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Depenguinator "Upgrades" Linux to BSD
cperciva writes "Many systems around the world have been possessed by penguins and dead rats. It would be nice to exorcize these evil spirits, but this can be difficult without physical access to the machines in question.
Thanks to a new depenguinator, it is now possible to upgrade Linux systems to run FreeBSD 5.x without requiring anything more than an SSH connection." Clever idea.
The next root kit is announced and within days all machines have been *upgraded* to BSD. Argh
How do you moderate an entire article as flamebait? ;)
Cool stuff, but the write-up is a little, uhm, polarizing?
and watch this flame war. Marshmallows anyone?
If you can read this sig - the bitch fell off.
will this make me a necromant ?
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
.. a worm to upgrade all windows boxes to linux remotely :D
Looks like a great tool. Unfortunality for the daemons, I want to replace my dead rat (7.2) with a Debian branded penguin. I would love to do that upgrade online. Any tips or tools?
Thanks!
They're lurking in a nice Linux system just waiting for the moment to come alive and do their dirty work.
Perhaps we penguinistas need to perfect a means of exorcising our systems of these evil daemons! Pure Linux, I say, pure Linux!
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
Having used the latest FreeBSD which I say is probably more together as a group than the NetBSD (Which I've also used) I'm not impressed.
the *BSD's just don't have the polish of a Linux especially not the speed with the advent of the 2.6 kernel.
Sorry, for certain, specialized server stuff I've no problem recommending *BSD, for a workstation, I take Linux and don't look back
Oooooh! Fire! Pretty!
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Personally, I find this howto more useful. ;-)
HOWTO - Install Debian Onto a Remote Linux System
Trusted Computing FAQ | Free Dawit Isaak!
Found next to the Bat Anti-Shark pills in Batman's utility belt, maybe? Still no reaction to the news from Mr Flibble, though
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
This isnt new, I changed 3 of my dedicated servers (2 debian 1 redhat) to Gentoo using a doc thats almost 2 years old that was based of a "how to remote install BSD"
you can do this with any system that lets you bootstrap the OS from the harddrive (i.e. gentoos stage tarballs).
I follow the SDK and GDN principles.. Spelling Dont Kount, Grammer Dont Neither
Effective, yet mischievously evil.
Well. Uhoh.. I don't know what to think about this. I mean, it's kinda neat. It's called depenguinator to make clear it's going to get rid of your linux, butbut...
I still think the way of operation is very crude and evil.
It says:
I'd personally go as far as saying:
Do not use this unless you are reallyreallyabsolutely sure you want to permanently destroy your current system.
Bot Assisted Blogging
I've often wondered if this could be done with Windows - if one could make a (perhaps large) Windows executable that, when you double click on it, assimilates your system and turns it into a Linux box. (Which could in turn provide the depenguinators with lots more machines to work on.)
.exe could create the root filesystem (maybe something like a base debian or gentoo install), put everything in place, change how the machine boots, and restart.
Win9x should be more straight forward - you can boot a linux kernel directly from a real DOS prompt using loadlin (although this may not be necessary), and it's possible to have the whole root filesystem stored in one file on a FAT32 filesystem, so the
The dead are going after the living!
>5. Make sure that the first 40MB of space on your hard drive is not being actively used. ...
I'm afraid that is NOT a trivial thing in 99.9% of all machines
How long do you think it will take the penguins to fire back with a dedaemonizer?
Wait, would that be considered a downgrade to Linux if they already depenguinized? Or would it then be a repenguinizer?
Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
and I'm gonna feed it. I think upgrading from Linux to BSD must be like upgrading from CSS2/XHTML to the HTML formatting used by this guy. Has the guy heard about HTML 3.2 ? :P
In Soviet Russia, our new overlords are belong to all your base.
PHTHBBBBBTTTTT!!!!!
I wonder if there's a security risk here... so I can "upgrade" someone's linux installation to freebsd using only ssh, assuming permission is not blocked? That sounds like a potentially dangerous piece of software!
stuff |
How do you moderate an entire article as flamebait?
May be you can write a program to flamebaitrate the article. Nobody said only people who freebsduse can verbgenerate, rite ?
getSexySig();
Time for the Slashdot Chorus to start singing, "Chestnut's roasting by the open Fire"
Dead Rat? OMG! I get it! It's like you took "Red Hat" and changed some letters around, and now it's like insulting!
That's what makes it funny!!!!111
Does FreeBSD have something like apt-get , or yum for fetching binary updates? I know you can patch the sources easily, but having to do a make world on 300 boxen is not my idea of time well spent.
Where was this when I needed it about 3 months ago?! This is PERFECT for one of those Dedicated Server hosting providers that don't let you touch your box at all.
Oh, and "creep" not "creap."
"upgrading" from one OS to another is never trivial.
/boot or swap.
/boot?)
/boot is going bye bye anyway.
/home and other stuff that you want to survive the upgrade (/var/www perhaps) and nuking the whole thing using OpenBSD. If you are 'upgrading' from GNU/Linux to a BSD at least make it the safest variant ;-)
I would think that on most i386 systems running linux the first 40mb or so is
Swap is a simple case of swapoff then setting it up again in the freebsd setup (perhaps using the old
and
As a confirmed debian user (running it across multiple platforms) I wouldn't use this anyway and would suggest any user looking for a clean upgrade to a BSD from GNU/Linux would be better off backing up
blog and junk
Those `upgraded' boxes... we know that of course they run NetBSD, but do they run Linux?
So all this does is write to the boot partition and load a barebones copy of bsd on a ramdisk? Not terribly impressive. Now if there was a script which could make a list of my RH packages, backup all my config files, generate an BSD install script, then most importantly, intelligently copy my config files from their old RH default location to the new BSD location, then I would be impressed.
Not really difficult, just time consuming. Of course, this assumes the RH system was installed through packages only, would break on most anything compiled, but the script described above would be a start.
Linux is viral (due the the GPL) you're the worm! ;)
DUH, of course - if permission is not blocked - you can as well do rm -fr. It's not like some random kid on the net can upgrade your Linux if you have port 22 open to the world. Get a clue.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
Not as useful as a defenestrator.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
I can safely live in a world running
ps -waux
instead of
ps -ef
-t
http://unmoldable.com W:"No one of consequence" I:"I must know" W:"Get used to disappointment"
Apparently the software was not designed to be used by the majority of the Linux community.
scott
Ancient Anguish
Debian/FreeBSD
Have a look at this: DebianTakeOver, a script that a debian developer is creating to migrate a Colo server from redhat to debian.
