Slashdot Mirror
Free Book on FreeBSD System Programming
An anonymous reader writes "A new book on BSD system programming has been released. And, in the spirit of open source, the book was released using the GNU Free Documentation License. Anyone interested in system programming on the BSD's can use this."
What an awesome gift idea.
I know I'll be putting this to very good use.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Chapter 2: Bootsrapping BSD
A book on BSD systems programming - released under the GPL!
AC's standard screed on the death and irrelevance of *BSD
;-)
(just to spare him the effort of posting it again
Free programming books published online.
Okay, I've only read the Basic and Advanced I/O chapters here, but it doesn't look like there's any material that's not straight from the man pages... certainly no discussion of best practice, or performance ramifications, or any of the other good systems stuff I had hoped to see...
I've had this sig for three days.
This book reminds me of Marc Rockhind's "Advanced Unix Programming", but is less technical in nature.
The chapter on BSD make was interesting, a topic not usually covered because most people use GNU Make these days.
And the section on kqueue(2) was interesting, although very superficial.
Everything else would be largely familiar to anyone who's familiar with the Unix programming idiom.
As someone who cut his teeth on "The Design and Implementation of the 4.3BSD Operating System", I'm eagerly anticipating McKusick's book on FreeBSD 5.2, to be released in August. http://www.mckusick.com/FreeBSDbook.html
Whoever is publishing this book is going to take a bath on the project. I wish whoever did this wouldn't have been so stupid. And to whoever wrote this book, why did you push for a GFDL'ed online book? Stupid, stupid, stupid. Go ask Pearson publishing about this, they and many other publishers have first hand accounts of the failings of the GFDL. Unfortunately, this publisher will probably not write another book about BSD, even though it's the GFDL that is to blame. If Pearson Publishing Group (they own Addison Weseley, Sam, etc.) has a lesson to teach other publishers, it would be that GFDL is the problem, not the content. Hopefully this publisher is all the wiser. Stupid, stupid, stupid. On the bright side, at least this will go down as another failure for GNU and its licenses.... which isn't a bad thing. Hopefully more people will wake up to reality and stop being braindead. *sigh* One can hope. Death to the GPL and friends.
-- Sean Chittenden
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 in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save *BSD at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
I fail to understand how the parent post is "interesting" (funny, perhaps). I understand the point being made -- the word "bootstrapping" was misspelled -- but that happens. It seems to me that is why the licensing on this book is significant: At least with this book this error can be corrected and reprinted by anyone so readers don't have to live with the error for long. As I read the web page, it looks like there is no error in the table of contents.
It's got to be tough to write a book and not make a minor spelling error. I've never written a book like this so I wouldn't know, but I have read many books (including technical books) with such errors. I read the error, mark it in my notes if I have paper handy, and move on. After reading the book, I often remember to submit my notes to the publisher for future corrections. It seems to me that the remarkably thorough editing and more restrictive licensing terms on these other books I've read do not prevent the errors from occurring. So my notes never result in fixing the book for subsequent readers unless the publisher decides to reprint.
Digital Citizen