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BSD For Linux Users
noackjr writes "Matt Fuller posted among his rants a great introduction and explanation of BSD For Linux Users: 'It's been my impression that the BSD communit{y,ies}, in general, understand Linux far better than the Linux communit{y,ies} understand BSD. I have a few theories on why that is, but that's not really relevant. I think a lot of Linux people get turned off BSD because they don't really understand how and why it's put together. Thus, this rant; as a BSD person, I want to try to explain how BSD works in a way that Linux people can absorb.'"
[Mods: Please DO NOT MOD THIS DOWN. This information affects all of us in one way or another and it needs to be seen by the masses. All goatse closing posts are getting modbombed down and nobody is getting a chance to see what's happening. THIS POST IS NOT COPYRIGHTED, REDISTRIBUTE AT WILL.]
.cx registrar's forum, supporting the reinstatement of the domain.
On January 14, the Christmas Island Internet Administration abruptly disabled everyone's favorite domain, goatse.cx. All joking aside, this action brings up serious questions regarding registrars exercising control over the content of websites they don't host. Goatse's geek appeal as a cult phenomenon is arguably stronger than AYBABTU, and has been an omnipresent icon here at Slashdot for years. There's a petition, as well as a thread at the
Regardless of peoples' feelings about what was hosted at goatse.cx, arbitrary domain suspension due to content has potentially chilling effects. CIIA used a vaguely-worded clause in their registration agreement which allows them to disable any domain for any (or no) reason, even if the domain's operators aren't doing anything wrong and aren't otherwise in violation of the agreement. The suspension was apparently done with neither warning nor notice to the domain's owner.
Nearly all registrars maintain the right to take such action. However, to my knowledge this has never been done before, except in cases where the domain's owner was seriously violating the registration agreement in other ways - spamming, illegal activities, etc. - and even then only on rare occasions. The goatse situation essentially amounts to a web-based joe job, wherein the site's owner had no control over links to the domain or how they were used.
Until this week, I'd always been under the impression that it's a hosting provider's job to stop service to a domain. If a website contained content so controversial as to generate complaints, the hosting provider would make the decision as to whether or not to continue serving the domain. If the host declined, the domain's owner could simply move the site to a more tolerant host. And that's the way it should be.
With CIIA's action, the tables have turned, and a registrar - even if only a small player - has set a precedent for registrars playing the role of content moderator. While this could come in handy (imagine dotster.com, who are running Apache on some sort of Unix, suspending sco.com's registration just for the heck of it), it also makes the process of shutting down potentially controversial sites far too easy. What if the Public Internet Registry decides on a whim to disable landoverbaptist.org because "Landover takes parody too far for our liking," or freenetproject.org because "Freenet can be used for bad purposes," or slashdot.org because "there are too many radical thinkers on that site?"
Domain names are finite resources. If it's widely known that you can be found at example.com, and your webhost shuts you down because they don't approve of the content of your website, you can find another webhost and be back online within a day or so. But if your registrar suspends your domain because they don't approve of your site's content, you can't just go somewhere else and "buy a new copy" of your prime internet real estate. (Oddly enough, it appears that Google has decided to ignore links to goatse.cx; I'd been hoping to use the search results to demonstrate the domain's popularity, but no go.)
The finite nature of domains becomes even more of a problem with many ccTLD operators, who are frequently the sole
i really needed something like this considering i'm just about as dumb as brittany spears.
n/m
AND IT IS TEH YUCK!
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
It is official; Netcraft confirms: *BSD is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin [amdest.com] to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dbblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
Come on, admit it.
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.
BSD helps the Beast of Redmond because of the License.
End of story.
Go GPL go.
FreeBSD has not support of USB, VMware, WebCAM, USB-sticks, VideoCamera, .. and no more drivers for new hw -> FreeBSD is dying!!!
open4free
Don't worry. I doubt you are actually capable of contributing anything worthwhile to the system.
Why won't I use BSD? Because I believe in the GPL, not the Berkeley license, that's why.
If a software license was like the government:
1. BSD would be anarchy. You can do whatever you want with whatever you want, whenever you want to. Murder your own mother? Nobody cares, you're free to do so! It's anarchy baby!
2. Most of Microsoft's traditional licenses would be rampant fascism. We control everything, we are accountable for nothing, and we will not stop until there is nothing left. Hitler would be proud.
3. Just about any license agreement from any small company would be the equivalent to an Iraqi or Italian dictatorship (think Musolini, absolutely pathetic compared to Hitler, but still a complete control freak).
4. Shared source would be communism (you have the illusion of freedom, but really, we the collective control everything and you have no say even though we say you have say even though you don't but you do).
5 And finally, the GPL would be democracy. Democracies are hardly ideal, they are slow, they waste a lot of energy, they infight a lot, but in the end there is NOTHING better.
It's as simple as that.
Bryan
Many so called "Linux users", are actually NOT:
..., eventually ...) The so called Linux users and BSD users ignore the GNU project, even while they are using it's software, so it's just a technical decision to say i use this or that one. In our case it's a filosofical-ethical choice. May be OpenBSD is an exception ...
I am a GNU User. I Only use Free Software, and, specially, the GNU OS and all the software that is part of that OS. We found that Linux, while not part of the GNU project, is under GPL, so we could use it until we have our Hurd (don't say a word about it, we will have a usable beta of it someday
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
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.
No. Linux is for people who want to get work done, with good hardware and software support, friendly communities, excellent SMP performance, and releases which are supported for longer than 12 months...
FreeBSD is for people who hate Linux, don't get out much, don't mind upgrading every 12 months (gimme Debian's two years+ of backported fixes any day), and are willing to sacrifice features, performance and hardware support in the name of being 'l33t'.
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.
Next up: learning how to upgrade.
;-)
That's pretty easy: Install Gentoo...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
We hate BSD because of the zealots who use it. They think they are so fucking superior.
Fuck me, you can't vene decide on a logo.
BSD is definitely dying - this 'documentation' is its last will and testament.
fsck {y,ies}ou all!
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
What's next, if we don't use the GPL the terrorists win?
Let me get this straight:
Apple takes BSD code, incorporates it into a closed source, propretary operating system, and that's good.
Microsoft takes BSD code, incorporates it into a closed source, propretary operating system, and that's bad.
I'm not seeing a huge difference here...
It's official. Most of you are morons.
wow
i think Microsoft Windows would be a good choice for you
vodka, straight up, thank you!
Of course, what the hell did you expect? I made a brief foray into BSD once. The friendly helpful attitude of the BSDers has convinced me to never screw with BSD ever again. "It was really hard for us to write it, it should be really hard for you to use it..." Arrogant self-important assholes. It's no wonder BSD is dying, here's hoping it takes all the snotty BSDers to the grave with it.
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.
"...how many angels can dance on a head of split hair."
Is he suggesting a split hair has a head like the head of a pin and if so, and, the head is on the other end from the split end, why would it matter if the hair was split, or, if the split end held the head wouldn't it be angels dancing on one half of a head? Or again, if he's referrencing the "head" from which the split hair fell or was pulled then perhaps it would be a count of the number of angels dancing on some one's head, someone with a serious hair problem.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Sure, Linux zealots are loud, annoying and arrogant. Sort of like pat robertson and jerry falwell.
But BSD zealots are downright militant like islamic fundamentalists.
Because you have to know Unix and Linux if you use BSD.
If you want to create a snazzy customized Linux like environment, then you need to hit the FreeBSD manuals and book.
That does not mean its hard. It means no gui install, no default booting into X, no color xterms or bash, etc. Just a simple tty login.
You learn the ports and setting up X and your shells. THen you customize your system with no depancy hell.
Really you have customization that no distro besides slackware provides. Gentoo offers that but I found it extremely low quality quality and no solid integrated product like FreeBSD is.
Linux is for beginers and FreeBSD is for experts or experienced users.
FreeBSD = Unix. No question about it.
I have learned more using FreeBSD exclusively for 9 months then several years under Linux.
For Linux users reading this let me tell you that Linux is just a kernel. FreeBSD is a whole integrated environment. All the linux distro's try to add things to it but its not as solid and breaks quickly when you try to change what the vendor adds as defaults.
http://saveie6.com/
Now, Apache uses a BSD style license but they have an open development model which allows them to take advantage of a very large developer pool in order to stay ahead of their competition. In fact although proprietary versions of Apache exist which perform better than the official releases, SGI has put out some open source patches which generate even larger performance boosts. This is the reason why they have such a strong showing in terms of market share.
BSD once had potential but the procedural problems they are experiencing hurt it when it comes to the market. I suspect that this is probably in part because the BSD teams are not interested in such things, and that is a shame... In fact, although I labeled it as an inferior OS, this is not due to lack of progress within BSD -- it has been progressing somewhat, but rather because all the improvements they make tend to be quickly copied by their competitors AND they lack the developer pool to stay ahead of this game (a problem which does not exist in the Linux or Apache communities, though for somewhat different reasons).
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result, even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
Furthermore the license allows proprietary software to "steal" source code and use it. The combination of these problems leads to a somewhat inferior OS.
Now, Apache uses a BSD style license but they have an open development model which allows them to take advantage of a very large developer pool in order to stay ahead of their competition. In fact although proprietary versions of Apache exist which perform better than the official releases, SGI has put out some open source patches which generate even larger performance boosts. This is the reason why they have such a strong showing in terms of market share.
BSD once had potential but the procedural problems they are experiencing hurt it when it comes to the market. I suspect that this is probably in part because the BSD teams are not interested in such things, and that is a shame... In fact, although I labeled it as an inferior OS, this is not due to lack of progress within BSD -- it has been progressing somewhat, but rather because all the improvements they make tend to be quickly copied by their competitors AND they lack the developer pool to stay ahead of this game (a problem which does not exist in the Linux or Apache communities, though for somewhat different reasons).
I don't think that there is enough widespread support for BSD to save the operating system. What must be done is an opening up of the development process OR a GPL-style restriction on redistribution. In many ways I favor the former.
Even in a worst case scenario, I don't see BSD completely dying. I think the developers are less into competition and more into a sort of idealized cooperation. As a result, even if BSD becomes more marginalized, I don't think that it will die outright. It will most likely outlive Netware, for example.
Of how arrogant and condescending the *BSD community is. Yeah, we're a bunch of uneducated masses who need your divine graces.
No wonder you guys get trolled so much..
Lose the attitude and maybe you will get treated the way you expect
Dude I am getting seriously sick of archaic condescending, militant BSD types whining because GNU/Linux has a stronger following and their baby is dying. Everyone is loosing sight of the fact that Open Source is about choice. If you have such a limited brain capacity that you can't handle choice, run Microsoft crap.After [trying] reading this I think I would not choose BSD as my web server, but there is much value in all of them. On that note, I think I will be running NetBSD on the SGI boxes at work. They spent so much time porting it to everything, that nothing except most of a C compiler runs on it...keeps the boys workin. meanwhile I'll be playing UT2003 on my Linux box. -regards nullptr(at)wi(dot)rr.com
BSD sucks, it always has, and maybe always will. And I admin it, though I'm loathe to use it. It's so backwards its not funny any more. I see all the arguments and talk and etc and it still comes down to the same thing. BSD people THINK they are better than everyone else, even though they're not. They've got this "holier than thou" attitude which is just pure bullshit. BSD sucks. Its archaic. If it ever gets out of the dark ages, let me know.
I see some arguments about disk partitioning, versus Solaris. Uh, hello? BSD has the same stupid moronic "magic number" bullshit still in there! But Sun was smart, they moved beyond most of that crap way back in Solaris 2.5 and where is BSD today? STILL in the freaking dark ages with their "magic number" bullshit, the non-standard device names, the archaic disk partitioning system, the nonsensical hardware/device installation system, and putting stuff in weird places.
guys, this isn't the 70s any more, it's 2004, get with the program.
oh and before any of you BSD morons tell me its supposedly more "stable" (ROFLMAO), BSD is STILL the only OS in the world that've I've ever seen do a DOUBLE kernel fault! Yes, a DOUBLE kernel panic!
wtf is that? So much for your "stable" OS! what a joke!
oh yeah, and newer hardware support my ass... it wasn't until 5.0 that BSD support Ultra-DMA, and not very well. We had 3 BSD 5.0 systems, every one of them with ultra-dma drives, every time the system had to write data (any data) - which is, as you might guess, constantly, the stupid OS would corrupt it (yes, we had console error messages popping up saying the write was corrupted) every time... wtf is that?
and I remember trying to add hardware to the system, trying to GUESS what the device would be called, everything had its own name, like hard drives. I mean, come on, wtf is this crap? You put in a hard drive as a secondary data drive, and theres NO way to know what its going to be called until you reboot the system? Uhm, wtf? same goes for network cards and other devices.
btw I had to add hard drives several times, and no, dmesg wouldnt give me the info, I actually had to run the installer, add the drive manually with a device I had to *guess* at, then reboot it again, THEN read the dmesg and see I got it wrong and what it was supposed to be, then fix it and reboot AGAIN.
I had devices that didn't even work this way, after manual install guessing at what the device was supposed to be called, dmesg still wouldn't tell me it was wrong, so I had to keep rebooting testing every single freaking option available. problem is there's an infinite # of combinations, so, I gave up on some of them, even though they were common manufacturers.
I asked a BSD techie about this once, why they couldn't use hda, hdb, hdc, eth0, eth1, etc like linux does. His answer was that'd it make the system too slow to be useful. wtf are you guys on crack or something?
BSD is more "free" than linux? what kind of bullshit is this? bsd has been called "free like beer" well morons, beer aint free! hello?!
and the installers. omfg... still in the dark ages. I remember using slackware in 1994 and it had a better installer than BSD has today! uh, that was 10 years ago and BSD hasn't moved an inch. wtf?