Reverse defenestration, throwing windows out of your computer. Where do I download? (Props to Eric for definition).
Actually, my server seems to be doing surprisingly well, considering that it's running a PPro 200.
That said, the people pounding on mrtg.daemonology.net are creating a bit of a load... I might need to take those scripts offline if things get too bad.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
What's up with BSD "demonizing" linux like that?
Actually, it's a fairly neat hack, even if the rivalry is somewhat silly.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
You've obviously never used FreeBSD... The most unstable and buggy version of FreeBSD is a dramatic step-up from any Linux distro.
This is no troll, it's a fact, and extremely hard to dispute ("Linux never crashed for me" does not count).
That just might be a small stumbling block... But I think this is just a proof-of-concept right now... I'm sure you'd be the first to jump up and start waving the Linux banner if something like this was created to convert Windows to Linux in the same manner.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yep, too many curious people. I've disabled mrtg.daemonology.net for now, but I'll put snapshots of the MRTG graphs online later for anyone who wants to see what a slashdotting looks like.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
this is a good thing for linux and bsd. it would be nice to see a dedemonizer to go with it. this shows to people what "open systems" REALLY can be.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
Well, it's not quite what you're looking for, but I have written a shell script to remove all offending SCO IP from Linux based on the evidence presented so far:
I hope everyone finds this helpful.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
You don't need a depenguinator to do this. If you want to keep the pesky little critters from crapping on your lawn, just use a shotgun. If you are good, you can do it from your second floor window, that way you don't have to put on pants for the day.
-Charlie
Gee, that's a cool thing.
Only one question: Just who would want to install a dead OS?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I believe VNC comes with the distro
I would rather be ashes than dust!
"having to do a make world on 300 boxen"
/usr/obj (and /usr/src as well?) as nfs, mount it on your 300 boxen, and you only need to install the shiny new bsd with 'make installworld'. That's it. So it is actually quite easy to deploy on a large server farm. You would go the same way with the ports btw: build on one machine and have it make pakcages, than install the packages with pkg_add -r whatever on the rest of the machines. Neat. :)
Not any more, and 'make world' is being deprecated in favor of 'make buildworld'. The difference is, that 'make buildworld' is totally self contained. You do 'make buldworld' on one machine, export
If I understand correctly, it seems to depenguinate in a fairly destructive manner. I'm fairly certain that a better depenguinator could operate off the existing filesystem, even if it is Ext2/3 and certainly ensure it didn't stuff vital directories such as /home.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Why make world on 300 boxes? Why not do it on one box, and share the src dir. Same with ports or pkgsrc.
You've obviously never used FreeBSD... The most unstable and buggy version of FreeBSD is a dramatic step-up from any Linux distro.
This is no troll, it's a fact, and extremely hard to dispute ("Linux never crashed for me" does not count).
My experiences with FreeBSD have been universally bad.
From the fact that it didn't support the built-in network card on my laptop (worked fine in Linux and Windows) to the fact that no less than 3 versions of the FreeBSD boot CD *and* floppy hard-locked on my desktop on install (worked fine in Linux and Windows). Then there's the fact that the POSIX threading support was bad enough to make our core application unusable on all versions of FreeBSD (up to 4.9, and it works fine on Linux and Solaris).
I also find the whole CURRENT/STABLE/RELEASE naming a little confusing, but I could live with that if FreeBSD actually provided any real-world benefit. The only areas where I've seen a real, measurable benefit to FreeBSD is in high-volume UDP servers (which is to say: DNS, or possibly NFS) or the IPv6 stack (thanks to the KAME project).
The fact is the FreeBSD technology is playing catch-up to Linux, and even if the technology were great, the childish "my OS is better than your OS" attitude of most FreeBSD users that I've met is what really makes FreeBSD stand out.
I run two IBM T20s - on is my main machine, the other is backup and it runs the OS of the month. I keep FBSD 4.9 on most everything including my primary laptop, but last week I loaded 5.2RC to check its progress.
I was mostly interested in improved USB support and I'm pretty pleased with the behavior so far. I've found some things to not love about ACPI but that may be my lack of clue rather than a problem with the OS.
I pronounced 5.2RC almost cooked enough for daily use. I'm going to wrench on the backup lappie for a few more weeks and if it does nothing worse than ACPI neutering the power switch I'll probably swap drives and make it my main machine.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
By hiring surrogate mothers.
Like a program that would "Capture the Flag" of a certain monopolistic regime...
;) Taking all the current settings of a Windoze machine, keeping the "wallpaper" and similar, familiar trappings, and allowing you to switch to BSD (or your fax 'NIX), and minimize the trauma of some poor drone's switch to something "else"...
Now *that* would be a Wonderful use of a "program"
But what are the Odds of seeing That happen anytime soon?
mount /usr/src /usr/obj /usr/src /etc
mount
cd
make installkernel installworld
scp -r build:/etc/\*
This is assuming all your machines are identical. If not you'd have to be more careful about the config stuff, and use mergemaster, but that would be the case for any OS.
Of course, NFS is not something you'd want to use to a remote machine, the idea of opening RPC ports in my firewall makes my skin crawl. But for upgrading multiple machines on your own network, the BSD system is really quick and clean.
If something could be done to improve mergemaster, the ease of upgrading FBSD would be the killer argument for the death of the penguin. I've never seen a description of how to upgrade linux which didn't make me decide it would be easier just to do a clean install ofa new version. If there is such a description/method, please post and earn some well deserved karma.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
...pregnant nuns will turn some people on here.
Add some tentacle rape hentai, and watch Slashdot get slashdotted...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The worst example I ever saw was on IRC; a jackass said "yeah, if you're stupid you should use Linux, but once you really understand UNIX you should use BSD".
Hey! I said that!
I'm not sure how much of the Slashdot crowd woudl have decided to actually visit the page (your famous /. effect)... but I'm sure the server woudl remain up, as compared to other OS'es I've seen get /.-ed.
/. of my own making. Damned OS (FreeBSD 4.9) stayed up and chugging along...
;-)
I ran a LOTR promotion on my site a few months ago that brought a signifigant number of eyes to the page, in effect, a
I've seen both Windblows and Linux creak under the same type of stress. You may label this as a troll post, but there is a bit of cheer for this "depenguinator"... I'm surprised the Linux community hasn't developed a "downgrade" tool for *BSD (etc.) to pop Linux back on a system posessed by the Daemon!
