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The State of the Demon Address
Kelly McNeill writes "It's an exciting era in the Berkeley Software Distribution world; indeed, things started off with a litigious bang over a decade ago, but now BSD solutions are more varied than ever before and offer the user heretofore unprecedented choice and power. So many are the options today that it's time for a roll call from the various distributions. Paul Webb submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews which takes a look at what each BSD has to offer and also looks at where each is going."
As a user of FreeBSD and OpenBSD, I must say that I have been quite satisfied with both, especially FreeBSD. While it could use some help in the ports and upgrading department, it is all around a wonderful piece of software, and it is quite interesting to watch the development of all the BSDs. Way to go!
Shouldnt that be State of the Daemon?
I mean daemon as in services doing good useful things running in the OS?
vs. the newer form of the word, Demon, usually signifying the exact opposite.
.... ... }
int main (void) {
I'm a long time user of Linux (since '93 or so), and I've never really had a need to use FreeBSD. This article treats FreeBSD as the second (or first, depeding on your religion) coming of Christ. The article tell us that "The new FreeBSD 5 branch offers some exciting technology, generally regarded as comparable with or superior to what is offered in Linux", but doesn't even give a hint as to what this technology is, only that it is "tantalizing".
Since "it has a bright future ahead of it", can someone name a few of these killer features? It would be interesting to see if any of them could be added to Linux, as well...
would it make you feel any better to know that osviews.com is hosted on OSX?
BSD is slashdotted :)
It's an exciting era in the Berkeley Software Distribution world; indeed, things started off with a litigious bang over a decade ago, but now BSD solutions are more varied than ever before and offer the user heretofore unprecedented choice and power. So many are the options today that it's time for a roll call from the various distributions. Paul Webb submitted the following editorial to osOpinion/osViews which takes a look at what each BSD has to offer and also looks at where each is going.
--
Each of the four major BSD projects are pushing forward with development and experiencing growth, diversifying the Open Source playing field's offerings Let's take a look at what each project is up to these days.
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is in a precarious state. While it has almost hit critical mass in the corporate world, their latest growing pains have left potential adopters confused. The new FreeBSD 5 branch offers some exciting technology, generally regarded as comparable with or superior to what is offered in Linux. The FreeBSD foundation is still upgrading its FreeBSD 4.x line and suggesting its use for production environments over FreeBSD 5. The reasons for this are very simple -- FreeBSD 5 won't be ready for prime time until FreeBSD 5.4 or 5.5 -- but users are left confused and timid.
FreeBSD's last major release, which now sits highly optimized at version 4.10, works just as well as always. For systems already running with FreeBSD 4.x that see no need to adopt the new technology in FreeBSD 5 or jump to Linux, this operating system is a godsend in stability and continued support. FreeBSD 4.11 is scheduled for a February '05 release, while plans for FreeBSD 4.12 are on the backburner should FreeBSD 5 not achieve -STABLE status by the fourth quarter of 2005. But what if you need the technology available in FreeBSD 5 and don't want to jump to Linux?
FreeBSD 5, currently available at FreeBSD 5.2.1 with FreeBSD 5.3 in late beta, tantalizes the BSD world with the culmination of several year's hard work and narrow escapes. Back in the late Nineties, when WindRiver bought BSD/OS (a closed-source BSD operating system owned by the now-defunct BSDI), FreeBSD users were promised a next-generation BSD made possible by crossing the ultra-robust corporate OS with its Open Source counterpart. While WindRiver let go of its plans leaving the future of FreeBSD in peril, the realization of its goal is almost here thanks to the FreeBSD community and Apple Computer, Inc.'s contribution of FreeBSD code.
That almost is a killer, though, in that it now causes potential users to look elsewhere for modern operating system features elsewhere until FreeBSD 5 is blessed as stable. Given FreeBSD's track record and the corporate sponsors now behind its operating system, however, it has a bright future ahead of it despite these stumbling blocks. Sadly, the same can't be said for its two little brothers, NetBSD and OpenBSD.
NetBSD
NetBSD's claims to fame aren't its optimization or secure code -- it's instead known for running on a wider variety of platforms than any other operating system out there, including Linux. NetBSD's binary releases include support for an amazing 40 platforms and an additional 12 platforms in the source code. In other words, it runs on everything but the kitchen sink. NetBSD forked from the 386BSD/4.4 BSD merger in 1993 and continued on its own in parallel to FreeBSD since then, albeit at a slower pace. It's currently at version 2.6.1, with aggressive testing on the new NetBSD 2.0 promising fruition by the first half of 2005.
