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FreeBSD 4.9 Code Freeze

Posted by michael on from the stop-in-the-name-of-love dept.

lewiz writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering have announced that the code freeze in preparation for 4.9-RELEASE (scheduled for 29th September) will begin on 25th August. Also 4.9-RC is tentatively scheduled for 12th September. A full list of dates can be found on the Release Process page."

136 comments

  1. In Other News... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The SCO is offering licences for the use of 0 and 1 in free bsd, at the low price of $699 per bit, with an increase to $1399 after October 15th.

    1. Re:In Other News... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      But I thought Microsoft owned that patent? Is SCO also claiming rights to Microsoft's IP?

  2. Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    *crickets chirp*

    1. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by mhesseltine · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Sure, no one seems to care now. However, wait until the SCO gestapo starts really trying to nail down their "licensing fees" from users. FreeBSD will see a huge influx of new users, migrating over from Linux.

      --
      Overrated / Underrated : Moderation :: Anonymous Coward : Posting
    2. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm sure the Linux fanboy base that makes up the core of Slashdot readers are all pleased to hear that another free OS is making progress. I'm sure they will all show up here to show their support as soon as all crusades against Linux and Geekdom in general are brought to an end and Microsoft is destroyed!

      In the meantime FreeBSD uses will be content to stay out of the limelight while Slashdot fights those terribly important battles. :rolleyes:

    3. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by cperciva · · Score: 4, Informative

      I, for one, agree here. 4.9-RELEASE isn't really all that exciting. Of course, it's not supposed to be exciting -- it's from the STABLE branch; new and exciting features don't belong in the STABLE branch.

      Now, if there was a completely new scheduler or virtual memory system, or a couple data-corruption on unmount bugs, that would be exciting. But in FreeBSD, that sort of thing doesn't get into the STABLE branch.

      --
      Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
    4. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by drdink · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The beauty of FreeBSD is that you don't get a new scheduler or VM subsystem in every new 'kernel release' unlike some other OSes I can think of. Only after great lengths of testing, experimentation, and the actual need for the new subsystem does it make it into the tree. And then, it makes it into the -CURRENT tree. Something so complex is never MFC'd, fortunately. I like FreeBSD because it doesn't radically change from release to release. It is just improved.

      --
      Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
    5. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, BSD can only asymptotically approach 5.0, or else it will be System V. Count on seeing 4.9.9.9.9 STABLE in the next few years.

      --
      taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
    6. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by cperciva · · Score: 5, Funny

      Slashcode must have eaten my tags.

      --
      Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
    7. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Fact: *BSD is dying

      It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

      OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

      Fact: *BSD is dying

    8. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Fact: *BSD is dying

      It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD probably is hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

      OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

      Fact: *BSD is dying

    9. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      But in FreeBSD, that sort of thing doesn't get into the STABLE branch.

      It doesn't make it into CURRENT, either.

    10. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      From what I saw, the big news will be PAE (> 4Gb on Intel boxes) support, which good for commercial uses (we have a bunch of 8Gb Linux boxes that use PAE) but not likely a lot of folks have it on the desktop.

      Check the FreeBSD open issues list to get a snapshot.

    11. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by mph · · Score: 4, Funny

      Some of us don't really want our OS to be exciting. Wasn't that an ancient Chinese curse? "May you live in interesting times, and your operating system provide much excitement."

    12. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by kongjie · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Well said. I should note, however, that this "Chinese" curse May you live in interesting times is in all likelihood the invention of Western writers.

      There is no Chinese equivalent that I've ever found and others have noted the same.

    13. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      if *BSD is dead. Why does it live longer than my linux box?

    14. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Fact: *BSD is dying

      It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

      OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

      Fact: *BSD is dying

    15. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe your inscrutable cohorts are just keeping the origins of this phrase a secret.

    16. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1
      I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you nutty 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 machine's 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.

    17. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by The+Clockwork+Troll · · Score: 1
      I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you nutty 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.
      Let's assume for a minute that you're an intelligent person and that maybe you believe in Occam's razor.

      What is more likely:

      • FreeBSD is so horrible an operating system that it is only capable of achieving 15 kilobytes/second disk throughput.
      • You have it configured suboptimally.
      Perhaps FreeBSD's kernel configuration tools aren't the easiest to understand, perhaps even they are buggy. But then again only a fanatic few have tried to claim that FreeBSD and its ilk are truly "user-friendly" or at least familiar in the same way Windows is to most.

      This is going to sound like a dig, but you might not be competent enough (or, to direct the blame away from you, the software might be too difficult to use for you) to set up a smoothly running FreeBSD box, and there Windows does have an advantage for you, since one can get 80% of an optimal set-up with Windows simply by having the right hardware and drivers.