Cheers folks...
need to share your obj dir too
scott
In the FreeBSD Ports collection, there are many Ports marked as broken, and many more unmaintained and suffering from bit-rot.
Name any five that depend on each other and are important for real-world use? Ports suffers from both the desire to be large and from the fact that they're generally supported by one person. I've been running FreeBSD now for nearly 5 years and have only run into a broken port once, snmpd, which broke after a significant change in system variables, which in turn broke snmpd. It was fixed quickly, and since then every time I've built a port it's built.
How exactly is FreeBSD 5 a "dramatic step-up from ANY Linux distro"? FreeBSD releases are only supported for 12 months. Then you have to upgrade. In comparison, Debian supports its releases for at least two years, and RHEL offers a whopping FIVE years. That's right, five. This matters in real-world use.
You don't understand FreeBSD releases. There are point releases (eg, 5.2), -STABLE branches and -CURRENT branches. Most people track a -STABLE branch. Tracking a stable branch provides you with bug fixes and occasionally some new features backported from -CURRENT. Tracking -STABLE requires you to periodically rebuild the system from source, but this is FreeBSD's *advantage* -- it's a single, coherent system that can be easily and totally recompiled from up-to-date source code.
I've been running 4-STABLE now for almost 4 years and its still a supported (ie, active development and maintenance) branch of FreeBSD. The 2.2 and 3 STABLE branches are still there and I think 3 was still supported until the 5-STABLE branch was created.
Maintaining FreeBSD is easy if you track -STABLE and supported for years, and its often possible (albeit not necessarily recommnede) to upgrade from one major release to another -- I did it from 3.x to 4.x. In this manner (and not just point RELEASEs), FreeBSD revisions are suppported for years -- far longer than even most sane people would run a given revision of software.
I never did more chasing than I did trying to keep Dead Rat systems updated; either I used RPMs and prayed that the package author didn't decide to switch a bunch of compilation options, or a built packages from source, which meant I had to do my own porting. And then there was libc upgrades and all other manner of horror of trying to maintain an OS that was a kernel with a bunch of other stuff glued on without any coherency.
I'll grant some Linux distros have better turnkey desktop setups, and certainly greater corporate involvement (although ask yourself when "greater corporate involvement" and "better software" were part of the same sentence), and higher visibility.
But longer suppport, easier maintenance and reliability over the long haul? No way.
holy men have created a DeDaemonator to rid those boxen of little satan men.
in seriousness, the same thing could be done to bsd so linux would be installed..
I feel the OS wars rekindling on a new level.
i think xbill now needs a sequel (after all the machines are turned into toasters): xlinus. except that now the daemons trash the dead rats.
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
I've done a similar thing to thousands of SCO boxes in order to turn them into penguins.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
As far as I'm concerned, this is further proof that BSD zealots are far worse (and less trustworthy) than Linux zealots.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
After all the tools were taken from NetBSD (looking at the bottom of that web page), I wonder how hard it would be to adopt this to end up with NetBSD on the disk? :)
- Hubert
* Put one line in your kernel config file (devce pcm) and you can just plug any supported sound card in. /dev/da0s1 /mnt/camera and there you go.
* The same goes with digital cameras: plug it in, and mount_msdosfs
You mention this as if it demonstrated how easy freebsd was to operate!
Whilst the above steps might seem trivial to the experienced users, you have to admit it's not the kind of intuitive setup proccess you would reccommend to your grandma.
Whilst win32 is a joke to advanced users, you generally plug in supported hardware, and it just works. This is probably the main, and only, reason why windows continues to have it's widespread popularity amongst newcommers.
Maybe it's a neat hack (well, it's dead simple actually, nothing just about anyone couldn't do), but the way it's presented is a gigantic flamebait.
RedHat bashing is especially transparent and nothing short of insulting, really.
Editors continue to happily let trough "articles" that have obviously been written by someone who is at mental level of five years old. Way to go.
Yee. These BSD guys sound exactly like Linux guys sounded during mid 90ties - it's cool, even the soundblaster (usb for bsd guys) is working properly. It's really cool :)
MySQL Error 1040: Can't return sig, Too many connections!
Please, do. And BTW, great tool.
apt-get update
apt-get -u dist-upgrade
This is for Debian.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I replaced a dead rat with Larry The Cow using an SSH connection. There are instructions in the documentation section at gentoo.org.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I am an active Linux user and developer, so what. I just think it is a pitty that some ppl, especially from the free/unix side still have to proclaim in such a way that their flavour is better and given an informative discription.
:-/ Let's kiss and make up :) [hm, come to think of it, since I guess the author is a 'guy', I'll drop the kissing]
Just when I have the impression that a lot of the distro wars are over (or am I just passively ignoring them), some BSD zealot has to attack Linux. I have the impression that the author of the site/tool used these words sarcastically, but the submitter of the story should have had better judgement than to just take over the heading of the page.
I want to try BSD from the moment I have some more time (possibly in some emulator or on an old box initially) and I don't care that much what *n*x system I am working on, especially when I consider the alternative. This kind of stuff does not really help when the *n*x playground if fighting like small children while big brother is sitting by and enjoying the spectacle.
Hm, I'm taking myself too seriously again
Nice tool, though I don't see the real innovative in this simular things are available (dunno for which *n*x but I would guess they are pretty platform independent).
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
My old business partner and I got a kick out of the ReadMe file included with MS-DOS v6. It told how to "upgrade" from OS/2 to MS-DOS.
Jason
"FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
Interestingly, the k root name server has been running Debian Linux for a year or two now and has not had any "creak". It gets about 1500 queries/second per machine (the root server is distributed geographically via anycasting, and at each site by load balancing), and receives all manner of ill-formed packets.
Other root servers seem to run Linux (use nmap if you're curious), but I don't know the people running them so I can't be sure.
Now admittedly this is a very specific type of service: it's a single application that all fits into memory.
We're going to be moving www.ripe.net and whois.ripe.net from Solaris to Linux in 2004. The WWW server gets about 20 hits/second as you can see here, and the whois server gets around 28 hits/second as you can see here. These have more complex usage, with disk I/O, new process creation, and so on. I wouldn't let these services migrate if I thought they would be unstable.
