Slashdot Mirror
Vulnerabilities in FreeBSD
flynn_nrg writes: "O'Reilly has an interesting article about vulnerabilities in common programs found on most FreeBSD boxes. From the article: "Welcome to Security Alerts, an overview of recent Unix and open source
security advisories. In this column, we look at buffer overflows in
OpenSSH, Squid, Listar/Ecartis, slrnpull, and IRIX's syslogd; problems
in Sudo, MHonArc, and Mosix; and a local root hole and denial-of-service
attack vulnerability in FreeBSD.""
Quote JORDAN:
Well, that is certainly poetic. Sounds like the tanks already rushed in and crushed the skulls of BSD. Yeah, we hear whiners claim Darwin is BSD, bull. Darwin on both PPC and even more so on x86 is *completely* un-usable, and you people damn right well know it. Mark me as a troll, you can, deny the truth you will (to use a Yoda-ism, death to G. Lucas) You know it. If you don't buy a MAC, an overpriced hack at a PC (whatever happened to acceptance of the superior Fire Wire [I love Fire Wire, but its only now starting to appear on motherboards after USB 1 and even 2.0 have been on for a while], almost ZILCH compared to USB, also, try and find a NuBUS card, let alone a slot - interesting how PCI killed off ALL the Apple busses), then you are screwed when it comes to Apple UNIX. I wish Apple would stop being a WHIMP and port to x86, but it seems apparent they do not have the intelligence present to PORT an OS to x86 (geeze, of all the oddest, off the wall undocumented architectures ever [facetious]. Yeah, right. Must be tuff.). Who would have thought? Well, I would have.
I've tried so many operating systems to date, and I always found most BSD variants completely annoying to install, to deal with. I so like OpenBSD, and, even though it is a rip off, I like BSDI. The rest of the variants to me are lame excuses for Linux. Pain in the ass. Ports are ALWAYS out of date, the "package" system is a laugh, the use-ability of the operating system is FAR less, ESPECIALLY OUT OF THE BOX, than any other OS. That is the truth. Well, except some garbage commercial Unixes, but who expect anything from them. GNU + Linux needs to be improved upon or flat out BEATEN, not annoyed with these horse-fly-like fragmented binary-incompatible bomblets of a dead operating system hatched in the brialliant but CLEARLY DISTURBED foundries at BEZERKELY UNIVERSITY INC (c) . (SAYS Uncle Sam, "I WANT YOU, TO GET REAL")
Remember folks, UNIX vendors are killing Unix. I piss on Microsoft, but they can sell SHIT far better than UNIX vendors can sell GOLD. IBM is dumping AIX in favor of Linux, what a surprise (They are writing JFS, POSIX THREADS 2.0, and lots of NUMA for Linux, not BSD, all you BSD loons take a note of that).. Solaris has only one thing Linux doesn't have, good scalable SMP. Other than that Solaris is a flaming dog-pile, I know, I have seen it in action. HP-UX is trash, lovingly known as HOCKEY PUX (and also verifiably impossible to port to and compile stuff on), they also killed the only REAL competitor to Micro$0pht Exchange, OpenMAIL. Now OpenMAIL is a dead end Samsung product and it sucks. Mark me as a troll, you are vastly uninformed if you do, but I have actually administered OpenMAIL and have tried it relabeled from Samsung. Worth noting, I never saw OpenMAIL working on anything else besides Linux. Thanks Carly, you for killing over the only good Unix based mail MTA. Lets rip into SGI. Ha ha ha ha. The only remnant holdover of that vendor is re-appearing in Linux as XFS. The rest of that garbage in IRIX is easily DEPRECATED in favor of a GNU OS. At least stupid Sun gets giving out a free OS. You can't even try BSD/OS. It's the only BSD of interest and Wind River is killing it. The rest of the BSDs are so far behind Linux in terms of scalability it's not even funny. I wish IPF was ported to Linux, I wish Linux was a better networker, it surely has room to grow, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing compelling ANYONE to develop anything for BSD. Its dead. I gets things back-ported from Linux. The only BSD worth anything is OPENBSD,. Theo is God, the rest of that whole project is shit. It's a moot, embedded only OS barely useable as a workstation OS.
