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FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Reviewed
ValourX writes "Here's a full review of FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE complete with screen shots, a short comparison with GNU/Linux, and some notes on migrating to FreeBSD from Windows and GNU/Linux."
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At last they reached the last of the little booths, set down Marvin between them and rested in the shade. Fenchurch bought some cufflinks for Russell, cufflinks that had set in them little polished pebbles which had been picked up from the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, directly underneath the letters of fire in which was written God's Final Message to His Creation.
Arthur flipped through a little rack of devotional tracts on the counter, little meditations on the meaning of the Message.
"Ready?" he said to Fenchurch, who nodded.
They heaved up Marvin between them.
They rounded the foot of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains, and there was the Message written in blazing letters along the crest of the Mountain. There was a little observation vantage point with a rail built along the top of a large rock facing it, from which you could get a good view. It had a little pay-telescope for looking at the letters in detail, but no one would ever use it because the letters burned with the divine brilliance of the heavens and would, if seen through a telescope, have severely damaged the retina and optic nerve.
They gazed at God's Final Message in wonderment, and were slowly and ineffably filled with a great sense of peace, and of final and complete understanding.
Fenchurch sighed. "Yes," she said, "that was it."
They had been staring at it for fully ten minutes before they became aware that Marvin, hanging between their shoulders, was in difficulties. The robot could no longer lift his head, had not read the message. They lifted his head, but he complained that his vision circuits had almost gone.
They found a coin and helped him to the telescope. He complained and insulted them, but they helped him look at each individual letter in turn, The first letter was a "f", the second an "a", the third a "c", and then a "t". Then there was a gap. An "b" followed, then an "s" and a "d". Another gap.
Marvin paused for a rest.
After a few moments they resumed and let him see the "i", and the "s".
The last one was a long one, and Marvin needed another rest before he could tackle it.
It started with an "d", then "y" then an "i".
After a final pause, Marvin gathered his strength for the last stretch.
He read the "n", and at last the final "g", and staggered back into their arms.
"I think," he murmured at last, from deep within his corroding rattling thorax, "I feel good about it."
The lights went out in his eyes for absolutely the very last time ever.
Luckily, there was a stall nearby where you could rent scooters from guys with green wings.
Hopefully we see something a little creative this time.
That screenshot really makes me want to go out and download it. lol.
here
I have over 70 freaks, do you?
I found the review in the obituary section, where else?
it blows. game over!
FreeBSD always was one of the more favorite OS's for me to play with. Always strong, never unresponsive, even back in the day it always stood up for being an honest and robust system. Thanks to it's ports system, it was a breeze to keep going. I guess that's why I still keep my old FreeBSD 3.0 CD around here, for memories.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Oh... yeah... those are some breathtaking fuckin' screenshots all right... I gotta get me some of this shit now.
Don't forget a "make depends" for when you crap your pants watching the majesty that is -- CONSOLE WINDOW
Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
FreeBSD: Are you guys coming or what?
Best Slashdot comment ever
sweet jesus, couldn't they get a decent screenshot or post a warning. Now I need to wash my eyes. With chlorine.
Good price... check
Compatable with today's games... negative
Based on my findings, this will not be the release to unseat the Redmond empire. Sorry.
Being such a site full of Linux weenies can we expect anything less than a bunch of 'FreeBSD is Dead' comments. I whould hazard to guess that none of the 'bsd is dead crowd have never even used it. FreeBSD rocks.
I find that FBSD 5.1 supports my hardware, esp. usb, better than FBSD 4.8
I bought SCOX with my Xmas money last year and today sold it. I am reach, biatches. $50000 or so in the bank, before the capital gains tax kicks in. I might blow it on a party with cocaine and girls. Yeah, go Linux, SCO rulez! Pay up your licenses.
I really like FreeBSD. I seem to be spoiled though using such *bleeding edge* apps (read: firebird/latest gaim/gnome2.4 etc) like i do with linux. Last time i checked out 5.0-CURRENT (Apr, iirc) it had older Apps than even the Stable release. I CVSupped my ports and found some of them broken, and also had some troubles installing things just from source code (bleeding edge problem, not Fbsd problem admittedly).
:)
In the last few days, looking at the packages in the 5.1 Release it looks like things have been updated some, so maybe i'll check it out this weekend.
However, i will say that aside from X apps and "non-essential" package version availability and things that the actual FreeBSD system is a pure joy to use. From documentation, to straight-forwardness to the beautiful console font and non-blinking cursor, i love FreeBSD!
do() || do_not();
that's right. in fact, the eyecon0meter is giving more accurate results than MOST of the ?pr? ?firm? scripted "mainstream" '?news?' outlets, so we're not planning on tweaking it much more right now.
bsd in't dying at all. in fact, if there's any dying to be done, it will be that of the felonious corepirate nazi payper liesense stock markup fraud execrable, who are self-eliminating buy their owned greed/fear based motives/behaviours.
get ready to see the light.
consult with/trust in YOUR creator.... yOUR ONLY purpose here is to care for one another. ANY other pretense is totally false.
for each of the creator's innocents harmed, there is a badtoll that must/will be repaid by you/US, as the aforementioned perpetrators of the attempted life0cide against humankind, will not be available to make reparations, after the big flash occurs.
*BSD is dying :).
Seriously, 4.8 release is much more stable than 5.1. Reviewing 5.1 is a bit dumb really. I've used both 4.8 and 5.1 and I have only had a few crash problems with my sound card driver on 5.1. Other than that they work perfectly.
Linux is still the ultimate free software desktop OS though. FreeBSD is good for hackers of all ages and servers, but definately not a desktop OS for newbies...
Bri.
The screen shots must have been carried off on a candle truck. I don't see them.
- EASY:Capable of being accomplished or acquired with ease; posing no difficulty
- SIMPLE:Having or composed of only one thing, element, or part
Not exactly alike, but they are synonyms. Maybe it is saying that keeping FreeBSD up to date is not simple, but FreeBSD is efficient? Or maybe understanding how to keep FreeBSD up to date is difficult, but actually doing it is easy?Not only does he persist in calling Linux "GNU/Linux" (Stallman's attempt to hijack Linus' bandwagon) and use the term "Free Software" (with caps, indicating a bias), but he knocks FreeBSD for what is one of its greatest strengths: its truly free and ethical licensing. It'd be nice to see a review that lacks this strong bias.
http://saveie6.com/
Torrents for the two CDs and mini-install.
...is they ALL look like default crap! Man this one looks like it was taken from a 1999 default installation of Storm Linux!
Pretty it up, make it look nice, put some makeup on it, THEN and ONLY then send it off on it's first official date to properly get banged in the back seat of a make believe car by a FreeBSD geek.
What do you want a screenshot of? KDE? Gnome? There's nothing special about a screenshot of any graphical environment of FreeBSD. It's the same as Linux.
When 4.x came out it had a problem with belkin KVMs. A number of people posted this problem and the FreeBSD community blamed it on the kvm. But Windows, Solaris, and Linux all worked without a problem. I did some research and found that the last 3.x released worked fine. After looking at the comments in pcm.c it was clear that the mouse handling was hacked into the 4.x series from the 3.x series and was not working. I posted these results and got flamed to death. Now 5.1 comes out and guess what the mouse still has problems but after the mouse generates a slew of errors it resets itself. This is a kludge and is not a worthy response from the FreeBSD community to this problem.