The Slashdot crowd needs this. It justifiably makes many of them look like rats picking fights with their tails. So many of these Slashrodents are so myopic by virtue of their unceasing "promotion" of Linux that it's as if they don't know what to do now when you show them something that isn't Windows, but isn't Linux, but it isn't Windows! but it isn't Linux! So they default to ATTACK! AAUUUGGGHH! It might be friendly but we can't afford to take the risk! ATTACK!
..."
..."
Even now, throughout these posts, there are a ton of "off-topic" posts that didn't get moderated as such. "Personally I prefer this ". They're not commenting on BSD, they're just moving their mouths and out comes LinuxLinuxLinuxLinux in a neverending, mindless blather. Most of them are like the Scientologists on Hollywood Blvd. "Would you like a free personality test? Oooohhh, we see here you need Linux. Linux will make you whole
It shows that many of these nits can't distinguish between understanding computers and software as tools or understanding computers and software as religion. Here's a hint guys: This isn't religion. Or it shouldn't be. And Linus isn't God. He's just an egotistical programmer that made some nice software. And, because I've never read it anyplace else, I'll just say this: He looks as dorky as hell.
Get a freakin' clue, guys. BSD is amazing. Stop being sheep and start using the brains you were born with. Learn what BSD is about and then, perhaps, you'll stop stuttering "DebianDebianDebianDebianDebian
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
I'm sorry to hear that.
From the fact that it didn't support the built-in network card on my laptop (worked fine in Linux and Windows)
I don't know if this is representative or not. I've only put FreeBSD on one laptop, and the network card worked fine (as it did in Windows, but not Linux).
no less than 3 versions of the FreeBSD boot CD *and* floppy hard-locked on my desktop on install (worked fine in Linux and Windows).
Which versions were these? Which install method did you use? When did it lock? I've never seen anything like this on any machine I've used. What platform were you using?
also find the whole CURRENT/STABLE/RELEASE naming a little confusing
It's not that complicated. -CURRENT is the unstable branch, -STABLE is the stable branch, and -RELEASE is a fixed point in terms of features, with only security fixed added.
I could live with that if FreeBSD actually provided any real-world benefit.
Maybe it has no benefits for you. For me, it has the following benefits:
There are probably a few other things, but these are the ones that spring to mind. I've been using FreeBSD for about 18 months now, and Linux for about 5 years. So far, I have never sat at a FreeBSD box and thought `This would be easy on Linux!', but I have frequently sat at a Linux box and thought `This would be easy on FreeBSD!' Again, your milage may vary.
the childish "my OS is better than your OS" attitude of most FreeBSD users that I've met is what really makes FreeBSD stand out.
I have to take issue with this. Take a look at bsdforums.org, and count how many 'linux sux0rz' post there are. I have yet to find one, and have found a lot of useful advice there. Now look at bsd.slashdot.org, and count the number of '*BSD is dying' trolls.
Offline, my experience with BSD users when I was a Linux user was that they had a kind of `My OS is better than yours because it can do x/y/z which you seem to need at the moment. Do you want any help installing / configuring it?' My experience with Linux users is that they have the kind of attitude whic
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I've put a static snapshot of mrtg.daemonology.net up here: http://www.daemonology.net/depenguinator/slashdott ing/
I'll update it from time to time over the next day.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
exactly right. The idea that some complicated command line is "good" in any sense of the word is rediculous.
By definition, a good OS will recognize peripherals automatically
To prevent sounding biased... I run FreeBSD on all servers. I ran Linux on my laptop until FreeBSD 5.1 was released. I switched because I use FreeBSD more often, not because Linux was lacking. I run XP on my workstation. I'm quite familiar with the strenths and weaknesses of each platform.
Back on topic...
5.2RC2 was released what?.. less than one week ago? I don't think you invested enough time to make an educated decision.
If you were a long time Windows/MacOS user, and gave Linux/BSD/Solaris/WTFE a few hours of your time, do you honestly think you would switch? I very much doubt it.
"Why did I spend an hour of my time installing THIS!?"
In short, changing OSes requires a fair amount of tenacity. A true geek cannot be a zealot. You've got blinders on my friend. Open your eyes and you will see how great *BSD really is.
"Consider this example: a company develops an app around the newly-released FreeBSD 4.8. This app depends on components from the base system and Ports tree. After 12 months, FreeBSD 4.8 is no longer supported and users should move to 4.9."
.8 and .9 are so negligible, that it would require a mimimum effort (if it requires anything at all) for that software to work under 4.9. Basically this is true for most softwares written for the 4.x branch. If a software company cannot do the mimimal work to maintain its software package (and it IS MIMIMAL work to have the software working without any problems in any of the releases of the 4.x branch) than I guess that company should be out of business soon.
Very realistic example. Companies have a tendency to write software, dump it on a platform, than leave it as it is. Rrriiight. Currently, the last officially supported BSD is 4.7, released in October 2002. 4.8 will be supported for almost a year from now. Architectural changes between
What you have written is also true of any linux distributions (glibc changes in RH anyone?) Also, you clearly don't understand how the ports system work: "app depends on components from the base system and Ports tree." I have news for you: both the 4.x branch and 5.x uses the SAME ports tree, even the changes to the base system are significant.
BSD is Dying
It's somewhat amusing to see a Linux user talking about platform stability. Multiple incompatible package formats, constant libc and GCC ABI breakage, "stable" kernel releases that provide less hardware support because their kernel interfaces are constantly changing, major vendors shipping releases with broken compilers, and so on.
Then you get Linus telling people that binary kernel modules are supposed to be under the GPL. It's somewhat amazing and sad that Linux obtained so much publicity and commercial attention when it's such a bad platform in terms of stability, and its users are such rabid fanatics.
...why doesn't BSD do this by default? I don't mean to fan the flames here, but that sounds like more work than I have to do with either a Windows or a Linux installation. In either case, I can just plug in a sound card and it'll work (In Linux, it's usually detected by harddrake, anaconda, or whatever hardware configurator the distribution you're using happens to be). So what are the benefits of configuring a sound card as you describe? And why doesn't it do that by default, so you don't have to go through the recompilation?
Correct! If by "just works" you mean:
1. load the driver from the supplied cd (where is that damn thing)
2. reboot
3. recover from blue screen of death
4. reboot in 'safe mode' (thanks MS, for protecting me from evil!)
5. Remove outdated, incompatable driver
6. Spend six hours reading forums and newsgroups about other users experience with how the device failed for them, and what they did.
7. Hunt down an obscure driver that is not intended for use with your device, but will give you some functionality without conflicting with your other drivers.
