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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
So... It's not yet ready for prime time, and it's the ultimate BSD.
:-)
I guess the trolls were right. BSD is dead. Dragonfly is the ultimate BSD by virtue of being closer to dead than the others.
--
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 it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
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.
[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
I wonder how he feels about their making fun of the fat penguin, considering the fact that Taco is pretty obese himself (Taco, if you are reading this, we met at one of the Linux expos. You were playing DOD3 with your nerdy buddies)
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!
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)