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."

Comments

Getting started with FreeBSD

[johnkp]

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.

What? No legal threats?

[death to hanzosan]

"Finally, the FreeBSD core team has not been contacted by SCO representives directly."

What? No pompous, threatening letters from SCO group? I've always thought that "BSD is dying" was just a huge troll, but if you're not even noteworthy enough to get unjustly harassed by SCO group, you're doing something wrong!

Why not use OpenBSD?

[use_compress]

Please excuse my ignorance, but why would I choose FreeBSD over OpenBSD? OpenBSD is more stable and secure. Why take the extreme step of using a *BSD distro if you're not goning to with the most secure one. If you value ease of use, why not go with some advanced flavor of Linux or even *GASP* the latest version of Win2K Server.

Re:BSD

[Devil Ducky]

Where BSD needs to copy Linux is in the packaging systems. First, you need so many different ways to package a program that half of every development team is devoted just to making all the variations. Then, you need a dumb public who only recognizes one of those systems, as a hint here they should choose the one with the worst dependency techniques of the group. Once this is complete a group of people who are completly unreleated to any section of the development of BSD have to get together to make a BSD-SB. This group should continue the tradition of choosing the worst variants of how things are done and make them the new standard. Finally a small group of hard core BSDers need to get together to create a new distirbution which will not be BSD-SB compliant, but will be based on a cool idea for software distribution that they saw implemented in Gentoo. Then the circle of popular unix clones will be complete.

Note to the people with no sense of humor: don't read this comment.