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DragonFlyBSD Team Interviewed

lowks writes "A nice little interview from the ONLamp BSD advocacy page where we get to peer a little into the goings ons and updates as well as plans for DragonFlyBSD. Highlights include the rationale behind DragonFlyBSD and peeks into the current engine as well as goodies planned to be implemented in the future versions. DragonFlyBSD is another flavour of BSD which forked from the FreeBSD 4.x branch not too long ago. It's headed by Matt Dillon, who forged out on his own and started DragonFlyBSD due to technical differences with the FreeBSD team ."

16 of 39 comments (clear)

  1. OnLamp -- Hit or Miss by bhima · · Score: 4, Insightful
    It is just me or are the articles on OnLamp very hit or miss. When the are good, like this one, they are very good & when they are bad I can't even finish them!

    Or I suppose it could be that I'm mildly interested in Dragonfly and I think Matt et all have a strong argument in LWKT.

    Hmmm now I wonder what sort of SMP strategy is used in OS X??

    --
    Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
    1. Re:OnLamp -- Hit or Miss by animus9 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Mac OS X relies on XNU (modified Mach 3.0 + BSD) for SMP. As far as I know, it uses a mutex model (like linux, freebsd, & netbsd).

      Mac OS X SMP
      --
      I eat bees -- they taste stingy.
    2. Re:OnLamp -- Hit or Miss by bhima · · Score: 1
      Wow! I go to dinner and an interesting article awaits my return! Thanks!

      It will be interesting to how things evolve...

      I must admit SMP on OS X works OK fine for me and most of my coding experience is for smaller members of the ppc family (4XX) so I have no basis for informed opinion but Dragonfly "feels" like a good idea.

      Best part there is not much keeping off my Power Mac if it really does work!

      --
      Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
  2. Re:The reason there are so many BSDs is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please. There are what, 300 different Linux distros?

    Guess what, different people have different goals and needs. Matt Doollon wanted to implement SMP in a different way than his (then) fellow FreeBSD developers had envisioned. NetBSD guys want to run on every platform out there. OpenBSD is about security.

    Go back to your cave if you have nothing to contribute, but don't tell people what to do with their free time.

    Mike Bouma

  3. Technical differences? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If by "technical differences with the FreeBSD core team" you mean "kicked off the team and mailing lists for hostile, inflammatory behavior," then you're right on the money.

    I listened to Dillon's crap on the -current mailing list and elsewhere. 'Technical differences' were the least of the concerns in getting rid of him.

    Sure, he's competent, and he's contributed some great things to FreeBSD over the years, but that doesn't mean he's not a troll.

    1. Re:Technical differences? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Then, why Mr. AC, haven't people like David O'Brien , Dag-Erling Smorgav or Poul-Henning Kamp been kicked out of FreeBSD yet? They're as prone to flamewars as Dillon was, probably even more.

      Mike Bouma

    2. Re:Technical differences? by bmah · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Matt is still on some of the mailing lists. I've seen him recently (past several days) involved in some very deep technical discussions.

      I personally think that even if Matt had not lost his FreeBSD commit bit, he might have started DragonFly anyways. DF is an excellent vehicle for trying out some new architectural approaches to problems that are just fundamentally different from FreeBSD 5 was/is doing.

  4. New BSD on the block by CustomFort · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It seems like this new DragonFLy BSD project could become very interesting. I have been wondering for a while what their exact purpose was for the split, and I think I like it. Their goal of implementing cleaner and more scalable structures sounds like a worthy one, even if it is a long tem goal.

    Who knows, someday the BSD world might break up lke this:
    OpenBSD is for Routers and firewalls
    NetBSD is for XBox/Toaster/microwave/everything else =P
    FreeBSD is for Servers
    and
    DragonBSD is for SSI Supercomputers or other highly scalable systems.

    1. Re:New BSD on the block by Homology · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Who knows, someday the BSD world might break up lke this: OpenBSD is for Routers and firewalls NetBSD is for XBox/Toaster/microwave/everything else =P FreeBSD is for Servers and DragonBSD is for SSI Supercomputers or other highly scalable systems.

      This might come as a surprise for you, but all of the BSD are general purpose OS, even though they have different focus. There are quite a few OpenBSD servers out there, just as there are quite a few FreeBSD firewalls and routers, and the same goes for NetBSD. NetBSD has even set the TCP speed record over "the pond".