      You asked for an intelligent person's argument, and I can't give you one because you haven't dug deeper than the surface to figure out why your FreeBSD installation might be performing so poorly. This puts you in the category of users who harrass Tier I support personnel at Dell, not those who can entertain intelligent arguments about operating system comparisons.

      --

      There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
    18. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      I've mulled it over. I've looked at every aspect and I've come to the only conclusion possible,
      *BSD is dying
    19. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BSD users are racist. When I chat on IRC they don't know I'm Asian. I hear racist talk all the time.

    20. Re:Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Fact: *BSD is dying

      It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying We all know that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

      OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

      Fact: *BSD is dying

  3. Dead operating system sketch by cerskine · · Score: 0, Funny
    DEAD OPERATING SYSTEM SKETCH

    Cast:

    Mr. Praline: John Cleese

    Shop Owner: Michael Palin

    A customer enters an operating system shop.

    Mr. Praline: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint. (The owner does not respond.)
    Mr. Praline: 'Ello, Miss?
    Owner: What do you mean "miss"?
    Mr. Praline: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
    Owner: We're closin' for lunch.
    Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this operating system what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
    Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, *BSD...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
    Mr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
    Owner: No, no, it's uh,...it's resting.
    Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead operating system when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
    Owner: No no it's not dead, it's, it's restin'! Remarkable OS, *BSD, idn'it, ay? Beautiful kernel!
    Mr. Praline: The kernel don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
    Owner: Nononono, no, no! It's resting!
    Mr. Praline: All right then, if it's restin', I'll wake it up! (bashes at the keyboard) 'Ello, Mister *BSD! I've got a lovely fresh kernel update for you if you show...

    (owner hits the keys)

    Owner: There, it spewed some debug output to the command line!
    Mr. Praline: No, it didn't, that was you hitting the keys!
    Owner: I never!!
    Mr. Praline: Yes, you did!
    Owner: I never, never did anything...
    Mr. Praline: (yelling and typing into the console repeatedly) 'ELLO COMMAND PROMPT!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock cron job!

    (Rips out hard drive from computer case and thumps it on the counter. Shoves it back inside the case and reboots the system - blank screen.)

    Mr. Praline: Now that's what I call a dead operating system.
    Owner: No, no.....No, it's stunned!
    Mr. Praline: STUNNED?!?
    Owner: Yeah! You stunned it, just as it was finishing an I/O task! *BSD stuns easily, major.
    Mr. Praline: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely 'ad enough of this. That operating system is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of responsiveness was due to it bein' in the process of recompiling itself after a particularly comprehensive code update.
    Owner: Well, it's...it's, ah...probably pining for some dilettante dabbling.
    Mr. Praline: PININ' for some DILETTANTE DABBLING?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its back the moment I started Emacs?
    Owner: *BSD prefers swapping everything out to the hard drive! Remarkable variant, id'nit, squire? Lovely kernel!
    Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining the system when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been printing any text at all to the screen was because of all the WORRYING COMPILER WARNINGS encountered while it was being rebuilt.

    (pause)

    Owner: Well, o'course it was spitting out those warnings! If I hadn't updated the kernel with an unstable development build, you might have had your FTP server compromised, and VOOM! Bye bye to your business.
    Mr. Praline: "Server"?!? Mate, this OS wouldn't "serve" if you put four million volts through it! It's bleedin' demised!
    Owner: No no! It's pining!
    Mr. Praline: It's not pinin'! It's passed on! This OS is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to mee

  4. Let's hear from all of the excited /. readers! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Most of us FreeBSD fans will be far more excited when FreeBSD 5.x becomes stable, and has things like KSE enabled by default. 4.x is a aging branch with only limited whiz-bang appeal.

  5. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    9994
    1. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by andrewski · · Score: 1

      Thanks to you, never. I run 5.1 and it's faster and sweeter than 4.x ever was. Fuck 4.x and long live GEOM!

    2. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by DashEvil · · Score: 0

      Fuck 4.x? You're a newb, aren't you?

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
    3. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by andrewski · · Score: 1

      Only if by Newbie you mean 'has only been using FreeBSD for about 5 years...'

      Sorry, but on my BSD machine (a modest P3-450) 5.x kills 4.x in speed, features, and usability.

    4. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by DashEvil · · Score: 0

      But 4.x kicks it ass in stability, which is why it's the stable branch, which is why 'fuck 4.x' was a very newbish thing to say.

      Don't even TRY to claim that 5.x is more stable than 4.x. heh.

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
    5. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by andrewski · · Score: 1

      Did I claim that 5.x is more stable? In any event, I have never had FreeBSD crash. 4.x or 5.x. In terms of feature sets, though, 5.x kills 4.x with ease. I for one look towards the future instead of wollowing in the past.

    6. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by DashEvil · · Score: 0

      "Did I claim that 5.x is more stable? In any event, I have never had FreeBSD crash. 4.x or 5.x. In terms of feature sets, though, 5.x kills 4.x with ease. I for one look towards the future instead of wollowing in the past."