8. Download and install driver from a less than reputable source
9. Watch a worm run rampant through your system
10. Finally learn your lesson and install Linux or buy a Mac
I am definetily no fan of WinBlows. I use linux everyday. Unfortunately, installing *new* hardware on Linux can be just as inconveinent as any othe OS.
The same thing can be said about most Linux distros as well....
1. find the driver on some obscure website or news group.
2. Recompile the kerenel to include the driver(Damn it has errors)
3. Fix code problems
4. Recompile
5. Repeat steps 3 and 4
6. Write patch for incompaitable gcc version
7. Repeat steps 3 and 4
8. Restart with new kernel
9. kernel panic
10. reboot old kernel
11. Remove incorrectly compiled kernel.
12. Spend six hours reading forums and newsgroups about other users experience with how the device failed for them, and what they did.
14. Download and install beta or (shudder alpha level)driver.
15. Repeat steps 2 - 12
16. Compile driver as loadable module.
17. Repeat steps 3 - 7
18. Start Daemon or reboot
19. Kernel Panic
20. Reboot in 'interactive mode', 'different run level' or 'using emergency boot media'
21. Remove loadable module
22. spend 6months writing your own driver
23. Overlook security flaw in your own code.
24. Watch your box get r00t'ed.
22. Finally learn your lesson and install Windows or buy a Mac.
Those that live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Unfortunetly I did not see something like Depenguinator for windows. Again the FreeBSD crowd attacks Linux and ignores windows. Maybe old Linux users is their only market share.
And my FreeBSD friends wonder why I'd rather run NetBSD on my systems. Maybe it's because politically Linux and NetBSD users can coexist. Or maybe it's because NetBSD is in "full production" on more architectures than FreeBSD. (many times more, including architectures I don't use).
*waits for some OpenBSD person to post how great they think OpenBSD is*
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
3) Please give us step-by-step instructions for updating *anything* on a *nix based box (one per variant and packager please... one where you compile the source yourself on each variant.. oh and one where you do not run any XWindow system whatsoever.)
... post[ing] that from a Windows box; I got it copy of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for Xmas, and it freaking rocks. Thus, I'm using my X(P)box right now.)
apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade
Updates all of my packages on the distro of my choice, Debian. (If you need help, it's kind of like Windows Update, except that it works, and I excercise control over whose updates I trust.)
(Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I am 1)
If you really want to compile from sources yourself, I'm sure that someone around here can help you with Gentoo and the emerge command.
emerge sync && emerge packagename , I think. So simple, even an MCSE (me) can do it.
Carthago delenda est!
I think some people take things too seriously. I think this is rather funny.
... Z and was so restrictive that you could not write a callable function.
BTW - As to BSD dying. I don't think so. We've migrated to OpenBSD on the servers and we really like it. It is solid, secure and stable. It is easy to install what we need and performance is certainly adequate for what we are doing.
This does not mean that Linux would not do the job... yet with Linux we found that the last two (2) redhat distros we bought were broken miserably. Hense - we do not expect to ever use RedHat again.
So its a toss up - those folks who install one of the BSD's on their servers generally know why they are doing it and generally are going to be pretty happy with it.
Those people who elect to go with a Linux distro probably also know why they are chosing what they chose (even if its the support they are looking for) and they also probably are going to be happy.
As for the people who install Microsoft servers. Well - they probably are happy too - but for different reasons. First off, ignorance is bliss. Next they have a marketing machine that certainly knows how to passify people who don't know too much and are dumb enuf to listen to marketroids. Yup - so they can be happy too.
I guess that leaves one group that probably isn't all that happy and they would be the professional admins who know better but are told by their collective bosses to use what they are given. To this group I will address the following comment.
A professional knows when to say NO. Just say NO dammit! Don't install it - don't support it - don't clean it up. Let them sink if necessary. A professional engineer will not use faulty concrete to build a bridge any more than a professional doctor will follow the bad advise of a bean counter. Right?
As a professional developer I personally have had to stand up to dumb ass bosses. One wanted us to use (of all things) BASIC to build a system that eventually had more than 1/2 million lines of code in it. Now - that was a really dumb suggestion since the BASIC in question only had variables of the type A B C
The point is that sometimes we have to simply say NO to the dumb ideas that float around and we need to do this even if we feel our job is in jeopardy.
Careful. That shell script may contain valuable and confidential SCO intellectual property. ;-)
Not all those who wander are lost.
What kind of network card is it?
Which versions, on which hardware?
I see, so having a filesystem that is twice as fast provides no "real, measurable benefit". Having a system that is by far more secure, far more stable, and performs far better has no benefit?
And on what do you base that fact? From what I've heard, the only thing you've got is that it didn't support your network card.
This is complete crap. The only reason people pretend to believe that, is because they are such zealots over their OS. I wouldn't even have posted this if the parent hadn't tried to claim that Linux is universally better than FreeBSD. Now, you try to claim that Linux is "ahead", with a complete lack of evidence backing up your rant.
And BTW, I don't have a single system running FreeBSD. In fact, my top-of-the-line system is running Gentoo (but only because FreeBSD doesn't support many TV-Capture cards).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
umm just plug in hardware and it works? Are you on crack, damn near nothing "just works" on windows.
I mean honestly, I work nonstop of different windows configurations all day. Install two network cards, oops ip stack is corrupted, by the way neither just worked I had to install drivers and that is the best you can expect with new hardware on windows. netsh didn't work as usual DAMN, have to get out a utility I wrote myself that goes through and REALLY resets ip on NT based systems.
Then install two nics on linux, boot computer up, nics detected, system prompts if I want to configure those nics. I do, it just works. Nics are now ready to be configured and work perfectly.
You know, I've NEVER had an ip stack corrupt on a linux system? It happens literally daily with all versions of windows.
There was a time when I didn't work with so many systems that I thought this was a rare event, once in a great while you had a problem with IP that couldn't be resolved by reinstalling the nic and such. But not anymore, now I know that 1 in 5 nic installs on windows corrupt the ip stack! woohoo.
The BSD crowd needs to learn that their constant trolling of the Linux community is what is responsible for the hatred of anything *BSD related.
Now you are saying that "we need BSD", as if your high and mighty ways are somehow overly superior to our own.
If you don't like Linux, then present your software and if it is actually superior, the people who actually care will use it. Simple.
You will not get converts with this arrogant attidude of yours, nor will you win over any hearts and minds, including my own.
