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FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE Review
MRE writes "Well it's been out for a week an a half, but here's the first review of FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE. Or if you want to download the new release and try it for yourself, it's only one ISO image away."
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Too bad you can't mod the article down. This guy was testing primarily on the amd64. Gimme a break. Of course it's gonna have major bug issues. It's not even fully supported (and has major bugs) in any of the Linux distros (yes, even my beloved Gentoo). Had he used the i386 on a stock x86 processor I might give him some credibility.
There is a [...] utility to perform binary security updates, but it does not yet work with 5.2-RELEASE.
FreeBSD Update works with i386 FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE. There haven't been any security fixes yet, so it doesn't do very much, but it does work.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
The writer argues that the BSDL "doesn't protect the rights of end-users the way the GPL does because it does not require the publisher to make the source code available". I don't get this. Unless one would s/end-users/the-code. And I have never understood what giving freedoms to a work means.
...)" or "freedom from (other entity doing...)".
In other words, the writer is suggesting something to distract from the real point which is at the heart of the controversy BSDL vs GPL: whose freedom and freedom in the sense of "freedom to (do
To argue that the fact that BSDL code can be incorperated into a proprietary product is somehow an attack on the rights of the end user of *that* BSDL code certainly doesn't stand if one thinks about it for five seconds.
So it's the freedom of "the code" itself then? Please. Don't even *try* to make that argument.
Or the freedom to give something away with strings attached. There's nothing wrong with that, but then one shouldnt represent it as if it has any other meaning. Giving something away with no strings attached would somehow inherently be less of a contribution to society?
I have nothing against GPL personally but I do take offense at the ways its implications are time and time again used to discredit the BSDL with a completely reversed reasoning.
I think GPL is great for some things, linux kernel, gcc, and many more. BSD/MIT alike is more appropriate for other projects like apache, *BSD, and many more.
Look at GUI toolkits or the layers between toolkits and real focussed middleware. GPL does hamper the adoption of open source solutions (let alone development) there. Finance software for instance. So this is where (in terms of layers and libraries), BSD/MIT, or LGPL but thats a slippery one, makes sense. This is one (possibly not the most important, but it does count) reason for there being so much abandonware on sourceforge. People tend to slap a GPL license onto their work "because then it's free and not for MS".
Getting back to the GPL vs BSDL argument made, it's pretty clear that if you're feeling that someone else does something better you'd pour some moralism into your version of the difference in order to spin it your way. People should understand that if SCO is smart enough to understand how that works then RMS and his church certainly also are.
It's a delusion and yes it does prey on (often young) idealists providing them a world view just like any religion. There, I said it. Now, where's my protective suit.
Luckily many happy Linux users and developers realize this. But mod me down anyway.
The default kernel is shipped with ancilliary features as modules, in order to save space and avoid conflicts. This includes sound. Go to /modules, type ls snd*, look at the modules that are there. Text mode screensavers are in there too; they're all of the type *_saver.ko. As long as you know what type of sound card you have, it should be supported either by default or via a patch. The FreeBSD modules commands are kldload, kldunload, kldstat; look at the man pages (in FreeBSD, the system man pages are actually useful, as is the module system). You can also configure modules to load on startup; edit the file /boot/modules.conf. I'm still using 4.x (about to set up 5.2 on my laptop), and you probably should be too; 5 is still very much developer's release territory, and will be until 5-STABLE is created.
Also, read the Handbook. Everything FreeBSD you ever wanted is in there. The appropriate section for sound is 16.2. It's a wonderful operating system - much more sensible and well-organised than any Linux distribution I've used, although admittedly not as newbie-impressing as something like Mandrake 9.2 - and its documentation is very high quality, so I suggest you do look at it.