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DragonFly BSD Announced
JoshRendlesham writes "Matt Dillon announced today on the freebsd-hackers mailing list the creation of the DragonFly BSD project. It seeks to build on the work of FreeBSD 4.x, including a rewrite of the packaging and distribution system, among other goals."
Brad Pitt announced a new fork from the -AC kernel tree.
hey guys I'm going to reivent the wheel again durrrrr.
Keannu Reeves announced: "Whoah."
Or if it is, it's coming back from the afterlife. You saw that kevin costner movie about that dragonflys always mean there's a ghost about to come back and do some mortal damage to those that wronged it! Beware all you "BSD IS DYING" posters, it's coming back from the afterlife to chew bubble gum and kick ass -- and lemme tell ya somthin', BSD IS ALL OUTTA BUBBLE GUM!!!
This for running the army's new microsurveillance vehicles right?
This is great news. God knows we need another BSD, I don't think anyone is happy that currently we only have FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, TrustedBSD, XMach, Darwin, and Microsoft Windows.
I'm no expert in this area, but does the world really need another BSD? Wouldn't it be better if the BSD people tried to make fewer and better distributions? Hit me if I'm wrong.
Martin
ISO Plz!! k THX!!111
Instead of different BSDs that are similar, how about combining the best into one unified BSD, like with Linux. There is only one official Linux kernel, and distributions are based upon it.
...and counting. Good thing Dubya 'restored dignity to the White House', eh?
Wake up, folks, do we want another 4 years of this (lies and warmongering)?
Oh no! Who will pay the administrators the big bucks now?
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
Here I was thinking that BSD is dead or dying. Maybe this will revive it...
As the rest are dead or dying, would this one be stillborn?
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/
Hopefully my T1 can handle the cvsup load. Eventually I'll colocate some boxes to deal with that issue.
<voice person="nelson">Ha ha!</voice>
YOU ARE ALSO PROBABLY SOME SORT OF NIGGER
but not a gay nigger.
those gay nigger guys suck my smelly asshole.
First person to post the "BSD is dying" troll gets a nice big KNUCKLE SANDWICH!
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
Dragonfly BSD is dying...
--Life may have no meaning, or, even worse, it may have a meaning of which you disapprove.
He prolly created this distro because he lost his commit bit. No Dillon, I wont use your distro, freebsd is the best at where it is. Ports is awesome. Your fork wont do any good, sorry.
...but this is my 513th post! This post is the ((2^9)+1)th post of mine! And I still have Excellent karma!
W00T!
Hi Mum!
Note to M1-ers: a curt but otherwise insightful message is not "Flamebait" or "Troll".
...packages and ports system. They're part of the best things FreeBSD has above Linux right now!
In addition, during this file transfer, IE will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Notepad is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various Windows machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a Windows machine that has run faster than its BeOS counterpart, despite the thousands of developers, developers, developers for Windows . My Tandy 102 with 32k of ram runs faster than this 800 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that Windows is a superior OS.
Windows addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use Windows over other faster, cheaper, more stable OSes.
...it doesn't have a cute little daemon in its logo.
Elegy For *BSD
I am a *BSD user
and I try hard to be brave
That is a tall order
*BSD's foot is in the grave.
I tap at my toy keyboard
and whistle a happy tune
but keeping happy's so hard,
*BSD died so soon.
Each day I wake and softly sob
Nightfall finds me crying
Not only am I a zit faced slob
but *BSD is dying.
Something forms itself from the silent void of the empty mailing lists and the noisy chaos of the crowded mailing lists. It shapes and protects us, it entertains and challenges us, it aids us in our journey through the ether world of software. It is mysterious; it is at once source code and yet object code. I do not know the name, thus I will call it the Tao of Linux.
If the Tao is great, then the box is stable. If the box is stable, then the server is secure. If the server is secure, then the data is safe. If the data is safe, then the users are happy.
The Tao of Linux flows far away and returns on the wind of morning.
In the beginning there was chaos in *n*x.
Tanenbaum gave birth to MINIX. MINIX did not have the Tao.
MINIX gave birth to Linux 0.1 and it had promise.
Linux gave birth to v1.3 and it was good.
v1.3 gave birth to v2.0 and it was better.