Nice review. Non-FreeBSD users can get a feel for where FreeBSD is in the FreeBSD 5.1 i386 Release Notes
Ciaran O'Riordan
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
I went to Slackware.com but could find no mention of FreeBSD? Your thoughts?
Perhaps you might be just a little too sensitive? Just because the reviewer chose to use Capital Leters, does not make said reviewer biased.
FreeBSD is dead and it sucked anyways, like Linux. I'll stick with Microsoft Windows, thank you. I don't need to complicate my life with "compiling" and editing text files with ancient and trash programs like this so called "emacs" junk. That stuff is for nerds and dorks. Dorks that we beat regularly in high school to bloody pulps. We nearly killed this one dork once. He went to the hospital and we weren't even in trouble for it, probably because we were on the football team. What's funny is that once a nerd got suspended when a teacher saw him punch my friend because my friend just slammed his head into a locker.
i hate this topic.
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TRoLL.
Who's the crack-head that modded this 'Insightful'?
I mod all 'Offtopic' 'Redundant' 'Flamebait' and 'Troll' as unfair. Read the goddamn guidelines.
Does it include Java? I see the lack of Java on FreeBSD has been a major oversight by the core FreeBSD team. The primary focus of FreeBSD has been the server-side and these days Java is a big part of what makes a server useful. Recently a binary distribution of Java 1.3.1 was released for FreeBSD, but I see no mention of it with the 5.1 distribution.
What is the status of Java on FreeBSD? Should I just switch over to MacOS X or Linux if I want a current Java runtime? Questions about Java have come up for the last several releases and so far I have not it addressed by the FreeBSD team.
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
Updating is "not simple, but it is easy"
In addition FreeBSD is not convoluted, but it is complicated. It is not slow, but it is lethargic. Lastly, it is not painful, but it is agonizing.
--- What?
I look at the difference this way. Let's say you're being punished in school, and you have to write out, "I will not play God." 1,000 times on the chalkboard.
:)
This is not easy, but is IS simple. As in, not complex.
Or, you could be writing some bit of RegEx code to do some pattern-matching. Some would say this is complex, though easy. (miss a character, you're farked)
That's why I see the two words as quite different.
bsd and linux are only used by stinking zit faced slobs who live in their mother's house trailers. time to GROW UP
It'd be nice to see a review that lacks this strong bias.
It'd be nice to see some less stupidly zealous postings, too.
Apparently some moderators have yet to upgrade to 'Sarcasm 0.94a'.
swaret --upgrade Sarcasm
Duh!!!!
Those frisky BSD users, always giving linux a hard time. Maybe they should just remove linux compatibility if the GPL is so evil. :P
funny link
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
This is a massive fallacy if ever I've heard one. On my Gentoo system, a 1.3 GHz Duron (which far from even mid-end these days), I'm running Gnome 2.4 (bloated as it is), chatting with friends in Gaim, compiling kde-libs/k3b and The Gimp in my F1/F2 terminals, browsing the Web in Firebird, reading email in Evolution, while another xnested Gnome session sits in the background burning a CD image from an NFS mount (too lazy to add my user to the cd-recording group, sue me) in gcombust and a Windows server at work defragments in tsclient. Thanks to the preemptive kernel scheduler patch which Gentoo distributes in their genkernel, this system is still entirely responsive.
Besides, I think Gentoo's ports system is more robust than BSD's.
In nature, the process is called decompisition. It happens after something dies; it is to be expected.
If anything, I'd say he's biased the other way, with his continuous digs at "that other OS", where all the package systems are crap and the developers are a bunch of wild hooligans who spew untested and broken code into the kernel.
Who cares if no-ine else uses the operating system you choose? This is freakin' slashdot. If we all just chose the most popular os all the freakin time, no one would ever have chosen Linux, and Windows will always be #1. Everyone who debates the *BSD linux by saying that BSD is dying is avoiding the issue. Why not come up with a better argument?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I find it interesting how the so-called "experts" on Slashdot judge an entire Operating System by a screenshot of a window manager that incidentally is not part of said Operating System.
You could turn that around and say Linux is crap, because GNOME and KDE look too much like Windows...
Sheesh, people, get your facts straight.
Looking fwd!!
I see you posting this kind of tripe all over slashdot. If you can't think of anything good to say, why not sit a few out?
Slightly off topic, but...does anybody know off hand if any of the BSD's support parallel port CD-RWs? I have an older laptop that doesn't have a CD-I managed to shoehorn a small Linux distro on but I'd like to look at using a BSD. Older desktops always seemed to be a bit snappier under BSD than Linux, and the only thing holding me back is whether or not my Microsolutions parallel port CD-RW would be supported.
Introduction
There are several players in the Unix world, but few are as complete and refined as FreeBSD. It installs easily, scales well, updates without a hassle and holds Netcraft records for uptime. It's also set and beaten several bandwidth records in its ten-year history. I say ten years, but really BSD dates back to 1978 when some programmers at UC Berkeley began making their own custom Unix distributions based on the original AT&T UNIX code. That makes FreeBSD and other BSD variants the oldest non-proprietary Unix operating systems still in use (GNU started in 1983 and Linux started in 1991). FreeBSD shed all of its proprietary UNIX code back in the 80s, so it is neither a trademarked UNIX nor is it directly related to System V or any other true UNIX. Age has given it a certain maturity and quality that few other operating systems possess. Read on to see what advantages FreeBSD offers.
The License
You'd be hard pressed to find a license less restrictive than the BSD License. Basically it says two things: that anyone redistributing the software must include all copyright notices and the appropriate license agreements, and that the FreeBSD Project and all contributors to the project may not be held liable for the software if problems should arise with it. It places no limitations on what you can do with the code; that means that it's Free Software. You can make unlimited copies of it, install it on any number of machines, give it to all of your friends and family, modify it in any way that you see fit, and even sell it if you want.
Purchase a TextAd
The Hero, by Jem Matzan
Critically acclaimed adventure fantasy novel.
Overview
There are two main editions of FreeBSD: the development version (which includes STABLE and CURRENT), and the more stable version with more mature code, called RELEASE. There are two parts to RELEASE: the new technology release (which is, as of this writing, at version 5.1) and the production release (which is, as of this writing, at 4.8). If you have newer hardware (made within the past 18 months) and you're interested in using FreeBSD for leisure or for regular desktop use, 5.1-RELEASE is likely to be your best choice because of its expanded hardware support. The development team strongly cautions 5.1 users that there could be possibly damaging bugs in the 5.1-CURRENT code, but I've found that this statement is more or less an exaggeration meant to indemnify the programmers in case something bad happens.
So just how risky is the CURRENT branch? Not very, but it is possible to have some problems from time to time if you're always using the latest CVS code. If you're well-versed in Unix you won't have to worry about it much; I have run into a few problems with 5.1-CURRENT that were caused by bugs in the kernel code, but there were none that I was unable to fix (or work around until a fix was released) on my own. I did not test any version prior to 5.1-RELEASE for this review, so I can't comment on the quality of 4.8-RELEASE or compare it to 5.1-RELEASE in any respect other than hardware compatibility.