I've been very interested in *BSD, but the arrogance abd condesendence of the *BSD community (and to be fair, it exists, to a much lesser extent, in the Linux community as well) has turned me off and away from looking into BSD solutions for my business and personal use.
So, we can now exorcise the penguins and dead rats, but is it really better to have a demonically posessed system?
Any generalization is a stupid one.
If you're running a distro that requires you to recompile your kernel to gain hardware support, you've got the wrong distro.
Get a swiss army knife kernel like Mandrake and others use..they create ALL possible modules for you and they're just a modprobe away. That's why hardware support is so much better on the 'easy' distros. Remember, easy doesn't mean 'not good'.
I actually thought I was being funny and expected to be moderated that way. :-)
But moderating me and especially that post 'Insightful' takes the cake. I give up.
And thus hereby offically anounce: Credit for the biggest 'Funny' goes to Mr. '+1 Insightfull' modder.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Unless your looking to power an SMP system...safest or not OpenBSD is still lagging in many areas and why I continue to goto FreeBSD for everything but firewalls
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Unfortunately even with swiss army knife distros some drivers still need to be compiled into the kernel. Not to mention by compiling them into the kernel, you will get better performance. Of course, we are getting past the orginal intent of my reply. My reply was only meant to show that every OS has its quirks about installing drivers. Linux, *BSD, WinBlows, Unix, etc. They all have their own little idiosyncrasies.
I Love Linux....but hate Linux Zealots!!!
My point is that Linux shouldn't be used to mean 'every distro of linux' because they all have different idiosyncracies that make them better or worse than other distros. You can't really lump all distros into one category when you're drawing parallels to installing drivers and the difficulties to be had with such.
I'm no zealot, but I defend what I like. Fairness is paramount.
There were two Bohemian Defenestrations. The first one was in July 1419, when the Hussite Protestants threw the town council out the castle windows, killing seven of them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
My point is that Linux shouldn't be used to mean 'every distro of linux' because they all have different idiosyncracies that make them better or worse than other distros.
You are correct, which is why I submitted my orginal reply. If you can't even compare diffrent distrobutions, how can you comapre "Linux" to Windows? Every OS and OS variations have their own little quirks. It just pains me when I see people bashing an OS (wether it is Windows, *BSD, Linux (Insert your favorite distro here), etc.), just because It is not Open Source. If you like WinBlows, then you will live with its problems and quirks. If you like *BSD, then once again you will live with its own set of idiosyncracies. The same holds true with your favorite Linux Distro. The only thing I am trying to say is that I constantly hear more and more non-Linux-OS bashing on this sight. Linux=Good, AllOtherOS'es=BAD. Hell we're talking about Winblows, when the parent post had nothing to do with it. Linux was created using the Open Source model. IMHO one of the basis' of the Open Source model is choice. I seem to hear more and more "Linux enthusiaist" bashing other peoples choices of OS'es. It just p*sses me off when, peopel that are suppose to be preaching choice and openess, are so closed minded.
Yes. There are a number of port catalogue systems for FreeBSD too...
I'd consider the article flamebait because of the baiting way in which it is written. A more mature way to describe the purpose of this software might be "a tool for migrating from Linux to FreeBSD", leaving out the controversial "upgrade" part. The author could have written the description in a neutral (in my opinion at least) tone, but decided on an inflammatory one.
... you don't know what you're talking about ...
An ad hominem fallacy would be if I stated you were wrong *because* you were an idiot. I don't say that.
You're wrong because your statements don't hold up. You stated you were closed to BSD because of your own perceptions, not because BSD wasn't superior. This is a wrong, incorrect stance to take.
You're silly because the manner in which you state your opinions is representative of many of the shrill Linux devotees of which you are one.
You're an idiot because you can't see how clearly you are representing these people and because when I accused you of having a closed mind, you responded "So, what?"
You *are* fun, however.
You see, if I'd stated you were wrong *because* you're an idiot, then that would be ad hominem. That you are wrong, and that you're an idiot, these things are merely coincidental.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
What evil system are you standing up to by linking to nonexistent web pages?
grep -ri 'should work'
Not sure what you're talking about.
If you are refering to the BSD license, well, you're just wrong, because I'm even free to take FreeBSD and change it and sell it as my own, as long as I mention that it's based on FreeBSD code.
If you're refering to the fact that the CD ISOs are not free, that doesn't keep you from downloading everything that's on the CD...for free.
So FreeBSD==Free
Leaving you to do your work and let a system run, instead of having to upgrade 100s of boxes every 12 months. Whatever spin you put on it, it's as simple as this:
RHEL: Upgrade every 5 years
Debian: Upgrade every 2 years
Mandrake: Upgrade every 18 months
Slack: Upgrade every 18 months
It's not ever that simple; major applications of all those OSes have had significant root exploits and significant changes in libraries and components over 18 months let alone over five years. You cannot help but maintain them and *hope* that the components released for them are reliable and stable. The only way you can NOT upgrade them is if they are not connected to the rest of the world and do some isolated processing on an application that itself is never updated. Even the hardware they run on must be replaced more often than that if load and other demands increase over time.
Security fixes, feature-driven application upgrades, bug fixes, etc are a reality and FreeBSD's build system via STABLE is the easiest and most reliable way to accomplish this.
You can get stable systems. The thing is, they don't have the latest software. So if you want to keep running Debian Stable, and never do a dist-upgrade, then you've got your stability. At the price that new software doesn't work.
You can't have it both ways, but you *can* have it either way.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is often true, but configurations in which it is not true are not uncommon. A friend of mine once had his BSD server stay up with a load of 86. It might take 2 minutes to completely service a request, but it still worked. When he had linux on the same box, same configuration on the same services, it would fall over around 12. BSD is incredible at handling load. It's less flexible in many ways than Linux, but it makes a really great server.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
...and anyway, it would be more fun to return the traffic to the originating machine.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Signed, Oscar.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
They'll never look back. In case of emergency, click here.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
reverse defenestration would be throwing something in through a window, I think maybe you want inverse defenestration.
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Ya know, I thought you made a mistake adding "reverse" to "defenestration", but I think I finally got your intent.
:)
The word "defenestration" means "the act of throwing someone or something out of a window"... "de-" meaning "out of" and "fenestra" meaning "window".
At first I thought "reverse defenestration" might be like "not not x", which would result in "fenestration"... perhaps meaning "to make something windowed" or throwing something to the inside of a window, both of which would be contrary to your intended point.