Those familiar with NetBSD swear by it, though its use in serious environments is limited. It is not secure and device driver support is paltry at best. NetBSD's true usefulness comes in providing developers of other operating systems -- such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Linux -- with hardware support to base their own new ports off of. For instance, much of the code for the PowerPC FreeBSD port comes from NetBSD. OpenBSD implemented support for A
... you insensitive clod!
There are a few mistakes in that article.
as the site claims, there hasn't been a hole in the default install in over seven years.
Actually the claim is "Only one remote hole in the default install, in more than 8 years!"
OpenBSD runs on very few platforms and even then only in single-processor mode
If you're using an i386 system then SMP has been available for a while and is shipping in 3.6 (I have my CDs already.
OpenBSD isn't acceptable as a desktop system
I've used it as a desktop for years and the ports system works very well.
Trolling is a art,
I bet the Darwin developers worked for years for that one! Tell me again how the kernel implements web standards, George.
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Too bad I can't mod the story flaim bait; the treatment of Net and Open is a bit heavy handed and the article seems to be written as a FreeBSD advert....
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
I was using BSD 4.2 in college over 15 years ago, and the litigation didn't happen for quite some time.
BSD's roots are in the early 80s when they were working closely with Bell Labs, and both versions of Unix were quasi-official.
Obviously, the big break for the modern BSD was 386BSD, which brought the OS to the personal computer a little over a decade ago.
Today, I think it is the rich set of userland capabilities that distinguish the BSDs to the point that occasionally Linux distributions pop up that emulate their functionality (e.g. Gentoo's use of a BSD-like ports system).
BSD is a rich OS with a long history, and I'm glad that it's still around and growing into niches that need it. Today, I'm mostly a Linux user, but I remember my roots and the joy that life was when BSD gained popularity over the proprietary OSes of the day back in the 80s.
I am a BSD user since 386BSD days, and a frustrated linux admin.
There is enough room in the world for both, and hopefully many more. Vote with what you run, be proud, but don't knock the other guy.
I get what I want out of my FreeBSD installations, I hope there are many Linux and any other flavor OS users out there just as happy with their installations.
Life is to short, enjoy it the best way you can with what you like!
Wow, what a crappy article. The guy couldn't even be bothered to read the websites for each project so as not to fill his article with incorrect information.
As an OpenBSD user, I quickly saw tons wrong in the OpenBSD section, I am sure its the same for Free and Net. OpenBSD's security claim is right there at the front of the main page, and he manages to get it wrong? And he says it runs on "few" platforms, and to avoid alpha and PPC, which is rediculous. The supported platforms page seems to list 12 supported platforms, and 3 more being actively worked on. And alpha and PPC are both fine, in fact some devs have only PPC machines themselves. And he also claims its single CPU only, even though it has SMP support on i386 and amd64, with PPC in the works.
Wrong : OpenBSD has sticked to its schedule of a release every 6 months (November 1 and May 1) since years, and the OpenBSD 3.6 release won't be any different (CD already started to ship to those who pre-ordered by the way).
No, its because the server is shared. The site's normal traffic doesn't deem a dedicated server yet... though I'm seriously considering it for times like this.
<<State of the demon??..but BSD is dead..and netcraft confirmed it.
<Troll? Comone mod's mark it as redundant. My bad for not reading the previous comments but still a troll?
No offense bub, but everyone's REALLY tired of that "joke". Face it, the joke is dead. Netcraft confirmed it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
ports and packages are good ideas, but never the twain should meet.
Simply installing FreeBSD will most likely (unless you try hard to avoid it) will install some packages. Seemingly harmless, but try to upgrade one of those packages via the ports mechanism and you will begin to feel true pain, young jedi.
Ports are a better path, IMO, because they are far more frequently updated. But mixing an installation of ports and packages will send you down a compatibility and non-compiling path to hell.
Fortunately, I've figured out the trick. Avoid any packages during the initial CD install and then install everything from ports. Then you can update your ports using cvsup and upgrade your apps and likely never have a problem. Worked like a champ for me and I can run the latest releases of Firefox and Thunderbird while others have compiles of the same apps barf on them.
http://mirrordot.com/stories/4b12ececaef8d53c673f8 6b34de8fac5/index.html
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
And what are these advance features you speak of? Do tell or stop trolling.
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
You must be joking. It's not even true for the kernel (there are some forks, mostly for supporting more or less obscure platforms, but more so because some distribution patch the official kernel really heavily) but if you consider the complete Operating System then you must consider the distributions and not the kernel, and those everyone stopped to count long ago...
