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Interview With The FreeBSD Core Team
Gentu writes "OSNews features an ultra interesting and in-depth interview with three members of FreeBSD's Core team (Wes Peters, Greg Lehey and M. Warner Losh) and also a major FreeBSD developer (Scott Long). They discuss issues from the Java port to corporate backing, the Linux competition, the 5.x branch and how it stacks up against the other Unices, UFS2, the possible XFree86 fork, SCO and its Unix IP situation, even... re-unification of the BSDs."
Here's a good analysis of the various BSDs from last september. It gives a great background on the BSDs and it'll help explain why the BSDs should be re-united (or not.)
Why do I h8 apple?
FreeBSD is a great OS, if you get to know it. There's a lot of documentation available, and I thought I'd just share with you my experiences with FreeBSD.
Which version to install.
4.x or 5.0? 4.x is the stable series and 5.x is in development. It suffers of what's been called a chicken and egg problem described here. Think of 5.x as Linux 2.5 series. 5.1 when released(scheduled for release in june)to will be the start of the new stable branch. If you want stability choose 4.x. Bleeding edge? 5.0.
You can download the ISO's from here:
You generally only need to download the first ISO
Installation:
The installer is text based, but dont let it scare you off. The partition layout is a little different than what you may be used to but it's all described in the FreeBSD handbook here
The installation will leave you off with a pretty basic system and you're ready to install:
Ports
Ports is a very powerfull way of installing new programs and manage installed programs. You almost never run into dependency hell. A very powerfull tool to help manage ports is portupgrade. A short introduction is available here and to ports in general here
Documentation.
FreeBSD requires some time to get to know but the FreeBSD Handbook, provides a great introduction to FreeBSD. Sites also worth a visit is Freshports.org to keep you updated about new ports, and BSD dev center
If you give FreeBSD an honest try it will pay off. Most of the applications avalible for Linux also compiles on FreeBSD, and in general I find it more easy to find documentation, thus making it more easy to maintain.
...or, in reading through this, does Greg 'groggy' Lehey come off as a bit of a prick?
What the HELL are you talking about?
Heck, even jdk1.4 is in the ports, and even native!
Because OpenBSD still doesnt support SMP does it? Which makes it useful only for small machines.
Because a very big bit of the security of OpenBSD comes from simply disabling features you're gonna go enable later on yourself. Sure, there's a number of cool things under the hood but FreeBSD for one got working ACLs by default (still nowhere to find on Linux) and Mandatory Acces s Control is in beta stage (I'm probably just too stupid to get it to work as others were raving about it for months).
The most noticeable improvement, though, and one that continues to be more apparent with each Red Hat version, for example, is the obvious difference in speed: in my experience, FreeBSD always runs faster on the same hardware than any Linux distro I've tried...it may be the fact that the entire base system is compiled on the host hardware (starting with the first cvsup), but that's what makes FreeBSD stand out in the performance category. It has all the window managers you get with Linux, as well, so not to be denied one's sweet tooth for eye-candy!
OpenBSD is more of a niche product concentrating 100% on security, at the cost of being somewhat archaic and sacrificing efficiency at times. Also it has much less ported software. It was split off of NetBSD which has many platforms to run on as its 'specialism'.
FreeBSD OTOH has always targeted major platforms (i386 and alpha), also is secure but doesn't have the single focus just on that as OpenBSD, but is much more suitable as a general purpose (server or desktop) operating system.
Unless you have a very dedicated network related application such as a firewall, I'd recommend FreeBSD over OpenBSD.
Enjoy!
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
does Greg 'groggy' Lehey come off as a bit of a prick?
I've had many interactions with groggy, and he has been nothing but very professional and helpful.
FreeBSD has many things that OpenBSD does not: good Mozilla support, OpenOffice, Java that works well, SMP, more ports, etc. Same goes in the other direction. Both have their fortes.
Please excuse my ignorance, but why would I choose FreeBSD over OpenBSD?
I use both - they both have their place. I tend to put OpenBSD on internet facing tasks(Apache, SMTP, DNS) , and FreeBSD on internal facing tasks (NFS, Samba, PostgrQL).
The largest benifit of FreeBSD over OpenBSD is that they have the resouces to keep older versions well patched - you can pop FreeBSD on a server and know that you'll have about three years of patches waiting for you in the future. OpenBSD stops official support for instalations older than a year or so.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
netBSD port status
netBSD port status
Answer to 2 specific questions:
I do not know exactly, ... but it looks like soley by Debian Developer developing user land software using only netBSD kernel.
I do not think this is true.
From Why Debian GNU/NetBSD?:
Why Debian GNU/NetBSD?
FreeBSD kills on the platforms it supports, which is unfortunately limited, but fortunately expanding (check the BSD webpage). I'll try anything at least once, but atm, I won't use anything but the good ol' FreeBSD.
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
Once the sources are downloaded -- and it is Sun's stupidity, that requires you to click-through the license before downloading, it is as simple as:
To install on multiple machines, you can follow up with After which, it only a matter of on each of your systems...BTW, I'm using the 1.4.1 -- it is certainly quite stable.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Linux runs on lots of things that can't
run NetBSD. Problem is, the Linux world
counts ports by CPU arch, while NetBSD
inflates their numbers by counting more
or less by how many distinct boot disks
are needed.
Off the top of my head: Linux supports
the S/390 (32-bit) and zSeries (64-bit)
mainframes. Linux supports the Power-based
AS/400 and newer. Linux can handle several
types of CPU without an MMU, including
ColdFire and the original 68000. NetBSD
doesn't run on any of that.
On 680x0, Linux is really there, with lots
of sub-arch "ports". (Mac, Amiga, Atari...)
Lots of NetBSD ports involve running the
OS in 32-bit mode on 64-bit hardware. Ouch.