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DragonFly BSD Introduces A 'Stable' CVS Tag
bsdman writes "The DragonFly BSD project have recently introduced a new 'stable' tag in their cvs. If you ever wanted to use DragonFly BSD but was scared of any instability - now is your chance!"
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My understanding is that rather than continue to make incremental improvements
to FreeBSD, the DragonFly BSD folks are ripping out entire subsystems and
replacing them with new designs that they think will scale better, be easier
to maintain, and, ultimately, make it much simpler to make incremental
improvements on than the current FreeBSD design.
Take a look at their website. They have some excellent explanations of their
goals.
*sigh* back to work...
That's the main difference: goals.
Goals make you take different decisions. They all write very good and consistent operating systems. All of them share code. OpenBSD takes drivers from Net and Free, and these have taken pf, OpenSSH and spamd; the list of shared code is huge (and that's the point of BSD).
But every BSD has different policies. OpenBSD is the more pedantic about licenses and code quality. For some people it could seem absurd, but time has proven OpenBSD is right.
It's my impression that OpenBSD is in the perfect balance between NetBSD (privileging portability) and FreeBSD (privileging efficiency and software availability).
But I'm biased :>
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
"BSD
/hopes the mods can tell a joke from a troll
4 more"
When was the last time anyone saw that? It's like a creepy zombie movie.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
One shiny feature that might not be obvious the first time you see a BSD box is ease of administration. Which is a consequence of a clean and integrated system. OpenBSD specially has a proactive approach to security, which is an important "feature".
Maybe this doesn't seem like fancy features to a teenager geek, but they are so important if you want to take *nix administration seriously.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it
I can clearly see the differences in linux distro's. But other than portability, and security, what other differences/uses are there?
Frankly, who cares about the differences? The purpose of the BSDs isn't to be different.
This is very different from the Linux community. Linux users, in general, tend to chase after the latest "hot" distro. Almost like flash mobs. The latest seems to be Ubuntu skyrocketing up the distrowatch charts. I can't understand why someone happy with their current distro would switch just because everyone's talking about something new. But apparently a lot of you do.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
From the download section of their website:
CD Images
DragonFly CDs are 'live', meaning these CDs will boot your system and let you log in as root (no password). You can use this feature to check for hardware compatibility and play with DragonFly a little before actually installing it on your hard drive. The CD includes an installer that can be run at the console, or (experimentally) via a web browser. Make sure you read the README file for more information. To activate the installer, boot the CD and login as 'installer'. See the 'Download Site' list below for a list of download locations.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
And I don't know of any particular advantage of UVM in practice; as far as I've understood, the performance in practice is not as good with FreeBSD.
If you've got information to the contrary, please share!
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
It's my impression that OpenBSD is in the perfect balance between NetBSD (privileging portability) and FreeBSD (privileging efficiency and software availability).
I think OpenBSD is the less performant and scalable of the three, has less ports and suffers at high loads much more than the others. But it has better security defaults and pf is great. Don't you agree?
it's the OSI approved version of the license. Apparently some old files had the old 4-clause license hanging around.
This is an improvement, and isn't making it any harder for Matt and other's ideas to get out. It's actually making the code MORE open, from the GNU/FSF/OSI standpoint. Nice attempt at a troll, though.
FreeBSD, and BSD in general, is an OS that once you learn...you will love forever. It's an OS you can love without becoming a zealot. It's pragmatic, intelligently designed, and the code is very clean, relative to linux. You'll also be working in an OS that really just has one goal - to be as good an OS as it can. Not to overthrow microsoft, not to overthrow linux, not to fight against Mac OS as the primary underdog. That, in my opinion, is the main appeal of the BSDs. They're there just to be there, to represent different models and ideas in computer science, and show how these different ideas might work. Linux does this, too, but there are ulterior motives that sometimes draw away from the goal of being the best that it can be. Though, Linus does a damn good job of keeping things on track and focused.
Now, BSD is mainly for servers, but i would venture to say that most BSD developers use it daily as their main workstation. It's a completely viable system to fill that role, and it does a damn good job. Also...nvidia puts out 3D drivers for FreeBSD, you can play almost all linux games in FreeBSD, usually as fast, if not faster, than under linux. I have no evidence of this...but it's what I hear...and people do play linux games on FreeBSD (think wolfenstein, 3D FPSes). So...it can be a platform for gaming. But yeah, to enter the BSD world you have to realize goals. If you want a firewall or a gateway, you can't go wrong with OpenBSD. If you want a nice fast workstation or a high-load network server Get yourself a copy of FreeBSD-STABLE (the 4.X series) or track DragonFly's development. If you want to see BSD die, get a copy of FreeBSD-RELEASE (the 5.X series). If you want to see somethign that will run on anything, and run pretty damn well, then it's all about NetBSD. If you want point and click prettiness with a terminal, OS X is BSD-based. I recommend trying all of them, because they all offer something different for the 16 year-old nerd to learn.
Maybe they don't want to admit they're not as happy with their distro as they say? Or maybe they're just the kind of poeple that want to "oohhh shiny!" kick from installing something new. (and maybe installing stuff is the only thing they do with it because they use their Windows box for games)
And then there might still be people who want to try them all because they can.
home
Insightful, my rim!
Wait a few months and there will really be some new cool things to brag about. The new VFS layering is going to allow us to implement a generic journaling interface (read: real time continuously streaming fs backups and other cool things).
-Matt
-Matt