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The NetBSD Organization
A reader writes: "Stumbled across a nice article about how the NetBSD Project is organized and some interesting ways users can help out." Good stuff, for those who want to get involved.
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Those who hate windows use Linux.
Those who love Unix use BSD.
Now that apple is beginning to behave badly, maybe it's time a free project showed what it can do with the BSD core. I'm all for this. I just wish I had more spare time!
lookie here
...the OpenBSD banner ad at the bottom of the page?
With the trolls here, it takes real bravery to post a BSD article on Slashdot, so you can't rightly call the submitter a "coward", can you?
He also summed up the target link well in his article submission, so he's definitely a "reader".
This article is formatted for the blind, right? Header size: 120px; text size: 80px; ...
*g*
Are there any bootable-CD distributions of *BSD, like the Knoppix distro for Linux? It would be really cool to bring a couple of CDs with you in case you ran into some open-minded person willing to look at a free OS, and not have to worry about partitioning or overwriting anything.
The answer is 42.
Needless to say if anyone ever asks you a question of what runs NetBSD ... you can safely say more things than any other operating system. NetBSD runs on everything from a supercomputer to a dreamcast and everything in between. The most impressive things I've seen from NetBSD is the ability to get the OS running on anything that can process information and NFS ... second to none.
There are ninches for everything ... portability ... netbsd wins hands down.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
FreeBSD: "Drowning in red tape"
NetBSD: "More Core than lines of commiters"
OpenBSD: "Dictatorships kill"
Darwin: "It takes a mighty corporation to turn out a tender BSD!"
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
I help out on some sites, and they all use Apache and freeBSD, and I've never had a problem. I believe it makes it less expensive for people to host on non-Microsoft servers, and having and open mind is important to keeping open software. If a fraction of the users of Microsoft and other commercial software spent a fraction of their time and effort (instead of downloading pr0n) to projects...well, who knows what could happen. A movement, perhaps?
Netbsd Live...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
True enough, unfortunately USB support on FreeBSD is still pretty flaky (not sure about NetBSD). I know, I use FreeBSD (for other reasons).
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of that? Seriously though, I want to know if it is possible to cluster in *BSD (which I suppose it is). If anyone knows a site that shows benchmarks of identical Linux and *BSD clusters. If the *BSD cluster is faster, then I will search with all my might for >1GhZ used boxen and make a cluster myself!
You must be a newbie or something. I'm sorry. I'd say more, but what a waste of time. Although, I do hope they don't change the installer, because it's fast, simple, and easy for those of us with a clue.
Umm.... GCC is part of the system, last I knew.
/usr/pkgsrc/www/apache
cd
make install
gee.. thats tough.
Sendmail.. well, ok... that damn sendmail.cf file is the ugliest config file I've ever seen, but its the same on solaris, so I'm not so sure why you'd find it so hard if you are "used to solaris and linux".
Ahh.. but wait... now I see your ending of "overhauled the installation menues [menu's?]".. other than atrocious spelling and horrible punctuation througout your post, my general consensus for you would be to stick with Windows and GUI configuration. I can tell you that if you have that much problem with BSD, I wouldn't want to let you *near* any serious production systems, Solaris, Linux, BSD, or otherwise.
http://wonka.acunia.com/. Also FreeBSD will soon get native Java. They're working on it. Also, it's possible to recompile JDK from source for *BSD. Yes, it is labor intensive.
I don't like the installation system that it uses either. When you first sit down in front of it you don't think there will be any problems. At first it reminded me a lot of slackware which is the version of Linux I started out on. However if you're not careful before you're done you will have installed the OS TWICE without meaning to, among other things. The biggest challlenge is to get it to do the things you want without doing the things you don't because you've already done them. The main reason for this is that the install routine does not really work in an entirely step-by-step chronological manner even though its interface would lead you to believe that it does.
Once the system is installed the package/ports system works beautifully and the system is very fast and stable. It runs well on a P-200 with 96 megs of memory. The last version of Redhat that would do that was probably 6.2 or 7.0 at the latest. The 2.4 kernel increased the minimum system requirements a great deal.
Overall I think that Linux's evolutionary and laise faire(sp?) development model will lead to the best solutions. The speed of its development is a testament to that. The problem is that the road to get there is a rocky one. There is something to be said for a mature code base that is maintained and carefully pushed forward by a small group that is dedicated to making sure it gets the job done and works right, right now. Linux, on the other hand, can be thought of as being in continuous beta. The degree to which it is solid and secure depends upon the bugs and quirks getting shake-and-baked out by dozens of independent companies and hundreds of individuals. This is why the dot-zero versions of Redhat are always quirky and poorly optimized while the dot-two versions generally work well.
If I was going to set up a web server I'd probably use FreeBSD. If I was going to set up a desktop system I'd use Mandrake or Redhat. If I was going to set up a system where security was the most important thing I'd use OpenBSD. The only reason I can think of to run NetBSD is if you've got some oddball hardware that you can't afford to replace with an x86 system.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Damn, got here late, this story was posted while I was at work, and now probably no one will even see this comment :P
:) For those that like KDE or Gnome, they run, in fact NetBSD had KDE 3 way before Debian ever did. So what's the fuss?
