Debian NetBSD

bXTr writes "Interesting project over at SourceForge. Quoting from the website, 'Debian NetBSD is a port of the Debian Operating System to the NetBSD kernel. It is currently in an early stage of development and cannot currently be installed from scratch. Instead, a tarball of the current envionment is available and can be extracted into a handy directory on a NetBSD system.' Check out the reasons why they're doing it and some interesting commentary at DailyDaemonNews on this."

Comments

kaboom

[magicslax]

Two open source minorities combine in a brilliant flash of light Because we can. .

Re:kaboom

[erlenic]

To me this kind of thing really shows the strength of the open source community. I'm sure we've all seen the flame wars that start here over the difference in the licenses, but in the end, we all have a common goal, share the source!

Re:kaboom

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so much a common goal, as it is compatable goals.

Eh... why not?

[1155]

I don't see why not, we have lindows, and now deb-bsd, so it shouldn't be bad.

Re:Eh... why not?

[jsprat]

Don't forget debian-cygwin

Debian on Windows!

debian netbsd port

[ralian]

I thought NetBSD's motto was to port to anything and everything with a CPU (viz. NetBSD Dreamcast), not to get another operating system ported to it ;)

Disclaimer: Yes, yes, I know what they did and it's not porting an OS. I just found it sort of funny, in a 'tables-have-been-turned' sort of way.

I would prefer the other way around

[horster]

personally, I would like to see a BSD distro with ports and all, but with a linux kernel.

I just installed FreeBSD recently and have to say i was blown away with how professional the installer was, very simple and powerful - not to mention the ports system.
debian is nice, apt-get is a great program and the net install is awesome, but I can't say I have much love for dselect. I think debian shows the most promise of any linux distro right now, but in terms of polish, I have to give it to FreeBSD so far.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[legend]

What is wrong with the FreeBSD kernel?

I have been in no situation where the linux kernel is better than the FreeBSD kernel.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[horster]

not so much what's wrong with the FreeBSD kernel as what's wrong with linux user land. I would like to see the FreeBSD installer & ports system, to begin with, exist on a linux distro.
I'm new to FreeBSD, so I might be wrong, but it seems like linux gets more of the new 'sexier' things. sambafs was on linux first, numa, IBM s/390 port - those kinds of things. not to mention binary support, which ok, there's linux emulation in FreeBSD, but it's easier to do it straight on linux.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[horster]

dude, chill out, I'm not dissing bsd!
binary support means I can run jdk1.3 natively without any emulation layer.
more drivers (like nvidia) are things that I do use on linux, and as for the rest, no they are not things that I need, but a possible reason why some one would choose linux over FreeBSD.

there is no need to start a flame fest here - both BSD and linux have their respective advantages.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[aussersterne]

What is wrong with the FreeBSD kernel?

FreeBSD doesn't have as many drivers for esoteric hardware. Not a technical advantage for Linux so much as a side effect of the greater market penetration.

But that's the way it is, nevertheless.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[ignorant_newbie]

why a linux kernel? i mean, the FreeBSD kernel is older, more stable, offers Linux (and SCO) binary compatability... the only area it's slighty worse than Linux at is SMP, and on an Intel system this is pretty worthless anyway.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[cymen]

I'm with you. Personally I would use a well done distrib that had the linux kernel + a base system and ports. I would also still use FreeBSD. Why do people have such a hard time seeing the benefit here? The linux kernel + base system + ports would be awesome for my laptop, desktop, etc. FreeBSD would be humming away on my servers. Of course if I started to really like the linux system better my servers might go that way too eventually but I don't see how either side would be affected negatively by a well done linux distrib that had these features.

Of course I'm not going to spend the time to make it. Talk is cheap :).

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[cymen]

Intel system this is pretty worthless anyway.

Uh... Hrm... Mind trying to justify such a position? If it is worthless why is there such an effort in the FreeBSD community to make SMP priority for 5.0? Argue the point if you must but at least make sense :).

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[Dahan]

personally, I would like to see a BSD distro with ports and all, but with a linux kernel.

Me too, but only to annoy the FSF zealots who keep insisting on GNU/this and GNU/that :) LinuxBSD would be funny--nothing GNU except for the toolchain and a few other utilities. I don't actually see a real advantage of a system like that over a standard Linux distro, but the idea amuses me :)

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[psamuels]

LinuxBSD would be funny--nothing GNU except for the toolchain and a few other utilities. I don't actually see a real advantage of a system like that over a standard Linux distro, but the idea amuses me :)

David Parsons created a distro a few years ago with pretty much exactly this in mind. Parsons on the GNU utilities: "Unfortunately, these tools come with a few albatrosses around their neck: FSF bloat, FSF philosophy, and Richard Stallman." One of his goals was to minimise the amount of GPL code in his distro.

It's called Mastodon Linux.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[Free Bird]

The BSD projects reject the Single UNIX Specification because many BSD things are just plain better than their SystemV equivalents. There is no point in reducing the quality of your software just to comply with a lame standard.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[haggar]

You don't give -any- arguments why you would prefere the Linux kernel! Well, of course, Linux ZEALOTS don't need any arguments, Linux is just better, it's the 11th commandement, I guess.

As far as I can tell, the jury is still out on the verdict whether the Linux kernel is better than FreeBSD. FreeBSD has some threading and messaging capabilities that Linux lacks.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[Anonymous Coward]

Does linux have support for usb mice yet? The last time I tried installing it, it didn't.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[scrytch]

Yah, but RMS won't shut up til ya build it all with lcc :^)

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[kan]

IMHO, because if you need high end system in the first place, you will be really better served by buying system from Sun, IBM or HP. Their offerings of enterprise-class systems are much more mature and stable than any of the i386-base alternatives on the market today.

SMPng project is not only about improving SMP performance of FreeBSD. It is also about making kernel fully preemtable, which has its advantages for real-time tasks, responsiveness in desktop and multgimedia environments. Besides, with an upcoming PPC and UltraSPARC ports having better SMP support kinda starts making more sense :)

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[Craig Davison]

If I want to mount a share over SMB in freebsd, I'm screwed. There's no sambafs in the kernel.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[cymen]

IMHO, because if you need high end system in the first place, you will be really better served by buying system from Sun, IBM or HP. Their offerings of enterprise-class systems are much more mature and stable than any of the i386-base alternatives on the market today.

One could say the same thing about a non-SMP i386-based server versus one of the high end providers. The whole point is that x86 SMP servers raise the bar without raising the prices to those high end provider levels. There might be some drawbacks to x86 SMP but we've all seen people using them for years with various versions of Windows. Obviously other people out there in the *nix world see some value in x86 SMP and are working to make it just another platform choice.

SMPng project is not only about improving SMP performance of FreeBSD. It is also about making kernel fully preemtable, which has its advantages for real-time tasks, responsiveness in desktop and multgimedia environments. Besides, with an upcoming PPC and UltraSPARC ports having better SMP support kinda starts making more sense :)

Well yes but it is also to just plain get SMP going well. That is why I don't buy your arguement :). I'm sure you have valid points but neither of your responses highlight any reason that SMP on x86 is worthless and shouldn't be pursued.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[T-Punkt]

You can use sharity-light as it`s called now (old name was "rumba"). On NetBSD the package is located in the category "net".

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[kan]

But there is. Since FreeBSD 4.4, if I am not mistaken. And external patches to do just that have existed for at least last two years. No need for sharity-light.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[kan]

On 2-way SMP machines the performance difference between Linux and FreeBSD in SMP department will be negligible. There were test from Byte magazine published recently, where misconfigured FreeBSD did more than adequate against Linux 2.4 despite the fact that FreeBSD kernel was configured with MAXUSERS value which is way to low for any reasonable use. It is when number of processors is more than two then Linux should start showing advantages. Once you abandon cheap dual-processor market segment, you will find that prices for Intel-based servers are not that different from the same class Sun or IBM boxes.

>neither of your responses highlight any reason
>that SMP on x86 is worthless and shouldn't be
>pursued.
And I never intended to argue that. I was simply stated that the importance of supporting SMP on i386 is quite overrated.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[Pseudonym]

Quite. Many of us use Linux despite the GNU userland, not because of it.

Apart from bash, that is. That beats [t]csh any day. The rest I can lose in favour of BSD.

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[cymen]

Thank you for clarifying the issue. I do not have any experience with x86 SMP servers with > 2 cpus so I did not think along those lines. I now understand where you are coming from...

Re:I would prefer the other way around

[dublin]

personally, I would like to see a BSD distro with ports and all, but with a linux kernel.

I agree. Although I think the BSD kernel is arguably superior, having a Linux kernel would allow the rapidly increasing number of commercial applications that run on Linux to work.

The big, ugly, problem for me (and almost anyone else that's really worked with and appreciated the real power of *real* Unix, as opposed to Linux) has always been the GNU utilities. They're acceptable, but just barely. GNU Documentation stinks when iut's there at all, at least partly because even most FSF-backers recognize that man pages are the expected form of OS docs and info pages are a hoppeless GNU-ism.

The GNU utilities insist on using their own hopelessly convoluted syntax, (especially the hideous "--" options, another perversity enforced by the gnazis that intentionally creates a gulf between the GNU wasteland and the civilization of the Unix/BSD world.

The BSD utilities are one of the best reasons to run BSD - they are orders of magnitude more stable and standard than their GNU hack counterparts. The code for many of these utilities is indeed old, but has not remained static: The BSD utilities provide a level of maturity that GNU will probably never reach, simply because structure and gols of their organization forces the BSD folks care about such things, while that of GNU seems to ensure that that level of care and attention will not be lavished on the code. In my mind, this is a distinction that is far too often overlooked.

Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

At least Enron isn't the only group of people jumping off of sinking ships! About time Debian started moving to an operating system that doesn't have VM problems every other release. Go ahead! Mod this one down!

Cooperation

[awgy]

To me, this is promising. I like to see cooperation between the Linux world and the *BSD world. Both have their advantages, and it'd be great if both would learn from each other more often. Perhaps this is an instance where some exchange of ideas could come about? Those responsible deserve a pat on the back.

Re:That is why Microsoft gets all the customer bas

[p24t]

Some people truly don't understand the possibilities of things like porting. Or they have no idea what porting is. Porting, in case that is the case, is making software useable to many people on different operating systems and hardware configurations. Say you want to run a program, and you're running Solaris on a SPARC. But the person who originally wrote the program wrote it for Linux, on x86. Its useful, but not to you, since you don't have what it takes to use it. Now someone comes along and ports it to Solaris/SPARC. You can now use that program. Whee!

That is why Microsoft loses a customer base. Flexability.

Its also what's great about various *NIX distros. If there's something you don't like about, say Suse (just as an example, I liked Suse) - but like some other things about it. Now someone else comes along with a Suse-based distro, or just another distro altogether, which has more of what you want. Switch. Simple as that. Use whatever you want, however you want. But if you make changes, especially really cool ones, let other people use them, too. That's just being nice.

Flexability.

Gentoo linux

[metalhed77]

Gentoo Linux has that, www.gentoo.org , it uses a ports style system, i'm not sure if it's a direct port of ports, or their own deal.

Re:Gentoo linux

[horster]

thanks, I'll check that out.

Re:Gentoo linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I tried gentoo, perhaps someday it will be in the same ballpark as FreeBSD (or even Net/Open), but not now. The install is less than perfect, the portage system currently has very little to choose from. Also, there is no BSD-style separation of base and packages.

Its a good idea though, I also would love to see BSD-like distro based on a Linux kernel.

Re:Gentoo linux

[krogoth]

What exactly is the ports system? Anyone up for some extra karma? :)

Re:Gentoo linux

[cymen]

Ports is a collection of applications that can easily be compiled for your operating system. Basically for FreeBSD you have /usr/ports. That directory contains various subdirectories dividing applications into www (apache, mod_php4, etc), lang (ruby, etc), mail (mutt, exim, etc), and so forth. Each directory for a specific application contains a number of files. Some of these are patch files that are applied to the source code of the port. See the ports tree doesn't contain the actual code of the application - it only contains enough logic to get the regular .tar.gz release (usually from the developers home site) and the patches to build it properly (particular distribution preferences on file structure, libraries, etc).

Every couple days I use cvsup to suck down the modifications to the ports tree to my FreeBSD box. Then I happen to use a relatively new tool not in the base system (portupgrade, written in ruby) to check if my currently installed packages are up to date. If they aren't, I can instruct portupgrade to upgrade them or go to each directory individually and do a "make install". Oh yeah, each directory has a Makefile :).

It's sort of like why distribute the source code if it is just going to get out of date (plus you'll be getting the source for all kinds of crap you never end up using). Of course now each application must be compiled but if you don't want to do that you can use the packages (precompiled binaries that can be added with pkg_add, etc).

Another benefit is ports can be on any version of the operating system because it is independent of the base system. Look at RedHat and you'll see compiled packages for RedHat 6.2, 7.2, etc (of course, before someone knee jerks a reply, RPMS are out there but I'm trying to make a point here). Ports avoids this. The price is compilation. A trade off. You make the call.

Hope that helps. Here is the FreeBSD handbook section for ports: ports-using.html (it contains a better description of what files are in a ports directory).

Re:Gentoo linux

[iceburn]

Gentoo uses their own program which acts like Ports. Its called Portage, and I think its written in Python. Right now they have almost 1200 packages in the /usr/portage tree. Its quite an impressive application. One of the cool things I have noticed is that when you merge the Linux kernel sources, it will also go and get the preemtible kernel patch, the low latency patch, and the XFS stuff, and it'll patch the kernel automatically! It also does a great job of finding dependencies, and you can even specify what a given package should compile in, for instance if you want to merge vim, it will tell you it needs XFree86 (if you don't already have it merged). If you don't want it, you can take X out of the USE variable, and it will compile vim without X. Very flexible.

how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[horster]

is it just me or is it terribly pretentious to take the work of the NetBSD team, shove some debian/gnu stuff on top of it and call it a GNU-based operating system?

Re:how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[CatherineCornelius]

is it just me or is it terribly pretentious to take the work of the NetBSD team, shove some debian/gnu stuff on top of it and call it a GNU-based operating system?

The beauty of the Debian approach is that sits a GNU system on top of a kernel. Source packages developed for Debian should build and run on any Debian system. The kernel is just a way of getting to the metal.

Re:how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[nomadic]

I don't see how you can refer to Debian as an "operating system". I mean, they do nice work, but an OS without a kernel is just a bunch of applications and utilities.

Re:how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[CatherineCornelius]

I don't see how you can refer to Debian as an "operating system". I mean, they do nice work, but an OS without a kernel is just a bunch of applications and utilities.

That's perfectly correct--the Debian system is aiming to independent of the kernel, so it seems to be developing into a portable userland (not a word I had encountered before, but suddenly everybody seems to be using it!) on top of whatever kernel you like.

Incidentally I notice that there was some debate on the Debian-BSD list as to whether to use the GNU name here, since unlike HURD they don't have libc6, and it's been argued that many essential parts of Debian aren't GNU anyway. And they might want to give the sysadmin the option of building a more BSD-like system (since the BSD userland is there for that kernel). The consensus so far seems to be Debian NetBSD.

Re:how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[ideut]

Yes. In the olden days computers were so hard that technicians were employed full time to operate them. These technicians were not the people using the computers for research. They were just there to operate the machines. When the operation of the machines became automated, the system that did this was called an "operating system". So you're right, the term operating system is a lot lower level than many people realise. Anything that isn't to do with multiplexing the hardware isn't part of the OS. It's part of the user environment.

Re:how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[Fluffy the Cat]

No more so than taking the work of the Linux team, shoving some debian/gnu stuff on top of it and calling it a GNU-based operating system. Linux is GPLed, but it's not part of the GNU project. If the GNU C library was being used, I don't think there'd be any real argument. As it is, I'm not so sure.

Re:how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[SpinyNorman]

Uh, no... Debian sit's a GNU system on top of the GNU glibc library, just the same as any other Linux distribution.

The glibc library provides the userland interface to the kernel.

Re:how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[Dahan]

Actually, it runs perfectly fine. Nothing in gnusrc is critical, and depending on what you want to use the system for, gnusrc might be completely useless. The only thing GNU I have on my Compaq IA-1 is grep, and it's running NetBSD without any problems at all. If I really wanted to, I could probably ditch grep and replace it with awk to be completely GNU-free. But I deleted the GNU stuff (and a bunch of BSD stuff too) for space reasons, not anti-GNU reasons.

Re:how is it GNU-based if it has a _BSD_ kernel?

[Arandir]

The glibc library provides the userland interface to the kernel.

Um, no. The *kernel* provides the userland interface to the kernel.

Since 1999

[kenneth_martens]

If you check out the mailing list archives, you can see the project has been ongoing (or at least discussed) since May 1999. It just until now to get it to the point where it actually sort of works.

Re:Mirror of wonderful post

[AnimeFreak]

Buddy, the MySQL settings are probably set to a low queue limit and since the queue limit is full it is rejecting all incoming connections until a spot is availble.

I know this from experience. They probably have set it down to a lower level because the system can't handle a higher queue level.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[tao]

Why on earth why would you want a linux kernel in BSD userland? Do you really want a horribly broken VM system and every yahoo who can type hello world submitting patches? Thats why I like BSD. Theres a core group in charge of what goes and what stays. Who has the final say so in the linux kernel?

Ever heard of Linus Torvalds? Oh, and for the v2.4 kernel it's Marcelo Tosatti, for v2.2 it's Alan Cox. For v2.0, it's yours truly. It's hardly like anyone can get their code into the kernel. Anyone is free to submit patches though. That doesn't mean it'll get in.

As for the VM, yes, there have been problems (mostly with corner-cases, though), but v2.0.xx has a stable VM, v2.2.xx has a stable VM now, v2.4.xx has a stable, if somewhat unoptimal VM now, and v2.6 will hopefully have Rik van Riel's VM, which shares a lot of similarities with the VM from FreeBSD, but with some Linux-specific adaptments.

So please, don't spread FUD.

You don't understand.

[alfredo]

Because we can is the spirit behind all great or not so great endeavors. You can never tell what might come out of it.

So how long...

[nrc]

So how long before they declare that we have to start calling it GNU/NetBSD?

Re:So how long...

[rjamestaylor]

• So how long before they declare that we have to start calling it GNU/NetBSD

How about GNUtBSD, for short?

Re:So how long...

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know, but I can say it will happen before Richard Stallman takes a shower.

gentoo.org not available

[horster]

I wonder if the project is still going.

Debian is not Linux

[CatherineCornelius]

To me, this is promising. I like to see cooperation between the Linux world and the *BSD world.