      No, but you insinutated that FreeBSD 4.x was without merit with your 'fuck 4.x' comment.

      In any case, it's not wollowing in the past, what about people that don't need any of the new features? I prefer stability of a new feature set that I don't 'need'. I personally can't wait for the stable branch of 5.x, but until that, I'm happy with 4.x.

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
    7. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by andrewski · · Score: 1

      I have used 4.x happily for years. If you misintrepret me that's hardly my problem. At the same time, 5.1 is beautiful, stable (if not STABLE) and UFS2+S absolutely blows away UFS or UFS+S.

      My point is that, as much as Dragonfly BSD sounds fun, and I'm sure that it'll actually run someday, I'll use official FreeBSD. At least that way I'll have a working ports. And, a bugs forum that actually exists. And, a system that runs now.

      Why even use FBSD 4.x if you have no need for new features? 4.4 BSD Lite is just fine!

    8. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by DashEvil · · Score: 0

      2) I said features that I 'don't need'. I'm pretty sure 4.4 BSD Lite doesn't have my onboard NIC drivers, or the latest security patchs.

      I think this argument is kind of redundant as we both have our reasons for using what we use, each are equally valid, and the only reason we are arguing is because I misinterpretted something you said. So on that note, I will stop.

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
    9. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by andrewski · · Score: 1

      Even if you don't think you need the increased feature set of 5.x, you could probably find a use for it. Who doesn't like a faster filesystem? I am not attacking you as an individual, but just curious why you might eschew a better mousetrap just because yours catches mice already?

    10. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by DashEvil · · Score: 2, Interesting

      My main interest in FreeBSD is rock hard stability.

      There is nothing worse than your desktop crashing, it's horrible. This is why Linux is an unacceptable choice to me in terms of a *nix desktop. Even crashing at the end of a 13 day uptime is unacceptable because it points at flaws in the system that can manifest themself at a time of their choosing; I don't like that. Well, there are other reasons I choose FreeBSD over Linux, but those aren't important. My main point is that, I want a reliable desktop OS, and I'm going to trust the FreeBSD team on this. When they say 5.x is stable, then it's stable, and I'll use it. I'm actually waiting on it pretty hard too, I love DevFS, faster filesystem is great, etc, etc, but none of it is worth sacrificing stability for me. I mean, it'll all be there for me when 5.2 (which is the stable release, or close to it, no?) is out, and I'm looking forward to that. No reason to rush things when, like I said, there is nothing in 5.x that I NEED.

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
    11. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      Are you a fag? Only fags use 5.1.

    12. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by essdodson · · Score: 1

      It was my understanding that UFS2 only brought about features which enabled much larger file systems. Can you please link to information regarding the performance of UFS2 versus UFS?

      --
      scott
    13. Re:Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ghod.

      This guy HAS to be a member of GNAA, crapflooding like that. O_o

      -uso.

  6. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    8498
  7. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    27312
  8. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    22801
  9. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    6196
  10. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    9712
  11. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    21255
  12. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    14884
  13. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    13252
  14. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    4375
  15. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    6646
  16. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    1054
  17. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    28028
  18. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    12178
  19. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    369
  20. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    26861
  21. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    18518
  22. Poul-Henning Kamp ruined FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Poul-Henning, asshole extraordinaire, has managed to ruin FreeBSD with his new GEOM and devd ego trips, that will silently rot, while he doesn't let anyone else touch them. FUCK YOU POUL. Long live to DragonFlyBSD!

    Turbo Glass

    6625
  23. Developer laments: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    The End of FreeBSD

    [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. It

    1. Re:Developer laments: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      What I know about BSD,
      1. It is dying
      2. It has no GUI
      3. It is fragmented
      4. It is associated with SCO
      5. It has no games
      6. It is run only by geeks
      7. It is unusable by Grandmas
      8. It has fewer than 500 users
      9. You can not install it on a pentium
      10. You cannot apt-get it
  24. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Fact: *BSD is dying

    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

    1. Re:*BSD is dying by kfuq · · Score: 1

      OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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.

      so where do they come up with these "numbers"

      not everyone who uses *BSD posts to usenet either..

      --
      iF yOu WAnT to C YOUr iP agaIn gAThEr tWO MilLIon dOLLArS IN Non - cONsEcuTivE TweNtY's AnD AWaiT FuRThER iNstrUctIoN
    2. Re:*BSD is dying by Above · · Score: 1

      It's not interesting how many "users". What's interesting is the number of installed boxes. FreeBSD, in particular, is likely to be used in server markets where hundreds of machines might be managed by one person. Compare and contrast with desktop markets, where some Linux distros go and Windows is definately king, and you find more of a 1-3 computers per person ratio.

      Of course, no one really knows any of the above numbers with any reliability, so we should all just make up new ones anyway!