You also fail to take notice of the fact that even if the three major BSDs follow a different path there is still a very high level of blood mixing, a good thing appearing on one of them quickly make its way to the others, as well as countless bugfixes and small improvements.
Darwin -- only available for Mac hardware or specific Intel architectures. (aside: Buy a mac, has the best OS out there by a *long* shot).
Aside from the fact it has PPC as the primary platform, it has the advantage of having a good choice of software when you take into account the commercial, shareware, freeware and open source solutions - there is something for most everyone, if you are willing to buy the basic machine.
All I need now is a good CAD application for MacOS X/Darwin.
Note: I am a happy Mac user - so I am fairly biased.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
If I see another "OpenBSD is the most secure", I'm going to kill someone; so help me god....
Like offering less than ideal Java support? That is probably Sun's fault, but anyway. I have installed and used FreeBSD quite alot and it is a great OS. Almost everything you need runs out of the box, but things like Java and OpenOffice required abit of fumbling.
There is a colour scheme more hideous than it./.
I'm a graphic designer with a bit of spare time on his hands if you like...
:P
I have tried most common flavors of Linux. Some are nice, but something keeps me coming back to BSD.
It was love at /usr/ports/
It had me at pkg_get -r
No Red Hat, Fedora, Slackware, Gentoo, SuSE, Debian or Mandrake could give me that same feeling. Call it a personal preference, call it zealotry. But FreeBSD has won my heart.
BSD I love you...
To blog is sublime
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.osvi ews.com
Apple's modified version is not the responsibility of the original BSD developers.
Either you're looking at closed source software or you're looking in the wrong place. FreeBSD comes with the ports system (/usr/ports) that presents a simple way to install a couple thousand software packages. Check out http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/ports.html for more details.
As for hardware, I have found that FreeBSD and NetBSD (probably OpenBSD; Mainly use that on non-workstation machines) have better hardware support than leading distributions. As long as you're not using anything too weird, you're fine.
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
I've love to try out linux on the desktop, but it seems I'd probably run into a wall with many hardware drivers or software apps not being available. Moreso than Windows at least. Everytime I need to search for software, it seems as though there is always a setup.exe for most of the Windows distributions, yet I rarely run across these for Linux. Linux seems to be used mostly in specialized machines such as webservers and the like, right? Not really geared towards the desktop? It seems like quite a bullet-proof OS that's organized better than most version's of Windows and runs more smoothly, why isn't there more software written specifically for it? Or am I completely missing something?
Well, having support for the CPU is nice but each platform needs its bootloader, often specific system utilities (NVRAM manipulation, disk-partitionning...) and more importantly support for everything around the CPU (also kernel init is often slightly different depending on the platform, CPU being equal. Starting up a Mac68k and a Sun3 is not exactly done the same way).
e.g. a kernel supporting SPARC without supporting SBus and the common SBus peripherals (framebuffers, NICs) would be at best useless.
I really think the NetBSD definition of a platform is the right one, because having a kernel supporting your CPU don't mean you'll be able to run it on your computer using that CPU, or if it runs that you'll be able to do anything useful with it, because you may lack platform support.
But OS X runs on top of BSD. That mean apples has been dead for twice as long!
Ports and packages work just fine together. Using a port is just compiling and creating a package on your machine, and then installing it for you. pkg_info will list the packages you've installed via ports. There is no conflict or problem at all. If you had a problem, it was likely because you used 4.4 packages on a 4.3 system or something like that, meaning the dependancies would be all wrong.
IIRC, FreeBSD can run most if not all Linux binaries straight up (provided you're on the same CPU arch)
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
Hm. No mention of DragonflyBSD. I don't have time to give it a proper blurb really, but DragonflyBSD is probably the most promising of the BSDs.
It uses a message passing framework, like a microkernel, but still keeps most things in kernel space. This quite a divergence from the other BSDs and Linux and will hopefully enable some really cool features.
Check it out for yourself at http://www.dragonflybsd.org!
Okay, but there isn't one best solution. There is that saying "jack of all trades" master of none. The BSDs tend to fork over major kernel architectual differences (rather than eye-candy or userland disagreements), but despite that they share and exchange code extensively. Maybe the linux approach would be okay if Linux really was a god and _knew_ exactly what the "best" solution was but that is the case. He's just a pretty smart guy like Matt Dillon of DragonflyBSD, Robert Watsom of FreeBSD, or Theo of OpenBSD. Smart, informed people can disagree on how to do things. The variation on the BSDs allow those ideas to be realistically tested in practice. So you could just as well make a diversity argument here. No one is betting the entire BSD farm on the one true and holy kernel architecture. Also you make light of switching linux distributions. The BSDs tend to be much more similar in their operation and usage than linux distributions. The differences are under the hood or in the choices for default configuration, not in the man-machine interface. Also, while people are pretty fond of saying OpenBSD for Security, FreeBSD for performance/stability... that sort of belies the complexity. Yeah, FreeBSD tends to have the best performance but it also has a really good security team. Is FreeBSD up to the same auditing level as OpenBSD? No, but it is audited to a very reasonable level.
So a microsoft monoculture is bad but a GNU/Linux monoculture is good?
Personally I am pleased to see the BSD's get some attention. I had a brief dabble with FreeBSD a while ago and I have to say it was a pleasure. Easy to install and configure, very solid feel to it and excellent performance on quite limited hardware, so much so that I would consider FreeBSD before a Linux distro for a server installation. You are correct in that their focus does tend to be a bit narrow, and the majority are probably not going to be running FreeBSD on their desktop but thats not to say it does not have its place, as do OpenBSD and NetBSD. What was the Unix ethos again? Oh yeah, do one thing and do it well.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
There is not one GNU/Linux, there are dozens of incompatable linux distros. There isn't even one Linux kernel, since most distros make local changes to their kernels.
And BSDs have not fragmented into extremes. Don't make such idiotic statements if you've never even tried the BSDs. I use OpenBSD for everything, my laptop, my firewalls, my servers. You could do it all with Free or Net or a linux distro. The difference is which one the person doing it prefers.
Posts like yours are why more and more BSD users think linux users are idiots. Please learn to keep your mouth shut if you don't know what you are talking about, instead of making the linux community look stupid.
People were reading the article before posting?? Say it ain't so!
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD
Comment removed based on user account deletion
to understand how BSD is doing, go to your local coffee shop, book store or student union. Take a look around, how many people do you see using BSD? 3 or 4 laptops. Now how many linux laptops do you see? none. I think thats pretty good.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
I wonder if the rest of the article is as poorly researched as this:
"Every line of code is hand-audited and, as the site claims, there hasn't been a hole in the default install in over seven years. Striking a balance in hardware support somewhere between FreeBSD and NetBSD, OpenBSD runs on very few platforms and even then only in single-processor mode. [...]
OpenBSD is updated every three or four months [...]
It is dead obvious from the OpenBSD.org website that they claim one remote hole in the default install, that they are including SMP support in the version shipping week after next, and the release schedule has been every six months for many years.
This doesn't give me a lot of warm fuzzies about the accuracy of the rest of the article.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
A couple of thousand? Try well over eleven thousand.
neh. it just means OSX is a necrophiliac.
I've never wanted a program that I couldn't run under FreeBSD--seriously!
/usr/compat/linux
Sure, a little 2k widget program you find somewhere coded especially for linux might be hard to compile on FreeBSD... but the solution is to just compile it on a linux machine (or trust a published linux binary). Why? FreeBSD runs linux binaries. It does this by emulating the linux system calls at almost no overhead and installing a set of libraries from Red Hat in
The kernel/loader takes care of the rest. Basically, linux programs tend to just work unless they depend on some special kernel module.
As for native BSD binaries. You have ports (a push-button way to compile it yourself) or packages (a push-button way to have your computer fetch a precompiled binary from the FreeBSD build cluster).
The best part? FreeBSD maintains a vulnerability database for third-part software. Installing a program that depends on a library version with a known vulnerability? make install gives you a heads up warning. Concerned about people hacking into distribution sites and putting trojans into the source and/or source? The FreeBSD team maintains their own database of MD5 which is consulted to verify that the source is the same source that past inspection by the port maintainer.
OpenBSD is tightly controlled by a madman, thus should be avoided.
Heck, the same could be said about Windows.
Anyway, I've installed OBSD on an old PC for an Internet gateway / firewall and have been nothing but happy. It's small (downloads quick), robust, secure. Power failures? Reboots automatically and continues w/ no problem, it has required 0 maintenance (other than, for example, checking authlog and changing ssh port for all the ssh scanners out there recently). It VPN's to a Linksys box, has dyndns client, and much, much more.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
For a fiction-writing class.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
There is exactly one GNU/Linux... which is ultimately designed by one team.
Bwahahaha! You've got one kernel (with half a dozen semi-official patch sets), one GNU metaproject (with dozens subprojects each with their own team), imports from several other projects, and an infrastructure that is unique to each distribution. Then you have some tiny distros that use busybox and dietlibc. Or realtime embedded variants.
Claiming that there's exactly one system/team in this mix is beyond absurd.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
A long time (well, relatively speaking- (6 years)) user of Linux i'm finding myself spending more and more time in my FreeBSD installation than anything else.
/. readers would have too). It's more elegant in that UNIX way. Things are less complicated through better design and implimentation.
This isn't a rant against linux- Debian and Slackware have both been very good, stable, and fun for me over the years. I have no regrets! But i must say that the grass is greener on the FreeBSD side of the fence, at least for my purposes.
Package management is concise and consistent. The whole OS and all its packages can be found in one place. No sifting through rpmfind.net (we have RH machines at work), sourceforge or freshmeat, or any other craziness. Documentation is well done and up to date. Software installation is almost mindless. Configuring the kernel is amazingly simple. The gripes about hardware support and detection seem to be a non-issue for the hardware i have (which is pretty typical of what 90% of
The BSD folks highlight how the BSD system is all made by one small team, vs. GNU/Linux being made by hundreds or thousands of folks on separate projects. I must attest that there truly *is* a difference in the end product. Everything in a BSD system "fits" and "gets along".
Once again- this isn't a criticism of linux either. The `fragmented' or `modular' method of assembling a GNU/Linux system gives it other strenghts in different areas that some BSD systems might otherwise not have. It's all about the right tool for the job.
A side benefit of the BSD side of the fence is the lack of Crusading To Subjugate The World type of mentality. It's all about the UNIXy goodness instead, which is why -I- got away from Windows in the first place. I find this a very refreshing change.
do() || do_not();
Not a BSD user, but as I understand it, it depends on the BSD: FreeBSD will run most any Linux software. There are FreeBSD libraries supplied that make it possible to run most Linux binaries easily. IIRC, people have even gotten the Linux versions of games like Neverwinter Nights to run on FreeBSD (maybe better than on Linux). Beyond that, *nix software is *nix software, so any code written for *nix should compile from source on BSD (okay, so that's an oversimplification, but it's true as a general rule with well-written code). FreeBSD is fairly heavily oriented towards the desktop, while NetBSD and OpenBSD are more oriented towards the classical Unix uses: web and file servers, mainframes, etc.
No, it was a hole in OpenSSH (also the OpenBSD version of Apache contains a lot of patches and runs chrooted)
Trolling is a art,
Okay, so I was a little off. Big deal.
Free of Flash! Free of Flash!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This is one man spewing invalid opinions and using outdated information. He hits hard on NetBSD and OpenBSD as though they were evil or the spawns of some demon's loins.
He says of NetBSD, "...its desktop and production applications are so limited as to be nonexistent...," yet this is a foolish and downright insulting thing to say. Desktop applications are not dependant on Linux or FreeBSD as much as they are on X. The issue of production applications are a problem with companies, not the system itself. And even then there are means to emulate other systems to allow most programs for Linux to run on NetBSD.
Of OpenBSD he says: "Sticking with Intel and compatible chips is a safe bet as its Alpha and PowerPC ports are still in their infancy." I find this once again rediculous. The macppc and alpha ports are better than what FreeBSD has to offer and are pretty much comparable to the NetBSD ones (what with the code sharing). He also takes a personal slam at Theo de Raadt himself, not at all something to make his opinion more valid or acceptable.
Of Darwin he speaks as though it were a complete system and not an incomplete husk of one. He even calls it a Unix, while it is not. His views seem tainted and hazed by his own prejudices.
He does not even touch on DragonFlyBSD, a system which I find to be far more a BSD than Darwin considering Darwin uses Mach and not BSD for a kernel.
I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
Another crippling bombshell just hit the already beleagured web server. Red smoke runs like a river of blood.
The "computing world" consists of more than desktops and servers. Embedded, handheld, etc. Different OSes for different needs. Sort of like the UNIX philosophy.
Random is the New Order.
This article text was already smelling bad, and the strong points of next version of darwin are:
"support for Java 1.5, XHTML 2.0 and CSS 3.0"
Yeah. Sure.
I use FreeBSD on an in-depth basis daily in a FreeBSD based development house. I wouldn't call myself a guru, but I know wtf I'm talking about.
I know what packages to get for my system. Packages are rarely updated. Ports are updated frequently. Use both and you're mixing old code with new requirements and you will feel pain.
Packages work fine by themselves. But if you ever want to upgrade your browser with the current release, you'll need to use a port. If you ever want to upgrade gnome, you'll need to use a port. If you ever want to upgrade just about anything, you'll need to use a port.
By keeping to just ports on your system, you only have to resolve the needs of one mechanism. And that pretty much works. Since I took that approach, my upgrades have been headache free.
If you don't agree, fine, suit yourself. Spend hours futzing with builds. I'd rather be USING the system or be off doing something more enjoyable with my time.
I use windows 2000 for my desktop, but freebsd as my servers.
I actually started using linux before freebsd but found it
very frustrating(the list goes on), freebsd just seemed to work.
That being said I am guessing linux would be a better desktop,
for doing desktopish windows things(dvd recording, ripping audio, games, scanner, etc..)
For a strictly development environment I would prefer freebsd but i would say they are comparable. Others may/will disagree,
There's more to OS X than Darwin, and the "more" isn't open-source, so the question should be rewritten as "how come Apple haven't written...".
Nice troll. Plenty of bites, no moderators seemed to notice. +10.
Complexity is Easy. Simplicity is Hard.
... and the mods may as well allow you...
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD
U need to upgrade to the current version of /. troll parser.
-- When did Ignorance Become a Point of View?
One of the coolest things to do if you have a really big hard drive: /usr/ports; make install
cd
And wait a very long time.
Best Slashdot comment ever
If you haven't used one of the BSDs, why not give FreeBSD a try with the FreeSBIE Live CD? FreeSBIE lets you try out FreeBSD and a wide array of its applications without needing to install anything on your hard disk.
FreeBSD is worth advocating, but I bet the avergage BSD connoisseur can come up with better arguments. The article is full of stereotypes and garbage. I really wonder if the author really took an hour to visit the WEBSITES, let alone experimenting with the systems by himself:
The new FreeBSD 5 branch offers some exciting technology, generally regarded as comparable with or superior to what is offered in Linux...while plans for FreeBSD 4.12 are on the backburner should FreeBSD 5 not achieve -STABLE status by the fourth quarter of 2005.
What a fair comparison, let's benchmark STABLE technology available in Linux by the end of 2004 with technology that might be stable in FreeBSD by the end of 2005!
[NetBSD] it's currently at version 2.6.1, with aggressive testing on the new NetBSD 2.0 promising fruition by the first half of 2005...Those familiar with NetBSD swear by it, though its use in serious environments is limited.
OK, first of all, NetBSD is at version 1.6.2, not 2.6.1, and if you are looking for "serious environments", what if I tell you that the world's fastest computer is running NetBSD? Maybe NASA's Lewis Research Center, NEC Europe and Sony Japan do not count as "serious environments". http://www.netbsd.org/gallery/research.html.
Forking from NetBSD in 1995 after a very heated -- and embarrassing -- personal argument, OpenBSD's one and only focus is to offer security. Every line of code is hand-audited and, as the site claims, there hasn't been a hole in the default install in over seven years. Striking a balance in hardware support somewhere between FreeBSD and NetBSD, OpenBSD runs on very few platforms and even then only in single-processor mode.
I don't know who got embarrassed w/ that argument, but certainly not Theo since he keeps a record of it in his own personal website for visitors to see:http://zeus.theos.com/deraadt/coremail.html. There hasn't been a hole in the default install in over EIGHT years, not seven.
OpenBSD runs on very few platforms and even then only in single-processor mode
OpenBSD runs in more platforms than FreeBSD!!! http://www.openbsd.org/plat.html
OpenBSD isn't acceptable as a desktop system or 3D workstation, however...One factor that mars OpenBSD's fair weather is its primary developer, Theo de Raadt...developers may wish to remain wary of this platform and its creator.
What a bunch of nonsense! I've been using OpenBSD in my desktop for years, and had developers listened to you, OpenSSH wouldn't exist, nor have over 88 percent of the SSH server market!http://www.openssh.com/press.html
I could go on and on, but I got tired already. I wonder why you guys promote these articles.
I've never read as much bullsh*t in so little text.
The person obviously never looked at NetBSD in detail, nor has any deep understanding of concepts like performance and security, else it would be obvious that they are not something that NetBSD has to brag about, but rather something that's considered normal.
Of course if you have nothing else to sell you can say "we're oh so secure" or "hey, we have all the cool GUI stuff, we can afford the bloat" - NetBSD won't, given it's constraints given through the portability. NetBSD has to offer state of the art operating system that OF COURSE is secure, and OF COURSE is performance optimized, and OF COURSE has about all the drivers available. But there's more to that other than the things that every operating system offers OF COURSE these days.
Blindly ignoring the facts and judging by some marketing slogan and hear-say proves that the author has no technical background for his writing at all, and obviously doesn't know any code of ethics for writing.
- Hubert (in bad mood)
Netcraft confirms: BSD isn't dying.
I'm a FreeBSD advocate and all, but lets everyone bear in mind that this does not, I repeat NOT, come from any sort of official channel either in Berkeley or the FreeBSD project. It is a freaking OS Opinion editorial. Calling it a "State of the Daemon Address" is deliberately misleading and in extremely poor taste.
Aside from a few vocal "Linux is teh sux0r" zealots, the FreeBSD community doesn't really worry itself too much about what the other BSDs or Unix-alikes are doing and certainly don't typically engage in penis-length matches such as this editorial.
The wording is inflammatory, the facts are wrong, and a quick Google reveals with near certainty that the author isn't actually involved with the FreeBSD Project on any level.
Where is my option to mod this article down? It's full of misinformation and slander. How do things like this get posted? Do any fact checking in the OpenBSD section alone and you will see several glaring false statements, as well as hateful remarks towards its lead developer.
This alone could be a valid reason to use FreeBSD.
(...albeit not a really serious one...)
Now, point me to a penguinette *this* hot, and I'll try Linux. :-P
Darwin is OSX minus the GUI (Aqua), basically. I know that's an over-simplification, but most of teh user interface is closed source. Therefore, no x86 port. It could be done if Apple wanted to, but they don't.
"[FreeBSD] has a secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003". The article is from July 2004.
I replied to you because repeating what our troll says (even with the intention of negating it) kinda helps the FUD to spread.
At least, this is my impression.
It looks like the author never used any BSD except FreeBSD, and he's just trolling without knowing anything about other operating systems. Almost everything he said about NetBSD, OpenBSD and Darwin is false. A 1 minute look at project's web sites would have been enough to avoid writing such bullshit.
NetBSD: "It is not secure and device driver support is paltry at best". That's a joke. FreeBSD had way more security issues than NetBSD, and when a common security flaw is found, NetBSD is often the first operating system to provide a fix. The device driver support is also very good.
"you can safely ignore NetBSD unless you have old or obscure hardware". Damn, but looking at the ports collection, it appears that NetBSD can run almost everything Linux and other BSD can. So why can it be "safely ignored"?
OpenBSD: "OpenBSD's one and only focus is to offer security". He didn't even read the web site stating the goals of the project. "OpenBSD runs on very few platforms". What? It properly runs on way more platforms than FreeBSD and almost as many as Linux. "even then only in single-processor mode": really? I'm running it on an SMP box right now (3.6). "OpenBSD is updated every three or four months". No, 6 months, always, as clearly documented. "OpenBSD isn't acceptable as a desktop system". Sorry, I use it for 3 years as a desktop system, what isn't acceptable? KDE and Firefox run, that's not an acceptable desktop?
Darwin: "support for Java 1.5, XHTML 2.0 and CSS 3.0". Wow, Darwin supports web standards? The kernel passes the W3C validator? Wonderful. Does the author have an idea about what XHTML/CSS is?
And why is there no word about DragonFlyBSD?
This guy is a jerk. Or he was drunk when he wrote that piece of crap. How is it possible to compare things when you:
1) never used them,
2) have no idea about what they are exactly,
3) even not take 30 seconds to read the main web page.
Coding or trolling... you can't do both.
{{.sig}}
In Soviet Russia, you are served to hot grits for free with their scrambled eggs and mjasa.
# ps -
PID TTY TIME CMD
"The State of the Demon Address"
The reason you do not see FreeBSD packages or ports on sourceforge is because BSD users CVSUP into the main freebsd servers to update their ports or get them via sysinstall during installation.
Many Linux developers are too dumb to run automake properly so the bsd developers run automake properly on the source and update the port in the FreeBSD servers.
Software is there and hardware is mostly there.
PS my wifi card does not work under Linux currently but works under FreeBSD 5.3 beta.
http://saveie6.com/
I don't know all of the of the Net/OpenBSD split, but in my view. As far I am concerned in 2004, it is ancient history. I use OpenBSD for my routers and DNS at the house, and have not had a lick of trouble with it. It just works, and it does its thing on extremely modest hardware (P/133, P/166, and P/200 boxen). In my view, there are not enough accolades available for PF.