Well I agree with you that it's promising, but do remember that the Debian project is not Linux, but a GNU operating system. There is Debian GNU Linux, and there is Debian GNU HURD, and now (apparently) Debian GNU BSD.

Re:Debian is not Linux

[lertl]

GNU BSD is an oxymoron, isn't it? :-)

Re:Debian is not Linux

[SpinyNorman]

That's true of EVERY Linux distribution - they all pair the GNU libraries (glibc, etc), GNU tools (gcc, etc), with Linux kernel. There's no such thing as a non-GNU Linux system, and I don't think anyone trying to sell a Linux distribution that consisted of Linus's kernel sitting on a CD all alone would get too far! ;-)

Re:Debian is not Linux

[efgbr]

Just a small correction: there's no such thing as GNU Linux. Linux would be called that way if it were a GNU project.

Instead, use GNU/Linux, GNU/Hurd or GNU/BSD.

Re:Debian is not Linux

[Arandir]

remember that the Debian project is not Linux, but a GNU operating system.

Bullhockey! The name of the operating system is "Linux". The name of the distribution is "Debian". As the distributor, Debian could call the OS any damn thing they want. They could have called it "Fred", but they chose "GNU/Linux" because that involved the least amount of bloodshed on the Debian mailing lists.

A few definitions are in order:

Operating system: "software that controls the operation of a computer and directs the processing of programs (as by assigning storage space in memory and controlling input and output functions)" [Merriam Webster]. This specifies a kernel and some bits of surrounding infrastructure (such as a filesystem, init scripts, etc). Everything else is extra. They are not part of the operating system.

The GNU System: An operating system created as part of the GNU Project. The FSF very clearly refers to GNU as "an operating system". Unfortunately, the FSF doesn't really know what an operating system is. They talk about games and mail clients and all sorts of stuff that aren't part of operating systems. It really seems that they aren't describing an operating system, but an overall collection of software that just happens to include an operating system.

Until Debian releases "Debian GNU/Hurd" in a finished state, there will be no GNU System.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[jelle]

" Theres a core group in charge of what goes and what stays."

Actually, in Linux it's the same (f.e. Torvalds, Cox, Tosatti).

And with BSD carrying the BSD license, anybody can take the code and do anything to the code. And with the freedom the BSD license gives to everybody, the 'takers' don't even have to contribute anything back, not even credits.

Guess how we ended up with so many different *BSD versions? Yes, the BSD license, and the tight control of the people running some of the BSD projects have created multiple forks already.

Some people think that all that is good, others think that is bad, which is one of the reasons why there always will be BSD _and_ GNU.

Personally, I haven't made up my mind about that yet, but I use Linux because it has Debian and interesting developments such as the vservers patch (=jail++).

Debian for *BSD is a good thing, it will make it easier for Debian-users to give *BSD a try.

works for me

[metalhed77]

works for me

Re:ROFL

[tao]

Grow up. No, the code has not been stolen in any way (and for that matter, using it wouldn't be stealing anyway, because of the license... But that's beside the point.) Rik van Riel has been talking a lot with the FreeBSD VM-wizards, and looked at the FreeBSD code. He has then developed a VM of his own for the Linux-kernel.

Oh, and it's not like *BSD is totally free from influence from the Linux-kernel... Just face it, the point of open-source is to help eachother out.

hmm

[Enrico Pulatzo]

How's that for your hardcore, commie conspiracy?

Try these

[Arker]

Slackware, the daddy of em all - still alive and kicking. Very BSDish install, similar package handling, BSD init. No ports system last I checked :( but a very friendly system otherwise for compiling from source. http://www.slackware.com

Gentoo, a newcomer, to oversimplify a little the idea seems to be Slack+Ports. Haven't used it yet, heard some great things, sure looks promising. http://www.gentoo.org

Also another similar project that was just recently reported here - sorcerer linux. Don't know enough about it to differentiate it from gentoo, the ideas seem very similar unless I'm missing something (quite possible, haven't had the time to try either.) http://sorcerer.wox.org/

Re:Try these

[horster]

yeah, right now slack is absolutely my favorite (posting from it on my laptop right now), but I am concerned with the one man show aspect of it, and the silence on the website.

the lack of a network install was too much of a pain for me last week so I just went ahead and installed freebsd (i lost my copy of slack 8.0 somewhere along the way).

Re:That is so exciting *yawn*

[The FooMiester]

which piece of news do you think is more insignificant ?

well, what's significant is that we can run NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on NetBSD on Debian on . . . .

segmentation fault. core dumped.

Awww, shucks. I was having fun

Mac OS X will unify the *BSDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Really, the convergence of Debian package management, GNU utils and NetBSD kernel isn't all that special and WILL NOT create a stronger, unified, easy-to-use UNIX variant.

Please, try Mac OS X; there's every advantage to it without all the traditional UNIX disadvantages.

• Simplified installation - OS X installs easily
  
• Easy-to-use interface - A yummy GUI interface that a first-time user can grok, with an excellent command shell for advanced users.
  
• Powerful inexpensive yummy hardware - G4 PowerMacs trump x86 by a long margin and cost much less than underperforming but expensive SPARC, MIPS and the PeeCee user's Holy Grail of DEC Alpha, which was intended to run WinBlows from the beginning and is dying anyways.
  
• Best design - look at the new iMac! Complete Apple Goodness from the small footprint to the sharp LCD display, all surrounding a powerful G4 processor.
  
• Open Source, even though GNU zealots will not agree. Fellow BSD'ers will soon recognize the errors of their ways and join ranks with the Apple crowd.
  
• Mac's ain't PeeCee's ;-)
  

My hope is that OS X will unify the BSDs into its proper place - at the top of the OS food chain. Many Free/Open/NetBSD users are coming to that conclusion as are many Linux users, beset with flaky kernels and horrible OS packaging.

Apple OS X and the *BSDs will be our answer to WinTel/Linux obsolescence.

Re:Mac OS X will unify the *BSDs

[CatherineCornelius]

[MacOs X has] Powerful inexpensive yummy hardware - G4 PowerMacs trump x86 by a long margin and cost much less than underperforming but expensive SPARC, MIPS and the PeeCee user's Holy Grail of DEC Alpha, which was intended to run WinBlows from the beginning and is dying anyways.

I don't know where you get your hardware from, but it is my experience that the cheapest powerful kit around is Intel-compatible. I'd love one of these Mac boxes, but I just cannot afford one.

And as for the alpha, it was originally designed by Digital to run its VMS operating system, not Windows, which was at that time a 16-bit shell running on top of MS-DOS.

Re:Mac OS X will unify the *BSDs

[nrc]

Holy Khrushchev Macman, were you banging your shoe on a podium during that speech?

Really now, anyone who thinks the G4 has kept pace in the CPU wars can hardly be expected to understand why an open source OS doesn't correct the problems with running a proprietary GUI on proprietary hardware.

yeah but,,,

[fiftyfly]

how would you pronounce that? "nut-bastard?"

Re:yeah but,,,

[questionlp]

Or "not-BSD" or "not-Beastie" :)

There is a huge need for something like this

[mrbnsn]

Right now if you need any sort of third-party application support (Oracle, etc.) or kernel threads (Java Hotspot, etc.) you need to run a Linux kernel.

If you don't need third party application support or kernel threads, however, FreeBSD has a much more solid, reliable kernel.

It would be excellent if you could maintain different machines with different kernels as needed, but have everything on top of that be Debian (both because Debian is excellent, and because supporting a heterogenous OS environment is a pain best avoided if possible).

Re:There is a huge need for something like this

[mrbnsn]

I know this may be hard for some people to understand, but generally speaking, when you pay for a piece of commercial software, there is an expectation of commercial support for that software.

Yes, it is possible to buy a Linux license for Oracle and run it (with some fiddling) on FreeBSD, but Oracle won't support it, which sort of defeats the purpose.

Debian is an OS?

[CheeseMunkie]

*blink*

I thought Debian was a distribution? That is, it's a kernel and assorted utilities. If we want to get right down to it, I always thought the kernel itself was the OS...

What makes a distribution is its installer and software management. That is, the main difference between SuSE and Debian and Red Hat is yast, apt, and rpm. So... They're porting apt to NetBSD? That's well and good, but is both unnecessary and not worth this fanfare.

Re:Debian is an OS?

[Carlos Laviola]

Debian is independent of kernels. We have Debian Hurd already to prove that, and hopefully, we'll have Debian NetBSD, which will kick ass :-)

Re:Debian is an OS?

[someonehasmyname]

no, the kernel is the kernel, and the os are all the apps debian wrote to interact with the kernel and the kernel. a windows nt machine uses microsoft's nt kernel, but it's still the windows os. all linux distros are their own os's with their own unique directory structure (debian puts rc files in "/etc/rc.d/rc1.d" whereas redhat thinks they should be in "/etc/rc1.d", etc.) netbsd, or more preferable freebsd (I had to plug it), supply their own kernel and userland apps that make up the os.

Re:Debian is an OS?

[Fluffy the Cat]

They're porting apt to NetBSD?

No, we're porting Debian to NetBSD. A distribution isn't just its installer and package management. There's the way the filesystem is laid out, the way the tools are configured by default and the philosophy behind the development.

Re:Debian is an OS?

[rking]

I don't think so; an OS is those utilities PLUS the kernel.

That's what he said, though the first sentence was rather clumsy :
"no, the kernel is the kernel, and the os are all the apps debian wrote to interact with the kernel and the kernel."
those last 3 words are to include the kernel as part of the os.

