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Folding@Home for OpenBSD

schnarff writes "Users of OpenBSD have been asking the Folding@Home team for a port of their distributed computing client since at least May of 2002; I've helped out by figuring out how to run F@H under Linux emulation (mirror of instructions). Note that this procedure should work for NetBSD as well with some minor modifications."

50 comments

  1. Frost Pist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Well folks, I've done it again. I've gone and got myself a first post. I dedicate this first post to all the stupid liberals out there who want to turn this country into the Soviet Union - may you all rot in hell you godless scumbags. I am sick and tired of you awful, filthy, stinking, hippies spouting off. You should all shut up and get some goddamned jobs. Free Software Foundation? Fuck You!!!

    Open Source is for suckers and hippies. BUY SOME PRODUCT!!!

    Microsoft rules.

  2. Yawn, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    I applaud the noble project but I really wish OpenBSD would get a mainstream desktop suite of applications that could be added with one port.

    I mean, who has time to look through all the ports collection to find a decent HP alike calculator?

    I love OpenBSD and it's install process rocks, simple, spartan, and secure. It's the feature creep that kills all software sooner or later.

    1. Re:Yawn, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I'm huge OpenBSD as anyone, works great on server and router, but for the desktop? Really? It's a great OS, but I say just use NetBSD or FreeBSD for your desktop.

      BSD Gear

    2. Re:Yawn, by tedu · · Score: 4, Funny

      kinda funny that you ask for one giant port that includes everything you might want, and then go on to say feature creep kills all software.

    3. Re:Yawn, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not at all, this is the irony of software. People like someting, want a little bit more, "feeping creaturism" ....bloatware.

      Just one jump, for a little while, on the features bandwagon, then we'll all be quiet.

      And yes, I'm sold on OBSD, and I acknowledge all of your _great_ work to keep it going. You deserve a medal. ;)

    4. Re:Yawn, by grub · · Score: 0, Offtopic


      I run OpenBSD on my desktop at work and whatever servers I need to set up (other than smp machines which get FreeBSD) Off the top of my head here's nothing I can think of that I'm lacking.

      It may take a little digging around but usually you can get what you want. Certainly there isn't the hand-holding aspect of other OSs (unless you count "RTFM! RTFFAQ!" as hand-holding. :)

      Oh wait.. I just thought of one thing. off to misc@openbsd.org..

      --
      Trolling is a art,
    5. Re:Yawn, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh please. I could equally say "Unix works great for a server or router, but for a desktop? Just use Windows". I'm certainly not going to change to an OS that is nearly indistinguable from the one I'm using. Is it really that much easier and nicer to type "make install" on FreeBSD/NetBSD then it is to type "make install" on OpenBSD? No it's not. Maybe next time I have to do an OS install anyway, it might be fun to see a different response to 'uname'. But the truth is 'for fun' would be the only substantive reason to change.

  3. Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    I would think that the BSD crowd would be more interested in studying apoptosis.

    1. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Please mod up parent as funny!

      It's the only BSD-is-dieing post to be reasonably clever and amusing evar.

    2. Re:Hmmmm by JShadow · · Score: -1, Offtopic


      ROFL... I'll have to agree, that's the most intelligent BSD slam I've ever read. :) I don't agree of course, but still, have to respect intelligence!

    3. Re:Hmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      Yes, using a thesaurus is truly a sign of consummate percipience.

  4. folding vs SETI by schapman · · Score: 4, Funny

    i would run FOLDING@Home but SETI looks so much better.. give me flashy lights and cool animations, and i'll run FOLDING in a second.

    --
    Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
    1. Re:folding vs SETI by a5cii · · Score: -1

      but that would use up unnecessary clock cycles which could be used for faster "w00" processing

    2. Re:folding vs SETI by schapman · · Score: 1

      no way.. just do all the graphics on the graphics card (which is what its there for) and leave the CPU for block-munching

      --
      Wouldnt you like to be a pepper too?
    3. Re:folding vs SETI by tmp_user · · Score: 1

      Hmm, waste my unused cycles on background noise for seti@home or contribute some information that has a far greater chance of being useful to folding@home... seti has the pretty decorations so I suppose I'll forego logic (or not resort to binary emulation...) and pass on FAH. Also, seti is a command line app on unices...

    4. Re:folding vs SETI by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      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.

  5. BSD's Feeding Tube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Oct. 23 -- BSD resumed receiving life-sustaining care yesterday in a
    Florida hospital room, but many experts said there is virtually no hope
    that it will ever recover, despite it fan boy's desperate hopes.

    "IF IT'S over a year, BSD's not ever going to get up," said Fred Plum, a
    professor emeritus at Weill Cornell College in New York. "You'd just
    don't see it. It just doesn't happen."
    BSD, 39, has been in a persistent vegetative
    state since its heart stopped for unknown reasons in 1990. A feeding
    tube in BSD's stomach was removed this past Wednesday after its husband,
    Theo De Ratt, who said his wife had told him she (BSD) would not want to
    be kept alive under such circumstances, won a long series of court
    battles to have life-sustaining nourishment withdrawn so she (BSD) could
    die.