  25. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Fact: *BSD is dying

    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying, that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The erosion of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  26. Elegy for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    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.
  27. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Fact: *BSD is dying

    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. Everyone knows that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  28. *BSD not dying by horcy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    First thing that i like to say is that I pee for pleasure on the people that always say *BSD is dying. These people will crawl back to *BSD because soon linux is dying because of some lame ass SCO crap.

    --
    Check my site: http://pixel.pagina.nl
    1. Re:*BSD not dying by The+Unabageler · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Not nearly dying!

      --
      perl -e '$_="\007/4`\cp%2,".chr(127);s/./"\"\\c$&\""/gees; print'
    2. Re:*BSD not dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But of course!

  29. What I know about *BSD... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    1. It is dying
    2. It has no GUI
    3. It is fragmented
    4. It is associated with SCO
    5. It has no games
    6. It is run only by geeks
    7. It is unusable by Grandmas
    8. It has fewer than 500 users
    9. You can not install it on a pentium
    10. You cannot apt-get it

    1. Re:What I know about *BSD... by DashEvil · · Score: 0

      It has XFree86 and I have it installed on a Pentium 120Mhz, so what I know about *you.

      1) You're an idiot.
      2) You need to get laid.

      --
      -If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
    2. Re:What I know about *BSD... by Quill_28 · · Score: 1

      How many times I have I told you, Don't respond to idiot BSD trolls.

      Though you are probably right.

    3. Re:What I know about *BSD... by kfuq · · Score: 1

      more like what you don't really know..

      --
      iF yOu WAnT to C YOUr iP agaIn gAThEr tWO MilLIon dOLLArS IN Non - cONsEcuTivE TweNtY's AnD AWaiT FuRThER iNstrUctIoN
    4. Re:What I know about *BSD... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
      Here is what I know about *BSD:
      *BSD is dying
  30. Features List by rf0 · · Score: 4, Informative

    4.9 Release notes showing what is going in/being fixed

    Rus

    --
    Cheap UK and US VPS
    1. Re:Features List by bmah · · Score: 5, Informative

      FYI: That document is really the release notes for 4-STABLE, and is a work in progress. I still have a bunch of things to do to get it caught up to reality.

    2. Re:Features List by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      FYI: *BSD is dying

  31. Shit on me fucker, BSD IS DYING! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    SHIT ON ME! It's official - Netcraft has fucking confirmed: *BSD is dying

    Yet another cunting bombshell hit the "community" of *BSD asswipes when IDC recently confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of one single puny fucking percent of all servers. Coming hot on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more fucking market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is ingesting itself backwards, disappearing up its very own shitter, as fittingly exemplified by coming a piss poor dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a cock-sucking 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 fucking future at all for *BSD because that sorded, shit-filled, mutated testicle of an operating system is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink splashes across the accounting documents like a series of exploding bloodfarts. FreeBSD munches the most ass of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD cuntwipes Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying and its rotting corpse smells worse than a maggot, vomit, shit and piss cocktail.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the fucking numbers, shall we? OK!

    OpenBSD wanker Theo states that there are a pathetic 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Oh, God, let's fucking see... The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore it's turd-suckingly obvious that 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, by simple fucking arithmetic, there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. Surprise fucking surprise, this is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of those arseholes at Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD showed themselves to be a bunch of retarded tossers, went out of business and were taken over by BSDI who sell another special needs OS. Now BSDI is also a miserable failure, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house... pathetic.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily fucking declined in market share. *BSD is where it belongs, at death's door and its long term survival prospects are almost non-fucking-existant. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among moronic, dilettante shitheads. *BSD continues to Chew Satan's Dick And Fuck The Baby Jesus Up The Pooper. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD IS A FUCKING USELESS WASTE OF BITS AND IS DYING LIKE THE DOG THAT IT IS. IT MAKES ME SICK JUST THINKING ABOUT IT.

  32. It's dead, Jim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    This bitch is dead.

  33. Lameness filter mod time I want to read about BSD by ratfynk · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Some dork, obviously an ex-freebsd disgruntled lame wounded spammer is managing to get around the multiple post of the same shit lameness filter. So it is time to make the lameness filter a little tougher to get around. The moron will tip off the MS sponsored GNAA people and bingo some idiot will write a script that will take down /. Time for affirmative action against scripted bot posts. Make a longer interval on post acceptance and a diff with the last post blocker. Then start kicking the users off that do that kind of shit until they are willing to send e-mail appologies to the /. gods before they are permited to post from a given location again!

    --
    OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
  34. Loud and Proud, Put Away That Silly Shroud by SlashCrunchPop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I was wondering, can any of the people who seem to be badmouthing FreeBSD all the time code? If so, have you contributed at least a line of code to making your much beloved Linux better? If so... Wait a minute, I'm talking to myself now.

    Seriously though, if you are not contributing in any way, but still think that just being a fan makes you superior to other teams and their fans, you should think about this: the game is not about you, you're just observers and if your team should cease to exist, you wouldn't know what to do with a football to save your life. So put your scarf on, cheer like a good sport, but leave the criticism to those who actually play the game.

    1. Re:Loud and Proud, Put Away That Silly Shroud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Part of the problem here is the management, or lack thereof.

      As an experiment one could take the 'BSD is dying mime' and create a series of 'GNU/Linux is dying' posts. You've got lots of factual material to work with, A GNU/Linux vendor - Calderia (now called SCO) suing over Linux. The stock valuations of most of the 'Linux' companies which show an evaporation of wealth, the ignorance or sloth of people who say 'our webserver is linux' (No, the webserver is apache, ya dolt). Another variation of the ignornant Linux supporter - a post here on slashdot who was claiming the SCO suit would effect Java/Samba.....when he came from the Microsoft world, word/excel/IIS/et la are all Microsoft. In the GNU/Linux world you can't call java 'linux' just because java runs on linux. Draw a parallel of the old 'UNIX Wars' of the 1980's-1990's...all the different versions of UNIX(tm) vs the EVEN MORE different forks of GNU/Linux. You might even gather the actual BSD troll data to show how Linux-centric people are no better than Microsoft-spreading FUD about products that are not GNU/Linux. Throw in some Brett Glass style 'the GPL will cause programmers to become unemployed' and you'd have posts to work for many topics. The experiment part is see how quickly management here causes the software to change to 'ban' posts that remind the readers about the fate of VA Research^H^H^H^H^H^H^HLinux^H^H^H^H^HSoftware.

      Anti BSD posts - Management doesn't care.
      Anti Linux posts - Ok, personal caring on the part of the slashdot staff
      Posts pointing out VA Software's history with a negative spin - Management will be all over thoes posts.

    2. Re:Loud and Proud, Put Away That Silly Shroud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another variation:

      Point out how the BSD code will be what kills of fthe SCO VS IBM Linux kernel suit.

      Then state Why use a copy when you can use the original..BSD.

    3. Re:Loud and Proud, Put Away That Silly Shroud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      I was wondering, can any of the people who seem to be badmouthing FreeBSD all the time code? If so, have you contributed at least a line of code to making your much beloved Linux better?

      The reverse is also true too (do elitist BSD-fanboys code?) But what would I know, I'm just an unwashed and ignorant Linux user.

    4. Re:Loud and Proud, Put Away That Silly Shroud by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that really what you have against BSD? Some nebulous feeling that some BSD users look down on you for using Linux? And just how do you feel about windows users? Are all "bsd-is-dying" trolls really just hypocrites with inferiority complexes?

  35. My trolls are not idiotic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Rather they are a balanced point of view, based on my personal experience.

    Now please run along and drink your hot chocolate...

    Damn he is right about point 2 though :(

    1. Re:My trolls are not idiotic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hint to you - bathe more often so you can get laid.

    2. Re:My trolls are not idiotic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I shower daily and use deodourant...
      Surely that's enough. Do you suggest buying some of those drugs that knocks chicks out?

    3. Re:My trolls are not idiotic! by Quill_28 · · Score: 4, Informative

      great now I am responding to a troll,
      so I will answer

      1. It is dying
      -Wrong
      2. It has no GUI
      -Wrong
      3. It is fragmented
      -This is a good thing
      4. It is associated with SCO
      5. It has no games
      -Wrong
      6. It is run only by geeks
      -Um no comment
      7. It is unusable by Grandmas
      -nor is linux
      8. It has fewer than 500 users
      -Wrong
      9. You can not install it on a pentium
      -Nope
      10. You cannot apt-get it
      -Correct, use have to make; make install

    4. Re:My trolls are not idiotic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not fragmented cause it's not Linux; the kernel with 10,000 fragmented distro's!

  36. An interesting claim by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Only fags use 5.1.

    Now there is something that Linux can't claim. An operating system *SO* easy to use, that cigarettes can use it.

    If a mindless cig can use FreeBSD 5.1, is Joe SixPack far behind?

  37. Re:Lameness filter mod time I want to read about B by R.Caley · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Set your minimum score setting to 1. End of problem. Anyone who can't be arsed to log in and can't write anything interesting enough to get a moderation point from someone is no loss.

    --
    _O_
    .|<     The named which can be named is not the true named
  38. *BSD is dying *BSD is dying *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Are you *BSD lusers getting the hint yet?

    P.S. *BSD looks like it stole some SCO code - get ya credit cards ready.

  39. Goggle confirms it - *BSD is dying! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Searched the web for *BSD is dying:

    Results 1 - 10 of about 12,100. Search took 0.28 seconds

    That is a lot of dying, genocide levels.

    This is concrete proof that *BSD is dying. After all, Google knows everything.

    1. Re:Goggle confirms it - *BSD is dying! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1
      On the other hand:

      Searched the web for linux is dying.

      Results 1 - 10 of about 126,000. Search took 0.19 seconds.

      So it looks as if Linux is dying about 10 times as much. Now let's look at this one:

      Searched the web for windows is dying.

      Results 1 - 10 of about 377,000. Search took 0.24 seconds.

      Sorry BSD, but Linux and Windows are both dying a lot more than you.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  40. Problems with *BSD again by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll


    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.

  41. Re:Lameness filter mod time I want to read about B by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic


    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.

  42. Re:4.12 by ftvcs · · Score: 1

    I read somewhere they will continue untill 4.12:
    4.9, 4.10, 4.11 and 4.12 = VERY STABLE

    The 5.X branch should become 'just' STABLE by then.

  43. gawdam.... by kfuq · · Score: -1, Troll

    FUCK YOU --- NO, FUCK YOU -- NO, FUCK YOU

    jesus h motherfucking christ...

    GROW UP YOU WHINING LITTLE BITCHES

    mod this as a troll.. i don't give a fuck..

    You all are just a bunch of whiny little bitches with your 'fuck you -- no fuck you' bullshit..


    What the hell ?!?!??

    Are you all stuck in some white trash/ghetto high school or something ?!?!? -- YOU SURE FUCKING ACT LIKE IT!!

    --
    iF yOu WAnT to C YOUr iP agaIn gAThEr tWO MilLIon dOLLArS IN Non - cONsEcuTivE TweNtY's AnD AWaiT FuRThER iNstrUctIoN
    1. Re:gawdam.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The 'trolling' of Slashdork has gone on for years.

      The only place where is has been allowed to continue w/o any visable attempts to stop it has been WRT the BSD topic.

      What will it take to have /. management do something? Does a response have to travel to all parts of the /. system? Does the response have to use zombie machines posting variations of a 'Linux is dead, the smell is the SCO lawsuit' type post for a week to flood the system for the management to shutdown the SAME posts about BSD that have gone on for over a year? Does a 'linux is dying' meme have to go to Linux mailing lists, other boards etc? At some point the snipping here will spread.

      Ignoring the posts hasn't worked...has it? You've noticed the bad behavior - what can be done to correct the behavior?

    2. Re:gawdam.... by HumanTorch · · Score: 1

      It still happens because its still goddamn funny.. and people still respond. Cheap entertainment: toss back a few pints and start reading BSD threads - you will laugh yourself out of your chair from the sheer silliness.

      Now I'm off to search the newsgroups for a good flame fest to read.

  44. Users of FreeBSD by greebly · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That's interesting. A recent Netcraft survey showed that there were thousands of FreeBSD IPs. Over 40000 alone at Yahoo. Extrapolated, every single person who even visits Yahoo is a FreeBSD user...

    --
    Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup.
    1. Re:Users of FreeBSD by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      Yes, but the RIAA has released figures stating that since a FreeBSD box is, on average up for longer than a box running another OS, BSD users count for more than normal computer users. Latest figures published by the RIAA indicate that there are over 70 billion BSD users...

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  45. OFFTOPIC: but please help a n00b out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I'm interested in trying out FreeBSD or any of the other BSD operating systems. My one main concern is backups. There are a whole slew of backup solutions for Linux, mainly LVM and filesystem snapshots comes to mind. LVM also allows you take incremental snapshots which is a big plus for me. I heard in #freebsd on irc.freenode.net that FreeBSD 5 has filesystem snapshots but no incremental =(

    And another thing. Are there any plans in the future of the FreeBSD project where binary updates will be officially supported instead of doing make world whenever security patches need to be applied? I've heard that the argument used against any binary updates is security and how trojans could be slipped in. Couldn't this be avoided if each binary update tarball was signed using the FreeBSD release engineer's gpg key?

    1. Re:OFFTOPIC: but please help a n00b out by ShavenGoat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't know of any commerical backup utilties, but Freebsd supports things like Amanda.

      I typically use a simple dump script for backing up 5.x systems:

      /sbin/rdump ${LEVEL}uaLf $DIR $FS

      Dump will do a snapshot in case of any file system changes during the dump. FYI, a make world usually isn't needed, as you can just re-make that particular peice of code, or rebuild the kernel if it is a kernel change.

  46. Re:Lameness filter mod time I want to read about B by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can't understand a word of what you wrote. And somebody modded you up?

  47. Re:Lameness filter mod time I want to read about B by ratfynk · · Score: 1

    Simple us poor suckers that keep a zero threshold need some temporary protection against the idiots that are doing a number on the bsd posts. It is getting to be a pain in the ass that the good people who contribute to good old bsd have to put up with more than a fair share of bullshit. If you do not agree with that then use hot mail and suffer the consequences when MS tries to migrate the server to 2003 again. Freebsd, and other bsd varients and the community that write for it are GOD DAMN important to OSS, linux and the future of internet communication. OSX for Apple would not exist without it and Microsoft would have squat left to reverse engineer, or clone. Just think MS would then have to be innovative, a f'in impossibility!

    --
    OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
  48. Re:4.12 by craig2787 · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure that it has been decided that 4.10 will be the end of the road. Also, as the version minor increases, the difference between it an the previous version decreases. That is, by the time we had a 4.11/4.12, the unified diff would probably be only a hundred lines long...

  49. Re:Lameness filter mod time I want to read about B by craig2787 · · Score: 1

    Saying "good old BSD" was a very big mistake.

    404: Parent Post punctuation not found.

  50. Elegy for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    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.
  51. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Fact: *BSD is dying

    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. The IT community is keenly aware that ever hapless *BSD is mired in an irrecoverable and mortifying tangle of fatal trouble. It is perhaps anybody's guess as to which *BSD is the worst off of an admittedly suffering *BSD community. The numbers continue to decline for *BSD but FreeBSD may be hurting the most. Look at the numbers. The loss of user base for FreeBSD continues in a head spinning downward spiral.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD 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 marketing surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is extremely sick and its long term survival prospects are infinitesimally dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among hobbyist dilettante dabblers. In truth, for all practical purposes *BSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  52. Be gentle... by Kibo · · Score: 1

    Ok, since I'm something of a neophyte, I'm going to show my ignorance and ask, what are the big differences between *BSD and linux. I know they're related. I've been under the impression that they share a relatively wide variety of software. With BSD being thought of as more stable, and linux a little more flashy with some of the software, like wine x, available for it.

    Please disabuse me.

    --
    --Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
    1. Re:Be gentle... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Here's the deal.

      They are enough alike that GNU/Linux users should be shouting down the BSD is dying trolls in the same way the BSD proponents should be helping out WRT the Linux lawsuit of SCO. Preceived 'leaders' like Linus, Alan Cox, et la of the 'linux movement' would be the obvious choices to lead by example. Another example would be Miguel de Icaza.

      Instead, you have people like Bruce Perens saying 'its not my job to support BSD' (Yet he claims to be an Open Source advocate), the Open Source Development Labs *ONLY* pimping Linux (If you are an OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT LAB, ignoring BSD shows you are not doing OPEN SOURCE DEVELOPMENT-your name should be LINUX Development Labs), few people correcting the idea that if you want to run Apache/samba/et la that means Linux.

      So, until people like Eric Raymond who has said (at one time) that the BSD kernel is better written then the Linux kernel starts to mention BSD, Bruce Perens who claims he supports Open Source, then ignores BSD/Disses BSD, and even a lack of effort to put down the BSD trolls on slashdork, there will remain a schisim.

      One that Microsoft and others could use, if they figure out how.

      The many Unix OS paths can try to work together to grow Open Source, or work apart. The actions of people like Perens shows that Linux advocates not only want to work alone, they want to co-opt Apache/samba/et la under the 'Open Source/Linux' banner. And, if for some reason the Linux kernel falls under the SCO lawsuit, there would have to be a 're-education' of users....such confusion will continue to help closed source/Mircosoft.

      (BTW, wine is in the FreeBSD ports collection. Code can be written to NOT run on the BSD's, and this does happen...look at early GNOME or other work by Miguel de Icaza, he writes (or used to) his code with no reguard to it working on BSD.)

    2. Re:Be gentle... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK my poor friend, here is the deal for you.

      First thing to remember is that money talks. OSDL's sponsors don't give it money from the good of their hearts, just like OSDL doesn't support BSD from the good of its heart. Its paid, or "sponsored" to further Linux development. OSDL is just a name, so don't get hung up on that.

      Second and probably more important: Slashdot is... Slashdot. There are plenty of smart people and good comments... outweighed 100 to 1 by the rambling idiots. The smart ones ignore the BSD trolls.

      Third, most BSD people I have met would acknowledge Linux's merits and vice versa. Doesn't mean they don't root for "their" OS... competitiveness is what got them as far as they are now anyway. Your mention of ESR backs this up: he is a rambling Linux/GNU advocate because of preference, but he'll acknowledge BSD.

      Fourth, don't let the actions of one person or group fool you. Don't let OSDL fool you. Don't let SCO fool you.

      Fifth, ease up on the conspiracy theories. There are no self respecting programmers who deliberately make their code unportable. Linux centric maybe, unportable no. This is no surprise given Linux's larger user base. Hey, even more programmers make their code Win32 only for some reason (wonder why).

    3. Re:Be gentle... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are no self respecting programmers who deliberately make their code unportable.

      Miguel de Icaza then hasn't acted like a self respecting programmer in the past. Perhaps he's had an attitude adjustment.

    4. Re:Be gentle... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
      Death is not pretty.

      It hurts 'n' stuff.

  53. The big new feature appears to be... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    PAE-physical address extensions, ported over from 5-CURRENT. I wonder if they're going to put out a version 4.10, because PAE doesn't yet work on all the drivers in current much less all that many drivers in 4-STABLE.

  54. *BSD is going down like a $2 thai whore by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    I can see its demise. It will fall, yet know one will notice.

    *BSD - as dead as my grandma.

  55. *BSD is dying *BSD is dying *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Are you *BSD lusers getting the hint yet?

    P.S. *BSD looks like it stole some SCO code - get ya credit cards ready.

    My original line for lameness

  56. What We Can Learn From BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    What We Can Learn From BSD
    By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

    Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

    Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

    These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

    As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

    Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

    The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

  57. FreeBSD problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    I really don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you crazy 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 machine's 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.

    1. Re:FreeBSD problems by qtp · · Score: 1

      Please find a new and original template, as the one you have been using is getting a bit tired.

      The over use of this template may have made this variable troll rather funny some time ago (circa 1998-99), but it has become so overused that it no longer has the strength of parody that once made it seem humorous, and it has been ages since anyone has been taken in by the "Holy War" troll (except in the manner that I am now, but I don't believe that a criticism of your trolling style can legitimately be considered a response to the troll).

      Unless you've discovered a new plateau for the Trolling artform that I am too simple to understand, this troll has fallen to a great low in terms of respectability, and one who habitually uses this should consider refreshing thier knowledge of trolling art history beginning with the great cross cultural classic known as "Pull My Finger".

      --
      Read, L
    2. Re:FreeBSD problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You see, trolls know their stuff is old when they do this.

      What they enjoy is when stupid users (such as yourself) come out and try to defend themselves.

    3. Re:FreeBSD problems by qtp · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what you mean, please explain yourself further.

      --
      Read, L
    4. Re:FreeBSD problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, this is a very complex issue. Please read my detailed guide here

  58. Parent is troll. by harikiri · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Troll. Seen it before.

    --
    Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
  59. Parent is offtopic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Parent has nothing to do with topic

  60. Re:4.12 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Get over it, Craig. For all practical purposes, FreeBSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.

  61. If there were a God I would thank her. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, if there were a God then I would thank her. I would thank her that I don't have to go through my short life imprisoned inside of a mind with a viewpoint anything remotely resembling yours.

    1. Re:If there were a God I would thank her. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It looks to me like *BSD is dying

  62. Developer laments: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    The End of FreeBSD

    [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. It

  63. ITS DEAD JIM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    _d8b____________________d8b_______d8,
    _?88____________________88P______`8P
    __88b__________________d88
    __888888b__.d888b,_d888888________88b_.d888b,
    __88P_`?8b_?8b,___d8P'_?88________88P_?8b,
    _d88,__d88___`?8b_88b__,88b______d88____`?8b
    d88'`?88P'`?888P'_`?88P'`88b____d88'_`?888P'

    ______d8b________________________d8b
    ______88P________________________88P
    _____d88________________________d88
    _d888888___d8888b_d888b8b___d888888
    d8P'_?88__d8b_,dPd8P'_?88__d8P'_?88
    88b__,88b_88b____88b__,88b_88b__,88b
    `?88P'`88b`?888P'`?88P'`88b`?88P'`88b

  64. Neat! by CooCooCaChoo · · Score: 1

    FreeBSD Frozen: Does that mean it is finally dead ;-)

    Oh well, looking forward to the 5.2 release, however, it is good to see that 4.x series are continuing to be developed as the temptation by some uname groups to focus more on the sexy/cool version rather than the boring maintainance work that is required.

    --

    "The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen

    1. Re:Neat! by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 1

      You dumbass... the reason they freeze it is to keep it alive!

      FreeBSD under the Vanilla Sky, FreeBSD will NEVER die...

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
  65. Good god Jim - he's he's deaadd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    _d8b____________________d8b_______d8,
    _?88____________________88P______`8P
    __88b__________________d88
    __888888b__.d888b,_d888888________88b_.d888b,
    __88P_`?8b_?8b,___d8P'_?88________88P_?8b,
    _d88,__d88___`?8b_88b__,88b______d88____`?8b
    d88'`?88P'`?888P'_`?88P'`88b____d88'_`?888P'

    ______d8b________________________d8b
    ______88P________________________88P
    _____d88________________________d88
    _d888888___d8888b_d888b8b___d888888
    d8P'_?88__d8b_,dPd8P'_?88__d8P'_?88
    88b__,88b_88b____88b__,88b_88b__,88b
    `?88P'`88b`?888P'`?88P'`88b`?88P'`88b

  66. What We Can Learn From BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    What We Can Learn From BSD
    By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0

    Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.

    Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.

    These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.

    As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.

    Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of the open-source community. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.

    The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.

  67. Elegy for *BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    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.
  68. Developer laments: What Killed FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    The End of FreeBSD

    [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. It