Re:Debian is an OS?

[Arandir]

In the Debian world, the OS is anything that would cause RMS to explode if it didn't have the prefix "GNU".

Orwell was right. GNU has been redefining the English language for 18 years, so it's to be expected that Gnuliban can't think straight anymore.

They're not cooperating...

[greygent]

In fact, the BSD world seems largely annoyed at these folks.

I personally don't see the reasons for this project, other than political. However, this is the beauty of the freedom of the BSD license.

Re:They're not cooperating...

[Carlos Laviola]

Their motivation is quite clear to me: have another choice of a kernel that is already robust and better than the Linux kernel in certain areas, and have the nice, organized and easily upgradable Debian on top of it. Come on, building *everything* from source is so much more trouble than apt-get dist-upgrade. Think XFree86, Mozilla, etc.

Re:They're not cooperating...

[Fluffy the Cat]

In fact, the BSD world seems largely annoyed at these folks.

Really? We've got some BSD developers happily working with us. Nobody has yet actually made their displeasure at the situation known, other than some bitching on Slashdot-alikes. If they are annoyed, they're not annoyed enough to actually do anything about it.

I personally don't see the reasons for this project, other than political

That's why I went to the bother of writing this page.

I shoulda seen this one coming...

[xcomputer_man]

Finally, it's the GNU/BSD distribution!

Re:I shoulda seen this one coming...

[CatherineCornelius]

Finally, it's the GNU/BSD distribution!

Gnu's not Unix...except when it is.

Re:I shoulda seen this one coming...

[styrotech]

Any BSD you can legally distribute freely is not UNIX (tm).


Thank you for that insight Rev Don Kool.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[CheeseMunkie]

" Theres a core group in charge of what goes and what stays."
Actually, in Linux it's the same (f.e. Torvalds, Cox, Tosatti).

This is true of the kernel, but the kernel is not the whole deal. One of the major problems with Linux is *that* it's every yahoo for himself -- Cox and Torvalds and a few others do the kernel, the glibc people are a different bunch, the X consortium, the ISC, Apache Foundation, plus all those assorted little libraries, you know the type, it's a kinda neat library, but you've only found 1 app that needs it ... Everyone does their own thing and contributes it to the slushpot, but nobody controls the pot.

So, where the BSD team is some 10-20 people who can all get in a room and hash out details and come out with a coherent ports system, or a standard place to put software (apache goes in /var/www? Wtf patrick?), the Linux world is far too big to do that. Hell, we can't even document stuf coherently -- everything has its own man page, readme, manual, plus linux documentation project. Compare to FreeBSD's Handbook.

This is a weakness in the Linux system of cooperation. It's also a strength. Just as no one can take control of the whole thing and fix it, also nobody can break the whole thing. Even if Linux and Cox between them decided to sabotage Linux, they couldn't, whereas one guy with cvs commit privileges on cvsup.freebsd.org could give himself a root shell on every BSD box on the planet. (Okay I exaggerate -- he'd get caught, probably, but that's only because most of the people working on BSD are good guys.)

I don't like it

[znu]

The thing I've always really liked about the BSDs is that they're complete and separate systems that include everything from the kernel to the userland tools, all integrated by one team. Compare with the Linux world, where you have a bunch of different distros that many people pretend are all the same OS (in spite of the fact that file systems are arranged differently, boot sequences are different, configuration is different, package management is different, userland tools are often different, etc.) because they happen to use the same kernel. The BSD way has always seemed a lot cleaner to me. The idea of seeing a myriad of distros based on the BSD kernels really isn't one that I like. I believe it's a step in exactly the wrong direction. Open source Unix needs more standardization, not more fragmentation.

Re:I don't like it

[Skuld-Chan]

Ever take a look in the linux kernel source? There's a lot of code and drivers that came from bsd...

Re:I don't like it

[Raving]

This is oh such a troll !

Giving choice has never been a problem in the Open source world, and the good ol' argument about "all those people are wasting their energy, they should team up !" doesn't take into account the way people work.

If anyone likes a project, he will join it. But if he doesn't, he will start hims. Is this a problem ? There is no such think as a best solution for the environment/distro/kernel choice ; being able to take whatever best fits your need is hence a big plus.

Re:I don't like it

[Ami Ganguli]

In a way this is standardization, just of a different kind. In the past, if I wanted to use both Linux and NetBSD I was forced to use too completely different operating systems. Different packaging systems, different user environments, etc. Now I can use the Linux, NetBSD, and Hurd kernels while sticking with my 'standard' Debian operating system.

I, for one, welcome the idea. It makes it far more likely that I'll consider using the NetBSD kernel at some point in the future.

Re:I don't like it

[Arandir]

Except Debian isn't an operating system. The operating system will still be NetBSD. The Debian bits could be called the operating environment, but it certainly is not the software that directs and controls processes, manages access to hardware, etc.

Re:I don't like it

[IkeTo]

> Compare with the Linux world, where you have a
> bunch of different distros that many people
> pretend are all the same OS (in spite of the fact
> that file systems are arranged differently, boot
> sequences are different, configuration is
> different, package management is different,
> userland tools are often different, etc.) because
> they happen to use the same kernel.

That makes it extremely easy... just use <add-your-dist-name-here>Linux! I use Debian GNU/Linux, and every installation of Debian GNU/Linux use the same boot seqence, same filesystem hierarchy, same configuration, same package management, same set of userland tools which can be chosen by sys-admins, ... There is no diversity to deal with!

Well... there is version differences, but there is version differences even in BSD, so it shouldn't count. ;p

How about the size of user base? Well... Just Debian GNU/Linux beats all BSD summed together hands-down! So don't worry about specializing just in Debian, it is still better than BSD!

If you don't think that "Linux" suffices to pinpoint your knowledge about your OS, just be more specific.

Re:I don't like it

[Ami Ganguli]

That's entirely a matter of definition. I think saying that the operating system consists of only the kernel (which is arguably the least visible component) is a bit of a stretch. The Microsoft position that the operating system is everything that's shipped on the CD is a little extreme as well.

Re:I don't like it

[Arandir]

That's entirely a matter of definition.

Everyone has their own definition, which is why I use the definition in the dictionary (www.m-w.com). Turns out that despite RMS's protests to the contrary, emacs, gnuchess and GNOME are not parts of an operating system.

Re:I don't like it

[Ami Ganguli]

...controlling input and output functions.

GNOME controls input and output functions (along with X). That would make it part of the operating system according to the M-W definition.

Don't have to install from source...

[greygent]

In the BSD world, we not only have the ports collection, we have the packages collection, too. So there's no need to compile everything from ports :-)

Re:Don't have to install from source...

[Carlos Laviola]

But do you keep this as updated as the ports collection? Because Debian is the equivalent of running a bleeding-edge *BSD, I think (updated by CVS daily, rebuilding the whole system as often as possible).

Re:Don't have to install from source...

[Carlos Laviola]

And of course, the user doesn't need to build from source, only fetch the latest packages available. If he uses the unstable branch of Debian, he's getting all the latest goodies, often ASAP.

Re:Don't have to install from source...

[T-Punkt]

Since you mention -STABLE you're obviously talking about FreeBSD.

For NetBSD (and I'm pretty sure for OpenBSD as well) there's no need to make seperate sets of precompiled packages for -current and RELEASE since packages made for RELEASE run on -current as well.

(There's no NetBSD -STABLE tree, just -current and RELEASE.)

I support it as a server over debian linux

[Billly Gates]

Linux has some serious issues . I like the Freebsd development model better then linux thanks to all the issues with the 2.4 patches. My problem with FreeBSD is that its cripppled after the install is done. Hardly anything is configured. I feel like a kid stuck on a pogo stick when trying to do anything. For example under WindowMaker you need to put every item one by one to the x menu. No config menu's here. Also not even bash or frankly any shells besides the crippled bsh is installed by default. You need to edit all the files yourself assuming your unix literate. All just to learn it. That is crazy. Why? What a pain. Its not FreeBSD per say but unix in general that suffers from this. Linux breaks the mold. Unless you have 5 years expereince or a cs degree you can not really tune it or highly configure it. In Windows you can just point and click and all the items are in the start menu by default. There is an old saying. IF computers were airplaines the unix one would be the best. However you would need to assembly it yourself. I believe Linux took off because the distro's configure everything for you. Don't get me wrong when I say that BSD is a great server OS. I just hope debian *bsd will fix this which actually knowcked unix almost out of the workstation market. I have never used debian linux so I don't know how much is configured by default during installation. I just assume its better then the current netbsd.

Re:I support it as a server over debian linux

[archen]

I'm not sure this guy should be moderated down as a troll since I find what he says to be somewhat true. I used Linux for a while before I switched to FreeBSD (which I'm much more happy with). The first thing to keep in mind is that of course BSD expects you to do your howework. No cute configureation utilities with BSD. But with that said, (as the post above states) there are gaping holes with certain parts of the install. My main gripe was also with Window Maker and bash. I mean if I choose bash for a shell, I would hope that the correct rc/profiles are copied (or even created) but they are not. Window Maker I found to be especially annoying. If I use Window Maker I would EXPECT that the X apps that I installed would be on the menu. Again this isn't the case. You instead end up with a generic config - much of which was a bunch of things on the menu for things I didn't even install (thus pointed off into lala land).