  6. *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 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 very 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

  7. Lessons from the Ashes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    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.

  8. Hi, BSD by cerskine · · Score: -1
    BSD, I'm laughing at you.

    BSD, I'm praying for your suffering.

    BSD, I'm fucking laughing at you :-(

    BSD, I'm D-E-A-T-H-L-Y serious :-(

  9. Troll-in-one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    All the *BSD is dying posts are contained in this one post. If you have mod points, please mod this up so that everybody will know that *BSD is dying! No need to post your own, as it will only be redundant!

    Oh, and if I've missed any, please add your troll as a reply and I'll include it in the next Troll-in-one.

    _*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

    The *BSD Wailing Song

    What's left for me to see
    In my ship I sailed so far
    What can the answer be
    Don't know what the questions are.
    And after all I've done
    Still I cannot feel the sun
    Tell me save me
    In the end our lost souls must repent.
    I must know it is for certain
    Can it be the final curtain
    As long as the wind will blow
    I'll be searching high and low.
    Who knows what's really true
    They say the end is so near
    Why are we all so cruel
    We just fill ourselves with fear.
    And heaven and hell will turn
    All that we love shall burn
    Hear me trust me
    In the end our lost sould must repent.
    I must know it is for certain
    Can it be the final curtain
    As long as the wind will blow
    I'll be searching high and low
    Final curtain
    Final curtain


    _*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

    • flask of ripe urine
      pressed to bsd lips
      bsd drink up

    _*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

    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.


    _*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_

    It is common knowledge that *BSD is dying. Almost 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 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

  10. bsd is gay.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    think about it ...

    The devil cartoon character MUST be gay....

  11. Well Whatever by craig2787 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Close the Slashdot BSD section. There's no point in reading it anymore. The troll to worthwhile comment ratio has grown too huge. Anyone that gives a mad fuck about BSD news will read it somewhere else. BSD probably _is_ dying, but who cares? Those that think that they are using a superior OS should silenty bask in our ignorance, not waste time telling us over and over that the OS we use (without any problems) is "dying."

    Anyways, to be more on topic, distributed computing programs such as seti/folding truly are a goddamn waste of time. Why would you make your processor run hot all of the time so someone you don't even know can benefit from it? Call me selfish, but I fail to see the returns.

    Fuck you slashdot!

    1. Re:Well Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

      The Failure of *BSD

      Of course we can all agree that BSD is a failure, but why did BSD fail Once you get past the fact that BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know BSD keeps losing market share but why Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players Or is it larger than their troubled personalities
      The record is clear on one thing no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for BSD.

    2. Re:Well Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps you should visit http://anti-slash.org

    3. Re:Well Whatever by Quill_28 · · Score: 1

      I thought you knew, one should always up your threshold to 1 in the BSD forum, and never post anonymous if you want someone to read it.

    4. Re:Well Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like all OSes BSD has its strong point. Windows easy to use for the average half-wit, gaming (only because all games are currently designed for it) and maybe even office work. Linux would work for office stuff well and the average high school nerd, with some work a good server. And finally BSD is good for servers. It does not matter if they are all incompatable as long as you have someone who can make something that works on what ever you have. Just because you dont use it does not mean it is bad or evil. The one thing Microsoft has learned is that omniculture is bad, if all are alike they all have the same problems so let diversity have a chance

    5. Re:Well Whatever 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

    6. Re:Well Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      (I'm anon because I'm not home, and I haven't memorised my slashdot-generated password).

      How about instead of modding me down like a little bitch, you come forward and present an argument, to prove me wrong, instead of trying to silence me? Thank you, assfuck moderators.

  12. Lights out, pard. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Somewhere, in a lonely hospital room,
    *BSD is dying
    1. Re:Lights out, pard. by beefdart · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      SCO isnt asking me to pay $600 a processor, and no freebsd developers seem to be getting sued...

      fugoff

    2. Re:Lights out, pard. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am asking you to pay me $1800 per processor for your BSD machine(s). Now pay up, you cock-smoking teabagger.

  13. BSD is such a joke these days... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    I mean who uses it?

    Who cares?

    BSD=Bloody Stupid Distro

    Please Die now!

    1. Re:BSD is such a joke these days... by JShadow · · Score: -1, Troll

      ROFL... so because you don't use it, that means no one does? HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR... oy, my sides hurt. :)

      The fact that these headlines keep coming up shows that PEOPLE DO USE BSD!! Resistance is futile. ;)

  14. WOOT! :) by JShadow · · Score: 0


    Can finally put those cycles to use on my file server and firewall. YAY :)

  15. BSD joins the B team by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    It is with a heavy heart that we must report that Bob "I'm still dead" Hope has gone on to join the "B" team. As you all may know, BSD has been part of the "B" team for quite some time.