But I see now that you are actually applying "reverse" to what is being thrown ("something" vs. "the window") rather than the direction it is being thrown (inside or outside the window... e.g. with the inside being representative of the computer).
Ha! very funny... hmmm... just like me to overanalyze a perfectly pleasant quip. Sorry.
If you're going to disable all access to SSH, why not just stop sshd?
DUH.
Ron Paul 2012
> In the FreeBSD Ports Collection, there are many Ports marked as broken,
> and many more unmaintained and suffering from bit-rot.
Let me inject some facts into this discussion, as this is an area in which I've done a lot of research.
As of 12/30/2003, there are 10011 ports in the FreeBSD ports collection. Except for a very few cases where only a binary is available from the authors, the entire collection is meant to be buildable from source.
On 4-STABLE i386, 214 ports fail to build from source; on 5-CURRENT, 366 fail to build. The difference is primarily due to FreeBSD being an early adopter of gcc3.3 in 5-CURRENT. As these bugs are fixed, we try to encourage people to get them adopted upstream. This benefits the Linux as well as BSD communities.
239 ports are marked broken on 5-CURRENT; these are the 'hard-broken' cases. Right around 50% of those are compile problems and in some cases the code is indeed quite old. Some of the others that fail to build, but are *not* marked broken, are failing to fetch and part of that is due to the savannah compromise which is outside our control. That's temporary, we all hope. (I'm reluctant to see any port marked as broken unless it really won't compile/install -- not just having some transitory error.)
A slightly larger number, for which I don't have statistics, are marked broken on the 64-bit architectures, generally due to bad assumptions in their C code. Again, as these are fixed, changes make it back to the larger community. And, the number of broken ports on the 3 64-bit architectures has also come down dramatically.
The number of ports PRs has come down from a peak of 1500 during the 5.1-RELEASE freeze, to around 800 today. This is primarily due to a dozen new ports committers in the past 6 months who have been very active.
The number of officially unmaintained ports is 2616. Although this number may have decreased as well, clearly we still need more volunteers.
As for bit-rot, again, much of the code that is rotting lies outside the control of the FreeBSD ports team. Another project that is active is to try to identify, and prune, ports for which there is no hope. However, this requires getting a community consensus on what "no hope" is, and that takes time. The last time a pass was made scheduling ports for demolition, somewhere around 100 were proposed, and around 70 were fixed by someone or otherwise adopted in the 3 months afterwards. There are another 100 or so proposed for removal in the next pass; some of those have already been fixed as well. (I hope to create a framework for making this process more visible to end-users so there are as few "surprises" as humanly possible.)
One last point about bit-rot. For ports that fail to compile/install, the previous version of the binary ("package" in FreeBSD terminology) remains available for fetching until the new version works. Thus, most of the bit-rot only affects those who are installing from source.
The code that I've written that generates these statistics does so by mining the Problem Report database, the error logs from the bento build cluster (which iterates over each port on each architecture and each relevant OS release, continuously), the ports collection itself, and (to a limited degree) CVS meta-info. As far as I know no-one else has similar functionality. (Interested parties can contact me directly; since this machine is on the end of a cable modem line, I need to protect it from slashdotting). I hope to get this code up and running on a machine with greater bandwidth to make it more generally useful, soon.
To conclude, IMHO things that get fixed in the FreeBSD ports collection can have the effect of helping the greater community. I'd like to see the culture of zealotry start to disappear, and a greater degree of peer respect, especially in regards to making as many apps useful to as many people on as many platforms as possible. I think there is a lot we can learn from each other, and a lot of duplicate effort that could be avoided, if we could just wrap our heads around that.
By definition, a good OS will recognize peripherals automatically
Then I guess there is no "good OS"...
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Boy, it looks like the parent post got under your skin much more than any other recent *BSD post I've seen. Instead of just posting your standard messages once per thread, you've posted each of them, what, 3 or 4 times in this thread already? I ask again, (as I asked earlier but not under this userid -- I have been too unmotivated to create a slashdot userid before), what is your goal in these repeated postings? Why not just avoid using the damned thing if you hate it? Why the repeated trolling with the exact same postings over and over again, in multiple threads, with differing subject lines?
It would be nice if you would attribute the original author of this email. IIRC it is from about a year ago. Some people left, some people stayed, life went on, as in any other volunteer project.
Has anyone noticed the requirement to have a FreeBSD install ISO in order for it to work? I mean cripes if you have the iso why don't you just install FreeBSD. Lower ram requirement, works faster and well. You end up with FreeBSD.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Whilst the above steps might seem trivial to the experienced users, you have to admit it's not the kind of intuitive setup proccess you would reccommend to your grandma.
The comparison was being made with Linux. Granted, Linux has made some strides recently. But look back just one year ago. Under FreeBSD you just mounted your camera like it was an everyday filesystem. Under Linux you had to get special software, wade through reams of imcomplete HOWTO's, cross your fingers, clench your buttocks, and hope it worked.
Whilst win32 is a joke to advanced users, you generally plug in supported hardware, and it just works.
Yeah right. And I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn...
Over Christmas vacation I was visiting my mom. Her computer was Win98SE. USB mass storage devices are supported by the OS. Plug in my thumbdrive and it works. But plug in my camera and it goes off into neverneverland. Even though my camera is a standard UMass device. I had to download the camera's USB drivers for Windows before it would recognize it. But I didn't need any special software under FreeBSD.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
That's right, msmith left because he didn't consider it fun anymore. Others have left too. Others stayed. Others joined. So what? that's the nature of volunteer projects. Why rehash this posting again and again?
I guess so my def of an OS is automatic regcognition of new hardware, with seamless web access to drivers. So, i guess there are no good OSs
While I certainly get your main point (rooting one box will leave the rest safe) I simply *must* take issue with your example.
You say if this guy roots your DNS VM, he won't be able to deface your website. I'll point out the obvious: he now has control over the web address, and can point your website at his own box, where the defaced site lies. Or he can point it at the DNS box itself, install apache, and deface it there.
Point is, if he roots your DNS server, you are all kinds of jacked.
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Abbreviating Gnu/Linux to Linux is usually clear in context, but when talking about changing the kernel it's clear as mud!
The Linux kernel is a tiny part of the Gnu/Linux system and can be replaced by several alternative kernels, thus "depenquinating" it, with little or no impact on users or application programs. So Gnu/Linux can be switched to Gnu/(*BSD kernel) or GNU/Hurd, etc.