So all you flaming hippie scum get behind Linux, because Apple is going to screw BSD in the rump, this is the first step, cut the chicken's head off [pry Jordan from FreeBSD]. Apple is dead ending their fork of *BSD, we know it. It won't be ported. Its sole purpose it to be eye candy for Mac zealots (boy, using an industrial grade Unix OS and Kernel for displaying EYE CANDY - that's "THINKING SMART"????). Believe you me, if Intel died tomorrow, Microsoft would move *fast* to support the next best platform. Look at the boot Intel got in the balls when Microsoft recently licked Hammer's (Opeteron's) nuts instead of Itanic Itanium.
Yep thanks to Apple, the de-facto "BSD" (BSD being used LOOSELY) implementation now consists almost entirely of closed source software (at least the useful user stuff, Darwin is UN-USEABLE unto itself - pathetic). Thanks to Apple, software that might have once run on Linux or FreeBSD will now only run on OS X thanks to their proprietary GUI! Thanks again Apple! Oh and thanks for that port of QuickTime to FreeBSD too, Apple! Not!
You better hope IBM buys out the now Defunct Sun, fixes up Java so it doesn't totally SUCK, throws out all the garbage that is named Solaris and SPARC, and makes a serious attempt at dominating the market. Otherwise, it won't be BSD dying as a troll, it will be UNIX having serious R&D funding problems. The party will end if big corporation abandon Unix, and oh, yes, it *can* happen. I sure hope it doesn't.
Sure mod me as a troll. Do it. But facts are facts. Apple BSD is a niche. *BSD is losing market share. OpenBSD is awesome, but very, very niche. Linux is being underwritten by IBM, Sun (through Cobalt, which is *pathetic). HP/Compaq are also earnestly supporting Linux, not BSD. The writing is on the wall, folks. Sniff some glue.
Mac OS X is to BSD what Windows XP is to VMS. Faintly related, but they're so radically different they're nothing but cousins. Sorry, BSD is dying, Mac OS is flyin' [for the PPC ONLY, pathetic Apple can only re-use software, not make new stuff, so the recycle NeXT, close source the meat and potatoes, and force its ZEALOT community to buy into a *PATHETIC* rendition of the PPC - Gee, thanks MOTOROLA.). Oh yea, and System V has a larger installed base than BSD (Probably Solaris alone, the piece of crap that it is, covers this).
QUOTH a BSD Zealot, "So far, I haven't had a single good reason to choose Linux over FreeBSD."
QUOTE a far wiser man, "Vendor support. Oracle on FreeBSD? NO., Well. You can kind of run it, but Oracle only supports it for the major UNIXes--and Linux. You'll find that for almost all commercial software. And what about hardware? Those shiny new Dell PowerEdge and Compaq DL*'s actually work with Linux, because their developers have put time into writing drivers & contributing the source back into the kernel tree. Once you get vendors on board, it's game over. *See Microsoft. (Ode to a Foolish Zealot)
It is now official: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test. Coupled with the sudden departure of FreeBSD's main designer, all that remains is the eulogy.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Sure this is half troll, half truth, but be open minded and see some writing on the wall.
The core of OS X is Mach with some stuff mostly from the early 80s BSD tapes. The FreeBSD stuff is only used in user space. Even though OS X is mostly a relic of the late 1980s, it has a substantially more modern design than FreeBSD. NeXT and the rest of the Unix world took what they needed from Berkeley Unix and moved on a long time ago. Hubbard's a smart guy, so it probably didn't take too long at Apple before he figured out which way the winds were blowing.
Proof that *BSD is Dying!!
