FreeBSD Changes Hands Again

wackysootroom writes: "On January 14th, Wind River Systems, Inc. agreed to transfer its sponsorship of FreeBSD to FreeBSD Mall, Inc. This should be a good thing, since general pessimism abounded when Wind River took over Walnut Creek's BSD sponsorship. Here is the full story." There's also a story on news.com. We published a note about this in the BSD section but it deserves front-page treatment.

Comments

Awesome.

[bytor4232]

This is simply great for FreeBSD. As a long time admirer of FreeBSD, I must say I never liked the Wynd River move. I tought it did not jive with FreeBSD's philosophy. This is really FreeBSD coming home since FreeBSD Mall started about the same time that FreeBSD was beginning development back in 1991! This is really an exciting development for OpenSource, if not a victory.

Re:Opinion on WindRiver and FreeBSD & Linux

[benedict]

It is part of a business model -- FreeBSD Mall's
business model is to sell FreeBSD-related stuff,
including CDs, books, toys and clothes.

The difference is that it's a sensible, proven,
small-scale business model, not an underpants-
stealing model from the late 90s.

Re:Is it DEAD yet?

[HairyBN]

What do u mean dead??!!

Its running on a lot of big sites: Apache, Yahoo

Seems very much alive to me

But then again if you would have read the article you would know that.

Re:BSD and Hope.....

[Sivar]

I haven't used Linux in quite a while since discovering FreeBSD, so please forgive any incorrect Linux info here.
Updating FreeBSD is done entirely with CVS. With one command, you can update the source for everything including all applications installed through the Ports collection. (Well, technically it updates the list of files to download, but it works the same)
In one command, "make buildworld", you can then recompile everything on the base system using custom compiler flags for a large increase in performance. In another command, "Make installworld", it all installs and replaces the old stuff.
Updating an application installed via ports is as simple as:
"cd /usr/ports/catagory/NameOfApp"
"make deinstall"
"make reinstall"

While the updating system is nice, I personally feel that the biggest benefit of the system is that *everything* can be compiled easily with custom compiler flags. Running a system in which nearly everything was compiled for a 386 has always irritated me, because it was holding back the performance of the system. It doesn't matter for many programs (like vi, for example) but it surely does with many other applications. Who has the time or inclination to recompile everything manually?

That said, it does have a disadvantage. The kernel and the base system are very closely tied together. So closely, that if many of the base system's core files are improved in a CVS update, you not only "can" compile the full base system as well as the kernel--you *must* compile the whole thing. This takes a fairly long time. Fortunately, there are ways to speed this up immensely, but it still takes about 45 minutes even on a dual-AthlonMP with a 10,000RPM SCSI hard drive.
I know of many people that swore by apt-get and switched to FreeBSD after trying it--and I also know of many that have tried FreeBSD and went backto Linux. Usually because Linux is easier to use as a pretty graphical system since everything comes preinstalled on many distros.
...however... *My* Xfree86 and GNOME are compiled such that they are far faster than they would be on, say, Redhat. ;-) You can do the same. Give it a try. If you don't like it--no problem! You aren't using Windows either way.