Linux has evolved greatly from its distant cousins of the old. Linux is embodied by the Tao.
The wise user is told about the Tao and contributes to it. The average user is told about the Tao and compiles it. The foolish user is told about the Tao and laughs and asks who needs it.
If it were not for laughter, there would be no Tao.
Wisdom leads to good code, but experience leads to good use of that code. Without the userland, the kernel is useless.
The master Cox once dreamed that he was a Kernel. When he awoke he exclaimed: "I don't know whether I am Cox dreaming that I am a Kernel, or a Kernel dreaming that I am Cox!"
The master Linus then said: "The Tao envelopes you. You shall create great code for Linux."
"On the contrary," said Cox, "The Tao has already created the code, I will only have to find it and write it down."
A master was explaining the nature of the Tao to one of his students:
"Is the Tao in the VM subsystem?" he asked. "Yes," replied the master.
"Is the Tao in the scheduler?" he queried again. "The Tao is in the scheduler."
"Is the Tao even in the modules?". "It is even in the modules," said the master.
"Is the Tao in the Low-Latency Patch?"
The master frowned and was silent for much time.
"You fail to understand the Tao. Go away."
The Tao is the yin and the yang. It is the good and the evil, it is everything and yet it is nothing, it is the beginning and the end.
The Tao was there at the kernel compile, and it will be there when the kernel panics.
A novice user once asked a master: "Why compile in C when C++ is more popular?"
"Why a monolythic kernel when Mach is more popular?"
"And why use ReiserFS when ext2 is more popular?"
The master sighed and replied: "Why run Unix when NT is more popular?"
The user was enlightened.
A frustrated user once asked a master: "My kernel has panicked, should I post to lkml?"
"No," replied the master, "You will only bother the Tao."
"Should I rm -rf?"
"No, you will have wasted the Tao's time."
"Well should I search the web?"
"You will search for all eternity," said the master.
"Perhaps I should try FreeBSD?"
"Then you will have disgraced the Tao."
"I suppose I could try gdb," said the user.
The master smiled and replied: "Then you will have made the Tao stronger."
A stubborn user once told a master: "I run version 2.2. I always have, and I always will."
The master replied: "You are foolish and do not understand the Tao. The Tao is dynamic and ever changing. Linux strives for the perfection that is the Tao. It flows from version to version with peace."
"So my Linux does not have the Tao, so what?" said the foolish user. "Oh your Linux is of the Tao," said the master. "However, the Tao of Linux follows the Tao of the C library. One day the C library will change, and your Linux will be left behind." The user was silent.
An angry user once yelled at a master:
"My Linux has panicked! What lousy software it is, I hate it so!"
"You are insulting the Tao," said the master. "The Tao is everywhere bringing order to h
not funny but should trigger some moderator reflex.
*BSD is still dying? :)
You're thinking of DeadBSD, which was a short-lived flavor.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Hi. I have oral sex with retarded kids. Retards are yummy.
/*
**
** I.H.O.S.W.R.K.
**
*/
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you BSD fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a BSD box (a PIII 800 w/512 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 17 Meg file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this BSD box, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even Emacs Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various BSD machines, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a BSD box that has run faster than its Windows counterpart, despite the BSD machines faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 800 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that BSD is a "superior" machine.
BSD addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a BSD over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
I'd like to see Gentoo's Portage move onto BSD, it was originally inspired by the BSD ports system, but has become very easy to use and refined. It's time for a BSD to try out Portage (Mac OS X is geting Portage soon!)
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I find this project exciting. Having tried gentoo's portage it has become clear to me that ports could be a lot better. While ports does work, it has a bunch of tools which make its use easier which arent included by default and could be integrated into ports.
Are they talking about replacing the ports system? I thought that that was one of those most revered parts of the original FreeBSD
I'm crossing my fingers that this comes out with Portage as the package manager...
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
... like another hole in the head.
:(
Oh well, it's probably about hurt egos again.
- Hubert
How many women will dress up like a dragonfly?! C'mon!
The name's too long. DragonFlyBSD? Come on! I'm not even sure where to capitalize the letters! It's bad enough the "OpenBSD" is as long as "FreeBSD", but spoken it's an extra syllable. I'll stick with NetBSD. Yeah. Nice and short!