Now some people say FreeBSD isn't a desktop OS. To me FreeBSD is as much a desktop OS as Linux is for the most part. KDE is KDE as far as I'm concerned, reguardless of OS. But there are some people (such as myself) that like to use X on more serious machines in order to see more than one terminal window at once, for which a lower footprint WM like Window Maker or fvwm are perfect.

It's just a bit of nit-picking about BSD. If they are going to offer the option, then they need to pull their head out of their arse and CONFIGURE that option (not the half assed here you go, figure it out yourself).

Re:I support it as a server over debian linux

[Arandir]

For example under WindowMaker you need to put every item one by one to the x menu.

That's the way it is supposed to be. Windowmaker is not FreeBSD and FreeBSD is not Windowmaker. They are separate projects. For FreeBSD to come along and decide what entries you must have in your wm menu would be the height of arrogance.

I used a Linux distro once that kept modifying my Windowmaker menu. It drove me nuts. I kept removing stuff and Redbutt kept putting it back in. So I tried another distro and it did the same damn thing, but went several steps further by removing every manual configuration I made every time it booted.

Dammit! Leave my configuration alone! If some distro wants to ship with default configs for the newbies, more power to them. But don't touch my configs after I do. That's more than rude, it's Evil.

Unless you have 5 years expereince or a cs degree you can not really tune it or highly configure it. In Windows you can just point and click and all the items are in the start menu by default.

Since when did you need a 5 year degree to add items to a menu?

I believe Linux took off because the distro's configure everything for you.

Linux took off long before the hand-holding distros should up. Go use Redhat 4.2 and see how easy it is. It was a nightmare of unusability. But it was the most popular distro at the time the world begin to discover that there was such a thing as Linux.

Interesting Linux Mentality

[pHDNgell]

For the longest time, people would argue about how Linux isn't an operating system, just a kernel from which an operating system is made. Now people are going out there and taking a complete operating system, pulling a part out of it, and sticking it in the middle of what was normally a Linux distribution.

Linux is a Kernel without an operating system. NetBSD is a complete operating system where everything is designed to work together seamlessly.

What's next, DebiaNT?

how different (from standard netbsd) is it?

[foonf]

Did they just port apt and dpkg, and put up some Debian-packaged NetBSD binaries? Or have they moved to a Sys V init system, ported the Debian administration and configuration tools, and all the other stuff that makes debian distinctive? They explicitly say that NetBSD doesn't support runlevels, and looking at the package list, it doesn't look like much of the debian tools have made it yet.

If its just a different package system, its pointless. Less work, and more immediately useful results, would be modifying apt to work with the current binary package system (which actually does support dependencies, etc.), and the large number of binaries in this format already available.

If not, its a more questionable proposition. Arguably, its not really BSD anymore...it runs NetBSD binaries and uses that kernel, but the userland is basically Debian, ie, just like any Linux distribution. And most people who want that should just assume use Debian with the Linux kernel, which is a far more mature combination. Yes, for VAXen, toasters, slide rules and other more arcane platforms this won't exactly work, but Debian-NetBSD doesn't seem to have package for these platforms anyway.

Re:how different (from standard netbsd) is it?

[pHDNgell]

Or have they moved to a Sys V init system

This would be a pretty big step backwards. The NetBSD startup stuff is far superior to SysV. They wanted to move to a similar model for a while, but anyone who's ever used SysV startup on a real system understands the problems.

Their current system allows you to drop files in a directory for startup that contain no special file names. They may list internally what service they provide, and what service they require and they will be sequenced properly. If you run two things that require network and don't provide anything that anything else requires, they'll get run after the network portion of the startup runs. There is no special shell scripting based on requested command (i.e. how many SysV startup scripts have you seen that implement ``start'' but not ``stop?''). Best thing is they're tiny, and they grow with the system. You define a couple variables and then do ``run_rc_command "$1"''

I think it's cool that people are trying different things, and I don't care as long as it's not wasting me money, but they'd probably be better off learning from a system rather than trying to assimilate the kernel while throwing away the other good stuff.

Re:how different (from standard netbsd) is it?

[Fluffy the Cat]

Apt and dpkg have been ported. We're working on porting the administrative and configuration utilities. The idea is not to just package NetBSD binaries - the idea is to build the Debian source packages on NetBSD except in cases where that's impossible, and in those cases to produce packages that provide as much of the same functionality as possible.

Less work, and more immediately useful results, would be modifying apt to work with the current binary package system

I'd argue with the "less work", but anyway. Connectiva have ported apt to work with RPMs - that doesn't make it Debian. We're not trying to produce a NetBSD varient using Debian packaging tools. We're trying to produce Debian running on top of the NetBSD kernel.

Arguably, its not really BSD anymore

By some values, this is probably true.

Debian-NetBSD doesn't seem to have package for these platforms anyway

Yet. Once we're running on one architecture, this ought to happen.

Re:kernel performance

[someonehasmyname]

"I don't think Linux" = "I don't think Linus"

Do you care about your kernel?

[BrookHarty]

I started using linux because it had the hardware support I needed, and support was 100x better. But it wasnt stable enough for my server, so I ran freebsd. But that was a few years ago. Ive always been able to explain to my friends who run BSD, that I need SMP support, so I run linux. But its also how linux has better configuration utilties and drivers. After using linux for years, I know where everything is, easy to setup and fix.

Now, Linux is rock solid, and I get to laugh at my friends who cant X setup on thier freebsd boxes. But then, by the time a good bsd distro will be out, newer and better linux kernels will be out, with new vm's and more features.

-
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny ...' - Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992)

Re:Do you care about your kernel?

[BrookHarty]

That is not a troll post.
Does netbsd support SMP yet? Valid points.

Re:Do you care about your kernel?

[kan]

They posted screenlog of the multiprocessor VAX box booting NetBSD some time ago. This is probably the oldest working SMP machine in existence.

Re:Do you care about your kernel?

[Arandir]

I get to laugh at my friends who cant X setup on thier freebsd boxes.

Funny, it's the same damn X on *BSD and Linux. It installs and sets up exactly the same. Now if you're talking about Linux front ends that try to simplify the procedure, like DrakX which has never failed to royally hose my XF86Config, you can have them.

Re:Do you care about your kernel?

[The Finn]

there is support in -current for SMP on i386, VAX, and alpha. (links are to old posts in tech-kern.) work is in progress for sparc, mips, and maybe a few others. (m68k?)

one of the goals is to get SMP branches merged back into the trunk for 1.6.

Transition

[tiny69]

Not too long ago, someone made the comment on slashdot about the general progression of Linux users. As a users becomes more experienced with Linux, they tend to shift from:

Mandrake/RedHat -> Debian/Slackware -> *BSD

It seems that Debian is going to make that last transition a little easier.

Re:Transition

[yobbo]

It all depends on how many stories are posted about specific distro's. If the number of stories about mandrake or SuSE were higher than other distro's, then naturally you'd have a higher total of debian loving posts. It is the same with Gnome or Kde. If there were alot more stories about gnome, then one's general perception of the "progression of linux users" would be that KDE is the most stable and user friendly desktop for linux, and that they are all refugees from Gnome.

Re:Transition

[m_ilya]

Funny but I've switched my desktop OS in slightly different order:

RedHat -> Slackware -> FreeBSD -> Debian

For desktop OS I find Debian Linux more convient than FreeBSD for two reasons:

• Linux have better support for multimedia devices than FreeBSD
• Debian have more prepackaged software than FreeBSD and in general quality of debian packages is better than FreeBSD ports thanks for Debian strict packaging policy.

Re:Transition

[mdw2]

I made that exact same transition, as my first installation was redhat, after a couple months, i just couldn't stand RH any more, then i moved to slack. Eventually when i had some hardware failures i decided to go with freebsd, that lasted about 8 hours, because i realized i couldn't get hardware accelerated openGL for my geforce2mx in freebsd. I'm not sure if this is still the case, hopefully it's not, as I would love to be able to use freebsd more, simply because i LOVE /usr/ports.

Re:Transition

[Arandir]

Linux have better support for multimedia devices than FreeBSD

A valid reason. But don't go to overboard in demanding multimedia support, or you'll end up using Windows :-)

Debian have more prepackaged software than FreeBSD

FreeBSD has 99% of what Debian has. Of that remaining 1%, they're 99% Linux-only programs. Who needs linuxconf on *BSD anyway?

Re:Transition

[m_ilya]

FreeBSD has 99% of what Debian has. Of that remaining 1%, they're 99% Linux-only programs. Who needs linuxconf on *BSD anyway?

I had FreeBSD on my desktop for three months (and I still use it on servers) and I'm using Debian Linux testing now for long time so I've some experience with both systems. Belive me there are tons of software which I use and which are not in FreeBSD's port collection but are avialable as Debian packages. It is not 1% and is not Linux specific.

And anyway I belive quality of packages in Debian is higher. At least I have seen much more problems with FreeBSD ports than with Debian packages.

Re:Transition

[Arandir]

"There are currently 6376 ports in the FreeBSD Ports Collection." [http://www.freebsd.org/ports/index.html]

That's a hell of a lot of software. It's a hell of a lot more than Debian -stable (3950). But I here you cry that Debian -unstable is really stable so I should consider that instead, even though Debian still calls it -unstable. Trouble is, there's no official count of the number of packages in -unstable (and I'm not about to count them by hand).

So I did an unofficial, by the seat of my pants, survey of Debian packages. It turns out that Debian has a very high atomicity for it's packages. In other words, what is one package on FreeBSD might be two or more packages on Debian. Examples include splitting a library up into base, development and examples packages, a greater preponderance of "meta" packages (like koffice being split up into nine packages, plus the "development" package), and duplicate packages differing only in their build options (dia, fluxbox). Other oddities include dozens of kernel versions and dozens more kernel patches, splitting the KDE wallpaper out into it's own package (huh?).