  5. Re:The reason there are so many BSDs is by Homology · · Score: 3, Funny
    They can now tell people: look we have 5 guys running FreeBSD, 5 guys running NetBSD, 5 guys running OpenBSD and 5 guys running DragBSD.

    Since we can safely assume that the *BSD developers are running their own OS, this implies that the 5 developers are very, very productive! So all the thousands of GNU/Linux kernel hackers quite simply can't match the quality, stability and speed of what is done by the 5 (five) *BSD hackers. By the way, the *BSD hackers has to develop userland in addition to kernel work ;-)

  6. Re:*BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Good News Everyone!
    Turns out that *BSD is stronger than ever!
    According to an Inernetnews article, Netcraft has confirmed that *BSD has "dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
    There has been a steady increase in *BSD developers over the past decade.
    There are currently 307 FreeBSD developers as of the 2004 core team election.
    You can read more about FreeBSD here

    If you would like to try out a BSD, you can download: FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, or DragonflyBSD
    Enjoy!

  7. Why, always...? by agraupe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why is it that, for any BSD article, half of the responses are standard, boring, retarded "BSD is dying" posts. I think it is just a bunch of linux evangelists with massive insecurities, just wanting to ensure that linux stays at the top of the heap when it comes to open-source operating systems. Who says that all competition has to come from Microsoft? It's not like they're amazing to begin with. (For the record: I am a happy Linux user. I tried OpenBSD, and found that I didn't like it. This does not stop me from realizing that some people like it more, and that it may be better for some purposes. At the moment, I am considering giving FreeBSD a try. Generally I'm open-minded towards all operating systems. Yes. Even Windows, to a lesser degree)

  8. New BSD Commercial Development Company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    It looks like BSD is gaining more market share now that ever before. There is a new company Crescent Anchor with a commercially supported BSD operating system called SilverOS which looks likes its based off of the upcoming release of DragonFly. Http://www.crescentanchor.com

    From reading through the site site the operating system looks very interesting. They already have a large client base, with some very respectable companies listed. I think I'll order a copy and at least give it a try as FreeBSD 4.x is what we use at work and I've noticed the development work on 4.x has slowed down a lot in the past year . SilverOS/DragonFly might be what we start running next. We've already been looking at DragonFly for some time now and if there is a company offering commercial support I can't see a reason not to start using it now.

    1. Re:New BSD Commercial Development Company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The parent post brought to you by:
      Astroturfers-R-Us

      Come on, who on slashdot says:
      "I think I'll order a copy and at least give it a try"

      My advice is to look at the damage done to the JBoss team after being caught astroturfing. If you want to promote your stuff, great but be up front about it. OK?

  9. Re:The reason there are so many BSDs is by andkaha · · Score: 1

    Since we can safely assume that the *BSD developers are running their own OS, this implies that the 5 developers are very, very productive!

    I think that you even can assume that at least two of those five developers are running more than their own BSD, and maybe even a Linux distribution on the side.

    --
    It's 11pm, do you know what your deamons are up to?
  10. Re:Yet Another *BSD? by Nimrangul · · Score: 1, Insightful
    You say fragmentation is bad, yet it seems to be working well so far for Linux distrobutions and other projects.

    How many 'user-friendly' Linuxes do we have? How many of those are just Redhat? How many are just Debian? You speak of splitting the community being bad, yet the Linuxes seem to devide more rapidly than cancer, and it looks to be working for them.

    How many webservers are there? How many mail servers? DNS servers? I am not talking about how many are popular, I am talking how many are out there. There are a great many, and increasing in number all the time. How greatly hurt has sendmail been by the creation of qmail and postfix?

    Honestly, I would prefer that people like the ekkoBSD, MirBSD and MicroBSD Projects just contribute to OpenBSD instead of going off on their own, but it isn't hurting OpenBSD. I don't see NetBSD being dead because OpenBSD was started. I hardly see DragonFlyBSD killing FreeBSD.

    I don't really like this kind of contstant trolling on about the BSDs on Slashdot, considering things like OpenSSH, CARP and now OpenBGPD and OpenNTP come out of just one of these projects, you'd think that Linux fans would like them more.

    --
    I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.