What were they thinking when they named their project after a bug?
Dead, I tell ya.
Given all the BSD is dying statements we commonly see around here, is it somewhat appropriate this flavour happens to be named after an insect with a life span of only 24 hours? :)
when your read goals as goats
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you FreeBSD 4.x fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of a FreeBSD 4.x(a 8600/300 w/64 Megs of RAM) for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to copy a 1GB file from one folder on the hard drive to another folder. 20 minutes. At home, on my Pentium Pro 200 running NT 4, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this Mac, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
In addition, during this file transfer, Netscape will not work. And everything else has ground to a halt. Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
I won't bore you with the laundry list of other problems that I've encountered while working on various FreeBSD 4.x, but suffice it to say there have been many, not the least of which is I've never seen a FreeBSD 4.x that has run faster than its Wintel counterpart, despite the FreeBSD 4.x' faster chip architecture. My 486/66 with 8 megs of ram runs faster than this 300 mhz machine at times. From a productivity standpoint, I don't get how people can claim that the FreeBSD 4.x is a superior machine.
FreeBSD 4.x addicts, flame me if you'd like, but I'd rather hear some intelligent reasons why anyone would choose to use a Mac over other faster, cheaper, more stable systems.
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest 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 [amazingkreskin.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. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
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 hobbyist 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 dead
The problem with BSD is that there are too many Albert Einstein-like people involved with its development... and Matt Dillion is one of them. I don't mean that in a bad way. These guy are *smart* probably one in a billion kind of smart. The problem with that is they can't work together very well. Theo (Open BSD), Matt (FreeBSD) Both these guys forked over differences of opinion with other developers.
Imagine what these guys could actually *do* if they put aside their differences and worked together!! No unsolved CS problem would be safe.
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In other news, Ben Stiller has started his own fork of the FreeBSD tree called "Angelfish" which competes directly with DragonFly. Apparently, the fight is really about who should be maintainer of FreeBSD itself...
Just when FreeBSD got great (the 5.1 distro is the best ever - well worth using on the desktop) - they go and base a new distro off the (relatively) clunky 4.8.
WTF? I don't understand the logic. FreeBSD 5 has superior performance, more features and better hardware support than 4.
I'll be sticking with the newest relese of FreeBSD, thanks.
"Our goal is to create a flexible duel-purpose caching infrastructure"
Maybe this project should just be called "Oedipus"
This isn't the actor, it's the lawman. Jeez, Slashdotters are so ignorant!
is that you?
Wow. Matt Dillon. :) There's a name that brings back memories.
:)
Matt: if you're reading this, I loved DICE, and all your other work on the Amiga - your compiler is one of the reasons I'm a programmer today. I hadn't been keeping up with your work but it's good to see you're still out there doing stuff.
(seems a lot of the old Amiga 'big names' have gone on to do interesting stuff in the time since)
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Matt Dillon's early background as an Amiga programmer is really showing through here. He's basically proposing doing a piecewise conversion of BSD to an Amiga-style message-passing operating system.
He's basically doing the reverse of what so many folks (NeXT, HURD) have done or tried to do.. not taking a microkernal and putting a UNIX layer over it, but taking a UNIX and scooping out the inside to replace it with a message-passing microkernal.
This will definitely be a fun one to watch. Go, Matt, go.
- jon
Ganymede, a GPL'ed metadirectory for UNIX
Learn to configure your box.
WTF is a sig?
My first reaction was "oh, forking is bad, we don't need another". But in truth, this is no more remarkable than the fact that there are 100s if not 1000s of different flavors of GNU/Linux.
So there.
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. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
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
Perhaps the devil (no pun intended) is in the details. Certainly from the perspective of a end-user, who usually don't deal with packaging systems in the first place, this new OS doesn't make any difference.
A rolling stone is worth two in the bush!
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
Apple Mac OS X gives you ALL the benefits of BSD and Linux and Windows all wrapped up in the easiest to use GUI, and the most advanced operating system currently available. Stuff like BSD and Linux are fine if you are a computer hobbyist, and Windows is okay if you are a secretary taking notes, but OS X is the de facto gold standard for true advanced computing tasks. Scientists, programmers, media artists, and everyone who wants to be on the leading edge of software use OS X. You should too.
Oh comon Drag-On-Fly-Bee-Ess-Dee, what was wrong with the name FlyBSD?
Now THATS an operating system name, nice, simple, to the point, and is just overall a bitchin` name.
WTF is a sig?
This might have a chance of surviving! FINALLY - and I really _mean it_ - someone has thought about the mascot issue with BSDs. This DragonFly mascot will not scare anyone away, it will attract people. It was a wise choice and I personally think it looks cool :) Well done and I'm eager to see this project grow!
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 know *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 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.
Best desktop, sure. No arguments here. I'm posting this from an iMac running 10.2.
Best server? Highly debatable. OS X Server is a fine product, one I'd never disparage, but I'm very happy running a FreeBSD HTTP/IMAP/IRC/Loads of other stuff server and an OpenBSD firewall.
The "best" is always whatever works best for you.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Surely this is a mistake. It must be ... It has to be, becaise we all know: BSD Is Dying
Did someone forget to give this guy the memo?
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
The proposed new messaging layer sounds really interesting and powerful. A little like Mach or QNX, perhaps? Many kernel methods and system calls will use messaging instead of traditional brittle techniques that often lead to API problems down the road. Also, multithreaded kernel design should be simplified as result. My only question is how much will this slow down FreeBSD?
... a place where the "BSD is dying" guy can post and be vaguely on-topic
http://virtuelvis.com/
um... is he trolling because he didn't realize there was BSD code in Windows? sheesh! time to meta-moderate.
Anonymous Howard, who made a career of proclaiming the demise of the *BSD Operating Systems, was found dead at his keyboard this afternoon. He had just turned 16. An unnamed police spokeswoman said it was an apparent case of "autoerotic asphyxiation gone haywire". [You know the rest of the story.]
What does an old gunslinger have to do with this announcement? Even more important... will Miss Kitty be involved?
Un-news
So is forking something that's dying anything like beating a dead horse? :-)
Having NetBSD/FreeBSD seperate was good in many ways because it kept mutually incompatable folks away from each others throats. Once things cooled down, technology began to flow in both directions between NetBSD and FreeBSD. Later on, OpenBSD came along. All sorts of good things came from that. Can you say OpenSSH?
It would be nice if DragonFlyBSD (gah, ENAMETOOLONG) was a similar deal. As a FreeBSD developer, I hope that there will be plenty of opportunities to take good stuff in both directions. If we can keep people away from each others throats and work on making the code better, then everybody wins.
Diversity is good. Developers fighting each other is bad. Forks can be a good way to relieve the stress. There is no need to make a Big Deal(TM) about it.
Black men scare me!
Ironically, lefties know how to save anything that's not. Personally, I don't think either stance makes much sense.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
This one never gets old. I also laughed my ass off to the ones above. Here's my contribution, i've got spare Karma, *BSD, dead at 55.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
I guess they need to look at
Debian FreeBSD
They've come quite a long way and have installable systems available
Glibc Based Debian Freebsd
Seems like this is what Dragon fly FreeBSD is trying to do
- Not Theo, but not Bill either
Good!
No offensive satanic demon mascot anymore! This is what FreeBSD should've done YEARS ago - ditch that red guy with horns. Us non-satan worshippers can now give BSD a try.
I'm a FreeBSD user, but not by religion. I use Linux on certain systems where some distro fits better.
However during daily usage FreeBSD simply turned to be superior to the big few Linux distro's as far as release engineering goes.
Matt branches, but let's take reasons and goals to be unimportant for now.
How is he going to sustain _any_ release engineering the quality FreeBSD (and the major Linux distro's) has/have?
Even BBEdit Lite is straining to keep up as I type this.
would choose to use a Mac over other
Come on, trolltacula, you can do better than that.
-uso.
The only reason I keep my Windows partition is so I can mount it like the bitch that it is.
Think about it.
200+ different things all called *linux*, and 2 different sets of people.
1 set - all the linuxes are from the same kernel, so it doesn't matter
the other set? The marketing agents who want to prove SuSE is better than RedHat who's better than (juggle fork names in whatever order floats your boat.)
Thus market confusion reigns.
Though many folks have choosen to troll out the BSD is dying thingy they may have a point. As solid as all the BSDs ,Free, Open and Net are they have become remarkbly stodgy to use. I would guess the development teams are likely stuck in this same rut as well. I am happy to see somebody step up to the plate to try, but the BSD license will eventually kill this one to I fear. If it ever does come to maturity and show any real promise some mega corp will just hijack the codebase, upstage them and just spit in their eye again anyway. How do you spell sucess?
GPL
I'd hate to let it loose on Slashdot.. we'd have no comments on our posts!
YOU FAIL IT, that's right motherfuckers.
Does this mean that VoIP on Dragon Fly might put me in touch with my hero ELVIS, maybe even get him to sing?
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
holy cow a ghost post bsd can't be dead that anon dead idiot only took a matter of miniutes to reply.
Sounds like a political war between people with gig egos, and axes to grind.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
Matt - Love the project. Really, really love the project. I've been walking around with a ridiculous grin all day long that someone in the *NIX scene is finally going to try to Do the Right Thing. (Of course, as a FreeBSD user, I'm equally interested to see how KSE and the like perform when all is said and done -- but when it comes to doing something useful, like, say, deploying production systems, it's all about the solution with the right featureset and the fewest parts to break.)
;)
That said, I've got point out to the rabble that no, Amiga, in any of the Classic, Extra Crispy, or
Third-Party-Possibly-Rebranding-to-Atari flavors, is certainly no deader than the good ol' Atari camp. It's just that, as you've said elsewhere, the Amiga scene has had GCC for quite a while -- and is now using it in the development of both competing OSes -- so we've less reason to bother you for legacy support than those poor ST users.
We're rooting for you!
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. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
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 only 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
Yeah, DragonFly was a horrible movie.
And it was Kevin Costner, not Matt Dillon.
[ Note: in this text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you
"BSD is dying" is dying.
> You need to rsync quite often
:)
... under FreeBSD I can chose specific mirrors to specific packages.
" emerge somepackage
Only before updating everything. How often that is, is up to you.
> I noticed several broken ports.
It indeed happens! Is it, however, Portage's fault, or that of the package's maintainer?
>
> Try that with portage?
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://somewhere.somedomain.net
You're welcome.
Now don't take me wrong. BSD Ports are very good.
It's just that Portage is no less good.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
...I wish Dillon luck. I have always admired his work, and thought the goals of his project I had heard of before interesting.
People should realize FreeBSD couldn't go both ways at the same time. We went one way, and Dillon will be going another way. If his project survives, and I hope it does, it should benefit everyone. Even if the source itself is never used elsewhere, we'll learn with the experience.
(8-DCS)
I'm still trying to figure why people chime so much against forks. Forks make Open Source go round, let people explore new directions, and avoid ultimate fighting-style fights :-)
Anyway, good luck to Dilon, especially on his ports/packages rewrite work.
Cesar Cardoso can be found at cesar at zyakannazio dot eti dot br (or at least I believe so)
My name is B - S - D.
Ayn Rand. C'est moi.
Forks are bad. Every time we BSDers have a fork it means *less compatibility*. It is truly ironic that each BSD variant is more binary compatible with Linux than with each other. The Linux folks got it right - keep the kernel standard and customize in user land. On the other hand we are almost exactly the opposite -- vary the kernel and keep user land almost the same. Wouldn't it be nice if commercial software vendors could release a plain "BSD version" guarenteed to work with Open/Net/Free/DragonFly/Whatever ?
gah ENAMETOOLONGTOOLONG.
;^)
Better stick with EDOOFUS.
matt should be putting his effort back into amigas. forget PCs brother!
shit, I've been watching too much of Hulk Hogan...
Sounds cool, maybe its a chance for *BSD to gain some mainstream appeal. An improved package system could make it useable for mere mortals... Ah, but I'll probably stick to FreeBSD for the time being, it seems good enough to me... Tim
Subject says it all.
Follow the link guys. It's a link to a thread on a BSD mailing list complaining about a guy on slashdot posting the usual diatribe about BSD dying.
it's s-a-r-c-a-s-m folks! And a little bit of irony mixed in...
