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FreeBSD September-October 2002 Development Status

Posted by timothy on from the behind-the-scenes dept.

mbadolato writes "A new status report documenting the latest goings on in FreeBSD has been published. There's some good information n there about the features for the upcoming 5.0 release. BTW, there happens to be a lot of stuff going in there for something that is, according to the trolls, dead! ;-)"

10 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    out there? I knew people who would not run Linux, period - BSD ONLY! Just curious if there are still those out there? What do those people think of Linux in its current stage (2.6)? Do you still think of the Linux camp as a bunch of neophytes who were in kindergarten when BSD was being developed?

    1. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by eht · · Score: 1, Interesting

      i'm a hardcore bsd-er, i won't touch linux with a 10 foot pole, it's mostly a horrid hack, and most of the useful features in it got in a year after they were in freebsd, usb off the top of my head, even with freebsd's really open license no one could be bothered to port it, now useless things like having a program that syncs with an ipaq using a palm cradle, that's cool, so that's in linux tomorrow, plus the gpl is quite distasteful, and just to prove i'm weird, i love my win2k boxes, i use whats best for whatever i do, for video editing, word processing web browsing, it's windows, for firewalls, web serving, programming, it's freebsd, tho i do have an ultra 60 sitting here, not really doing much, and to add to the fun my ftp server is actually a windows one, it had every feature i wanted with easy configuration, so i just do a little port forwarding

    2. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by PFAK · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'm right.. here. I won't run anything but *BSD any of my servers. IMHO it's too big of a security risk. With FreeBSD I can upgrade my system in a few commands.

      If I found out one of my now converted friends was running Linux i'd be forced to hammer them over the head with an old Linux manual.

      --

      Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
    3. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Garin · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, I'd say I'm a "medium"-core BSD-er. I spent a lot of time with Linux -- I cut my teeth on the late 1.x/early 2.0 kernels in the Slackware days. I moved on to try Redhat, SuSE, and Mandrake seriously (and many others fleetingly). Then about two or three years ago, I tried FreeBSD and I've never looked back since. It all happened when I tried to upgrade to a new version of glibc (remember that?). Holy cow was that ever a mess... I was so pissed off that I wiped the drive and installed FreeBSD -- it was purely a rage-induced reaction.

      After that, I was hooked. Don't get me wrong, Linux is tons of fun. But that's just it -- maintaining a current system can be a hobby unto itself. I honestly think that's why so many people really dig it. There's always hacking and work to be done. There's always some stuff that is broken and needs to be fixed. It seems like a Linux installation stays fresh and good for about a year at the most, and then you have to wipe and reinstall from scratch due to accumulated annoyances. For bleeding edge hacker types, that sort of thing isn't a problem -- they do it anyhow, and think of it as fun. I did for a while too, but then I got tired of it.

      FreeBSD was such a welcome release. It just -works-. Between the base system and the ports, it's all flawless. With every new release, I'd run the ol' "make buildworld" and a whole new system would magically appear an hour later. In three years of updating, the update never failed once. I've never had to reinstall from scratch, and so I'm still running the system that I installed all those years ago.

      Anyhow, I know it's possible to stay stable with linux. Debian appears to do this quite well, and if I were to run Linux again, I'm sure I'd be happy with Debian. It's just.. I dunno. There's nothing -wrong- with Linux, it's just not my style any more. FreeBSD has this incredible simplicity that I've never found anywhere else (FWIW, I do find the same things with Net/OpenBSD, I just find that FreeBSD is a friendlier desktop).

      --
      In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it. -John Archibald Wheeler
    4. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by soup4you2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've been using linux for somewhat around 5 or 6 years now.. then about a year ago a guy i work with turned me onto FreeBSD and i can say this i will never go back to linux again.. though i'm still new to the BSD world i can say that it's definatly superior to linux in many ways..

    5. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Matty_ · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I feel exactly the same way. Two years ago this month I switched to FreeBSD from RedHat, and have never looked back. My FreeBSD server started out on version 4.2-RELEASE and is now up to 4-STABLE (as of a month ago). Runs great.

    6. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting
      nice troll. Yes, BSD is doing just fine. This message posted from an OS X box which has most of its storage as an smb mount off of freebsd servers, and the packets travelled through a freebsd box running ipf to go through the net. (and that's just my home network)

      I don't feel the need to flame the Linux effort, or insult Linux developers (especially since most of the developers are now seasoned professionals who get paid to work on Linux). Maybe someday there will be a Linux-based solution that doesn't suck in a lot of critical ways (debian comes close), but until Linux offers something crucial that BSD doesn't, I'll enjoy life with FreeBSD and Darwin.

    7. Re:Are there still hardcore BSD-ers? by BSDFreak · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I started out using Slackware about 8 years ago. About 5 years ago I built a dual CPU PC and started looking at other OSs. I decided to try FreeBSD because it was the only BSD with SMP support. Since then I've only used Linux for work required purposes. Everything else is FreeBSD.

  2. Still no by dar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Still no Scsi emulation support, I see. I thought that was going to be in 5.0?

    --
    My other Slashdot ID is much lower.
  3. One here - but it's "what you know" not "who" by DrSkwid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't think it's fair to brand anybody anything for using an operating system, especially using "you are young" as an insult.

    The things I like about FreeBSD /usr/ports
    It's an easy search term in google.
    It's obscurity

    Ein Users, Ein OS, Ein FreeBSD

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter