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FreeBSD 5.3-BETA2 available
Nirbo writes "One week after FreeBSD 5.3-BETA1, FreeBSD 5.3-BETA2, is now available to those wishing to update to the most current FreeBSD on the 5.x branch.
It's available from the Main FTP servers, and probably a few more places by this point.
BETA-3 is due out September 3rd, but for those who don't want to go a single day without updating, you can find snapshots (and the ISO images) here."
To: Secretary of State Colin Powell
March 10, 2003
Dear Mr. Secretary:
I am joining my colleague AmigaOS in submitting my resignation from the list of living operating systems (effective immediately) because I cannot in good conscience compete with Linux.
I have failed:
--To support SMP
--To generate media attention
--To spawn a professionally managed distribution
--To innovate
--To be relevant.
Throughout the globe *BSD is becoming associated with in-fighting and sloppy coding. My disregard for views of other operating systems, borne out by my neglect of technical competence, is giving birth to an anti-BSD century.
I joined the operating system world because I love technology. Respectfully, Mr. Secretary, I am now bringing this calling to a close, with a heavy heart but for the same reason that I embraced it.
Sincerely,
*BSD
Dead Operating System
freebsd isn't dying.
Yet another sickening blow has struck what's left of the *BSD community, as a soon-to-be-released report by the independent Commision for Technology Management (CTM) after a year-long study has concluded: *BSD is already dead. Here are some of the commission's findings:
.005% of internet servers. A recent attempt at a face-to-face summit in Boulder, Colorado culminated in an out-and-out fistfight between core developers, reportedly over code commenting formats (tabs vs. spaces). Hotel security guards broke up the melee and banned the participants from the hotel. Two of the developers were hospitalized, and one continues to have his jaw wired shut.
Fact: There are almost no FreeBSD developers left, and its use, according to Netcraft, is down to a sadly crippled
Fact: servers running OpenBSD, which claims to focus on security, are frequently compromised. According to Jim Markham, editor of the online security forum SecurityWatch, the few OpenBSD servers that exist on the internet have become a joke among the hacker community. "They make a game out of it," he says. "(OpenBSD leader) Theo [de Raadt] will scramble to make a new patch to fix one problem, and they've already compromised a bunch of boxes with a different exploit."
Fact: the *BSDs have balkanized yet again. There are now no less than twelve separate, competing *BSD projects, each of which has introduced fundamental incompatibilities with the other *BSDs, and frequently with Unix standards. Average number of developers in each project: fewer than five. Average number of users per project: there are no definitive numbers, but reports show that all projects are on the decline.
Fact: X.org will not include support *BSD. The newly formed group believes that the *BSDs have strayed too far from Unix standards and have become too difficult to support along with Linux and Solaris x86. "It's too much trouble," said one anonymous developer. "If they want to make their own standards, let them doing the porting for us."
Fact: DragonflyBSD, yet another offshoot of the beleaguered FreeBSD "project", is already collapsing under the weight of internal power struggles and in-fighting. "They haven't done a single decent release," notes Mark Baron, an industry watcher and columnist. "Their mailing lists read like an online version of a Jerry Springer episode, complete with food fights, swearing, name-calling, and chair-throwing." Netcraft reports that DragonflyBSD is run on exactly 0% of internet servers.
Fact: NetBSD, which claims to focus on portability (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for BSD use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our NetBSD boxes out to the backyard and shot them in the head. We're much happier running Linux."
Fact: *BSD has no support from the media. Number of Linux magazines available at bookstores: 5 (Linux Journal, Linux World, Linux Developer, Linux Format, Linux User). Number of available *BSD magazines: 0. Current count of Linux-oriented technical books: 1071. Current count of *BSD books: 6.
Fact: Many user-level applications will no longer work under *BSD, and no one is working to change this. The GIMP, a Photoshop-like application, has not worked at all under *BSD since version 1.1 (sorry, too much trouble for such a small base, developers have said). OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office clone, has never worked under *BSD and never will. ("Why would we bother?" said developer Steven Andrews, an OpenOffice team lead.)
