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DragonFlyBSD 1.0A review
ValourX writes "NewsForge has a review of DragonFlyBSD 1.0A. If you recall, this was forked from FreeBSD 4.8 a little more than a year ago, and has since achieved several of its goals. According to the review it's not quite ready for prime time yet, but it looks like DragonFly is shaping up to be the ultimate BSD."
What really makes the ultimate BSD?
I've not had all that much experience with BSD, but I'd say that packaging always seemed quite difficult, for me coming from a Debian GNU/Linux background.
Join the Free Software Foundation
but are GPLed programs allowed to take BSD code in their projects?
The source of its 'ultimateness' is explained on their homepage:
See here.
My bedside clock drags seconds into days--
Now two a.m., now almost two-oh-one--
My sleepless eyes grow teary as I gaze
Into the night and think of bygone fun.
For BSD is dead, dead ere its prime;
Dead, oh! dead, before its thirtieth year.
Almighty Linux, in but little time,
Destroyed the OS I once held dear.
Like Orpheus, I languished in my pain
When the cold grave swallowed Eurydice;
I piped my woeful song of sighs in vain
For nothing could revive FreeBSD.
Young Dragonfly now goes where Ekko led;
I cry to think of Open and of Net.
If tears could open coffins--raise the dead!--
Then BSD might have a future yet.
My tears have drenched the pillow that was dry.
Tomorrow will my sorrow come again.
I lie back down and tell myself the lie,
"FreeBSD lives on in OS X."
Not bad but needs work. Try again in 12 months
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
BSD projects use GPL code all the time.
I've been flogging gcc for a few weeks now, upgrading all my FreeBSD ports, and I'm pretty sure gcc is GPL.
Many of the ports I run are GPL projects. I suppose that means that the port itself (set of patches, mostly) becomes GPL, although I've never really looked.
Now if you mean that BSD projects can't take GPL code, stir it with BSD code and release it under a BSD license, then I agree with you.
But seriously, I wonder if he looked through the DragonFlyBSD website at any great length, or read through any of the mailing lists before he tried to install. I used dragonfly as my main desktop OS (but wait, it's not able to be used as a desktop os, right?) for a few months prior to the 1.0 release. X compiled fine from ports, so did gnome and a multitude of other programs. I rebuild world and the kernel atleast every other day (major changes are always going on, bugs are always being fixed, etc), and never had, at any moment, an unusable system. There is a guidebook/handbook in development. As for the SMP issues, I can't really say anything, since I don't have a SMP box, but I know that area's a little shakey.
I have a feeling the author of this article was expecting to jump into a 1.0 release OS the same way he would jump into FreeBSD 4.x stable. That's just not the way it works. You have to do research before you dive into a hyper-actively developed OS in the state that DragonFly is currently in. It's like running FreeBSD-current, only with the steel insides ripped out and replaced with titanium, gear by gear.
YaST seems nice, but I've been running Suse 9.1 pro on my laptop for a month now and already I want my BSD port system back. Sure it doesn't have a fancy GUI (or at least I never used it), but portupgrade and an always up to date ports tree rocks.
I've been playing battle for wesnoth lately, and while it is great, I only have 0.7.1, and .8 is current. YaST however doesn't have the update, nor updates for most of the other programs I've installed. Sure libpng was there soon after the exploit, but the rest of the programs I want to run aren't updated.
Now if this was a server, and it was Samba out of date I could understand that the extra testing is worth it. Even at that I'd argue that the new version should be made optional somehow and there for those who want to try it.
Thats just one example, that I've noticed. Somehow ports just works and is easy, while the other tools are easy, but don't work. (when work is defined as having an update you want)
the "opposite" meant "using GPL'd code in BSD'd projects". This is not possible. You can get another license from **ALL** the copyright owners (one that is BSD'd compatible -- not the GPL), but then it's not "the GPL'd code" anymore, is it?
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
how are the recent x86 builds of Apple's Darwin?
MORTAR COMBAT!
Good News Everyone!
Mike Smith now works for Apple, whose OS is based on BSD.
Check it out: www.lemis.com/~grog/msmr.html
and at: daemonnews, under "BSD at Apple"
He didn't like the direction that v5 was taking so he quit and starting writing BSD code for Apple.
Please read the comments on OSNews. They are informative. Especially the one stating reasons why the review is moot. The reviewer did not take the time to check out the DragonFly website. When I confronted him, he was very rude about it. Food for thought. He used the "click, doesnt work, must suck" method. He did not use the mailing list, nor irc. What is worse, he did not admit that he was wrong.
--David Ross
(drossruby (at) yahoo.com)
BAD news everyone; those links are from three years ago!
Want to know what the LATEST buzz says? It says that *BSD is dying.