Furthermore, with his all of his unsteadiness and unpredictability, Theo manages to heard the cats every six months for a solid, production quality release. No OS, commercial or open source, has been as consistently reliable for me in terms of operation, quality, or schedule. Let's not get into the patch responsiveness of the OpenBSD team.
If Theo is the loon this trolling article claims, we need a few more loons like'em. He leads a team that produces a great product. Cheers Theo -- keep up the great work.
Which wifi card?
FreeBSD 5.x offers you wonderful tools such as the following: ls, cat, man, make, gcc, sed, vi, and many many more.
... if you go on Apple's site looking for Darwin binaries, they send you to OpenDarwin. It's like saying "Slackware is a project to complete what Linux couldn't or wouldn't". It's technically true, but not relevant. Darwin is the Core, OpenDarwin is the whole environment. Apple releases their own, and it's called MacOSX.
And yes, it uses a Mach microkernel (which was derived from BSD) and has a BSD kernel personality. That is to say, from an external API level, it looks like a daemon and quacks like a daemon... It's userland is all FreeBSD, NetBSD and OpenBSD userland tools. How much more BSD do you need. So it has a different, related kernel. So do the big three BSDs. It has more in common with these than most other OSs.
As for Theo, he has my abiding respect, even after an argument we had. He had some good points. I think I did too. The fact is that he doesn't suffer fools, and he is quick to resolve the evidence in front of him. He may have false positives. Frankly, though, you have to be a particular weenie to actually be flamed off the internet. That's hard-core victim mentality right there. "Ooooh, theo said a bad thing to me.... mommeeeeeeeeeee." No one likes to be disliked by anyone, especially whom they respect, but that's life. Deal with it.
i - This sig provided by
But, I couldn't let this slide (even giving up my mod points): counting security advisories is just not a good way to judge the relative security of an OS, especially one of the more uncommon ones. SecurityFocus has no vulnerabilities listed for either MS-DOS or EROS, but few people would conclude that both operating systems were equally secure, or that MS-DOS's unblemished security record means it's more secure than OpenBSD (which has many dozens of vulnerabilites listed, most of which are advisories for bundled programs like Apache which OpenBSD nevertheless takes responsibility for).
Even worse, the more that people are believed to be using vulnerability lists to compare OSes, the more pressure vendors feel to improve their scores by sweeping security problems under the rug. Microsoft is notorious in this regard -- years after promising to make security their #1 focus, whenever they think they can get away with it they continue to hide known security bugs from sysadmins (who would be able to deploy work-arounds if they were told about the problems) in favor of silently sneaking the fixes into the next service pack many months later.
Here's a story from
Now that it comes to my mind: the gap is probably not closing, but widening. This is an example of superiority that probably relates specifically to version 5.x.
Btw, benchmarks are important, but personally I've got other reasons to use FreeBSD: stability, reliability, clean and consistent design, and last but not least the less restrictive BSD license (and please, no more discussions on this point: while the restrictions of the GPL might be considered desirable by some people, they're restrictions nonetheless).
I already answered you in the thread above (my "Here's a hint." post).
I did the portupgrade dance on a FreeBSD 4.9 system. I'd have been better off formatting the drive and installing 4.10. Which is essentially what I wound up doing after several weeks of hassles.
Packages are older. Ports are newer. If you want anything in a reasonable amount of time after release, you HAVE to use ports. If you stick to JUST ports, it WORKS.
Enough of portupgrade chant timesink. As I said above, been there, done that, got the t-shirt, rebuilt the hard drive. No thanks. It's UN-RE-LI-A-BLE.
Stick to ports and live a pain free upgrade experience. Those that have used portupgrade and had no problems have been lucky. Perhaps I was unlucky (I DID read the docs). But if you've never used it or tried it, ask yourself one thing... "Do I feel lucky?"
Well, do ya?
At least partially, given that Darwin includes WebKit.
If you want to upgrade things, you need portupgrade.
Yeah, you may have to upgrade more if you used packages, but really, it does not matter in the end.
If you dont feel like upgrading with portupgrade, and reinstall, that is fine, jusrt that for portupgrade it really does not matter if you started with ports or packages.
As said, both register in the same place in exactly the same way. In virtually all cases, the result of installing a package or port of the same version of the same program is EXACTLY THE SAME.
whatever went wrong in your case is something else, and really has nothign whatsoever to do with you starting with one or the other.
The page now states:
This article has been removed because many points made within it have been deemed unfactual.
"Unfactual" isn't even a word!
I just went to osopinion.com to have a look. The page now states:
"This article has been removed because many points made within it have been deemed unfactual."
Just FYI
-Lasse