Entwined with the ports tree (which is used to download and install programs from source) is the package system: a collection of precompiled programs for FreeBSD and other binary-compatible OSes. There is nothing stopping you from installing non-ported programs from source code, or from installing programs via a CDROM or other media, but for the most part you'll be using the ports or package systems to install new programs in FreeBSD. Both the package system and the ports tree can be updated easily by using the cvsup program to retrieve the latest modifications, patches and versions. Some applications cannot be installed as precompiled packages, binaries don't allow you to include special compile-time options, and some packages can be a little out of date, so in addition to the package system there is also the ports tree. Each port in the tree is stored in its own separate directory, categorized by type and listed in
I try to be fu
RMS is going to shit a brick when he catches wind of this article's author repeatedly referring to FreeBSD as "Free Software". And even has a hyperlink, in one of these instances, pointing to GNU.org.
Purposeful trolling by the author?
I've never had the honour (pain?) of being directly slashdotted, but I seem to be getting an indirect slashdotting. From the link in the middle of the article (to a very handy utility in development for performing binary security updates) I'm seeing a couple visitors per second.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
OK, so I'm new to all this BSD stuff. Skimming the page for the promised screenies I saw this image that says "WARNING: kernel contains GPL contaminated ext2fs filesystem." Am I missing something? Is this that "BSD is free-er than thou" I've heard about?
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I would consider using BSD - it doesn't have a "fer Dummies" book, and that is good.
It is just that I am annoyed by the BSD mascot even more than the penguin.
Why shouldn Linux be called GNU/Linux? Linux couldn't have been created with GNU tools...
Why the author thinks web fora are better than mailing list is a mistery to me. None of the reasons he gave sticks, and I actually find them a pain. With a mailing list I can always use Gmane to get a nice news interface!
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
That's all she wrote.
Ok...I can agree with the underlying concept (ease of use can mean difficult to fix). I don't see this in the portage tree however. Hell, it's all just text files. And "always fatally broken"? Huh? I've been using Gentoo since the early releases and I have not experienced the portage system being "always fatally broken". Hell, you wouldn't even be able to install gentoo if that was true.
How about a little less hyperbole and a little more specific and accurate facts? I've only known of a couple of instances where things got really messed up, and that was because of screwups in releases. And unless you were one of those people who felt the need to update everything all the time every time a new release came out you didn't even get bit by it.
I've seen APT and Portage choke on dependancies with no obvious way to fix them,
Again, huh? If you're having troubles with dependancies within portage not working then you need to get a better understanding of how portage works. You can't blame your ignorance on the tool.
and anyone who has ever tried to use a third-party RPM knows what a disaster that can be.
yes. Emphasis on /can/ be. RPM isn't unusable, but it is unusable for some purposes. And the workstation of any linux user who installs something other than what their distro releases is not it. ;-) And even then, a workstation install can be unpleasant. However, if you're running a typical internet server system redhat's setup can serve just fine. Not only do you not need the latest cutting edge releases, you don't really even want them. Works fine then as long as you stay within the lines.
FreeBSD is, if nothing else, a nice respite from the various GNU/Linux package management systems.
You know. I have nothing against BSD. I'm not an avid lover/user of BSD, but I have installed it on several occaisions and played with it. It's a nice OS. I prefer linux cause I like the faster pace and the more ...gritty...(for lack of a better term) feel to it. People are /doing/ things in linux. People from all walks and of all levels of skill. BSD doesn't (imo) seem to lend itself to that. It's always seemed to me that BSD considered itself destined for the elite, while linux was an OS for the great unwashed as well.
My impression could very well be inaccurate, as it's based mostly on things I read in mailing lists and from people I've met who /are/ avid BSD fans/users. (Few, if any, of which actually meet the "Elite" definition, but they sure felt and acted like they did. Which imo is why BSD tends to attract people like that. But I digress.)
Bottom line, both are great OSes. Why is it that this has to be us /or/ them. Why can't it be both? Is there some unwritten rule that one OS has to be cool and vibrant and the other has to be lame and dying?
I think the writer does BSD a disservice. The article makes it look like BSD defines itself by the shortcomings of some linux distributions (ignoring the fact that most of those "shortcomings" are hot air). BSD has enough positive things in and of itself that I highly doubt it needs to poke holes in linux or try to make linux look bad as a means of promoting itself.
Don't rag on linux and tell me linux sucks so I should use BSD. Tell me what's great about BSD. I already know windows and linux's shortcomings. Tell me what's great about BSD and I'll make my own comparisons, thank you very much.
</soap box>
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison
The supposed FreeBSD vs GNU/linux competition is one of the strangest things I've seen.
I use both. And, the reason for using one rather than the other isn't that crucial. I would be perfectly willing to use either for everything. It is just that I don't have to. So, I use FreeBSD for server stuff with standard hardware, and I use linux when I want to support more up-to-date hardware.
Best wishes,
Bob
The problem with not calling it GNU/Linux is that it's more GNU than Linux. Want to copy a file with cp? That's a GNU program. Like bash? It's GNU. Text editing with emacs? GNU.
:)
Of course, you couldn't do any of that without a kernel, which is what Linux is. So both parts are equally important. Without GNU, Linux would be behind... without Linux, GNU wouldn't be useful to anyone
My other car is first.
The Year of Our Lord 2003 has been a particularly bad year for the "B"s,
- Bob Hope
- Buddy Ebsen
- Buddy Hackett
- Barry White
- BSD
This honored list of dead is but a small token of adieu from the many fans of the deceased.These dead were truly some American Icons. They will be missed.
I don't understand why BSD and Linux users accept each other for their own strengths. It seems that Linux users keep trying to push into BSD's space and vice versa. I think that much of this is releated to commercial problems.
Linux was designed to provide a desktop version of *nix so that those of us who could not afford a huge machine to run it on could take advantage of enabling power of the *nix environment. It did a great job in this role. BSD was origionally designed to run on larger, higher-end machines and it does a great job meeting those ends.
Now, however it seems that everyone whats to make Linux scale to run on larger and larger systems. They are trying to make Linux, which was optimized for the desktop, replace the big iron unices. Now it seems that BSD is making a run for the desktop.
What is good for the big irons is not good for the desktop and vice versa. They are both a form of *nix. I do not see any harm in having two different kernels optimized for two different purposes. I think such a great dichotomy can only be good for both systems. Why do they have to after each others throats.
We are all here for the same reasons. We should be helping each other spread the *nix word instead of fighting amounst ourselves.
a "few all-powerful decision-makers" in linux are Linus himself and a dozen or so others... how is this different? i'm not trying to start a flame, just wondering how this is different.
Did I mention that all of these Linux apps are in the ports collection, so installing them was as simple as typing portinstall linux-opera, or whatever?
My FreeBSD workstation has a cron job which runs each evening, syncs the ports tree with the latest version and updates everything that's out of date, so when I go in to work in the mornings I always have the latest versions of software.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
so many Linux users getting bent out of shape that "FreeBSD users are insulting Linux" or some shit.
I didn't read any "insulting Linux" comments in the article.. maybe some things addressing shortcomings of Linux, but nothing that would really be "insulting".
Just let us use our OS in peace. Everyone seems to hate it when Windows users say things like "Linux? Why would you use THAT?", but it's somehow okay to say the same thing to *BSD users?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Except that GNU also runs on the Hurd and NetBSD kernels. In theory it could run on almost any other UNIX-like kernel with a C compiler (for example any of the gcc target platforms).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Sorry, but that's the way it crumbles cookie-wise.