The article covered two vulnerabilities specific to FreeBSD, a few in third party programs which apply to all platforms (the article itself makes no reference to FreeBSD), and some vulnerabilities (mosix, IRIX syslogd) which are specific to other platforms (Linux and IRIX respectively) and have nothing whatever to do with FreeBSD
So how does that make it an article on FreeBSD vulnerabilities?
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
what timothy forgot to mention is that the freebsd group had already released patches before posting this article. i guess he could have actually gone out and checked, but alas, this is /. ... home of editors that don't give a shit
go on, mod me down
look at the other articles he has written
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/au/103
telling us shit we already knew about 2 weeks before he wrote about it
FUD: 1
True: 0
Gee, just two FreeBSD vulnerabilities in that article.... I run several FreeBSD workstations and servers and neither of them would be affected because it's easy to workaround those problems and equally simple to track -STABLE.
Ever get into rpm hell on a redhat box? Debian might be a little better, but still, Debian is barely more than a kernel from being FreeBSD. FreeBSD is infinitely simpler to tailor to your needs and manage than any other *nix system I've tried.
This article doesn't discourage me a bit, since fixes for the mentioned vulnerabilities were available so soon after the announcements. I absolutely love FreeBSD for all me needs and encourage other to install and learn it.
It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Anal sex is still considered taboo in many societies as it is usually labeled a gay practice and widely associated with sexually transmitted diseases. However, anal eroticism is probably the oldest manifestation of human sexuality and a very misunderstood sexual practice. For example, in ancient Peruvian cultures, at least half of all married couples indulged in anal intercourse in their lovemaking experiences. In addition, a more recent survey of 5000 married couples in rural Brazil found that in 40% of households, anal sex is regularly included in the lovemaking experience. Furthermore, in Rio de Janeiro, the figure is even higher at around 50%. These figures are high mostly because the couples want to avoid pregnancy, contact with menstrual blood or injury to the hymen before marriage. But there is surely more to anal sex than questions of contraception and chastity. Today, with modern and efficient contraceptive tools and early sexual experiences, anal sex is practiced for pleasure. In North America, Redbook Magazine surveyed 100,000 married women on their anal sex practices. Here is what the survey said: - 43% of married women have tried anal intercourse. - Of these, 40% found it somewhat or very enjoyable. - 49% didn't like it. - And 10% had no particular feelings one-way or the other (no pun intended). So anal sex isn't a rare practice amongst North American couples; it is something many women have tried. There are a few things to consider before engaging in anal sex with your partner. Both partners have to consent to the experience; it must be done in a smooth and delicate manner; and proper protection is required. In general, men are willing to try intercourse from behind (in her behind, relax), but they will usually have to convince their female partners into trying it. Getting your partner to try it will take some convincing because initially, the experience may be repelling as well as painful. So how do you do it? It is recommended to build up to anal sex by trying anal stimulation prior to full penetration. For most people, the anal area is an important erogenous zone as it is believed that stimulation of that area can be very pleasurable. However, the rectum is also very delicate and must be approached with tact. The easiest way to stimulate the anus is by merely rubbing your partner there during intercourse or whilst performing oral sex. Slowly massage the area with your cleansed and nail-trimmed fingers and see how your partner reacts. If she seems comfortable with the idea, then explore a little further (and deeper).
only 2?
:).
Heck, I'm waiting for my Service pack 3 for win2k to apply the 14 pages of hotfix and security patch automatically to my newer systems without having to reload the windowsupdate/rebooting 3 times (explorer 5.5sp2, reboot, security roolup jan 2002, reboot and finally the critical, and that doesn't include post-sp2 hotfixes that aren't "critical").
No wonder I am considering FreeBSD for my email server, yeah it'll need maintenance and security, yes I hate the overhead and everything is so much simpler in windows, that I have to give it to microsoft, but GOD, I don't want to reboot a zillion time after applying patches every week, heck, I don't want to apply patches every week
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
BSD is dead. Long live BSD.