:)). If BSD wasn't around, alot of other operating systems would have gotten crappier TCP/IP stacks, OSX would probably be in much worse shape than it is (if it ever came to light at all), and many other things. So what if a vendor doesn't want to release their changes? They paid their people to write the code, let them have it. The original source will always be around.
:)
Some random thoughts:
I've run Linux for about a year and a few months, I've run Debian *only* for about a year, and recently I started running NetBSD on my desktop machine (yes, my desktop machine, not my server, router, or toaster). I don't see why people denounce the BSD's for desktop use. Mozilla runs, Xterm's run, irc clients run, Gaim runs, XMMS runs, MPlayer runs, damn, everything on my desktop runs
I moved from Linux to BSD for many reasons, BSD is much more tightly integrated. You don't get the "oh, that's Jim Bob Developer's fault, email him", etc. You don't get manual pages that state "This manual page is old and incomplete - please read the GNU info manual". Of course opinions differ, but I _like_ man pages. I don't like info manuals.
Another factor is the license and attitude of the community as far as licensing. I don't really like the GPL. Sure, in a perfect world, all software would be free, there would be no evil corporations, and everyone could sit around reading fine literature and hiking out in the mountains - BUT that's not going to happen. If people want to make a product and sell it, let them do it (as long as they're not breaking the law
BSD init is alot cleaner than Sys V init - no piles of symlinks with funny names - and NetBSD's rc.d system takes care of Sys V init-style init scripts (/etc/rc.d/named restart). In fact, NetBSD's rc.d system is being ported to FreeBSD.
ipf is, IMO, a hell of a lot nicer than IPTables.
The whole base system is consistant, well documented, well thought out, and easy to use as long as you know how to read. The userbase is *much* more intelligent and experienced, on average, however it is quite a bit smaller, than Linux's.
For software - there is pkgsrc, which is like Free/OpenBSD's ports system, or Gentoo's portage. pkgsrc is kept very up to date, I'm running Mozilla 1.2.1 from it right now.
As far as being a server or firewall/router, NetBSD runs any OSS Server stuff great, and I'm sure most Linux-only stuff would run fine under emulation.
Any other NetBSD users out there in the wasteland that is Slashdot? Speak up!
I found the NetBSD installer the best and easiest installer i have ever passed through. I started using NetBSD by version 1.4.2 and i only kept it first because the installer was that nice and easy to handle. Ever gone thru the Debian installer? Oh my! I hadnt to rue the decission :-) NetBSD simply rocks!
i agree! :)
the installer is simple and no-frills, and gets the job done well, without confusing the hell out of you in the process.
just like Latin is a dead language.
Well, I learnt latin at school (only language I was any good at).
And many languages have Latin roots.
And Latin is used in the taxonomy of may things.
And I believe Latin is still used in the legal profession.
So if, in death, *BSD is destined to end up just like Latin all I can say is....
Great!
Do you mind, your karma has just run over my dogma.
Anyway, I'm puzzled that you didn't like the NetBSD install - and as a couple of others said regarding their experiences with the NetBSD install, I found it the cleanest and simplest OS install process I've ever used. Just beautiful. Now if you were talking about OpenBSD, I could maybe understand you - I don't particularly like their install process, especially the disk partitioning part (though once you have it installed it's great).
And as regards your comment... "it took me three weeks to figure out how to get apache, perl, sendmail and gcc working. and that was just figuring out how to install them." - well, erm, two of those four (gcc and sendmail) should be included in the default install! The others - well, you could certainly install them from source (which works fine), or you could read the documentation and find out how the NetBSD packaging system works. It's not really that hard - or at least it shouldn't be.
Which version of NetBSD (for which architecture) did you try using? Note that for the question you asked (ie. "has it improved since I used it before?") this sort of information is kind of critical, so it's a little suspicious that you didn't include it originally. And I now realise that you didn't specifically say you were using NetBSD - just "a bsd", so you should probably clarify that point as well.
If you don't respond, it's probably fairly safe to consider you a fairly lame troll. Though perhaps slightly more subtle than the good 'ol "BSD is dying" guy. *grin*
Pete.
After just going throught an OpenBSD install I found the installer pretty good. It didn't do nearly as much as the Debian installer, but it did leave the ystem in a usable state and was much easier to use with a serial console and a lousy terminal emulator (I didn't feel like getting out the monitor with the old style Sun 13W3 connector).
The only part I didn't like was the disklabel editor. Yech! If it would have let me work in MB instead of sectors I would have prefered it. It rounds off what you enter anyways.
I think that you missed the great documentation that accompanies FreeBSD. I installed FreeBSD as a *Totall* BSD, Linux, SCO, Solaris newbie. Now when I install any NIX or UNIX system I think how nice it would be to have the same simplicity that is the FreeBSD installer. I honestly have tried to install Mandrake and get so frustrated and angry that I just stop. I like FreeBSD and Debian's installers the best. Just give me the basic system and let me build what I want. I laugh when people talk about how hard installing FreeBSD is. Look at the handbook it is the single most usefull *nix manual out there. Oh and by the way its "menu" not "menue"
RiGgA