The problem with not calling it GNU/Linux is that it's more GNU than Linux.
True, but most distributions are also more Mozilla, X, and several other things, than they are GNU.
Should we be referring to RedHat Mozilla/XFree86/GNOME/emacs/BSD/GNU/Linux?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I have been running both Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD 5.1-current for a while in a dual boot config, switching between the two every 2-3 months. One good thing to say about BSD, is that as the author suggests (although his example about compiling 2 programs at once is ridiculous) is its ability to stay responsive under heavy loads. Linux (there may be scheduler/IO patches I am not aware of) is relatively easy to hose down by doing a lot of disk IO and/or memory hogging. Once a certain treshold is passed user interactions become almost non-existant. Despite all my efforts (and I really tried) I couldn't get FreeBSD to completely stop responding to console IO. X stayed up and running and responsive most of the tests (on one ocasion I ran a fork bomb where every child would grab a 1MB of memory, and do an endless loop of floating point calculations, after about 60-90 seconds of such treatment, X died, but I was still able to reboot the system from the console without much trouble). Memory management and IO scheduler are excelent. Desktop responsiveness is fairly good (I think linux 2.6 series is slightly better in that department). My major complaint (and the reason that now I only have Gentoo on my system) was that whatever commercial software I tried to run I encountered a problem. Vmware 4 is not supported and doesn't work, vmware 3 kernel modules have been ported to BSD, but the program itself kept crashing on me. Winex (GAMES!!!) wouldn't compile. Cross Office/Plugin wouldn't run. No games! :(
I couldn't compile openoffice and couldn't find a binary build for it. Flash plugin works but you have to screw around to get it running (documented). Hardware support is a bit outdated. I was actually able to compile and run Nvidia driver without much trouble, but my soundcard (SB 512 PCI) gave me a lot of grief. I have to say that it is getting better though. All in all, I wouldn't recommend running it on a desktop unless you plan on developing for it, but as a server I would choose it over linux at any time. Back to the article, the author makes a few claims which I have found ridiculous. XFree86 hardware detection is a big mess, but we all have to live with it, since at the moment it is the only free implementation worth mentioning. If the problem is entirely on XFree side, why doesn't RH or Mandrake install crash when detecting XFree settings? Both RH and Mandrake detect videocards and configure X during installation process and start in graphical mode right away. Second thing is about Gentoo portage. I have been running Gentoo for quite a while, and I do not recall that many times I had trouble with updating my system. I do recall though that portsupgrade is a separate port, not installed with FreeBSD by default, and without it figuring out what needs updating is rather non-trivial. I had to go to IRC and ask around to find that I am supposed to install it to make my life easy. It is not easy even after that. Every UNIX user can read/write a simple shell script, and portage ebuilds are shell scripts (with a bit of magic on top). But if you want to change something about a port you might have to wade through several levels of rather complicated makefiles, and since I am not a developer it gets to be a rather involved process. Oh, and by the way, here is a good example, in order to update your sources and ports you need cvsup. To build cvsup you need modula, modula pulls a shitload of dependencies behind it and takes a few hours to compile. Doesn't that suck. Yeah, yeah binary packages. People complained about the same thing with gentoo where something simple would pull a lot of dependencies (like vim would start installing XFree and tcl/tk as dependencies), but that is all in config. If you know how to use a system, it is easy, so I suppose if you do not know portage it is difficult, same goes for ports.
The last time I compiled 5.1-CURRENT (a couple of days ago) the system paniced on boot. Maybe we should wait until 5.2...
I'm running 4/8 after a similar experience with 5.1.
Remember, if you run 5.1, they warned you might have problems. That's why 4.8 is still recommended for production use.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Should we be referring to RedHat Mozilla/XFree86/GNOME/emacs/BSD/GNU/Linux?
Gnome and emacs are both parts of GNU.
It is still a mistery on how to setup hardware raid (promise sata) in the system
No one knows what a man page is until someone tells them, even a Unix guru.
Meanwhile, Linux defaults to the command line, too. Xfree86 is identical on both systems.
But, in any case, FreeBSD is blessedly free of the politics that inflict Linux and doesn't care if a Windows user knows what a man page is.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Dunno about some of us, but it seems quite odd that there's smp support, but some of the machines that support it (ultra2's - yes, some people run these amazingly) sure could use builtin scsi support. It's nice to have smp, but netbooting isnt an option for some of us just for that benefit.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
In the bullet points for things to improve FreeBSD the author says:
/usr/src/sys/i386/conf is a file called LINT with all the options. So if you want to know how to play with firewall options
"Put IPFW (the kernel-level firewall) into the kernel config file, commented out by default. This makes securing the system much easier and it doesn't really change anything in terms of functionality -- four lines added to the kernel config can't hurt, but they can certainly make things easier"
"In addition to IPFW, ideally every possible kernel option should be in the config file, commented out by default. The user shouldn't have to go look at other files or websites to find the right option to put in."
Right next to the GENERIC file in
grep -i firewall LINT
The only thing you're doing by not offering code to BSD is depriving BSD users, assuming your code was accepted. (Now, there's a big distinction from Linux: Code isn't accepted into FreeBSD unless it's reviewed and approved. Thanks to the GPL, any yahoo can write something and foist it off on users.)
If someone's GPL's code evers does something really innovative, then it's time to worry about Microsoft copying it.
If nothing else, remember that you have BSD to thank for tcp/ip and, hence, the Internet.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Chances are for his XFree86 problems, XFree86 4.3.0 as far as I know has a driver for Xfree86, and if it doesn't, it's not that hard to get at least accelerated 2d working. It involves compiling Xfree86 from CVS, which isn't hard at all. His kernel config file has several options in it which WILL slow down his system significantly. His problems with the mailing list are expected, mainly because the questions he's asked have been answered several times in several places.
This quote is true though "The initial learning curve can be discouraging, but once you learn and get used to FreeBSD, all other operating systems seem slow, weak and brittle."
Definitely true.
My pleasure! More to come in the future.
It isn't too much of a leap to assume you don't know what you are talking about. Where's your evidence?
I've switched from Linux to FreeBSD. Here's why:
1) It's a community populated by adults, not rabid cheerleading adolescents who get turned on by a fight between OS just like their fathers got turned on by a fight between Camaros and Mustangs.
2) The entire OS is under someone's review and control. In Linux, a few people people worry about the kernel, but, after than, it's up for grabs.
3). No, repeat, no support and configuration nightmares due to arbitrary differences between distributions.
4) A great ports collection that is kept current. (Its imitator, in Gentoo, always broke within the first week or so after I installed the base system.)
5. See the first item about adults.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Was fairly decent overall. He seems to hit most of the high points and picks up on some of the problems FreeBSD has (like the third-party, end-user hardware support not being stellar). However, I disagree with his railing on other packaging systems...Ok, granted, RPM has been the bane of my existence a few times, but I've never really had any major problems with apt or portage.
The author didn't really mention how "modular" FreeBSD is. Almost anything that's in the base system (sendmail, bind8, OpenSSH, etc.) can be "turned off" (in /etc/rc.conf) in the base system (or not built at all with options in /etc/make.conf) and alternatives from the ports system can be used. Don't like sendmail? I don't see why not, but fine, you can run qmail, postfix or whatever MTA you want.