With these incontroverible facts staring (what's left of) the *BSD community in the face, they can only draw one conclusion: *BSD is already dead.
Just because the *BSD's explosive growth is minscule compared to Linux's explosive growth, that hardly means it's dying...
:D)
:D... now if only we could get off such dependancies as Linux Compatibility for out Flash plugins, we'd be set as both a Linux-ally, and a Linux competitor...
:D
For every 10 Linux users, every 1 has enough sense to fall through the cracks in the Linux Kernel and land in BSD-country (See, we can troll too
Rather, the boom of Linux in recent history has sparked a lot of BSD numebrs to jump too
With 2.5 Million active sites according to Netcraft (Who also run BSD... coincidence? Not really.), *BSD is hardly dead... just too busy disputing the death rumours to really make a show of it's vast and productive life
Just like 5.3 BETA1, BETA2 does not detect my network card automatically, and nothing I do makes any difference (it's always been found by every Linux distribution and all other BSDs, including all previous releases of FreeBSD since 4.7).
I can only hope that someone fixes this before it's released, because I've long been waiting to try a truely modern version of FreeBSD (with KSE, ULE and now X.org all as defaults).
I guess it makes little difference in the long run, as I've mostly switched over to the (admittedly too new to realistically be used in a production environment, yet utterly promising) DragonFly BSD and Mac OS X.
This version has been in the works for over three years now (5.x that is), and I am getting tired of waiting for something that could have been out and stable a year and a half ago were the developers not constantly adding to the feature list while trying to stablise the core architecture of the system.
DragonFly seems to be doing better in this department (it looks as if thier "light weight kernel threading" subsystem has allowed them to almost completely multi-thread their network stack in roughly a one month period (the project itself being little over one year old) while the FreeBSD folks *still* have not made significant progress doing the same with 5.x (no, even with 5.3 there is more code that cannot function without the big giant lock than there is code that can run happily without it)).
I can't wait for version 1.1 of DragonFly (due in some six to eight months). It'll be very interesting to see how far they've come at that time when compared to FreeBSD.
I'm quite impressed how quickly the beta's follow eachother. Even if changes between 5.2 and 5.3 aren't major. (haven't read the changelog though)
It makes me wonder why it takes so much longer for Microsoft with all its resources to go from one beta to the next, even with all the software that has to be tested.
home
For the install CD, use:
3 86 /5.3/5.3-BETA2-i386-disc1.iso
3 86 /5.3/5.3-BETA2-i386-disc2.iso
ftp://ftpX.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i
Replace "X" with 1 to 14 to use the US mirrors.
For a "live CD" to test hardware compatibility, use disc2:
ftp://ftpX.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i
Helevius
Because 75% of the postively moderated posts on bsd.slashdot.org are offtopic/lame/k-whore rebuttals of "BSD is Dying". If you BSDers actually had anything interesting to say other than blatent asskissing, the Dying mantra would fade away. But you don't.
Guess I don't understand why you think that your NIC being detected is the the end all be all for an OS.
Let me explain it to you. It's a network operating system. It's a commonly encountered, and generally well supported card. The beta is broken, plain and simple. No networking ability means it's not ready for prime time. Can you understand that?
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 an Amazing 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
Yup. You're a dimwit all right. It seems as though you can't read small posts carefully enough to save yourself some embarrasment.
To each their own I suppose.
I get errors whenever I try to burn the images to a CD-R...this either means A) My burner is broke or B) BSD really stands for "Bull Shit discs"
I wrote code so you didn't have to.
What We Can Learn From BSD
By Chinese Karma Whore, Version 1.0
Everyone knows about BSD's failure and imminent demise. As we pore over the history of BSD, we'll uncover a story of fatal mistakes, poor priorities, and personal rivalry, and we'll learn what mistakes to avoid so as to save Linux from a similarly grisly fate.