You can also replace the whole O/S with a different one that is able to run Gnu/Linux application binaries. Thus Gnu/Linux can be replaced by FreeBSD or Solaris or SCO Unix. As this is a much larger change, I would expect some trouble and user-visible changes.
I prefer to always use the term Gnu/Linux in writing even if I may abbreviate to just Gnu or just Linux when speaking.
Ridiculous.
You argue against this person (The italisized portion of your post) who shows a *parallel* situation, by demonstrating the way an *opposite* situation behaves!
Seriously, he says "if it was about 'upgrading' windows boxes to Linux it would not be considered flamebait." THIS IS NOT THE OPPOSITE OF THIS ARTICLE! It is in fact a parallel; the same thing with the names changed.
Now, as it happens, this act (Linux "upgraded" to FreeBSD) has no real opposite. Even a FreeBSD->Linux upgrade would still be more the same than opposite. But that just makes your argument all the more silly.
Now, that's not to say I agree with this fool, either. Frankly, you're both wrong; you for your argument, and he for his conclusion. Any of the three parallels would be flamebait...no matter what, an article written up this provocatively and on this subject is going to cause the vast majority of responses to be holy-war. You don't think an artical about "upgrading" Windows to Linux would be flame-laden? Who the hell are you kidding?
On the other hand, that's why I clicked on the story; I wanted to see it happen, and work my logic muscle a bit. Against both sides. I mean, seriously...you get what you pay for. Who here didn't know they were about to read some flames?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
WHich makes it funny and ironic!
i wouldn't care too much if my system were to get rooted by some script kiddy, but if they're going to install F*BSD on the thing, then i'm scared!
Software Freedom Day!.
funny thing is...
go watch the OS compatibility list for Veritas Netbackup (client.).
And a whole slew of other software, too.
The last and only supported debian release is 2.2.
FreeBSD support spans from 3.5 to 4.9. So, i guess it isn't *that* hard to maintain their software across multiple FeeBSD versions.
i had a sig, once..
If you're running a distro that requires you to recompile your kernel to gain hardware support, you've got the wrong distro.
Get a swiss army knife kernel like Mandrake and others use..they create ALL possible modules for you and they're just a modprobe away. That's why hardware support is so much better on the 'easy' distros. Remember, easy doesn't mean 'not good'.
You remind me of the Windows admin in the commercials who said he liked Win2k because it automagically detected all of his hardware. I wanted to slap that fucker, because every fool knows that you can only autodetect hardware you have drivers for. In other words, it has to have been developed before your OS CD was made, and there have to have been drivers in time for that release.
You are referring to the fact that Mandrake and friends compile all the modules included with the Linux kernel, and yes that is probably super spiffy for you. However, what happens when you go get new hardware that was not supported by the kernel that you have? Better yet (and more on the mopney in this case) what happens when the hardware is not supported at all in the vanilla kernel? That's right, you get to do the dance explained above. This is the same for every Linux distro, and anyone with a very basic understanding of how drivers and operating systems work knows why.
The point is, you cannot dismiss the popularity of Windows as a product of consumer ignorance. All of these people I helped knew that there were alternatives to Windows, they just wanted nothing to do with them.
That is because the daemon you know is never so scary as the daemon you don't. Face it. No one likes windows. Only MCSE types claim it is worth a shit, and that is because they are praying to keep their jobs because they don't really understand computers. But people (including the MCSE types) are also afraid of change. Deathly afraid. It was scary enough for them to try a computer, and they have been having nightmares about it ever since. It is no wonder they aren't so keen to repeat the experience, except this time without the benefit of following the herd and having massive corporate support.
Uhg. OpenBSD as a desktop system? Not a good idea.
When someone might yell at me, it has to be OpenBSD.
Unfortunately, since we run Linux and BSD, we have to do a moderate amount of research before we buy bleeding edge or 'different' hardware. Strangely enough, I find that these days even the most obscure pieces of hardware are supported (a Soyo KiKY-X USB playstation controller convertor? yes!). So while once in awhile you may have to hunt down driver sources and compile them, if you do some research beforehand you may never have to compile anything.
If you are refering to the BSD license, well, you're just wrong, because I'm even free to take FreeBSD and change it and sell it as my own, as long as I mention that it's based on FreeBSD code."
You can do that with code released under GPL too, provided you supply source code. The problem with the BSD license is that someone with a big name (i.e. MS) can come along, take the code, add DRM to it, and release MS-*NIX. Because they don't have to release source code, they can assimilate and extend it into a proprietary product. After establishing themselves as the dominant player, DRM becomes mandatory for their distribution so all the free applications won't run. Meanwhile, because they've become the dominant distribution and simply integrate all additional features developed by the BSD community (who now feel like free labor to said company) they've given up, and only the proprietary version remains. Don't think this can work? Can it be done for $50Billion? You bet. Can it be done to Linux? Yes, as long as we continue to use X"free"86 which is not free either.
The BSD style licenses are for people who say they're open-source/free but have ambitions of later making a proprietary product. The problem is that if the software is successful, the winning product will not come from them. It will come from the one who has the most marketing ability.
RMS may be a bit extreme, but he was the first to really understand this.
F--- the BSD license.
Not at all. If you have ever worked in a PC shop you would know there were just as many grannies asking about how t0 blah blah such and such in windows too.
If you're going to disable all access to SSH, why not just stop sshd?
Limit on title length prevented me from adding -s (somewhere). Crap. Couldn't even use the much more fun TARPIT target.
When booting Linux, it mounted the FAT32 fs, then mounted the root, swap, etc as loop filesystems. Slower than a real partition, but very cool and very safe for someone who didn't want to risk destroying his Windows setup.
Since Windows constantly crashed (ME - one of the worst versions), when he got a new disk, he was confident enough to install RedHat directly, and bought Win4Lin (a virtual machine with custom Windows drivers to avoid emulating the hardware - much faster than VM ware for supported Windows versions). ME still crashes inside Win4Lin, but rebooting is much faster (win4lin keeps a ram image of mostly booted Windows) and all the Linux applications stay up!
The LIN4WIN approach was very good - but is hampered now by MS use of the ever changing and undocumented NTFS.
URL please?
BSD is NOT dying. The official dying title goes to Amiga, of course, which has been "dying" since 1993. So enough with the "BSD is dying" statements - you're showing your lack of experience.
Subject says it all :P