I also disagree with most of the "Developer Recommendations" at the end of the article. Mailing lists are good; don't bog down the hardware with forums when anyone with half a brain can Google for information on the lists. Hardware support? Contact your vendors! Kernel options? Once you learn where they are, you're set. Don't put everything under the Sun in the GENERIC kernel config; you're just going to obfuscate the options most everyday users will want. As far as putting a commented-out IPFW line in the kernel, why IPFW? Personally I prefer IPF; limiting the choices by "endorsing" IPFW is not a good thing.
I do agree with the author on his last two recommendations. X configuration should be done outside /stand/sysinstall and send-pr is rather obtuse for most people to use.
I'm still not sure why people are so hot to review 5.x releases without a -STABLE branch being around. Once there's a -STABLE, then and only then can you really get a true picture of how 5.x is going to be due to stabilization of features, etc.
I'm trying to grab the iso on dialup (no broadband around these parts)and I ^C'ed it so I could load slashdot.
At any rate, I should have it, and my review, sometime around thanksgiving.
The operating system is Linux. Nothing from the shell on up is part of the OS. Sure, a Linux distro is going to have scads of GNU software on it, but very little, if any, GNU software is at the OS level.
Thanks to Bill Gates, people now think that the browser is part of the OS. Thanks to RMS, people who would otherwise know better think that text editors and compilers are as well.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
You didn't read very carefully, The DRI driver will NOT work for anything over lower 9000's radeons. It won't work for 9500 or above. That means no 3d if you have a modern card.
And you're a known BSD zealout with the credibility of an enron executive. WTF is your point, moron?
Isn't that already the case? Look at the config file LINT instead of GENERIC. All the options are there, and clearly documented. Just cut and paste what you need into your own kernel config.
Putting everyting in GENERIC would just make things difficult to find.
I am sorry, but I don't see any Dreamweaver or Photoshop running on Linux. The only major application that I have seen support Linux has been Maya.
Last printer I bought came packaged with OS X drivers, no Linux drivers packaged with them.
The number of apple units shipping is actully increasing, especially their powerbook line. The more developer confences I go to for PHP and PERL, the more iBooks and Powerbooks I see in the crowd.
So to say BSD is dead...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
...I'm running Gnome 2.4 (bloated as it is)...
Ummm, so how do you know it's bloated? And, compared to what? Have you measured the code size and memory use and determined what other software can provide the same functionality with fewer bytes?
Or, are you just mouthing something cool you heard some other dweeb say?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Be interesting if anyone ever starts a project to create fully BSD-licensed versions of the standard unix utilities and shells.
Not that it would happen, but at least Stallman would have less to gripe about.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
2 It cannot be used by my grandma
If your grandma can't use an iMac, then chances are Windows isn't going to be any better
It lacks a GUI of any note
GUI Installer, yes, but with X, you can choose KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, a couple others. Or if you purchase a Mac you get Aqua, which is about a GUI as they come.
It is an assortment of fragmented OSes
Everytime I hear this I always ask, "And how many features has Linux stol...I mean borrowed from FreeBSD to make Linux more stable?"
It cannot be run on the x86 Platform
Well it seems to running on my 1.2Ghz Althon machine quite happly. Hell I even have it running on an ALPHA box here.
You have to compile everything and know C
Helps, but 99.9% of the programs you need are already in the ports tree. Typeing 'Make && make install' isn't that hard.
Support for the latest hardware is always poor
For Macintoshs, not so much of a problem. For those running Free, Open, Net, I would have to say hardware support is lacking for things like sound cards and vidcards. But consider that the main use of BSD is as a Server OS, you don't need the lattest ATI card with 1GB of vid ram to run terminal.
It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux
Well, FreeBSD has a great Linux emulator. I really havn't had much problems running Linux apps in FreeBSD
It is dying
Aren't we all...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
and FreeBSD is not "GNU/FreeBSD"? Don't they each supply a kernel with a bunch of GNU software piled on to make up a complete OS? Or does FreeBSD not use basically the same system software as Linux?
Guns don't kill people -- people kill people.
But the guns seem to help a bit. (apologies to Eddie Izzard)
just compile 1.4.1 yourself. it is easy and seems stable.
/usr/ports/distfiles /usr/ports/distfiles
patchset 4 has been released and the java plugin now works on mozilla.
you just have to
1) portupgrade -N nspr
2) get the scsl.zip from sun.com put it in
3) get the patchset 4 from eyesbeyond put it in
4) portupgrade -N java/jdk14
How would screenshots be that much different than Linux ones? Usually UNIX/Linux creenshots are done in X, with some popular desktop environment like GNOME or KDE.
Linux is, strictly speaking, an Unix like kernel. While an Operating System is a coherent set of programs (system) allowing the use of the computer resources (operation). But this definition doesn't clearly state the method used to acheve this goal. In the Unix design, the kernel is only a part of the OS. And something is a part of the OS if you can't remove it without breaking the system.
The first thing I noticed was that when they describe the license, they talk about how Free it is, but don't mention the crucial difference between the GPL and BSD licenses: your option to not release the source when you include the code in another programs.
The next comment that caught my eye was "The installer is fairly intuitive and informative, and everything works perfectly as far as I can tell -- I've installed FreeBSD about a dozen times." If you've installed FreeBSD that many times, of course it will seem intuitive and informative. I've heard the install process is much more Debian-like than say RedHat like. More information on that would really have been helpful.
When he talked about the boot process he said: "The FreeBSD bootloader, while simple and unable to be manually configured, is one of the best I've seen." He makes a good point that this means that no reconfiguration is needed when a new bootable partition is added... but "unable to be manually configured"? Does this mean you can't set a default OS to load? You can't set a default timeout? Seems odd to me, and needs more explanation for that comment.
The potshots at Debian, Gentoo and RedHat's respective package management systems are not backed up at all, and don't match my experience in the slightest.
Finally, at the end, there's the bit about 'ee' beint better than 'vi', but no discussion about what 'ee' is or why it is better than a very standard editor that's on every Unix in the world. (I'm an emacs guy myself but I happily fall back to vi when appropriate). He also says a lot of other FreeBSD tools are better than their Linux equivalents, but without so much as a single reason why.
I'd love to hear an article on a BSD saying what the differences really are, why the author prefers one version to another, etc. This one seems, at times, to be a review, but it isn't a review from someone who seems to have given both Linux and FreeBSD a chance.
At least it was enough for me to decide that FreeBSD isn't for me. I'm lazy, I admit it. I do certain things often enough that I want them to be simple. I prefer 'make xconfig' over manually editing a file to customize my kernel. I prefer a one-step package management command to a multi-step one. Sure, I'm familliar with CVS, and it's nice to know that's what you're doing with the BSDs, but I install and remove packages often enough that if I can save a few keystrokes every time, that will add up. FreeBSD sounds like it might make a better choice for an ultra-stable server which only ever has to be upgraded. If you're doing the maintenance over SSH anyway, configuring by editing files rather than a GUI is the way to go. But for a desktop system, Linux seems to be the better choice for me.
Gosh, as a courtesy, you should really give Yahoo, NetCraft and the rest of these folks this important advice.