Let's not be overly morbid and give BSD credit for its early successes. In the 1970s, Ken Thompson and Bill Joy both made significant contributions to the computing world on the BSD platform. In the 80s, DARPA saw BSD as the premiere open platform, and, after initial successes with the 4.1BSD product, gave the BSD company a 2 year contract.
These early triumphs would soon be forgotten in a series of internal conflicts that would mar BSD's progress. In 1992, AT&T filed suit against Berkeley Software, claiming that proprietary code agreements had been haphazardly violated. In the same year, BSD filed countersuit, reciprocating bad intentions and fueling internal rivalry. While AT&T and Berkeley Software lawyers battled in court, lead developers of various BSD distributions quarreled on Usenet. In 1995, Theo de Raadt, one of the founders of the NetBSD project, formed his own rival distribution, OpenBSD, as the result of a quarrel that he documents on his website. Mr. de Raadt's stubborn arrogance was later seen in his clash with Darren Reed, which resulted in the expulsion of IPF from the OpenBSD distribution.
As personal rivalries took precedence over a quality product, BSD's codebase became worse and worse. As we all know, incompatibilities between each BSD distribution make code sharing an arduous task. Research conducted at MIT found BSD's filesystem implementation to be "very poorly performing." Even BSD's acclaimed TCP/IP stack has lagged behind, according to this study.
Problems with BSD's codebase were compounded by fundamental flaws in the BSD design approach. As argued by Eric Raymond in his watershed essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, rapid, decentralized development models are inherently superior to slow, centralized ones in software development. BSD developers never heeded Mr. Raymond's lesson and insisted that centralized models lead to 'cleaner code.' Don't believe their hype - BSD's development model has significantly impaired its progress. Any achievements that BSD managed to make were nullified by the BSD license, which allows corporations and coders alike to reap profits without reciprocating the goodwill of open-source. Fortunately, Linux is not prone to this exploitation, as it is licensed under the GPL.
The failure of BSD culminated in the resignation of Jordan Hubbard and Michael Smith from the FreeBSD core team. They both believed that FreeBSD had long lost its earlier vitality. Like an empire in decline, BSD had become bureaucratic and stagnant. As Linux gains market share and as BSD sinks deeper into the mire of decay, their parting addresses will resound as fitting eulogies to BSD's demise.
[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
Have you submitted a bug report of any kind about this? That is what the BETA is for, and it is why it has the BETA tag.
While I respect your opinion, I do wish you would hold judgement until the final release is made.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
There's BSDWiki, which I contribute to now and again, but it's still early in that project's development and although I know a lot of linux stuff, I am not nearly as conversant in the differences between FreeBSD and Linux, and quite frankly, the handbook makes my eyes gloss over.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
The book is divided into five parts, organized as follows:
Part I, Overview
Three introductory chapters provide the context for the complete operating system and for the rest of the book.
History and Goals, sketches the historical development of the system, emphasizing the system's research orientation.
Design Overview of FreeBSD, describes the services offered by the system, and outlines the internal organization of the kernel. It also discusses the design decisions that were made as the system was developed.
Kernel Services, explains how system calls are done, and describes in detail several of the basic services of the kernel.
Part II, Processes
Process Management, lays the foundation for later chapters by describing the structure of a process, the algorithms used for scheduling the execution of the threads that make up a process, and the synchronization mechanisms used by the system to ensure consistent access to kernel-resident data structures.
Memory Management, the virtual-memory-management system is discussed in detail.
Part III, I/O System
I/O System Overview, explains the system interface to I/O and describes the structure of the facilities that support this interface.
Following this introduction are four chapters that give the details of the main parts of the I/O system.
Devices, gives a description of the I/O architecture of the PC, describes how the I/O subsystem is managed, and how the kernel initially maps out and later manages the arrival and departure of connected devices.
