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Daemon News Publishing FreeBSD CDs
LordGibson writes: "DaemonNews.org is taking up some of the slack following Wind River's massive layoffs of FreeBSD developers. 'Daemon News has been a BSD organization from day one. We are now happy to announce that we will be publishing our own FreeBSD CD sets, beginning with the next release, 4.5, scheduled for January 2002. We offer CD subscriptions, and our subscription plans can be for any desired combination of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and Darwin. Since the FreeBSD Mall isn't offering subscriptions any more, you can get your BSD fix from us--at a better price, too.' You can read all about it here or jump for joy and go directly to the subscriptions page."
Now that direct corporate support for open source projects in general appears to be waning (what with this and other cutbacks taking place), it's good to have the community take up the slack.
At least we as a group can remember our roots, and return to them, rather than doing the human equivalent of exploding in a blaze of chapter 11.
Ok, I think that FreeBSD is cool. I like the notion of a predictable OS layout. However, I can't get my PCI modem (it is not a winmodem) to work. All of the documentation for setting the kernel up is old, and not applicable to the most recent releases of FreeBSD. The main reason I keep SuSE on my PC at home is because it works right out of the box. Any FreeBSD advocates out there who could help a BSD newbie out?
Congrats on finding a new publisher!
The middle mind speaks!
This is great news. They are a much better organization than WinDriver (division of Microsoft).
(drumroll)
*BSD is dying
That's right. No proof because it isn't true.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when last month IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in th recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
*BSD is dying
I hope that they can keep up and dont go burning CD until they are ordered (JIT inventry)
I think they should screen print some CD with just their logo on it (no version numbers so they can use it for whatever) so that it would look pro as well
throw in a book on unix programing and hey presto a Real product !
john 'what about mips distro' jones
Do the CD's from Daemonnews come with the FreeBSD stickers?
Go to the bsd newsgroups and mailing lists. Search for pci modem. You get the same response every time. "Is it a winmodem? Non-winmodems should work fine." Then there is no indication as to what the hell one should do to get a modem (like the 3Com 5610) to work. Same song and dance with no new info.
The handbook has something to say about the kernel configuration, but it is out of date.
Oh well.
The middle mind speaks!
"massive layoffs"? hah. you slashtrash kiddies will say anything to get attention, won't you? I wouldn't call 3 developers massive by any form of imagination. Yes, it sucks. But not what I would call massive, given the size of both the FreeBSD project (hundreds) and WRS (thousands).