\u@\h(\w)$ Thats innovation for ya!
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
There he goes again, posting another inflammatory, non-topical invitation to a flame war.
Oh wait. This one's actually a valid article.
Never mind.
Maybe you should get together and troubleshoot with this guy who had the exact same problem with his Mac back in 1998. Maybe he can tell you how he fixed it.
I bought FreeBSD stock. It died.
I bought BSDI stock. It died.
BSD is dead.
FreeBSD is dying
Transfer or migrate the mailing lists to web-based forums. Forums are easier to read, search, categorize, organize, join, and maintain. In addition to that, mailing lists are a gold mine for spam spiders searching for email addresses to exploit.
Errr, web based forums suck. I have to use a mouse and I can't integrate them with all my other lists.
You can build A Unix-like OS without XFree86, Mozilla, GNOME, etc.
You can't build a Unix-like OS without a shell, a C library, a compiler, etc.
A Unix-like OS can be useful with a GUI, a web browser, a file manager, etc.
A Unix-like OS isn't all that useful without cp, mv, sed, awk, touch, rm, etc.
See the difference??
Are you stupid?? There are BSD versions of all the standard Unix utilities. Have been ever since the release of 4.4BSD-Lite.
Over the years, several of the BSD utilities in Free/Net/OpenBSD were replaced with their GNU counterparts due to increased speed or functionality. Now, most of these are being replaced again with BSD equivalents. NetBSD and OpenBSD have replaced almost everything except GCC in their latest releases. And there are projects underway to do the same in FreeBSD.
Get a clue.
Sticking "BSD" in there is a bit silly, too, since I don't know of any BSD code being used directly. Usually it's reappropriated into Linux (e.g.). So, to rephrase the grandparent's question more accurately, should we be referring to Mozilla/GNU/GNU/GNU/GNU/Linux? Possibly.
I was struck by two things. First, he had a really bad recommendation:
It goes without saying, of course, that anyone running mission-critical systems should use the RELEASE branch rather than the CURRENT or STABLE branches.
This is exactly mixed up, RELEASE is a TAG not a BRANCH. Or am I mis-understanding how FreeBSD CVS works? And further, you _don't_ want to use 5.1-RELEASE on something mission criticial; instead you want to track bug-fixes in the current STABLE branch. This is the first thing that they try to get across on their web page, they call 5.1 new technology (CURRENT), while 4.8 (STABLE) is called production. There is a reason for this.
Second, he suggested, as his first recommendation to the FreeBSD group that they drop mailing lists and move to a web forum! Am I that old? If you've done any serious open source work you will see why this is a problem, or have times changed? I would hate to have to go to N forums on N sites (requiring that I actually be on the network) without the advantage of using procmail and other filtering/notify triggers! I cannot stand careless use of web interfaces, where most of them need a mouse instead of a keyboard (as most web forums suck when viewed via w3m or lynx).
Wow, I see the doctor gave you an extra supply of asshole pills. I was sincerely unaware that there were non-GNU system utils out there SINCE NO ONE EVER FREAKIN' MENTIONS THEM! So stuff your snotty attitude back up your ass where you pulled it out from and try some decaf once in a while, shithead.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
Yeah, lets all upgrade to a potentially unstable version of an operating system.
Thanks, but i'll be using STABLE.
Hmmm... I guess the old cut-and-past "BSD is dying" troll is getting old, so now they're moving to a top ten list format. Man, these trolls are retards.
I noticed the migration of utilities going from native to GNU and back to native. Is there any reason they're going back? I was finally happy that the BSD stuff (like df) were supporting some of the nicer GNU flags (like -h), but I wonder if they're going to end up diverging again. I'm still waiting for the native FreeBSD ls to support color for that matter (not that I mind using gnuls, but it's sort of odd using a replacement for something as fundamental as 'ls' IMHO).
What's more, the use of the GNU utilities in the BSDs is contrary to the BSD philosophy and defeates the very purpose of BSD. Remember how BSD got started: its goal was to give -- to any and all comers -- technology that could be used for any purpose, including as part of a product that made money. Including the GNU utilities in the BSDs poisons the well, as it were. It has a doubly negative effect: it keeps the BSD implementation from being wholly commercially reusable (thus creating licensing hassles), and it provides no source of code that can be used in that way.
If the BSDs don't provide truly free, reusable-by-anyone code for those functions, who will? Not the FSF, and certainly not Microsoft. So, the BSDs would be abandoning their mission if they did not provide BSD-licensed utilities of a caliber at least equal to that of the GNU-ish ones.
You forgot cygwin, on windoez :)
And something is a part of the OS if you can't remove it without breaking the system.
I can remove emacs without breaking the system, yet emacs was the first "component" of the GNU operating system. Likewise, I can deal without 99% of the GNU utilities on a Linux system. Does that remaining 1% sufficient to call the whole thing by the name "GNU"?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Sure, Linus did some cool stuff and all, but is he *really* qualified to be making such large directional moves in the kernel?
I don't know about that... I like committees elected by contributors...
I browse at +5 Flamebait- moderation for all or moderation for none.
My guess is that you don't under stand the market very well. You are focused on the minutatiae of licencing terms. I would say your model of the marketplace is rooted in the 1950s. In this millennium, services have so far proven to be more important than products. Your premise makes rather large unspoken assumptions and completely overlooks what really drives the current marketplace.
I would say that you place too high a value on software as "product". Your weighting of its importance is all wrong.
Reminds me of the diminutive, smarter, nerdy kid who's forced to do the larger, lazy, bully's homework or else! I love them flabby-licenses! Thanks BSD; Apple and others appreciate the extra helping.
= 9J =
Why is BSD more or less a failure when it is supposed offer this stuff up for commercial use?
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Your question presupposes that BSD is not being used in commercial software. That's wrong. There's BSD code in every modern operating system (in fact, not a single one of the Linux distros would run if the BSD code was removed from it). BSD code is also pervasive in the libraries of all the popular C compilers (yes, including GCC), and the BSD TCP/IP code is ubiquitous. So, BSD is, in fact, a smashing success. It's everywhere.
If you seriously are looking to get FreeBSD "RELEASE' ISOs, you can order CDs online (cheap!), and many major computer retail stores carry (older) packaged FreeBSD distributions, right next to their RedHat boxed sets.
I don't want to stray too far from topic, but the reviewer mentions Gentoo's Portage system having horrible breakage? This concerns me a bit as I'm a recent inductee into all that is Gentoo and have thusfar been quite happy with Portage as well as the system in general. Are there really serious issues that one should know about before trusting Gentoo and Portage, or is this mostly FUD?
Not really interested in "sucks/rules" responses, but if anyone has some concrete examples or information, I'd definitely be interested.
Well I think "poisoned" is a bit strong, but I agree that the core should be written by the BSD team (stuff in /bin /sbin etc). But in the end I just want to use the best programs for the job. I may be incorrect in my knowlege of the GPL, but I don't think it covers usage of programs. For instance if I do something like:
bash$ gnuls | proprietary-prog | gnutar
And I charge for this entire "system" being on BSD, there's nothing they can do about it as it is permissible under the GPL. I like BSD as a personal preference, not neccesarily because of political reasons. BSD and GNU are both free enough for me. But I agree that having a truly free OS is important. I think that as Linux gains acceptance, many vendors will realize that they could just as well use BSD and not worry about licencing issues (like Linksys). On the other hand I'm firmly against certain programs using the BSD licence - such as apache and samba. Each of them has their place, but it starts to get awkward when gnu programs are strewn all over the BSD userland.