Local Filesystems, details the data structures and algorithms that implement filesystems as seen by application programs as well as how local filesystems are interfaced with the device interface described earlier.
The Network Filesystem, explains the network filesystem from both the server and client perspectives.
Terminal Handling, discusses support for character terminals, and provides a description of the pseudo-terminal device driver.
Part IV, Interprocess Communication
Interprocess Communication, describes the mechanism for providing communication between related or unrelated processes.
Network Communication and Network Protocols, are closely related, as the facilities explained in the former are implemented by specific protocols, such as the TCP/IP protocol suite, explained in the latter.
Part V, System Operation
Startup and Shutdown, discusses system startup and shutdown and explains system initialization at the process level, from kernel initialization to user login.
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
When I first used mergemaster I thought it was the greatest thing since before that I had to tediously hand-pick through /usr/src/etc on OpenBSD and NetBSD in order to keep /etc up-to-date.
But now the luster has worn off and I'm seeing things a bit differently especially after using Gentoo's etc-update.
So what about mergemaster?
1) split screen mode - mergemaster splits your screen into a left and right half with no scrolling. You get a whopping 40 columns of truncated file to look at on an 80 column display in single-user mode with no network or GUI. The first thing you will notice on the screen is the CVS tags which will almost help you tell which is the new and which is the old file except that they are cut off at 40 columns
2) "l for left" and "r for right" - you type the "l" for "left" with your right hand and the "r" for "right" with your left hand. Screws me up since I have typing skills.
... strike back again. Get a life idiots
BETA. B-E-T-A. BETA TESTING. BETA
B
E
T
A
Can you understand that?
And of course there are ONLY those two possibilities. Nothing else could POSSIBLY have caused the "problem" you claim to have. We really need to start emphasizing logic skills more in education.
You're an idiot. Of course I do, but am I supposed to sit here with my thumbs up my ass, because this might still be an issue AFTER the beta, even with problem reports.
Do *you* understand? Thought not.
"Fact: Linux community = bunch of script kiddies & pseudo-leet (and as we can see, dozens of trolls) ; BSD Community = Technical guys"
I think both FreeBSD and Linux are pretty cool, but it is not in anyone's interest to talk trash like this. Do you want people saying that BSD users are arrogant? I think not. I have two machines at home, my main Debian box, and another one that I set up with FreeBSD out of curiosity and a general desire to broaden my knowledge. I like both, although I must admit I have a much better grasp of Debian.
mergemaster is the most painful part of a FreeBSD upgrade. 20 minutes of paging through files that I've never touched and probably never will (with a couple of minor exceptions).
/usr/defaults/ and then letting the user put his overrides into a file of the same name in /etc/. Just as we do with rc.conf. Throw in a switch to mean "update everything in /etc/defaults/ without asking me" and everyone should be happy. (That is, the curious and the masochists can still page through every changed config' file.)
I see its purpose, but it could be made much less painful by putting most of those files into
K.C.
Erm. Ahem. Tap tap tap.
Attention, everyone who responded to this post.
YOU HAVE BEEN TROLLED. YOU HAVE LOST. HAVE A NICE DAY.
Or, abbreviated for convenience: YHBT. YHL. HAND.
See http://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/YHBT
Netcraft has confirmed: FreeBSD is dying
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 an Amazing 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: FreeBSD is dead
If you are truly trying to get a working version of FreeBSD onto your system, I suggest you go back to the one of the -RELEASE versions you have had success with in the past. Otherwise, post your findings to the bug database and be patient for just a while longer.