Going by package count is definitely NOT the way to compare FreeBSD and Debian.

So far I haven't found any software that I wanted that was in Debian but wasn't in FreeBSD. But what if I did? Well then, I would simply turn on FreeBSD's Linux compatibility Mode!

Re:Transition

[m_ilya]

Going by package count is definitely NOT the way to compare FreeBSD and Debian.

Well, just some facts. Some software I use:

• eudc (LDAP interface in emacs) - is in Debian but not in FreeBSD until I submited port
• gnuserv (port of xemac's gnuserv) - is in Debian but not in FreeBSD until I submited port
• gnus (recent version popular newsreader for emacs) - is in Debian but not in FreeBSD until I submited port
• perl modules (I do a lot of Perl) - Debian have more than FreeBSD

As for FreeBSD's Linux compatibility mode: it is cool but you should understand than every big Linux application will require to install Linux versions of all libs. Also you are out of lack if you want to use Linux packages and have package managers to track their dependacies. At this point it becomes much more easier just compile from source.

Actually I think the only reason to use FreeBSD's Linux compatibility mode is closed source software for Linux.

Re:Transition

[Arandir]

There will always be one OS/distro/system somewhere that happens to have to most software available. Currently that happens to be Windows. But somehow I don't think Debian users are going to suddenly switch to Windows. The number of packages available on a system is largely irrelevant to the user. All they want to ensure is that there's a sufficient number of packages that they're not spending a significant amount of their time hunting stuff down.

Now let's suppose that two different distros each of 10,000 packages. Will they have exactly the same packages? Of course not. If you choose one of those distros you will eventually discover that they other has the software that you want.

Instead of nitpicking Debian-vs-FreeBSD to death, let me rephrase my original assertion: "FreeBSD has 99% of what you want. Of that remaining 1%, it's not worth switching over."

Re:Transition

[rawg]

I went like:

debian(95) -> slack(96) -> debian(96) -> redhat(97) -> debian(97) -> freebsd(01) -> debian(01).

I really like the BSD system, but I dont like download, compiling and installing 100's of MBs of software. I'll stick with Debian, but I'll switch to DebianBSD when its working well. Long live APT.

What does FreeBSD have to do with anything?

[pHDNgell]

Your complaints about NetBSD are a result of your experience with FreeBSD? These are completely different *operating systems* (not kernels, full operating systems).

Windowmaker is not BSD. If you have a problem with Windowmaker, go complain to them.

Which parts of tuning require five years of experience and/or a CS degree? I switched from Linux to NetBSD after I'd been using computers for about two years altogether, and have always found it easier to work with. Why? Because it's a whole operating system. If stuff goes into the kernel, it's released with userland support, all at the same time.

NetBSD is, IMO, the cleanest system out there today. Everything works, and moving forward is easy. Doesn't come with bash? So what? I don't use bash, so I'm pretty happy to not see it. I do like the standard bourne shell it comes with for running my scripts. I do use tcsh, so it's typically one of the first things I install from pkgsrc on a new machine.

``But pkgsrc is hard! You have to build the stuff yourself,'' you say? A ``make package'' at the top level will create binary packages for the current platform for all packages your configuration suggests you're licensed for. Port maintainers typically do this and provide binary packages for most things people would want. In fact, when NetBSD releases ISOs, they release pre-built package ISOs for i386, just to make it a bit quicker (it certainly can't be any easier).

quiet you!

[gnurd]

no linux! please leave bsd alone. we were doing just fine thank you, go make another revolution somewhere else. we dont want microsoft targeting us next. we are much happier having them use our code instead.

GNU OS

[Proud Geek]

As Richard Stallman has been saying all along, the OS is GNU, and the kernel it runs on, be it HURD, Linux, or now NetBSD, is just that: the kernel. Of course, Richard is now chorling at the thought of further showing the irrelevance of Linux, but if people call it the Debian Operating System (DOS???) instead of GNU, he'll quickly change his tune and go back to righteous indignation.

Re:GNU OS

[cmkrnl]

So tell me this now. Does that theory apply to a NT box running Cygwin for example ? Or a VMS System running gnu userland packages ?

Or are you just A.N Other RMS groupie with zero insight. Queueing like all your GNU wannabes, not an original thought among you, waiting for the honour to fellate the guy, whose take on how the world should be, is hypocritically self indulgent.

Free Software is only free if your time is worth nothing. Its a pity the GNU Socialist whose whole working life whas been funded either out of the public purse or the largesse of others deliberately fails to see that.

Curmudgeon

*BSD More Secure?

[ryanisflyboy]

I've heard a lot of talk at the local ISP (who gave up Linux for FreeBSD) that *BSD is some how more secure (which IMHO is relative). Why would an ISP think such a thing? And, if infact it is somehow more secure, then isn't having the wonderful tools of Debian running on it very very good? Regardless, I think it's really neat to see Debian growing in all kinds of interesting directions.

Re:*BSD More Secure?

[8bit]

FreeBSD has kernel level security options. Once you set a security level you cannot set it at a more relaxed level without rebooting. With features like that in place, it becomes very hard for a cracker to gain complete control over your server. Reboots are pretty dawg-gone noticable, don't ya think?

Splintering

[Alcemenes]

At this rate there will be three independant open source platforms; Linux, *BSD and Debian. I see no real problem with this but I just don't understand the point. One other question; if Debian is the most pure Linux in an open source point of view why are they porting it to a more restrictive licensing scheme?

Re:Splintering

[cmkrnl]

Here we ago, yet another RMS groupie. Go read the damn thing before spouting such nonsense in future.

curmudgeon

Re:Splintering

[The Ape With No Name]

One other question; if Debian is the most pure Linux in an open source point of view why are they porting it to a more restrictive licensing scheme?

How is the BSD license more restrictive? It allows for free and non-free use. It is actually more open than the GPL and probably better for students as it allows them the freedom to carry their work away from school. Does the GPL do this?

Re:Splintering

[Burnon]

Odds are, the people doing this aren't concerned about licensing purity, and just like the technical features.

ports

[lightfoot jim]

What exactly is the ports system?

More like, what are rpm users missing out on? With rpm -i package.rpm the user may or may not be able to install the intended software. There could be real dependency problems, as in kde2 needs qt2. There could also be bogus dependency problems since you may have compiled qt2 from source but rpm wouldn't know about it.

Enter FreeBSD and ports. A typical FreeBSD install creates a directory called /usr/ports which is a whole tree of makefiles. So to install something, you just cd /usr/ports/category/WhateverYouWantToInstall/ && make && make install. All dependencies are taken care of automagically. The makefiles in these directories are smart enough to download whatever you need and then compile the source on your machine. So installing a new package doesn't take several hours of trolling newsgroups and searching for rpms.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Check this out.

My experience is limited to Mandrake, Slackware, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, but when I need to get sh*t done, BSD, espescially FreeBSD is my first choice just because the ports tree contains nearly any software I'd want to run, eliminating the bottleneck that software installation sometimes turns into and letting me get to the task at hand.

As an aside, it seems like everything that Mandrake tries to be to "joe sixpack" who is just getting into trying linux on the desktop, BSD is to the sysadmin or programmer who needs to get a *nix platform up and running for a certain task. Compiling a custom kernel, installing software, modifying the init process, etc are at least as easy for the sysadmin on BSD as adjusting the screen fonts and changing the wallpaper are for a newbie in Mandrake.

Re:ports

[damiam]

There could be real dependency problems

Enter Debian and apt-get.A typical Debian install includes a program called apt-get that handles dependencies automatically. So to install something, you just apt-get install WhateverYouWantToInstall. All dependencies are taken care of automagically. The apt-get program is smart enough to download whatever you need and install it. To compile from source, use apt-get -b source WhateverYouWantToInstall. So installing a new package doesn't take several hours of trolling newsgroups and searching for rpm.

Re:ports

[lightfoot jim]

Yep, apt-get is great, or so I've been told. The reason I didn't mention it in my initial post is that I don't have any experience with Debian which makes me unqualified to praise or criticise it. Since I live out in the middle of nowhere, my only internet connectivity option is a dialup account from a company that has more customers than bandwidth. When I downloaded Slackware, it took me 3 days. Because FreeBSD has impressed me more than linux in several areas besides than software management (kernel compilation, documentation, cleanness of a base install, only one "distro," etc.) I've not been in any real hurry to download and try out Debian. I probably will at some point, but it's just not a priority. I suppose it makes me a minority here, but I don't look at installing and configuring software as a means of recreation. I consider it a necessary chore in order to use my computer to read email, listen to music, surf the www and crunch numbers for certain statistical projects I'm working on. If I saw any indication that Debian could reduce that chore more effectively than FreeBSD, I'd set aside another three days. At the moment it looks like a toss-up at best, so I stick with what I have.

Re:ports

[SpinyNorman]

How is this any more convenient than apt-get which is also available for RPM based systems?

Personally I find that I rely on the installed RPMS of most everything (and once in a while upgrade my distro to get the newer X, KDE etc), and simply compile from tarballs anything that I really care about and want to be up-to-date with, which basically means development libraries and a few cutting edge utilities. It works for me.

Re:ports

[scrytch]

> How is this any more convenient than apt-get which is also available for RPM based systems?