Thank you that post just brightened up my day to finally see that "BSD sux" post to be trounced into the ground.
You've never heard of the embedded market, huh?
" ... , HP, IBM, Oracle, Sun, ... "
... not to mention Linux.
Of those, HP, IBM and Sun all use BSD code. Oracle, I've no idea.
And then there's Cisco, Ascend, BigIP, Microsoft...
BSD code is everywhere.
There's not the song and dance about it in the way there is when Linux is used - many companies are very quiet about its use - but it really is spread and used far and wide.
I would say you don't have a clue, frankly.
I know it is now almost a mantra set in stone that "FreeBSD is dying". Unfortunately, the abuse of that fact by trolls has obscured the truth, that truth being that FreeBSD really is dying.
My main reason for moving away from FreeBSD has been twofold. First, to avoid the constant political infighting and bickering. And secondly, to investigate more promising and viable entries into the operating systems sweepstakes. FreeBSD is no longer a legitimate player, I'm sorry to say.
As I indicated elsewhere, money is an issue.
Apparently, you're not familiar with the licensing of these products. Apache's license is essentially the BSD license, which is good. Code to serve and manipulate HTML should be available to anyone on a completely free basis.
Samba, unfortunately, is GPLed. Which is a terrible shame, since it prevents Microsoft's competitors from incorporating code that would let their systems network easily with Windows systems. If they were able to incorporate code from Samba, they'd be able to make greater inroads into Microsoft's installed base.
Are screenshots really all that applicable when dicussing BSD/Linux? You're just showing window managers that run on all of them anyway.
Mix the failings of Usenet with the shortcomings of the World Wide Web and the result is slashdot.
Ash, TCSH, (maybe even pdksh) are not gpl, afaik.
NO OS is useful without a gui, web browser/internet connectivity or a file manager. You can get X windows and a web browser without resorting to GNU, though afaik there are no non-gnu/non-commercial filemanagers (ie -none that are BSD compatiable in licencsing).
If you have a file manager, you have no need for cp, mv or rm and as far as sed and awk go--I've been using *N?x since 1996 and I have to ask... wtf??!?!
[side note, don't *BSD provide their own cp, mv, touch, echo and rm?]
Shhh....everyone, stop saying bad things about FreeBSD before they hear us. Where else are we gonna run to after SCO owns linux?
-Steve
(For those who couldn't tell, this was sarcastic)
Why is gcc still hanging around? Is there a BSD compiler suite in the making?
It was at 4:25am on the morning of September 27th 2003 that, after many failed attempts to resuscitate the dying OS, *BSD finally passed away. While *BSD has been in it's death throes for many months now and it's death has been foreseen for many years, this is still a very sad moment; a great loss for OS dilettante dabblers and *BSD lovers the world over.
Though *BSD has passed away, it will surely be fondly remembered for years to come by users, developers, and trolls alike. Even if you didn't enjoy using *BSD, there's no denying it's contributions to popular OS culture. Truly a Berkeley icon. It will be missed :(
Hear, hear. Infrastructure type programs should be BSD licensed so that more businesses can use them in their products. Things like networking stacks, DNS resolvers, protocol implementations, and the like. Things that enable interoperation between systems.
If they are BSD licensed (or similar), than more companies, projects, people can use them, and more companies, projects, apps would be able to inter-commuicate. And nobody would have to worry about "giving up the crown jewels". They would be able to give back of their own free will, or keep it all to themselves. Either way, we all win, as everything works together.
Sounds like a better world than a world run by GPL'd products. To me, anyway. I'd rather see people giving back because they WANT to, not because they HAVE to.
Individual apps can be GPL'd. Just the infrastructure behind it should be truly free (in ALL senses of the word).
NO OS is useful without a GUI??? Obviously you never used DOS. That was (is?) a very useful little OS, and there's no GUI for it. Many many people found that to be useful, even though it didn't have a GUI. And yes, it does come with a file manager (dosshell) and a webbrowser (Spider, I think it was called).
Just because Apple, MS, and so on have popularised the GUI does not mean you must use it to be productive.
Other than Apple and MS server products, how many have you used that require the use of a GUI?? There are plenty of server OS (most based on some form of Unix) out there that don't have GUIs, and yet many many people use them. How could that be??
Back to the main point, which you have totally missed: a kernel alone does not an OS make.
Actually, I believe it is the other way around.
Both CURRENT and STABLE are tags for the system under development. CURRENT is the latest bleeding edge version. STABLE includes those elements of CURRENT that have proven to be pretty much reliable. Once the STABLE branch is solidified, it gets promoted to RELEASE. Typically the process goes CURRENT->STABLE->RELEASE.
Your welcome.
"So just how risky is the CURRENT branch? Not very, but it is possible to have some problems"
... "This model differs greatly from that of GNU/Linux" ... "ultimately headed by only a few all-powerful decision-makers."
Yeah sure! its been seriously broken in numerous aspects on and off just in the past couple of weeks alone. Leave FreeBSD CURRENT alone for true developers. The last thing needed is more whiny asses on dev mailing lists complaining that it broke their system without a clue how to diagnose, debug, revert/fix/patch.
'The reason why this is a three-step process is to make the updating procedure more reliable and easier to fix. Having survived the nightmare of Gentoo Linux's always fatally broken and never easily fixed portage system, I can tell you that "ease of use" means "difficult to fix" because it doesn't allow the user to control the process. I've seen APT and Portage choke on dependancies with no obvious way to fix them'
Huh? Have you *looked* or *asked* for a way to fix Gentoo or Debian issues?
The author is comes across as somebody who's a FreeBSD zealot that occasionally tries other systems only to give up and whine when it "doesn't do things the same way as FreeBSD" without being open to finding the answer. Both gentoo and debian provide ways to deal with the rare dependancy issues. (don't even get me started if the guy complain about debian unstable, see my freebsd current comments above. or if he tries to compare the software available in ports to that in portage...)
I run a couple Gentoo, one Debian and one FreeBSD box at home. They all have different strengths and weaknesses but none of their packaging systems should be scoffed at due to ignorance. Is the author trying to sell something
"a Core Team of nine people to make all the important decisions."
Since when is nine people to make all important decisions any different than a few all powerful decision makers? FreeBSD is not democratic. Only those who currently hold power can vote and decide who can play in their club. if it were democratic all of the idiots reading this on slashdot could vote and the OS would suck goatse.cx.
too many stupid things wrong. why am i bothering to even write and post this? nobody cares.
I knew I wasn't experienced enough to. I run FreeBSD on my desktop (5.1 to boot!) and have for a couple months now. I love it. But I'm not so sure of myself that I put myself on a pedestal and write a review before being fully versed.
This review got several things screwy, and I don't agree with several of his statements (for instance, mailing lists are useless? They got me to where I am now).
I think he'd have done better to have the review privately checked for technical errors before publishing it. I think that it actually would turn some people off to FreeBSD to read it, who would actually enjoy using it if they tried.
"it's only after disaster that you can be born resurected" - My friend Dave
Last printer I bought came packaged with OS X drivers, no Linux drivers packaged with them.