Since you are obviously much more enamored with Dragonfly, Linux, and the other flavors of BSD, I am still puzzled as to why you are even bothering with FreeBSD in the first place. You obviously are more interested in bashing FreeBSD than getting it running on your system.
let's hope they've fixed those buffer problems with the intel e1000 network cards. i'm tired of having to restrict my card to 100mbps
The statistics sample from 2001 over a year was a cheap attempt to minimize Matt's contribution to the project. The reason why he has been mostly silent is probably one of the most prominent signs of his superior maturity. The fact that the official defense (mostly fronted by Greg, atm) he wasn't such a substantial committer is crap, for the most part. If one wanted to go by the stats, Jeff Robertson (sorry if I munged the spelling) would be one of the key committers, and his UMA system isn't even entirely ripe yet, it's just been committed within the sample timeframe. That suddenly phk is at the top of the list, is simple a result of his newest attempt to add another large chunk of bit rot to the project that he can later claim not to have time to maintain "unless someone is willing to pay for my time" (like the atm bits, the half-finished devd monster, et.al.) One can hardly get him to look at his malloc bits, that put his name in lights at some point in the long past.
Matt didn't contribute because he was convinced that that the smp development direction that was chosen (my impression at least from the archives and my fading memory) was overly complex, too complex for the number and talent level of the contributers involved, and that it would delay a release from the -current branch significantly. So he was right. I'll almost bet that that was a constant sore for John, who still hasn't gotten his long-promised, but little delivered re-entrant work done, but he always had time enough to object to any other commits that might help along the way. Strangely Julian and Matt could work together. One might attribute certain commits to both Matt and Julian (if that would matter anyway, since -core is interested in proving the opposite statistically).
If the issue here had anything to do with IPFW, then you all better get out your C-coder hats and take a little more time to fix that rotting pile of muck that has been the standard broken packet filter interface for FreeBSD long past its possible usefulness. A packet filter with no central maintainer which is subject to once yearly random feature bloat through some wild university project from Luigi. The brokenness that Luigi introduced (and the repository bloat through backing out and recommitting, ad absurdum) was probably no less a threat to security than anything Matt did. If the security officer was to be blatantly honest with himself, ipfw would be marked broken for either a full audit or full removal (just port obsd's pf or something that someone actually actively _cares_ about).
You've alienated Jordan, Mike, Bill Paul (for all I can see), Greenman, you constantly rag on Terry, even though he's seen and done more with FreeBSD than most of you, O'Brien is on the verge of quitting (since he, like I, am not convinced that GEOM is anything more than an ego trip that will never be completely maintained or usefully documented). There are certainly others, too, that have attempted to make technically correct contributions, but didn't fit into the sort of paranoid "glee club" that core would like to have around them. You guys lack the talent to steer the positive from Matt into the project and let the crap fall by the wayside. I'm not saying Matt's rants are the most intelligent thing he's done, but he's sat by the wayside and watch the superstars beat up the code to a point where it's less stable, slower, and more bloated than it ever was. I, for one, can understand his frustration (as I can with Mike's, Jordan's, and a few others), altho
you fell for a troll
but am I supposed to sit here with my thumbs up my ass
That would probably be as productive as bitching on slashdot. Perhaps bugs@freebsd.org or current@freebsd.org or the PR system?
because this might still be an issue AFTER the beta, even with problem reports.
Ohhhh, but if you bring it up in Slashdot comments, it'll definately get fixed, or at the very least, inform the people of the world that FreeBSD 5.3-BETA2 just isn't ready for production.
Perhaps you should stick to the thumb up your ass idea. Still sounds more productive.
BAD NEWS: Mike Smith's employment at Apple Computer was terminated on August 11, 2004. No official announcement was made, but reliable sources report a fistfight started by Mr. Smith over a C programming issue (use of int vs. char), and general beligerant behavior concerning trivial technical issues, as the cause of his termination.
More recently, Mr. Smith has been working on a contract programming in Python at a waste management company in Salinas.
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for *BSD;
The carriage held but just our bad code
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
Passing Linux, we dared salute, a foe superior
My coding work was but a-waste,
Doomed OS a triviality.