I remember waiting for the 4.x series of BSD to come out, when it was first announced. great new technology, blah blah blah, but it took two years to come out, and by then, all that "new' technology was obsolete, no one even used it any more. same thing happened with the 1.x, 2.x and 3.x versions. always the same.
in BSD 5 it was ultra-dma, they just adding it now. uhm... guys? its now defunct. get with the damn program!
I'll consider BSD a serious operating system when
1) the installer gets to the point of slackware 1994
2) the device interface becomes standardized (device numbering)
3) the hard disk formatting/partitioning gets out of the dark ages (to at least the level of solaris 2.7)
4)gets some decent hardware support
and
5)takes less than 2 years before implementing obsolete technology
Until then there's no point even looking at it.
unless you're going to use picobsd, and then, only maybe.
The very fact that linux has xfs, Reiser jfs, ext3, and god knows what else instead of just one highly developed filesystem that is clearly superior and implemented horizontally proves Linux is schizophrenic and inferior IMHO. Your delusion is that it is a "choice" rather than a symptom of a disease. Compare that to FreeBSD's simplistic snapshot and background fsck clean implmentation.
It's been my impression that the BSD communit{y,ies}, in general, understand Linux far better than the Linux communit{y,ies} understand BSD.
That's obvious: it's because BSD people are more professional and more intelligent.
I want to try to explain how BSD works in a way that Linux people can absorb.
Use babytalk.
"I want to try to explain how BSD works in a way that Linux people can absorb."
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
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.
Well, all you arrogant BSD fanboys out there, just keep quiet! You're not a penny's worth better than the zealot l33t minority in the Linux community, maybe even the same people just liking to play the devil's advocate: "Oh I'm so funny and so witty and just know to upset /.ers!"
Basically you're a bunch of liars, and you know it! Where's this mess of rebooting Linux computers? Aren't there 1,000s of well-administered Linux servers in the world with uptimes of years? And what forces you to use the latest vendor upgrade and kernel, if you can use Debian stable with a 2.2 kernel?
The other way round: How stable would you be, if were running the CURRENT release????!!!! No, you're running RELEASE at least, and always STABLE for a production system, so why don't you with Linux distributions and kernels??? It's not like they just get unavailable the moment something new hits the servers...
On a personal note: When I 1st tried BSD, it become slower and slower on install, with every package I installed (4.4-RELEASE that must have been), and I finally rebooted that and kicked the installation after two hours. BTW, it we're the same software packages I had on my Debian Potato box... So don't say I didn't try, and don't say I will be overwhelmed by all that powerfull technology.. if it doesn't work as well as 2.2 Linux kernel on a plain vanilla Celeron I or PII, I'm not that much impressed. Even if it may have been fixed, it was deemed worthy enough for a release! And I don't give up simply of that, next I'm installing 5.2-RELEASE off the net, on my PIII, and expect it to do better from the benchmarks I saw.
But how free is BSD really? Nothing can harm your copy, but you'll need new releases and fixes, too! Please take away _ALL_ the zealous GPL programs from your BSD distributions! And then hope, that the BSD community will never run out of money, because their usage count is way too low to excite anyone in the industry with serious money.. Even they cannot live without money, cannot arrange hackfests, meetings and conferences, servers and hardware purchases. Linux developers will not only get paid for their skills, but often enough are already paid for adding stuff to Linux. While BSD Unixers get money for their skills, too, virtually none of them will get paid to do BSD development, and the more Linux grows, the less oportunities will remain to do so.
Oh, remember free? Windows Services for Unix - *BSD code? Yes. You're actually helping Microsoft migrating people off of any kind of Unix with your license. That's the kind of freedom a contributing developer surely has not in mind, when contributing to free software!
BSD is not dying. Yet! BSD will die, if all that remains are zealots like you, that don't see that there's more than their own good, and that communities cannot survive if they're giving it all away. Now FreeBSD is technically superb, though not better than Linux. OpenBSD is secure, but already falling behind in efficiency, and if continuing so, they will no longer be a choice for servers. So secure, but unwanted. NetBSD did many great things for us, but they are dying and withering most of all.
Without the wave of GPL'd software, would any of these still exist and be worthwhile? I think not. You're presenting *BSD as a system and Linux as a kernel. They should call them GNU/*BSDs, showing the emperor is already naked without the GPL to wrap himself into! As would be SUN Solaris without GNOME and stuff, etc.
Consider this: Run a BSD workstation without GPL software. Without all the window managers. Oh, and skip Apache, it's simply to Linux-oriented, isn't it? And not BSD-licensed. Live free, free from non-BSD licensed software. Tell me, what good is that box then still for?