    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.
  16. *BSD Sux0rs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll


    In a startling turn of events today, a previously little-known fact came into the public eye: "*BSD Sux0rs". This came as a complete surprise to the BUWLA, or BSD Users With Large Assholes, as they previously thought that *BSD 0wned.
    "You see, even though I have never contributed code to any BSD project, I thought it was my duty to be a big asshole to others which don't use the OS I do, because it just 0wnz.", said one FreeBSD user. "Now that I know it sux0rs, though, I have to go find something else to be an asshole about."

    One notorious OpenBSD fanatic known as WideOpen, told reporters, "I have to kill myself. This isn't how it was supposed to happen. My BSD has always been the best, and shouting that opinion in other people's faces at every chance I got has been my only hobby. It was all I ever did. It was what got me out of bed in the morning. Now I have to die. I will jam my bedpost up my ass until I hit my brain. It is the only way to go: BSD style."

    In the volatile world of operating systems anything can happen. "At least we don't sux0r as much as Windows users", BigAzz, a relatively well-known NetBSD user said. "Screaming things in people's faces is my calling. Now I need to scream that BSD sux0rs. What a sad world. At least I won't kill myself like those uber-asshole OpenBSD guys. They are just way over the top. Or were, at least."

    Nobody knows for sure what the future holds for the state of operating systems, but with Netcraft confirming the sux0r status, *BSD users all over the world will have to stick something else up their asses from now on or risk looking even more gay than they used to.

  17. *BSD's Feeding Tube Re-Inserted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Oct. 23 -- BSD resumed receiving life-sustaining care yesterday in a
    Florida hospital room, but many experts said there is virtually no hope
    that it will ever recover, despite it fan boy's desperate hopes

    "IF IT'S over a year, BSD's not ever going to get up," said Fred Plum, a
    professor emeritus at Weill Cornell College in New York. "You'd just
    don't see it. It just doesn't happen."
    BSD, 39, has been in a persistent vegetative
    state since its heart stopped for unknown reasons in 1990. A feeding
    tube in BSD's stomach was removed this past Wednesday after its husband,
    Theo De Ratt, who said his wife had told him she (BSD) would not want to
    be kept alive under such circumstances, won a long series of court
    battles to have life-sustaining nourishment withdrawn so she (BSD) could
    die.

  18. Shocking News: *BSD Is Dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: *BSD is dying

    Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered *BSD community when recently IDC confirmed that *BSD accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood. FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS hobbyist dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dead

  19. Poo! What is that stench! ? Ye Gods... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    BSD is dead and someone should bury the bitch.

    Death. Decay. The *BSD way.
    Bones. A skull. Put the bitch in a hole.

    Thank You

    CEO of Netcraft.

  20. 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.


  21. Coping with a terrible (albeit insignificant) loss by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll
    Although it is true that BSD is dying, there are some helpful steps you can take ease your sorrow:
    • 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.
  22. The *BSD Wailing Song by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    The *BSD Wailing Song

    What's left for me to see
    In my ship I sailed so far
    What can the answer be
    Don't know what the questions are.
    And after all I've done
    Still I cannot feel the sun
    Tell me save me
    In the end our lost souls must repent.
    I must know it is for certain
    Can it be the final curtain
    As long as the wind will blow
    I'll be searching high and low.
    Who knows what's really true
    They say the end is so near
    Why are we all so cruel
    We just fill ourselves with fear.
    And heaven and hell will turn
    All that we love shall burn
    Hear me trust me
    In the end our lost sould must repent.
    I must know it is for certain
    Can it be the final curtain
    As long as the wind will blow
    I'll be searching high and low
    Final curtain
    Final curtain

  23. Ten things a little birdie told me about BSD... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    1. You can not play games on it.
    2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
    3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
    4. There is no support available for it.
    5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
    6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
    7. You have to compile everything and know C.
    8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
    9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
    10.It is dying.

  24. Listen up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    You people have been denying for ages that *BSD is dying. It's blantently obvious that there are more troll post in every *BSD topicajdklasjkldajskldjaskldjaskl;jdklasjdkl; TACO IS A FUCKING IDIOT

  25. BSD Problems 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.

  26. The End of FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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's when you get distracted by the politickers

  27. Ghetto of BSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    BSD you grow in the ghetto, living second rate
    And your eyes will sing a song of deep hate.
    The places you play and where you stay
    Looks like one great big alley way.
    You'll admire all the numberbook takers,
    Thugs, BSD pimps and pushers, and the big money makers.

  28. What it is that is being "folded" by puff+the+barbarian · · Score: 2, Informative

    For those of you that do not know, what is being studied is how protein molecules "fold" themselves before doing useful work. Improper folding often accompanies diseases, so studying why things go wrong can help toward curing diseases like Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, and Parkinson's.

  29. This bitch is dead by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Who cares. BSD is D E A D

    Think about that for a change of pace.