I have never used a BSD before, but I think I'll give it a try when this release hits stable, as I've read a lot of good stuff about FreeBSD. What will be the first differences I will encounter? Is it easy to set up a fully functioning GNOME environment on FreeBSD?
Thanks in advance.
It will happen.
If you do, we promise not to judge you, or your lifestyle choices.
The LORD is my shepherd
*BSD shall not want
He makes *BSD lie down in green pastures
He leads *BSD beside still waters
but He will not restore *BSD's soul
He cannot lead *BSD in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake.
Yea, though *BSD walks through the valley of the shadow of death, *BSD will fear no evil: for thou art with *BSD; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before *BSD in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest [2] *BSD's head with oil; *BSD's cup runneth over. 6 Surely goodness and mercy followed *BSD all the days of its life: and *BSD will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Because *BSD is dead.
Hi! :o)
:-))
I'm trying out the BETA on my k6-II... I always want to have a FreeBSD box lying around. I like FreeBSD and its philosophy, but i'm not completely ready to make the jump from linux yet- there are certain things i'm accustomed to in the linux OS that are different or less-implemented in Fbsd.
but anyways....
Granted *this* is a beta and is full of debugging code and watchdogs and such, but even on official releases i've noticed that FreeBSD tends to have a much larger memory footprint than linux.
Of course, this is most visible when running X (which isn't officially part of the OS). But say, for instance on the k6-II, i can have both Debian Unstable and FreeBSD on the hdd. In both cases i will have just the base system, and then only what is necessary to run windowmaker, gkrellm, firebird, gaim and bitchx- a moderately lean desktop installation.
On disk, linux is about ~250MB, FreeBSD is about ~700.
Boot up, startx, load windowmaker and gkrellm ONLY (aside from standard daemons and services)...
gkrellm reports the linux installation as having 90 of 128mb free, but on FreeBSD (in the same state) it shows 10 of 128mb free. Obviously performance is gravely different between the two- anything else i open or use in FreeBSD lives in swap.
Now i'm not illustrating this as a criticism of FreeBSD- I'm just curious if anyone has an explanation. I'm sure there is a valid reason for this, or it's a matter of ignorance on my part of setting up/configuring between the two.
I do hold FreeBSD in high regard, but it is discouraging to run it on my k6-II. 300mhz and 128mb of ram aren't really limited resources, in my book- one should be able to expect a reasonable and useable desktop experience. No KDE or Enlightenment or Gnome or things like that, but i'm not a fan of heavy DEs (XFCE, Wmaker, bbox are just fine for me
Hell, even WindowsXP (ugh) outperforms FreeBSD (which surprised the hell out of me)
do() || do_not();
BSD vs. Linux
mmmmm...
thumbs up my ass...
XP SP2...
(faints)
*BSD dies in clash with police - source
03 Sep 2004 11:26:18 GMT
Source: Reuters
RIYADH, Sept 3 (Reuters) - Saudi security forces killed the *BSD operating system in a gunbattle on Friday, as the kingdom continued its crackdown on dead OSs, a security source said.
The clash took place outside the central town of Buraida, the scene of a shootout with *BSD in which a policeman was killed on Thursday, the source told Reuters.
*BSD has waged a 15-month campaign of bombings and shootings aimed at Linux, Windows, and the technology industry. Around 90 programmers and civilians, many of them foreigners, have been killed.
Earlier in the week, officials announced that a *BSD militant -- involved in an attack which had set up 20 unstable servers in production capacities -- had surrendered.
The militant was wanted for setting up a poor-performing webserver with a single CPU in the city of Khobar.
Other than that little rant, I have found bugs@ and current@ very responsive...
Boys from the City. Not yet caught by the Whirlwind of Progress. Feed soda pop to the thirsty pigs.
I know its a BETA. But just curios. /newb
It is horrible slow to compile with it. my system is very poor in performence. And GNOME is hardly unusuable it look likes it running on a 486 machine on a dual p3 500.