What a loser.
Sure, we all know that *BSD is a failure, but why? Why did *BSD fal? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all knw *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting glom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
Another piece of great news hit the already prosperous *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has risen yet again, now up to more than of 18 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has gained more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is growing in complete unity, as fittingly exemplified by coming dead first in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a superb future. In fact there will be a wonderful future for *BSD because *BSD is living. Things are looking very good for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to gain market share. Black ink flows like a river of cash. FreeBSD is the most successful of them all, having acquired 93% more core developers.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 70000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 2 to 1. Therefore there are about 70000/2 = 35000 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 15000 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (70000+35000+7000)*4 = 448000 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the success of Walnut Creek, excellent sales and so on, FreeBSD became a viable business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another popular OS. Now BSDI is also growing, its success acquired by yet another software house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily increased in market share. *BSD is very strong and its long term survival prospects are very good. If *BSD is to keep growing it will be among those who appreciate solid, fast and well-engineered OSes. *BSD continues to succeed. Nothing short of a miracle could kill it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is here for good.
Fact: *BSD is living
There. I feel much safer now.
|>
Here be Dragons
Now I'm done.
(Not that I use sudo, but it's there for completeness)
|>
Here be Dragons
helicopter crash
dead flesh stinking putrid flesh
freebsd death
I used to be a big Linux advocate, unfortunately it seems that Linux has been becoming more and more unstable. The hundreds of different distributions of Linux all have their pros and cons, but there is no centralised package or ports system. Want a package for Linux ? Ok, cool - DEB, RPM? RPM? That's the most popular. But don't try using a Mandrake RPM or a SuSE RPM on RedHat.
Linux has given up its usefulness for graphical installers and Windowesque gimmicks. The code bloat is unbelievable. Unless you roll out your own distribution or use a minimalist distribution like Slackware, the default installs for RedHat, Mandrake, etc are huge, Windows-like monstrosities.
So what?, I hear you say. Linux is stable and secure. Wrong again. The Lion worm proved that Linux is not as secure as one might believe. The fact that VMs get changed in the middle of a stable release branch (2.4.x) shows bad organization.
It took Linux years to overcome its awful filesystem problems, and now journalling filesystems are available. But speedwise, compared to the FreeBSD FFS, they are slow and cumbersome, and have yet to prove as reliable. FFS Softlinks are a few generations ahead of any journalling filesystem on the market.
FreeBSD is far better organized, the ports and packages collections are better synced and more reliable, the system is more stable and easier to understand. The firewall included with FreeBSD has been proven and has a far better track record than ipchains or iptables, the latter having security problems in its first week or release, the former having no stately inspection and being a complete mess due to its shell-script bound layout.
But Linux has more software than FreeBSD!, scream the Linux die-hards. What they fail to realize is that 99% of Linux software runs under FreeBSD. I haven't encountered a Linux program that didn't run under FreeBSD. Sure, I've heard reports by trolls that certain software doesn't work, but all the software I've tried works, in fact, even faster than the native Linux versions in most cases. To the VMWare troll: Yes, VMWare does work under FreeBSD.
FreeBSD vs Linux is a debate that won't ever be settled, but people who have used both generally prefer FreeBSD for mission-critical tasks. Those who claim that FreeBSD performs worse than Linux either haven't used FreeBSD or are trolls.
I won't say that FreeBSD is the best Unix variant on the market, but the best open source Unix variant? Yes. Solaris is still tops, but in terms of Free (Open Source) systems, FreeBSD is probably the best all-rounder. NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux all have their respective places, but overall, FreeBSD will probably take over most of the open source server market, at least in organizations with serious management.
So what?, I hear you say. Linux is stable and secure. Wrong again. The Lion worm proved that Linux is not as secure as one might believe. The fact that VMs get changed in the middle of a stable release branch (2.4.x) shows bad organization.
