor.

-------
CAIMLAS

Odor

[Ledge Kindred]

Is it just me, or is there a squanty type of odor about this story...

-=-=-=-=-

Re:Odor

[StandardDeviant]

Slash is written with mod_perl. It's not CGI.

Actually, slashcode is written in Gibberish. It's not mod_perl. (Well, ok, maybe it's Gibberish that plays mod_perl on TeeVee.)

--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org

Re:Odor

[pi_rules]

I agree entirely here. At first glance at the story, I'm thinking, "Okay, makes sense .. FreeBSD is supposed to the superior SMP system, right?". Wait.. backup.

A) Slashdot isn't coded for performance, never has been it seems like. It's an ad-hoc Perl/CGI implementation. This screams "bad performance" no matter what OS you put it on. Logically if they wanted a faster response time they'd code in mod_perl, php, or SOMETHING other than this archaic architecture.

B) Tracking down any nuance in the Linux -> FreeBSD transisition wouldn't be transparent. It should be, and I've never looked at the Slash code but I'm really _really_ doubting it was built with portability in mind. :)

C) With all the pro-Linux stuff I see on here I'd consider it more likely to see Natalie Portman waring a pants full of hot grits screaming "All your base are belong to us!" in the middle of Times Square than see Slahdot switch to a BSD.

The above was ment to be moderately humorous... sue me if I didn't hit my target.

Justin Buist

Packet Filtering

[nihilogos]

I'm trying to put a line in my firewall script (iptables v1.1.2) which will reject packets based on source address and the date. Can anyone help? I think this would be useful for a lot of people.

Finally?!?! NOT

[Skrap]

I finally get to be a Moderator (supreme cosmic power at my fingertips!) and I get stuck moderating people's trolls on slashdot's april fools posts? Dah. Its a cruel cruel web.

ahhh.. a perfect end to a perfect day

[mr_gerbik]

Shall I get the flamewar kicking?

WHAT???? FREEBSD 5.0 SUCKS! Why not move to OS X for godsake?! If yer gonna dump Linux, move to something worthwhile.. hell, Windows ME running Personal Web Server would be a step up!

-gerbik

FreeBSD?

[DeeKayWon]

If it were "Slashdot moving to Windows/IIS", it might've been funny.

Community reaction

[HongPong]

In reaction to this announcement, Mr. Stallman screamed in anger. "This sort-of-closed-source BSD licensing scheme is inappropriate and unacceptable, and furthermore, the press release clearly says 'Linux,' not 'GNU/Linux.' I want Taco's head on a plate with a side of refried beans, now!!"

--

In a related move...

[bryan1945]

Microsoft has decided to move to Mac OS X, while Linus believes that Windows ME 0.3 is the future of all computing. In un-related news, Sun loves AMD and SGI is may as well be dog-humping SCO. Steve Jobs has jumped in bed with the new Amiga company, and HP-UX will now be called BeOS. Wall Street has collectively commited suicide, and the American public pretty much just yawned, except for the 145 day traders who strung themselves up by the privates.....

Newsweek says, "We like cheese"