Because ports does not require packages. Example, if I want to install a KDE app, it does not require that I have the qt package installed. It searches for libqt.so. If it's a gtk package, it runs gtk-config, if it's apache, it runs apxs, and so forth. Now debian's a little better than RPM, which ends up making you force-install just about everything (defeating dependency checking) because you installed something from source, but you still have to intervene when a dependent package isn't present. Ports assumes you know what you're doing, and if the lib is there, it's there, it doesn't need a package manifest to tell you. It does check for the package first, and ports does build a package, so you get a package-based system that degrades gracefully when you don't religiously use the package system.

THAT is why I use ports. Because no sysadmin I know of takes the builds out of the box, they keep their source trees around to tweak and recompile as needed. Oh, and ports lets me do that doo, I just "make get" the port, cd work/packagename, and there's the source tree as if I'd untarred it myself. I can configure && make install it from there, or cd ../..; make install from there and it builds as a package.

Re:ports

[Anonymous Coward]

If I saw any indication that Debian could reduce that chore more effectively than FreeBSD, I'd set aside another three days. At the moment it looks like a toss-up at best, so I stick with what I have.

Well, I can guarantee you that Debian will solve virtually all of your package problems. I love the FreeBSD kernel, but wouldn't think of using any system that doesn't match up to Debian in terms of package management. And none that I know of do, so far.

To be honest, I've tried FreeBSD (really tried),and and really want to like it, but coming from a Debian background, FreeBSD's package management is much too primitive to consider.

Debian not only automatically downloads and installs packages along with their dependancies, it will set up virtuall all programs properly - they run out of the box. Daemons come up as soon as you install them, and reload when upgraded. Upgrading a particular package will upgrade dependant packages. Installing an X app will automatically add it the menus in almost all window managers available. Uninstalls go just as easily. Conflicting packages are managed, so that your favourite pager is known, even with many different paging programs installed. RPMs can be imported into the system, and there are importers for other standard packages like gtk/windowmaker themes (and CPAN too, if I recall correctly).

What else? CDs can be built automatically from the packages on your system (using an add-on package), kernels can be automatically built and patched. Hell, that's enough. You should be convinced by now. In fact, I really can't believe that Debian hasn't replaced RPMs and PKGs by now. I looked up the BSD family's new OpenPKG system with hope, expecting them to have at least included debian's features, and perhaps expanded on them, but no. It's still the same old last generation stuff. Which, frankly, is just crap after using Debian. Did I mention that the latest version of Debian (the current one, in FreeBSD terms) has over 8000 packages available? Gotta love it =)

In short, if package management is a priority for you, then use Debian - it's that simple.

Re:ports

[Arandir]

apt-get is the best there is when it comes to precompiled binaries for the generic i386. But this is the world of Open Source. You have the source code, so use it! With source code you can optimize all the software for YOUR hardware, configure the software how YOU want it, etc. The best tools for upgrading software from source is ports.

Binaries are great for quickly getting a system up and running. But once you've got the system up and running, switch to source code.

Re:ports

[damiam]

apt-get -b source package

Re:ports

[CatherineCornelius]

Binaries are great for quickly getting a system up and running. But once you've got the system up and running, switch to source code.

This works well for a full time sysadmin, on a well resourced system, but on this Thinkpad I've got far better uses for the 2GB hard drive, and far better uses for my time. There's nothing to stop me doing a bit of source hacking on the bits I'm really interested in, of course.

Re:ports

[Arandir]

portupgrade -P package

Re:ports

[damiam]

Your point is? They both work. I'm just saying that, while the ports system may be nice, it's not the only good way to upgrade your system and it's not by itself an overpowering reason to use BSD.

Re:ports

[Arandir]

and it's not by itself an overpowering reason to use BSD.

Does the converse also apply to Debian? Is apt-get an insufficient reason to switch? Of course the answer is yes, but I've run across too many Debian users who would argue otherwise.

Re:ports

[krogoth]

They have enough information to fail dependency checks :)

FreeBSD ports and Sorcerer

[Shiny Metal S.]

So it's basically the same thing which Sorcerer wants to achieve, right? Than maybe Sorcerer should just use FreeBSD ports instead of reinventing the wheel?

Re:FreeBSD ports and Sorcerer

[cymen]

Well Sorcerer couldn't just use the FreeBSD ports because they have the specific patchs for FreeBSD. I assume you know that but just pointing out one downside. One you have to change all the patches to your system there isn't much left. Maybe it just depends how you look at it. Anyway, apparently Sorcerer decided to go from scratch and I don't really find that too surprising.

The interesting thing out there is OpenPorts. I don't really know what they plan on doing besides guessing from the name but it sounds good to me. Hrm... I'm not finding a page for the project.

Re:FreeBSD ports and Sorcerer

[Arandir]

There is an openpackages project that means to integrate all the BSD ports, so that there won't be a separate ports tree for OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and Darwin. It's open for Linux participation.

As I understand it, the underlying system will be the same for all participants, but individuals platforms would have to maintain their own patches.

Re:TROLLS DEMAND EQUALITY

[poemofatic]

sounds like a great idea.

Re: I actually have seen the pattern....

[Pengo]

Mandrake/RedHat -> Debian/Slackware -> *BSD -> Debian

;-)

Original idea was Debian OpenBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

The original proposal was for Debian OpenBSD:

Debian OpenBSD topic

Debian OpenBSD txt

So wait...let me get this straight...

[8bit]

NetBSD runs on everything, right? Hardware-wise at least.

Now Debian runs on everything? Kernel-wise at least, and with NetBSD, hardware-wise too? Freaky stuff...

What came first, the GNU kernel or linux?

[3seas]

I'm a bit confused here. Didn't the GNU community (what is pretty much what debian is) show it's openness to other kernels when it accepted the linux kernel while continuing on with the original GNU Hurd system? Even knowing it would slow down the progress of the Hurd?

I'm confused because the listy of reasons seem to suggest that it was in accepting the Hurd that states Debian is open to other kernels.

And even the Hurd is open to different micro-kernels! Mach and L4 are current micro kernel use efforts.

Re:What came first, the GNU kernel or linux?

[SpinyNorman]

Linus's kernel and the GNU project are two seperate things. GNU predates the Linus's kernel and was always meant to be a complete Unix implementation - both user tools such as gcc, glibc, emacs, tar, ftp, etc, etc, and the kernel HURD. The timing of it was that the GNU project was pretty much complete excepting HURD while in parallel and independently Linus had started his kernel project and it had got to the point of being usable.

My history is a bit shaky here, but I think it was the Slackware team which first made the unholy alliance of the GNU tools and Linus's kernel, and released it as a Unix distibution. I think Linus may have coined the name "Linux" a bit earlier for the combination of his kernel and a small set of GNU tools.

I think that Debian is more of a Linux distribution than a GNU project - even though the GNU project is what make Linux possible, they've never actually put out distributions of their OS themselves. But of course Stallman would like them to get credit for the fact that the only part of Linux that is Linus's is the kernel (a miniscule part of what's in a "Linux" distribution).. hence the GNU/Linux and GNU/HURD pedantry which is quite reasonable apart from Stallman's initially obnoxious way of handling it.

Re:What came first, the GNU kernel or linux?

[ceswiedler]

Well, no, it was Linus himself who first paired the kernel with GNU tools. He developed it using GNU development tools on Minix and then Linux itself once it was usable, and ASAP he had the standard GNU toolset compiled and running on his own box.

Perhaps Slackware did indeed release the first distribution; but from the start, GNU was used on Linux. I imagine that the 0.1 release had some mention of "BTW, if you want to actually DO anything, go get the GNU stuff..."

Re:What came first, the GNU kernel or linux?

[Cro Magnon]

I think SLS was the first Linux distro. Slackware was based on SLS, and is the oldest surviving distro.

There is no need whatever for something like this

[Anne Thwacks]

NO, actually there isn't.

If you need to run Linux stuff on *BSD, you just install it and run it.

All the *BSD's have the ability to run Linux stuff through a hack to the loader (Obviously, its not officially called a "hack"). It works fine. There is no obvious performance penalty, and the stuff runs (although, I have to admit, it took a bit of work for me to get Star Office to work on one of the BSDs). NestCrap works as well as it does under Linux :-(

AFAIK, the ports/packages systems include DB2, Oracle, Star Office/Wordperfect, etc, and they are as easy to install as native BSD stuff in principle.

But IBM, if you are listening, Id still rather PAY for native BSD DB2 than use the free hack.And Larry Ellison, if you are listening: Up Yours

Re:the kernel? my god man

[jelle]

"One of the major problems with Linux is *that* it's every yahoo for himself"

And I think that's good think, much better than a hurdle of people who act as if they are god and know everything better than anybody else.

10-20 people cannot know it all, neither can they force application programmers to stick with just this library, or that that program is 'bad for users because it uses a different library that nobody else uses'.

I'm one of those users that likes to decide himself what is best for him, I don't need a team of guru's to do that for me.

" or a standard place to put software"

That is not inherent to the development method of the GNU+Linux-based OS. I'd say that HPUX has a pretty tight control with a very limited development group contributing. Still, there are binaries in /etc/ (grep anybody?), and the init.d scripts are in /sbin (s_bin_!!).

"Just as no one can take control of the whole thing and fix it"

Yes you can, and I can too. In my sytems, everything is perfect the way I want it, the whole thing is fixed. Crap stays out, good stuff goes in. I decide, and nobody else.