It took Linux years to overcome its awful filesystem problems, and now journalling filesystems are available. But speedwise, compared to the FreeBSD FFS, they are slow and cumbersome, and have yet to prove as reliable. FFS Softlinks are a few generations ahead of any journalling filesystem on the market.
FreeBSD is far better organized, the ports and packages collections are better synced and more reliable, the system is more stable and easier to understand. The firewall included with FreeBSD has been proven and has a far better track record than ipchains or iptables, the latter having security problems in its first week or release, the former having no stately inspection and being a complete mess due to its shell-script bound layout.
But Linux has more software than FreeBSD!, scream the Linux die-hards. What they fail to realize is that 99% of Linux software runs under FreeBSD. I haven't encountered a Linux program that didn't run under FreeBSD. Sure, I've heard reports by trolls that certain software doesn't work, but all the software I've tried works, in fact, even faster than the native Linux versions in most cases. To the VMWare troll: Yes, VMWare does work under FreeBSD.
FreeBSD vs Linux is a debate that won't ever be settled, but people who have used both generally prefer FreeBSD for mission-critical tasks. Those who claim that FreeBSD performs worse than Linux either haven't used FreeBSD or are trolls.
I won't say that FreeBSD is the best Unix variant on the market, but the best open source Unix variant? Yes. Solaris is still tops, but in terms of Free (Open Source) systems, FreeBSD is probably the best all-rounder. NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux all have their respective places, but overall, FreeBSD will probably take over most of the open source server market, at least in organizations with serious management.
Linux has given up its usefulness for graphical installers and Windowesque gimmicks. The code bloat is unbelievable. Unless you roll out your own distribution or use a minimalist distribution like Slackware, the default installs for RedHat, Mandrake, etc are huge, Windows-like monstrosities.
So what?, I hear you say. Linux is stable and secure. Wrong again. The Lion worm proved that Linux is not as secure as one might believe. The fact that VMs get changed in the middle of a stable release branch (2.4.x) shows bad organization.
It took Linux years to overcome its awful filesystem problems, and now journalling filesystems are available. But speedwise, compared to the FreeBSD FFS, they are slow and cumbersome, and have yet to prove as reliable. FFS Softlinks are a few generations ahead of any journalling filesystem on the market.
FreeBSD is far better organized, the ports and packages collections are better synced and more reliable, the system is more stable and easier to understand. The firewall included with FreeBSD has been proven and has a far better track record than ipchains or iptables, the latter having security problems in its first week or release, the former having no stately inspection and being a complete mess due to its shell-script bound layout.
But Linux has more software than FreeBSD!, scream the Linux die-hards. What they fail to realize is that 99% of Linux software runs under FreeBSD. I haven't encountered a Linux program that didn't run under FreeBSD. Sure, I've heard reports by trolls that certain software doesn't work, but all the software I've tried works, in fact, even faster than the native Linux versions in most cases. To the VMWare troll: Yes, VMWare does work under FreeBSD.
FreeBSD vs Linux is a debate that won't ever be settled, but people who have used both generally prefer FreeBSD for mission-critical tasks. Those who claim that FreeBSD performs worse than Linux either haven't used FreeBSD or are trolls.
I won't say that FreeBSD is the best Unix variant on the market, but the best open source Unix variant? Yes. Solaris is still tops, but in terms of Free (Open Source) systems, FreeBSD is probably the best all-rounder. NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux all have their respective places, but overall, FreeBSD will probably take over most of the open source server market, at least in organizations with serious management.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default. asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/case/ hotmail/default.asp
Has the conversion from freeBSD to w2k been successful?
Microsoft seems to think so.
The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.
helicopter crash
dead flesh stinking charred flesh
freebsd death
www.gentoo.org
Who constantly posts bullshit/FUD
The patch to fix the IRIX problem was included in the standard IRIX maintenance patches that were released 18 months ago. I would hope if someone had a system on the internet they would patch it more often than every 18 months.