FreeBSD June-December Status Reports

An anonymous reader wrote in to say that "FreeBSD just published status reports covering June to December '04 with many interesting details about the work that went into 5-STABLE and a look ahead on plans and projects for 6-CURRENT."

Comments

netcraft

[millahtime]

poking around netcraft you'll find that freebsd is growing at a decent rate. forget death, it's getting bigger having grown at a very high percentage rate in the past year.

Why don't I use *BSD?

[mcrbids]

I'm a heavy Linux user. Why don't I use BSD? I've considered it heavily, and revisit my decision from time to time:

1) BSD makes a lousy desktop. I would thus want to use something different on my laptop, like Fedora Core. This increases administration overhead.

2) BSD doesn't do SMP gracefully.

3) BSD doesn't have the mindshare of Linux - most interesting packages are developed on Linux, and "maintained" elsewhere.

4) Getting to know BSD would require getting comfortable with a new administration system for startup, shutdown, and package management.

5) As of Redhat 7.x, Linux is "good enough"(tm) and getting better fast. Keep the patches up to date, (it's easy with yum - as a policy, I patch monthly or when "critical" issues are found) apply some sane policies to configuration, (disable telnet, etc) and it's quite secure.

6) BSD has much more limited hardware compatability, and drivers for "cool stuff" can be hard to find.

All the above said, I might still move to BSD. Later. When I have time to. When I get a chance to play with it more. When I decide I'm ready to make the switch.

But, for now, it's RedHat/Whitebox Linux for me!

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[grub]

I'm a big BSD user (Free and Open), it just happens that I can take and make a joke. Lighten up.

Re:Text here

[EvilAlien]

I think the joke will continue until either of two things happens:

1. BSD actually dies ;)
2. BSD fans stop reacting so defensively

I don't get defensive when someone attacks BSD, but I have to admit I get a little defensive when Solaris bigots attack Linux.

I tried to have a conversation with someone today about why they thought "OpenBSD sucks!", and actually got to some rational reasons while others were whining about stopping yet another OS holy war discussion. Everybody needs to stop looking at operating systems as a religious issue and discuss things rationally. Personally, technical merit (including user interface design) is all I care about. I don't choose technology for any Stallmanesque ethic.