Re:Mirror of wonderful post

[cmkrnl]

Excellent mod this AC up, post of the week.

Sir, please take a bow. I dont think I could have put it anywhere near as succintly.

For the average Open Sores Zealot, "there are none so blind as those who will not see. "

Curmudgeon

Re:ROFL

[SubtleNuance]

Just remember, Adolf Hitler was a socialist.

Yes, and your point? Timothy McVeigh (whatever) was a Christian, Oliver North was is a Republican and John Locke was an Anarcho-Syndicalist.

Re:Mirror of wonderful post

[Anne Thwacks]

I think you've lost the plot here - the server (as its running OSS) is in all probability a used 486, on the end of a 300 baud modem. When overloaded, it delivers an error message.

If it was an MS operation, it would be on $10k worth of hardware, connected via T3. When over stressed, it would collapse in a heap and wait for a re-boot.

In all known tests, OSS delivers more power on less kit, and fails cleaner, or someone was bribed.

If you can read this, thank a troll.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[DrSkwid]

Guess how we ended up with so many different *BSD versions?

As the saying goes :

two great things come from Berkley, LSD and BSD

What next?

[archen]

Does this mean that the "BSD is dyeing" guy is going to finally update his message to include Linux?

Re:BSD + MySQL + PHP = Crap

[WildBeast]

heuh? So does Python.

my thoughts on a distribution

[scrytch]

I once thought of making a Linux distro -- yeah, everyone has -- but short story shorter, I don't have that itch to scratch anymore, since I have sitting in front of me a box that's running just Win2k. I got cygwin, liked it for a while, and have grown to hate it. Slow, buggy, and now unreliable in config -- make stopped working, some weird interaction with shell quoting. Make is kinda important yunno. The DLL that every last damn cygwin program needs is also GPL'd, which ironically might violate the LGPL for a lot of binutils. Discouraging commercial apps from using cygwin might be A Good Thing anyway, since it's not a paragon of security (it uses a shm segment to keep state like fd's). So I'm switching to MinGW, which is much nicer in many ways, but it has an even worse system of distribution than cygwin's rather unimpressive kludgy installer (which for starters is impossible to use without a mouse)

So I am wondering, what about porting something like BSD ports or Gentoo's portage or Debian's apt to MinGW? They're all ostensibly architecture-neutral, right? Personally I am leaning toward ports, because it uses the right language for dependency checking (make), it doesn't require packages (great for embryonic distros that don't have everything in packages). Portage OTOH looks like it has transactional features ports does not. I don't want to get mired in trying to design The Package System To End All Package Systems ... I would like to know if anyone else is working on such a thing for cygwin and/or mingw though.

Re:BSD + MySQL + PHP = Crap

[WildBeast]

true but those error messages are usefull to the developper, not the users. Some error messages will provide usefull information to crackers like a database name, the path to a file, etc. I believe that's why they choose to use try/catch.

Noooooooo! Stay away!

[The Ape With No Name]

I am not a NetBSD user, but I love FreeBSD like Madonna loves dick. Debian's pkgs are interminably behind the curve relative to the rest of Linux-land and this would only serve to slow down NetBSD's acceptance. As far as BSDs go, NetBSD aims for hardware-indpedence/multiple platform acceptance. It is already behind the curve as far as pkgs go. The Debian "keep it stable at the cost of progress" mentality might hurt NetBSD. Please keep these people away. They might come after FreeBSD and really dick up things. Luckily, OpenBSD has Theo -- who is just plain mean as shit -- to protect the very important security work that is done over there. I don't see Hubbard as such a crusader to stop the "everything-that-is-bad-about-linux" crowd from poking their heads in.

Re:Noooooooo! Stay away!

[faedle]

I'm sorry if keeping it stable is such a bad thing for you. Fortunately for people who's jobs depend on reliability and stablilty of the systems they maintain, there are people like the Debian developers who think that keeping it stable is a Good Thing.

How quickly we forget that stability is how many of us have sold Linux and *BSD to our employers, and that sudden rash changes and stability problems can leave those who require stability out in a lurch.

I see Debian's methodical approach to "current" as a good thing. Debian is about choice: if you want to be on the bleeding edge, please run unstable, we need the beta testers. If that's not your game, here's the stable tree. If you're really anal (or demented), here's the last version with security patches.

Sounds like a win for everybody. NetBSD gains more users (those who happen to get off on apt-get), Debian gets to work on porting to other kernels (a major cornerstone of the Debian project's defined goals), and everybody gets more choice.

Stay away from system administrators who think that the "latest" is always the "greatest."

Re:Noooooooo! Stay away!

[The Ape With No Name]

My experience with STABLE and Debian GNU/Linux is that it is an outdated tree. FreeBSD pkgs, again in my experience, are right where they need to be, not outdated versions of common apps.

Re:Noooooooo! Stay away!

[drinkypoo]

I am not a NetBSD user, but I love FreeBSD like Madonna loves dick.

What are you trying to say here, that you use both FreeBSD and linux?

Re:Noooooooo! Stay away!

[faedle]

One man's "outdated" is another man's "stable."

'Nuff said.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[kan]

Actually, the number of committers in FreeBSD is close to 300. But do not make mistake thinking that the number of committers represents the number of actual developers. FreeBSD has a GNATS system and and a number of developer-oriented mailing lists where everyone is welcome to submit patches. Think about the whole bunch of BSD nomads from Japan, all hiding behind handful of Japanese committers as an example.
Besides, FreeBSD is using a lot of "contributed" software, take 'bind' for example. BSDs only provide a glue to integrate such a software into the base system but try hard to feed all other changes back to original vendor. This allows them to minimize divergence with an 'official' package versions and eliminate associated support problems.

This is so shortsighted!

[2nd Post!]

What happened to the concepts of diversity, hybrid vigor, competition, and cooperation?

With Microsoft we get a monoculture.

Are you suggesting the same for all other OSes?

If nothing else this project encourages and explores compatibility issues, source examination, bug catching, performance tuning, and a bunch of other things, if only because a new, fresh, set of eyes (Debian) is looking at old things (BSD), and the other way around, BSD people looking at Debian things.

This cross pollination can have so many surprising and unexpected benefits too. Like the fact that if the kernal is BSD and the userland is Debian... it means you could, besides a little project called Fink, place an entire Debian OS layer on top of Apple's Darwin or Apple's OS X.

Then there is the ports system, which sounds very good to me. It's currently a BSD thing, but there's nothing stopping it from running on top of the Debian-netBSD distro, with work, and therefore stopping it from working on GNU-Debian with just a little more work, with 'work' and 'little more work' being subjective here.

These are just obvious speculations on my part. Many more advantages can be found, I'm sure, of this type of project.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[haggar]

However, I do have to take issue with the original poster who gave no reasons (good or bad) as to why he would like to have the Linux kernel with the FreeBSD userland. Why are you hell-bent on protecting his non-argument?

Re:the kernel? my god man

[jelle]

Sounds like nothing different than the various gnu & linux mailing lists and the Debian maintainers combined.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[jelle]

"Could you tell the slashdot editors that?"

Are you making a point or enlisting my effort? If the latter, maybe a fork is the only solution (freedot.org? opendot.org?). If the former, your point is as strong as the repeated stories and MS-paranoia we regularly see here.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[kan]

It makes a world of difference when you are trying to implement something which touches both kernel and userspace at the same time, just as an example. Good luck finding central point of contact to discuss your patches :)

Re:Your *linux concerns are trumped by BSD

[m_ilya]

Have you bothered to read my comment? It was about FreeBSD and Debian Linux.

Re:The former, fork slashdot.

[jelle]

Doesn't sound bad. Inside of the discussion website, you can have 'virtual communities' in which the members rate, accept, and possibly reject stories.

Hmm, technically almost the same result should be possible inside of /., simply by having multiple sets of editors, and letting users 'subscribe' to particular groups of editors, or maybe a mode 'show me only stories accepted by at least three editor groups', and 'don't show me any story that has been reported dupe by a reader', and 'don't show me stories that match the following regexp'

Re:Transition (FreeBSD vs. Debian wrt packages)

[d^2b]

I too run FreeBSD and debian/linux.

I would say package/port breadth is a tossup.

But I really like the separation of the upgrade
process into core and ports that FreeBSD has.
I have never made my machine unusable using ports. I have had some close calls with apt.

Also, my limited experience is that it is easier
to wedge things with apt-get than with ports
because problems show up during the build process
with ports, and the install process with
apt.

You may cry that that is an unfair comparision
since I could build packages from source on debian. But that is not the typical user experience.

An alternative to dselect

[_Laban_]

dselect is pretty hard to get started with, but it works fine when you get used to it (as most software). But I can really recommend console-apt which is a replacement based on an ncurses-interface. I use it all the time even though I know dselect really well.

Give it a try if you don't like dselect:

console-apt

So does this mean

[Cro Magnon]

that I can use apt-get on my toaster?

Re:the kernel? my god man

[tao]

Not really, something I consider a good sign. I've applied about 15 bugfixes since December 2000, and intend to add some 4-5 more before the release of 2.0.40.

Re:the kernel? my god man

[tao]

Well, I don't know why he'd want that. Probably personal preference. Maybe he has hardware not supported by the FreeBSD-kernel, maybe he wants some feature of the Linux-kernel not available in the FreeBSD-kernel. But is that really interesting?! It can be done, the code is open-sourced, and a real hacker doesn't do things out of real use anyway, but out of the hackvalue.