./mnt/cdrom/install.sh - Then File->Print in OpenOffice and out came a printed document.
And I bought a Samsung a month ago that shipped with Linux drivers that were easier to install than their Windows drivers. USB plug-in then
On the other hand, it also came with OS/X drivers. OTOH, you got trolled by an old troll. So I guess you being a zealot calls for your erratic behaviour.
BSD IS THE WALKING DEAD, and thus, is UN-STOP-ABLE :)
You're obviously confusing BSD with Plan 9.
Though I must admit I did a "linux text" install, because I didn't have a mouse hooked up to this box, and red hat would not let me run the GUI without a mouse.
I've only had Red Hat installed for a few days here, and already i've been beating my head against the absolutely excruciating RPM dependancy hell I've heard so much about. I suppose Red Hat works better when you stick to the bundled software... but that is... for me... painful. I'd compile stuff myself, but then uninstalling is a mess.
Gentoo I've attempted to install once and failed. Debian I had installed for a few months, and found its package management to be pretty much hell as well---if you fall from the beaten ultra-conservative "stable" path.
I've Never encountered any issues like these with FreeBSD after years of running it as my desktop system. And I tend to churn through a lot of software installs, uninstalls, and updates.
That's my experience anyhow.
> Back to the main point, which you have totally missed: a kernel alone does not an OS make.
On the contrary - he answered that point perfectly, and in this way:
IT IS POSSIBLE TO USE LINUX AS YOUR PRIMARY OS WITHOUT USING A SINGLE GNU TOOL ON A REGULAR BASIS.
Please excuse the shouting, I just wanted to make sure you didn't miss the point this time round.
The GNU portion of GNU/Linux, with the major exception of glibc, is useful only to command-line power users. If you're running KDE, and using it like most people use Windows, then the chances are you're NOT USING MUCH GNU SOFTWARE. Therefore, the logical name for it - based on RMS' arguments - would be "KDE/Linux", since Linux is after all only the kernel, and you wouldn't have much of an operating system without KDE.
So why is it that "GNU/Linux" advocates always claim that it's logical to call it GNU/Linux (even if you're not using the GNU tools much if at all), but ridiculous to call it KDE/Linux (even if you're using KDE on a daily basis for all your basic OS functionality)? Don't ask me. I think I'll just carry on calling it Linux, since the Linux kernel is what distinguishes it from similar operating systems like, well, GNU/Hurd for example. Or (to bring this back on topic) BSD.
> Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
/. users: "I'm not married, you insensitive clod!")
To which the correct answer is simple: "I have never beaten my wife." So much for the trick question.
(Alternative answer for
How on earth can you state that "a kernel alone does not an OS make" after having argued for DOS?
Btw, while MS provided doss-hell, most people I knew used the Norton Commander if they wanted to get anything done...and the browser you are thinking of is arachne, though -again- no-one used pure DOS networking tools, instead preferring to use teh winsock TCP/IP stack.
And yes, if you are doing any kind of word processing, spreadsheets or anything else that involves modern computing--you do, in fact, need a modern OS that is both multitasking and GUI based. That involves either windows, mac or Unix...DOS died for a reason.
With regards to servers...who says I've used any? Dispite being a desktop user, I am well aware that EVERY UNIX[tm] vendor moved to some sort of GUI configuration well before MS "popularised" teh GUI...CDE came out in roughly 91 (I may be wrong by a year or two either way...even so, well before win95 came along). Do I need to remind you that most true UNIX installs are used for servers?
"there are plenty of server OS...out there that don't have GUIs, and yet many many people use them. How could that be??" Simple, because "many many" people have bought into the myth of CLI superority peddled by your traditional Unix Geeks and choose to work in sub-optimal computing enviroments, while convincing themselves and anyone who will listen that it is the best of all worlds.
Denial ain't just a river in egypt.
To be truly productive in any computing enviroment, you require two things: A)mulitasking B)A GUI. It is possible to work with less, but it's far, far less efficent to do so.
The original point was not "a kernel alone does not an OS make", but rather that you could not run an OS without some sort of GNU toolchain. I maintain that you can. But I've already covered that so go back and re-read my previous post for my posistion there.
And the history behind your 'observation' is shown to you.
What prevents microsoft competitors from writing their own SMB protocol code? Nothing? Good point, this is all about competitors stealing from people's hard work. If a Microsoft competitor wants to use samba then perhaps they should pay the samba people and "license" the work under an alternative license other than the GPL. Otherwise they can fuck off cause nothing is free.
BSD people are losers who need to feel "different". This is much like the self-proclaimed homosexuals. You have an empty spot in your psyche which requires you to always need to be associated with the peculiar and different. Your most important concern in life is hardly the operating system itself. It is the need to feel "special". Maybe your momma didn't cuddle you enough, who knows.
You know, the conclusion is what us FreeBSD fans have been saying for years. In fact, the best part was reading the conclusion. It just STATED WHAT WE ALREADY KNOW. "The initial learning curve can be discouraging, but once you learn and get used to FreeBSD, all other operating systems seem slow, weak and brittle. It's hard to even go back to GNU/Linux now that I've gotten accustomed to FreeBSD; FreeBSD is faster than any other OS I've used. All of the programs that I used on Linux are available for FreeBSD or will work just as well (sometimes faster) through the Linux binary compatibility layer. FreeBSD handles resources more efficiently than GNU/Linux to the point that I can compile two programs at once, listen to MP3s and work on my website all at the same time without any significant slowdown. On the same computer using Gentoo or RedHat with either the 2.4 or 2.6 kernel, the system slows to a crawl under the same conditions. And comparing the speed and efficiency of FreeBSD to Windows is like comparing a cheetah to an armadillo."
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Troll? I guess someone is either unfamiliar with the plot (such as it is) of the film "Plan 9 from outer space" or unaware that there's an OS named after it. Or maybe just had more mod points than they knew what to do with.
It isn't exactly a trick question. The context originally I think is of the way quesationing can be abused in cross examination. Your "I have..." can be cut off sharply with a "YES or NO, Mr Haeleth". You're correct that the answer is to stick to your guns and insist that you have never beaten your wife but for the unprepared that isn't as easy as it sounds.
The idea behind Linux and BSD is free software for whoever wants it. RMS is a little weird and I gree the BSD is less restrictive but the only effect is on the gnu utilities. I use FreeBSD and the first thing I do is install gnuls and gnufile utilities for a color console and the dir command, and use the gnu gnome desktop.
http://saveie6.com/
Margialized operating systems require you to jump through more hoops to get things accomplished. Not only do you have to track changes in your operating system, but you have to track changes in unsupported software and emulation libraries. You always have to tweak and use "work-arounds" because your hardware is probably not supported by any vendor.
Things only get more hairy day by day as BSD becomes increasingly marginalized.
CURRENT/STABLE are *branches* RELEASE is a *tag* on one of the branches, ie, 5.1 is a CURRENT RELEASE, 4.8 is a STABLE RELEASE.
Consider that because of the many 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 very 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.
- deal with the inevitable.
- grieve for your loss.
- move on.
Never let your emotions get mixed up with something as silly as a computer operating system. It isn't healthy. So BSD fails. Big whoop. Deal with it and move on.Hope this helps.
= 9J =