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
A Day in the Life of Michael Sims
06:00
Alarm goes off, Michael slaps the sleep button.
10:00
Michael finally wakes up and starts making breakfast: 16 Reese's peanut butter cups, 1 gal. 2% milk, "Big Grab" Fritos, four cold hot dogs, and coffee.
10:45
Time for email! Michael opens Outlook Express 6 (*gasp* Michael uses Windows!? Yes, the truth hurts, folks.) 30 emails from known trolls bitching about moderation bugs and abuses, 20 additional emails from trolls incognito regarding Slashdot censhorship, and 5 emails from legitimate Slashdot readers regarding bug fixes and code patches.
11:15
Lunchtime! Michael has a triple-decker balogna sandwich and Nacho Cheesier! Doritos. Washes it down with Nestle Quik! Strawberry milk. Finishes it off with a healthy swig of Pepto-Bismol and a few Tums.
11:45
Michael opens Emacs and starts coding in Perl: SLASH has a lot of bugs to fix, thanks to Taco. Michael silently curses Taco under his breath. Feels underappreciated, overworked, underpaid-- oh wait, Open Source software unemploys programmers. Michael wants to bitch but knows he can't.
11:47
Quits Emacs, opens Pico. Can't handle that "complex shit" anymore.
12:10
Calls ex-girlfriend, cries into phone for 10 minutes before realizing she'd hung up on him seven minutes ago. Questions his manhood. His manhood does not respond. Sad little knob, it's gone neglected for years.
12:30
Shower time! Heads down to the local truckstop, grabs a ticket for a restroom, and hopes the door locks. In the middle of his shower he is accosted by the janitor (again). He supposes the door didn't lock. Screams go unheard and the janitor walks away satisfied. Michael cries in the corner of the shower stall for a a while before running home, still crying.
13:00
Back in front of his Pentium II system running Linux, Michael masturbates while thinking of being raped by the truckstop's janitor in the shower. Though terrified at the time, Michael feels exhilerated by it in general. Michael fingers his asshole to bring himself to orgasm.
13:01
Conference call with Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, ESR, and Michael. How do we silence the trolls? Michael suggests deleting comments and accounts regularly. ESR and Taco, however, know this would be bad for business-- they own stock in the company! Michael is frustrated and hangs up on the call.
13:30
Time for more food. Even though Michael eats enough for three geeks, he has a rare disorder that increases his metabolism. Michael is 6'2" but only weighs 120lbs. Michael is eating pickles, celery wih peanut butter, cold baked sweet potatoes, and dog food. Michael is too hungry not to eat whatever is in sight.
14:00
Returning to Pico, Michael begins working on tweaks to the moderation system, purposefully coding "features" so the likes of Mighty-Troll, Trollaxor, and the Turd Report will be silenced for being funny and creative. Michael can almost see their emails, bitching about being banned.
15:45
Michael begins getting itchy. The rash is coming back, so Michael strips out of his clothes and sits naked. Nearby plants in his condo wilt and die, milk curdles, and Linx begins core-dumping. Michael is ashamed. He cries as Linux reboots and wishes the rash would leave his pale, skinny, feminine body.
16:30
Michael declares "quittin' time" now as he's had a very stressful day. He needs some time alone so he works on the holocaust project. Thousands of Jews laugh at him for having naively fallen for the greatest lie in all of history.
17:45
Michael gets the mail. New Playgirl. Next few hours blown.
21:00
Raw, chafed, and sore, Michael passes out on the couch naked after a marathon session with the new Playgirl.
23:50
In a zombie-like trance, Michael stumbles off to bed and falls back asleep, preparing to do it all again tomorrow.
BSD is as dead as an AIDS homo sucking on a cyanide coated
70 KVolt high tension cable with a ground wire shoved up his ass.
BSD commissars are always spouting some kind of socialist gobbledygook. The free market said "No! we don't want BSD!" "We don't want to give away our work with no recompense!"
Take your BSD socialism and shove it up where the sun don't shine!!!
Now that's high tech multitasking.
This looks *realy* cool!
Oh wait, the show "Six Feet Under" is what I was thinking about.
*BSD: as cold and stiff as a porn star in Sweden.
Ouch. It hurts 'n' stuff.
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals.