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

Text here

[grub]

Site is already slashdotted, here's the compete text:

June, 2004: Patient is complaining of pain in side. 4th time here this month. Hypochondria a possibility.
July 2004: Pain is severe, admit to hospital. Recommend morphine drip.
August 2004: Kidneys failing, urea levels high. Recommend immediate dialysis.
September 2004: Patient delusional, calls for "grandpa AT&T"
October 2004: Grand mal seizures, complete kidney failure. Heart and lung congestion worsen.
November 2004: Patient in coma. Total brain death, recommend removing from life support and issuing a DNR.
December 2004: Patient dies. Awaiting full autopsy report from Dr. Netcraft.

Re:Text here

[Omniscientist]

Hmm, have something against FreeBSD?

Well to join the fun, Dr. Netcraft has just confirmed it...the death can be attributed to poisoning from an internal source.

Re:Text here

[MPHellwig]

"Site is already slashdotted, here's the compete text" No it isn't, besides a bsd will stay up even after death, a daemon is not a mortal beast so it can not die, tux on the other hand...

Re:Text here

[Fallingcow]

will stay up even after death

Yeah, rigor mortis does that sometimes. That, or too much viagra.

Re:Text here

[Triumph The Insult C]

January 2005: Patient miraculously recovers, thanks to the Amazing Kreskin!
February 2005: PROFIT!!

Re:Text here

[VagaStorm]

http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=Netcraft .com

Seems like they run FreeBSD them self :)

Re:Text here

[sremick]

Right. Because obviously it was SO funny the other 10 million times we saw it last month, your using it has got to be even funnier. As well as the 1000 or so encores of the same we'll see on this thread.

*yawn*

Considering that the lame "joke" has no basis in reality, I wonder just why the people who continue to toss it around do so. Desperation? Jealousy? Do they feel threatened? Who knows.

Either way, it's a badge of lameness. Too bad the people using it can't figure that out.

Re:Text here

[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

[sremick]

Then it's all good... no hard feelings :)

Cheers...

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.

Re:Text here

[xA40D]

> Everybody needs to stop looking at operating systems as a religious issue and discuss things rationally

Could not agree more.

And when igniting a holy war we need to do so tactfully and with respect for the opinions of others.

And when we are done we should embrace in the spirit of brotherly love and agree that both sides benefit from such discourse.

Nice, but in need of better wording

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

Nice overview, although the wording may have been chosen with some more thought, take for example this entry on ifconfig:

The ifconfig program used to configure network interfaces

OMG, but now it's been relegated to kitchen duty?! ifconfig dishwasher0? How will I configure network interfaces now?

was overhauled.

*whew* Damn you for scaring me like that!

Re:Nice, but in need of better wording

[agent dero]

-2 Overuse of Sarcasm

Come on, cut them some slack, a even improving the little things is still helpful

Re:Nice, but in need of better wording

[Brandybuck]

Those of us who can actually read to the end of a sentence without having to stop to take a breath had no problem with it at all.

Re:Nice, but in need of better wording

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

Those of us who can actually read to the end of a sentence without having to stop to take a breath had no problem with it at all.

That's only because you read out loud. Everyone in your office heard you read that as "used to" as in "I used to read out loud when I was a child."

Re:Nice, but in need of better wording

[Brandybuck]

Everyone in your office heard you read that as "used to"...

That's "used to" as in "you-zd two" (present tense), and not "you-st two" (past tense). See the difference? Taken in context it's clear that the present tense is meant.

Re:Nice, but in need of better wording

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

That's "used to" as in "you-zd two" (present tense), and not "you-st two" (past tense). See the difference? Taken in context it's clear that the present tense is meant.

The ifconfig program used to... - that alone is not enough to be able to tell the difference, you have to read the entire sentence to see what was meant. That was my point. Inserting 'which is' or putting a comma between program and used would have solved the ambiguity.

Re:Nice, but in need of better wording

[Brandybuck]

that alone is not enough to be able to tell the difference, you have to read the entire sentence to see what was meant.

Which was my entire point. Most of us CAN read all the way to the end of that ten word sentence. In fact, most of us go through life reading every sentence all the way to the end to see what was meant. It's a normal way we read. We don't stop to ponder what the author meant until we hit the period.

Re:Nice, but in need of better wording

[Anonymous Cowherd X]

Which was my entire point. Most of us CAN read all the way to the end of that ten word sentence.

You don't first read the whole sentence, then buffer it, semantically decipher it (and decide how to pronounce used to) and then pronounce the processed sentence, that's not how humans read out loud, pronunciation decisions are made in a very localized context that is no bigger than a few words. Besides, you are taking my humorous post way too seriously.

Re:Nice, but in need of better wording

[Brandybuck]

I must not be human, because I can do it. Then again, I'm an English major, so I have an unfair advantage...

raised from the dead

[millahtime]

January 2005: The stone is rolled away and behold the might FreeBSD has raised from the dead.

Wow, this is really great!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they released status reports more frequently, the stuff in there is really neat. I follow the FreeBSD mailing lists once in a while and sometimes it's hard to get "the big picture" from the details. As someone who follows the Linux kernel mailing list, I guess the same problem exists there. Have they considered doing something like the lkml summaries? That might help get the word out about some of the cool stuff that's going on.

Re:Wow, this is really great!

[drdink]

There is now a weekly cvs-src summary that is sent to the lists and available on the web in HTML, text, and RSS. I find it very useful for catching up with the lists when I've been away.

Re:Wow, this is really great!

[parc]

There's a weekly summary of -current activity posted by Mike Joihnston, mirrored in HTML at http://www.xl0.org/FreeBSD/ and available as an RSS feed at http://excel.xl0.org/cgi-bin/rss.py. While it's not as exhaustive as Kerneltrap, it's very good.

Re:Wow, this is really great!

[molnarcs]

Yeah, at least a bi-montlhly status report would be great, although this one is pretty huge and a very interesting read. My random favorite parts: (for those who find the report too long to read)

Thanks to Michael Johnson, the FreeBSD GNOME team has recently been given permission to use the Firefox and Thunderbird names , official icons, and to produce officially branded builds. Mozilla has also been very interested in merging our local patches back into the official source tree. This should greatly improve the quality of Firefox and Thunderbird on FreeBSD moving forward.

Nice to see that there is good cooperation between FreeBSD and the Mozilla Project.

FreeBSD profile.sh

URL: https://projects.fsck.ch/profile

Contact: Tobias Roth <ports@fsck.ch>

FreeBSD profile.sh is targeted at laptops. It allows to define multiple network environments (eg, home, work), and will then detect in which environment the laptop is started and configure it accordingly. Almost everything from under /etc can be configured per environment, and only the overrides to the default /etc have to be defined. Suspending in one environment and resuming in a different one is also supported.

Proper integration into the acpi/apm and several small improvements are underway. More testing with different system configurations is needed.

That's a nice touch for laptop users, and I never heard about it, though I follow some of the mailing lists pretty closely (but than, I just learned a week ago that I don't have to go through the shutdown-p now routine to switch off my puter - pressing the power button will will suffice).

FreeBSD 5.3 is the first release to include PF. It went out okay, but some bugs were discovered too late to make it on the CD. It is recommend to update `src/sys/contrib/pf' to RELENG_5. The specific issues addressed are:

* Possible NULL-deref with user/group rules.
* Crash with binat on dynamic interfaces.
* Silent dropping of IPv6 packets with option headers.
* Endless loops with `static-port' rules.

Most of these issues were discovered by FreeBSD users and got fed back to OpenBSD. This is a prime example of open source at work.

PF rocks! I just swithed to pf from ipfw2, and even though ipfw is really good and easy to configure compared to iptables/ipchains, pf is even more noob friendly. You can do powerful things with pf _very_ easily.

Some other things: PHK's status report is in itself very interesting. So are the more gory details of changes in the OS internals. It seems to be that there is a general trend of modularizing the system and providing good API's for 3rd party development (GEOM comes to mind). Also: what's not in the status reports - the recent kickoff of freebsd-usb mailing lists that tries to enhanche ehci (usb2). There was a recent call to arms for rewriting the FreeBSD sound system. Many improvements in the bktr (tvtuner) driver over the past few months. Jeff's schedgraph that measures scheduler performance, and only two days after commit there were some bugs fixed in the scheduler that increased performance by 10%.

Although 5.3 was a good release (worked like a champ on my server and my desktop machine) - I'm very much looking forwards to 5.4. I upgraded all my puters to 5-STABLE, and they seem to run fine, and, I already see a slight performance increase (it can be just the driver upgrades, my server has the problematic if_sk). If they can fix ULE for 5.4 (or at least unbreak it) than FreeBSD would be a very good desktop choice as well (not that it isn't currently - it is somewhat more responsive than 2.4.x based linux distroes, but it isn't as good as 2.6.x, not with the 4BSD scheduler).

Cheers to FreeBSD developers.

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.

BSD vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

For Linux users like me, take a look at this to see how BSD compares to Linux from a BSD point of view.

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4l in ux/bsd4linux1.php

Re:BSD vs. Linux

[cheshire_cqx]

Mod parent AC up. This is a good link.

Re:BSD vs. Linux

[Scott7477]

Fooled me...

Re:BSD vs. Linux

[cheshire_cqx]

It is a good link, just need to fix the space inserted by Slash.

http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4lin ux/bsd4linux1.php

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!

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[snorklewacker]

> 1) BSD makes a lousy desktop.

What makes it a lousy desktop? It's not like it won't run KDE and Gnome on X with all extensions and the same fonts. From the graphical environment alone, I defy you to tell me the difference. In fact, BSD as a desktop used to be a lot snappier than Linux, down to less pointer lag and all. More recent linuxes have caught up with the low-latency patches, but once they run into swap, they still bog -- because Linux's VM system is still bolted on and degrades very poorly.

FBSD 5.x I understand, has made some pretty painful tradeoffs for throughput and lost quite a bit of ground in responsiveness. If you want to try BSD out sometime, I actually recommend giving DragonFlyBSD a look -- it's based on FreeBSD 4.x, with some 5.x stuff backported, plus quite a bit of original work, and it reputed to be quite fast indeed.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[0racle]

Congradulations, your an idiot.

1) BSD makes a lousy desktop
It can use the same Windowing system you use on Fedora

2) BSD doesn't do SMP gracefully
Chances are FreeBSD will handle SMP better then Linux will, and it has for some time

3) BSD doesn't have the mindshare of Linux
It has a dedicated team of people that develop the system as a whole and i386 has over 10,000 ports that have been verified to work

4) Getting to know BSD would require getting comfortable with a new administration
Ya learning things sucks, especially when it uses pretty much the same tools as Linux does, and the packaging system makes far more sence, well at least to me it does. Is this the same argument you use for not using Slackware?

5) As of Redhat 7.x, Linux is "good enough"
At least you have a sense of humour.

6) BSD has much more limited hardware compatability
BSD often gets drivers before Linux and with few, though sometimes notable exceptions, if your system runs Linux it will run a *BSD.

Why didnt you just say you dont use it because you don't want to instead of making up some 'insightfull' points that show you don't know what your talking about.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[Jesus 2.0]

BSD makes a lousy desktop.

I assume you mean relative to Linux. If so, in what way?

Is Gnome on BSD different than Gnome on Linux? KDE? XFCE? Any number of other WMs or DEs?

If so, how so? If not, what are you talking about?

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[gstoddart]

Why didnt you just say you dont use it because you don't want to instead of making up some 'insightfull' points that show you don't know what your talking about.

Simple. Because this is Slashdot and the moderators in a topic on FreeBSD don't know or care if the poster was insightful. He used insightful sounding words.

Bash Windows. Bash FreeBSD. Winge about Macs. Tin-foil hats. 'Yay Linux' and PHP seem to be the order of the day. All other stuff is either offtopic, troll, or overrated.

Me, I'll stick with my nice stable FreeBSD box with a huge ports collection to console myself. :-P

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[Brandybuck]

1) BSD makes a lousy desktop.

It's running on my work and home desktop and my laptop. It runs KDE and GNOME, with all the bells and whistles, with absolutely no problems.

2) BSD doesn't do SMP gracefully.

First, it does do SMP just fine. Second, you probably don't even have an SMP machine on your desktop anyway. People don't need SMP on their destkop. And yes, you're talking about the desktop, because that's what your very first question was about. For some servers SMP is important. Good news is that FreeBSD supports it just fine.

3) BSD doesn't have the mindshare of Linux

So what? Linux doesn't have the mindshare of Windows, so why aren't you using Windows? All the popular stylish people are using Windows, why don't you to?

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

This is a stupid argument. Replace "BSD" with the name of any Linux distribution. "Oh poor me! I can't use [Debian|Slackware|SuSE|Mandrake] because I would have to learn a new adminstration system. Oh boo hoo!"

5) As of Redhat 7.x, Linux is "good enough"(tm) and getting better fast.

Some of us don't want "good enough." Some of us prefer "damned fine and strutting like she knows it!" Far be it for me to stick up for Linux, but she deserves a lot more respect from you than merely "good enough". Sheesh. ...apply some sane policies to configuration, (disable telnet, etc) and it's quite secure.

Side note: telnet is disabled by default in FreeBSD. It comes secure out of the box. It's not perfect, but for a tenth the work you would have to do on a telnet-by-default distro you could have FreeBSD locked down as tight as anything.

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

If you want "cool stuff", then stick with Windows. I understand it has drivers for ALL the "cool stuff". On the other hand, if you want drivers for all the boring stuff you use every day, then FreeBSD will have them.

In fact, I was not initially able to install Linux on my current home system, because at the time I built it (18 months ago) there were no Linux distros that supported SATA out of the box. But FreeBSD did. It wasn't until about six months ago that some Linux distros started shipping with SATA on by default. Many still don't.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[archen]

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

Actually that's sort of funny because when Redhat dumped support on me I had to do just that. It was hard enough getting my boss onboard to implement some of that "Linux" stuff, but the price was reasonable for up2date. Then no more 7x updates after about what 1 year, 2 years?

I looked at various Linux distributors but tended to be wary of commercial vendors. Debian looked promising but just didn't strike me as the right choice. By contrast I found good performance and security as well as a stable consistent OS with up to date packaging in FreeBSD. I had to not only re-learn package management, but system administration as well. And you know what, it's the same for most Linux distros because they're all different. Even worse that Redhat tends to spoon feed you with their own special tools - I became a better admin when I moved to BSD, not because BSD is neccesarily superior, but because it gave me another perspective on how things could be done.

Well most of the other points are flamebait as well (although I sort of agree with some of them) but I thought I'd address that one point.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[mcrbids]

It's running on my work and home desktop and my laptop. It runs KDE and GNOME, with all the bells and whistles, with absolutely no problems.

And what did you have to do to achieve this? What did you have to compile?

First, it does do SMP just fine. Second, you probably don't even have an SMP machine on your desktop anyway.

I misspoke. OpenBSD doesn't do SMP. I don't have SMP on my desktop, but I DO like having as similar an environment as possible from Desktop to Server, thus this is an issue.

Linux doesn't have the mindshare of Windows, so why aren't you using Windows?

Because the smaller mindshare of Linux (And I'm not so sure it really is much smaller) is worth it to avoid the worm-of-the-week (tm) syndrome so common with Windows. I didn't say mindshare was all-encompassing.

I can't use [Debian|Slackware|SuSE|Mandrake] because I would have to learn a new adminstration system. Oh boo hoo!

It is definitely NOT a stupid argument. I have people in line to get XYZ done. I can either do XYZ and make paying customers happy, or take a performance hit while I get used to a new environment. Which do you prefer? Money to pay for kid's college tuition, or time spent learning new stuff so that you can do what you were doing before?

Some of us don't want "good enough." Some of us prefer "damned fine and strutting like she knows it!" Far be it for me to stick up for Linux, but she deserves a lot more respect from you than merely "good enough". Sheesh. ...apply some sane policies to configuration, (disable telnet, etc) and it's quite secure.

And to many of us, "damned fine and strutting like she knows it" IS "good enough". I'm not sure what you are saying here; it seems self-contradictory. Linux does the job competently, and to me, that's "good enough". Who mentioned telnet?

If you want "cool stuff", then stick with Windows.

Refer to the previous point, about "good enough". In my experience, Linux has excellent hardware compatability, and BSD is so-so.

Grandparent was /NOT/ intended to be a troll, but rather an honest indication of my perception of BSD (specifically, OpenBSD) when I evaluated it for the next round of upgrades.

My conclusion was that Whitebox Linux would be the best solution for my specific needs.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[omaha]

Me Too!
I was in the same boat with RH and decided after trying a number of dists to go with FreeBSD. I haven't been disapointed. Granted these were all server machines but since then I've installed it on my teenager's computers, the kitchen laptop, my laptop.

Happy Me!

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[someonehasmyname]

OpenBSD does support SMP.

http://www.openbsd.org/smp.html

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[SillyNickName4me]

> I misspoke. OpenBSD doesn't do SMP

As of version 3.6, it actually does support SMP

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[mcrbids]

As of June, 2004, SMP (Symmetric MultiProcessor) support has been merged into the main OpenBSD development branch. At this time, the i386 and amd64 platforms supports SMP, but hopefully others, including macppc, sparc, and sparc64 will ultimately support SMP.

Did you read the link you posted? It's "in development"...

Looking at http://www.openbsd.org/amd64.html

Starting with OpenBSD 3.6, OpenBSD/amd64 supports most SMP (Symmetrical MultiProcessor) systems. To support SMP operation, a separate SMP kernel (bsd.mp) is included with the installation file sets.

As this is a new feature, developers will want to see what hardware does and doesn't work when running SMP, so it is even more important to send a dmesg after install.

Sounds nice and stable, doesn't it?

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[sp0rk173]

In fact, I was not initially able to install Linux on my current home system, because at the time I built it (18 months ago) there were no Linux distros that supported SATA out of the box. But FreeBSD did. It wasn't until about six months ago that some Linux distros started shipping with SATA on by default. Many still don't.

Very good point. I have two 120 gig sata drives in a raid array. First I tried windows...it worked, but was a pain in the ass to set up (why the hell doesn't Windows XP x64 have sata support out of the box yet? Ugh). Then I tried Gentoo, because windows got boring. It detected by sata drives individually, but the array? Nope. In order for that to work I'd have to install it on a smaller ata drive, then build a kernel to recognize my particular hardware raid chip, then copy over the base system onto the array and boot from it. "Fuck that!" I said. Then I tried ubuntu...and same thing. So i finally gave up and decided to just say fuck it and install FreeBSD. It detected two identical drives and set them up as individual devices (ad0, ad1) and a raid 0 array device (ar0) - so i could pick if i wanted to use them as individual drives or as an array. Linux may have more hardware support than FreeBSD...but the hardware support FreeBSD has is done correctly and Just Works. Once again, FreeBSD won my heart over...even after I slammed it for not being as technically sound as DragonFly. Regardless, until DFly comes out with 1.0-STABLE, My box will be a FreeBSD box. Less headaches, hastle, and bullshit. It just works.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[Brandybuck]

...but I DO like having as similar an environment as possible from Desktop to Server, thus this is an issue.

While this sounds fine on the surface, on closer inspection you'll find that the needs of the server and desktop are so different, that they might as well be different. My desktop is going to have a full blown desktop, but my server won't even have a video card installed (let along Xorg).

I can either do XYZ and make paying customers happy, or take a performance hit while I get used to a new environment.

While you certainly don't want to switch systems every other week, that's no reason to lock yourself into a single vendor for your entire lifetime. Elsewhere you talked about evaluating OpenBSD. Why the heck did you even bother when you knew in advance you were going to keep the old vendor? In my experience, people who abhor change don't evaluate new products.

And to many of us, "damned fine and strutting like she knows it" IS "good enough".

To many people, "good enough" is synonymous with mediocrity. Windows is good enough. Really it is! The whole secret to Windows' success is that it's just good enough that the average consumer won't flush it down the toilet in disgust.

Some of us don't want "good enough", we want "better", or if we can manage it, "best."

Who mentioned telnet?

You did in your grandparent post. I'm quoting you directly. Unfortunately Slashdot mangled my post by dropping a <p> tag.

In my experience, Linux has excellent hardware compatability, and BSD is so-so.

And in my experience it's just the opposite. I've already mentioned my SATA experiences. I've heard similar experiences with USB and several audio cards. I have a laptop where I had to go through several Linux distros before I finally found one that would install on it. It was Gentoo that finally worked, with all the others I tried (Slack, SuSE, Debian, Mandrake) hanging while booting from the install media. But FreeBSD installed the very first time.

Grandparent was /NOT/ intended to be a troll

Bullshit. You didn't post to Whitebox Linux story, or even a generic Linux story. You posted to a FreeBSD story. Your very first statement was "BSD makes a lousy desktop". And you say you weren't trolling? Hah! If I posted to a Linux story claiming that Linux made a lousy desktop, I would be modded down so fast my eardrums would rupture.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[sp0rk173]

I'm a heavy Linux user. Why don't I use BSD?

I have a better question, as I don't care why you don't use FreeBSD: why do you feel obligated to tell us why you don't use it? If Linux works for you, great. Quite honestly all of your points are moot from my point for view for the following reasons:

1) This depends on your definition of a "desktop." To me, a Laptop is not a Desktop. If they were the same thing, why would they have different prefixes, Desk- and Lap-? I've used Fedora Core and I think it makes a Lousy Desktop. It has too many things I don't use installed in the default Desktop install. FreeBSD makes a much better desktop, with a much tighter install, while keeping all the bells and whistles *I* like. My opinion though. Since this is a subjective thing, I would say this point is moot and completely relative to the user.

2) Why would you need SMP for a standard desktop? And while I would Agree that FreeBSD doesn't do SMP Gracefully, it still does it basically the same way as Linux does from a theorhetical standpoint. I would argue the same thing that Matt Dillon argues - the basic underlying ideas behind both Linux and FreeBSD's SMP model are flawed and ungraceful. Check out the DFly site for more details. Technically, this is a moot point and is only a matter of time before FreeBSD is at the same level as Linux...i would argue they're so close right now the difference is insignificant.

3) While you might be correct with mindshare, there is not correlation between quantity of mindshare and quality of the final product. While the linux kernel is generally good, due to the decentalized nature of the linux community in general you end up with literally thousands of different distributions for different purposes, most of which are redundant and virtually useless. With BSD you have four to five different "distributions" with generalized goals - FreeBSD (server/workstation performance), OpenBSD (security), NetBSD (portability/stability), DragonFly BSD (cutting edge research/kernel-level innovations), and Darwin/OS X (general desktop optimization). While most interesting packages are indeed developed on linux, the majority run fine on all BSD's, with FreeBSD being compatible with the majority of the so-called cool linux-developed apps, including binary commercial linux games. FreeBSD also has binary 3D acceleration on x86 if you use an nVidia card, just like Linux. Moot point.

4) You mention the learning curve. Trust me, when i moved from linux to FreeBSD, there was virtually no learning curve. The RC system is much more sensical than the init.d system in my opinion. /etc/rc.conf controls base-system-level startup scripts with a simple binary switch (i.e. sshd_enable="YES"). User-installed programs with startup scripts are controled by their own files in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. To activate these, generally you just move prog_name.sh.sample to prog_name.sh. The system will then start it up the next time you reboot. The scripts are also startable from the commandline by root, without need for a reboot. Package management is as easy as pkg_add -r [progname] for binary packages, or simply installing something from the ports directory. The program is then patched and compiled from source. Simple. It would take you, if you're an advanced linux user, probably a weekend to get up to speed on how to admin a FreeBSD machine, and maybe a week to master it.

5) As for patches, you'll probably notice by checking out the FreeBSD website there hasn't been a security advisory in the base system since December 1st, 2004...more than a month ago. When they tag a source tree as stable, you better fucking believe it's stable. Ports, however, may introduce security vulnerabilities as they're programs not directly controled by the freebsd project, perse. If there's a program that the ports team feels isn't secure, they won

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[molnarcs]

4. rc scripts actually a little more complicated in FreeBSD, they're in more places, but less than half hour to learn. boot process of FreeBSD is weird too. Package and ports are trickier for sure in FreeBSD

What?! One of the best things in FreeBSD is that startup scripts are much less complicated than in linux. Startup scripts for services included in the base system: /etc/rc.d Startup scripts for packages installed from ports: /usr/local/etc/rc.d - And that's it about it. And you don't even have to no anything about startup scripts. When you install a package, it installs a startup script in rc.d, and you only have to know one thing about startup scripts to have it enabled: put one single line in rc.conf. Just to make it sure that no one thinks that FreeBSD is complicated - this is my entire rc.conf, which controls almost all aspects of the system:

# networking
ifconfig_rl0="inet 172.17.141.160 netmask 255.255.252.0"
defaultrouter="172.17.140.19"
gat eway_enable="YES"
hostname="mcsaba.sh.nek.klte.hu "
ifconfig_ed0="inet 192.168.0.1 netmask 255.255.255.0"
tcp_extensions="YES"

# network services
sendmail_enable="none"
sshd_program=/us r/sbin/sshd
sshd_enable="YES"
lisa_enable="YES"
pureftpd_enable="YES"
pureftpd_config=/usr/local /etc/pure-ftpd.conf
samba_enable="YES"
apache2_e nable="YES"
mysql_enable="YES"

# other services/options
linux_enable="YES"
usbd_enable= "YES"
# clear_tmp_enable="YES"
moused_flags="-z 4"
moused_type="auto"
background_fsck="NO"

# pf options
pf_enable="YES"
pf_rules="/etc/pf.conf" # rules definition file for pf
pflog_enable="YES" # start pflogd(8)
pflog_logfile="/var/log/fw/pflog" # where pflogd should store the logfile

That's the best thing about bsd's rc system: you don't have zillions of symlinks in various runlevel directories. You don't have to worry about proper naming either. rcNG (NG=next generation) checks for dependencies automagically: you instal samba, put samba_enable="YES" in your rc.conf - end of your worries, for all the services it needs will be started up automatically.

The only reason for thinking it's complicated is that it is simple :) - as weird as it may sound. When I switched from linux, (of course I read the handbook) sometimes I had this feeling that there must be something more to it I am not aware of. And I thought that because I can't find it, it must be more complicated, until I realized that it is really that simple. No /etc/sys/networking/somefile (mandrake) or /etc/networking (debian) just to config your network interfaces. See my rc.conf - that's the simplicity and user-friendliness of BSD.

About yum - please, don't suggest such things. In FreeBSD, the best thing is that you don't have to worry about dependencies and about adding some package repositories (than removing others, because they conflict with each other). The ports system just works, without any need to configure it (except one line which is like "CHANGE_THIS.freebsd.org" preceded by a comment to put there your local mirror - but only if you installed the portupgrade tools). No freaking repositories (just over 12000 ports - see freshports.org)

As to the desktop: some obligatory screenshots.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[molnarcs]

It's running on my work and home desktop and my laptop. It runs KDE and GNOME, with all the bells and whistles, with absolutely no problems. And what did you have to do to achieve this? What did you have to compile?

Well, I don't think grandparent was a troll, but it was (is still) -5 uninformed. What you have to do to run kde is install it from the first CD (takes 5 minutes). Or, you can: pkg_add -r kde. AND you have a choice to install it from ports, compiling it for your specific hardware with optimizations. All it takes is one command: portinstall kde - if you want everything but the kitchen sync, or if you want a streamlined kde: portinstall kde-light.

learn more... it's not that difficult.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[Chreo]

4) ... /etc/rc.conf controls base-system-level startup scripts with a simple binary switch (i.e. sshd_enable="YES"). User-installed programs with startup scripts are controled by their own files in /usr/local/etc/rc.d. To activate these, generally you just move prog_name.sh.sample to prog_name.sh. The system will then start it up the next time you reboot. The scripts are also startable from the commandline by root, without need for a reboot.

Just a small correction. Renaming prog_name.sh.sample to prog_name.sh is the "old" way and not rcNG-style. Ports that are "converted" to the new rcNG-style, install rc-scripts as prog_name.sh and use the switch prog_name_enable="YES" in /etc/rc.conf just as the base system does. This makes it coherent and easier to control what's being run on startup. Otherwise excellent post.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[iggymanz]

whether the ports "just work" depends on which ones you use; see the discussion lists for all kinds of issues still being worked out for freebsd 5.3 Release. Some of the Ruby stuff is broken as well as X.Org stuff needing cleanup, I can tell you.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[iggymanz]

well, in Linux I can switch a particular init.d file in or out of all runlevels with a single command, so I don't have to worry like in FreeBSD whether rc.conf will handle the job or not (it does control most but not all). The other thing we might as well mention for anyone wanting to give freebsd a spin is that in /etc/ttys controls whether one gets a graphical login or not (there's your "runlevel 5", haha).

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[Brandybuck]

And what did you have to do to achieve this?

I chose "KDE" as my desktop during installation. Duh!

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[molnarcs]

How do you know which file you have to swap out? How can you say that searching for a specific file (how do I know its name - or rather, why do I have to know its name?) and "swapping" it out is easier than inserting a hash mark before samba_enable="YES"

Your laughter rings quite hollow btw. Can you explain the joke? How are runlevels better with having to edit a separate file just to have a graphical terminal?

---snip---
ttyv5 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv6 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv7 "/usr/libexec/getty Pc" cons25 on secure
ttyv8 "/usr/local/bin/kdm" unknown off secure</a>

It is because turning that off to on is more simple or what? It doesn't matter really though, you proved multiple times that you don't know what you're talking about. In fact I'm pretty sure that you're really trolling. There is one ports system for all the bsd releases btw. (in answer to your other comment) Is there an event when a port doesn't work? Sure - out of 12000+ ports of 3rd party software, yes, there are some that might be temporarily broken. Just like in any other OS I have tried that supports lots of 3rd party software.

The way you sidestep the issues I rised (rcNG vs SysV Init - tell me how the the latter is superiour - does it have proper dependency checking, or the order is decided by the name of the files lol) and bring in new ones is just pathetic. Have a nice day.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[iggymanz]

I'm having a nice day, I serve 4 domains with FreeBSD, and one startup venture with Linux. In the context of a graphical login, a runlevel might be nice if other services are also desired along with font server & X, if not then BSD way easier. There's more to which OS is "superior" to a given application than a bunch of silly shell scripts that are invoked during boot; I could give any Linux distro a FreeBSD type rc structure in probably 4 hours if that's what I thought made or broke the use of Linux over FreeBSD. My only point about rc.conf in FreeBSD is that not all services are controlled there, one does have to be familiar with what's set up on the machine. It sounds like you are the troll, you don't like the opinion and observations of someone who uses/likes more OS than just your pet one. I even find my Solaris and IRIX box better at some things than my favorite Linux distro or *BSD; I've made $$$ on all of them.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[molnarcs]

Ok, I regret calling you a troll - made a mistake, thought you wrote the grandparent post. That said, I didn't speak about the superiourity of one OS over another - and no, I don't think init scripts are the most important factors in evaluating an os. And FreeBSD isn't my pet OS - it just suits most of my needs, and that's it. When it doesn't, I use WindowsXP (installed it on my gf's laptot, for she uses SPSS, I have it on my on puter as well, along with Slackware 10). Nevertheless, I do think that what you wrote is innacurate at best - there is far less to worry about in the rcNG world of Free/NetBSD than in SysV Init, and your insistence on the issue without addressing any of the points I made, even though I gave specific examples made me think you're trolling.

My only point about rc.conf in FreeBSD is that not all services are controlled there, one does have to be familiar with what's set up on the machine.

You see? Example? I don't run every service there is, so I can be wrong (mysql/apache, sshd, pureftpd on one server, samba on another, plus all on my home/test machine) - but I have yet to find a sercice that is not controlled by rc.conf. "One does have to be familiar with what's set up on the machine" - Thank you Mister Stating_the_Obvious - isn't that true for any important production system? Tell me you don't have to know what's installed on your linux server to run them properly.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[sp0rk173]

haha you have no idea what you're talking about. I said 1.0-STABLE. No one on the dragonfly team would recommend using Dragonfly in a production environment, therefore it is not stable. Nice try, though.

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[iggymanz]

I'm glad the discussion has turned to something of true importance. If one has a high temperature oven, then the best way to make a chicago style pizza is with the sauce on top, but the typical home oven is not up to the task. For a New York style, the question is moot, since the cheese must be on top. They make pizza in Montreal?

Re:Why don't I use *BSD?

[leshert]

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

FC has better laptop support?

Funny... that's why I switched from Fedora Core 3 to FreeBSD.

As always, your mileage may vary.

sremick

[Triumph The Insult C]

to prove it to him, i think you need to post your "gloat" video again grub =) that's some funny shit man

Re:sremick

[Anonymous Coward]

Good idea :) That video brought to you courtesy of Fort Garry Dark Ale

BSD is dying, but portaudit eases the pain

[puzzled]

/usr/ports/security/portaudit - instead of tracking your apps and their vunerabilities you just you this gadget and it tells you. This is hot++

FreeBSD might be dying, but its a pretty corpse :-)

Re:netcraft

[sremick]

Not only that, but the irony of the "Netcraft" jokes is Netcraft actually runs FreeBSD themselves.

Oh... for a second I thought...

[eno2001]

... they were refering to some kind of twisted BSD based romance chick flick. You know what I mean, the whole May-December romance plot. Oh... you don't? I should have figured. ;P

Today,

[AtariAmarok]

Today, I booted up my FreeBSD install and received a system message that Netcraft was dying.

Nice too see that the *BSD shares code....

[Homology]

and contrary too what many believes, it actually does happen. FreeBSD has now imported CARP and the dhcp client from OpenBSD. The OpenBSD packet filter is also updated on FreeBSD. Just in this status report.

OpenBSD has imported the 802.11 wireless network infrastructure from FreeBSD, as well as the Atheros driver, among other things last year. Now, OpenBSD is reverse-engingeering the binary HAL part of the Atheros driver, so I wonder if FreeBSD will dith "their" HAL when this is completed.

And, not to forget the code sharing with NetBSD.

6.0R brings shorter release cycle/fewer features

[ikewillis]

One of the big differences between 5 and 6 will be a substantially shorter release cycle. According to this report, 6.0R should be available in August:

For the 6-CURRENT development branch as well as all future development and stable branches, we are planning to move to a schedule with fixed timelines that move away from the uncertainty and wild schedule fluctuations of the previous 5.x releases. This means that major branches will happen at 18 month intervals, and releases from those branches will happen at 4 month intervals. There will also be a dedicated period of testing and bug fixing at the beginning of each branch before the first release is cut from that branch. With the shorter and more defined release schedules, we hope to lessen the problem of needed features not reaching users in a reasonable time, as happened too often with 5.x. This is a significant change in our strategy, and we look forward to realizing the benefits of it. This will kick off with the RELENG_6 branch happing in June of 2005, followed by the 6.0 release in August of 2005.

Help - I didn't get it!

[ulib]

Could some kind soul explain me the joke?
I tried - and really bad! - to figure it out, but I really didn't get it. ;)
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

to the Finux crowd

[JDizzy]

A few reasons I use fbsd:

I don't have to mess with dependencies with RPM's, or deb's, or whatever flavor of package.

The system installer is better than what Slackware had in 1997 (when I moved to BSD).

FreeBSD is not controlled by a dictatorship (Linus, RMS, et'all).

The GPL has a major restriction that what it links with must also be GPL, and that sucks. BSD is way more altruistic to the notion of "no strings attached" open source.

The same people working on the kernel also work on the C/C++ library's, and the userland. There isn't a zillion loose canons developing in different directions.

Updating a freebsd system (3rd party packages) is much easier with the ports system, and it is FRee. You dont' have to pay a subscription to use up2date, or have a local satellite server.

Staying current (base system) with fbsd is much easier with the various source code syncronization systems.

I can run all the Linux apps I want on FreeBSD.

sysVr4 style init system is lame, and cause you to edit a zillion startup scripts, where in BSD you just drop the changes for your system in rc.conf.

I can use whatever desktop system I want, including a fully loaded KDE, or Gnome. I use fluxbox myself.

acceptance of good ideas, and rejection of bad ideas by a congress of fbsd commiters. This keeps fbsd on the cutting edge, and maintains stability.

Documentation! FreeBSD has the best docs of any Unix like system around.

Finally, to those Finux users who think they are 31337 because they joined a smaller group of computer power users, just try to put your self in the perspective of any FreeBSD user that migrated away from Linux to get away from you (the hoard of crying windows haters)! Linux has become diluted with wanna-be's looking to be l33t.

Re:to the Finux crowd

[ArbitraryConstant]

"Updating a freebsd system (3rd party packages) is much easier with the ports system, and it is FRee. You dont' have to pay a subscription to use up2date, or have a local satellite server."

As a BSD and Linux user, I think apt-get and ports are pretty evenly matched. apt-get is more automated, ports is more deterministic.

Some of the Linuxes are 31337 and unreliable (Gentoo), some are more stable than BSD (By stable I mean no major changes for long periods of time.) (Debian-stable).

It's a mistake to paint all the Linuxes with one brush. Don't confuse Gentoo fanbois with Debian users.

Personally, I've never been able to get OpenBSD or FreeBSD working satisfactorally as a workstation OS, but Debian-testing has been great. Conversely, Debian-testing is probably the best workstation OS I've ever used.

Java

[discogravy]

What's the status of the Java port/package(s)? Nothing in the report about it.

Re:Java

[atcurtis]

1.5 is available for the brave and adventurous.

1.4 and 1.3 seem pretty stable.

Only 1.3 is available as a binary due to Sun's restrictive licenses.

Re:Java

[sp0rk173]

Well - all releases - even 1.5, *WORK* on x86 FreeBSD. You just have to compile them yourself and download the source packages and patches yourself. The only thing special about 1.3.1 is that it's a Sun-licensed, *legal* binary distribution. Again...for x86. What I want is Java for amd64, as that's my primary platform.

Hope they don;t share offices

[AtariAmarok]

"... the rhetorical "hemorrhaging developers"..."

I sure don't want to use their chairs on the night shift.

Re:netcraft

[molnarcs]

Not only that but this is what Mike Prettejohn (of Netcraft) wrote when asked about FreeBSD:

Initially [early 1995], we opted for FreeBSD because it was similar to SunOS, which we knew and liked.

We felt safer with FreeBSD because we were quite conscious of the security implications of the Internet. We wanted to run an operating system for which source was available in the expectation that fixes for security vulnerabilities or other serious bugs would become available more quickly, and if needed we would have the opportunity to write it ourselves.

FreeBSD wasn't a big investment in money or time, and so we thought if we wanted to replace it when something better came along it wouldn't have cost us much.

So far [nine years & counting ...] we've not felt the urge to replace it :)

Mike

source: http://ezine.daemonnews.org/200410/netcraft.html

Re: SMP on the desktop

[caveat]

I beg to differ with your "people dont' need SMP on the desktop" statement; I have a dual G4 and I absolutely love it - it never ever gets hung on a single proc-hungry task; sure, it's probably not as absolutely fast as a P4, but the overall responsiveness of the system is unmatched, at least in my limited experience (and a nice shiny new dual G5 should make up in the speed department, just need to get that mortgage :D).

Now, that rant done with, what about Darwin's SMP code? It seems to be pretty efficient [of course I've never run any other BSD on this box, so I can't say how well it stacks up against them, but I do hear the "BSD SMP sux0rz" line a lot], at least for 2 chips; has anybody considered trying to reuse it in the other BSDs? AFAIK the APSL isn't incompatible with this sort of idea...

Re: SMP on the desktop

[Brandybuck]

While SMP is certainly nice on the desktop, it is not necessary. Millions of people use single CPU systems on their desktop every day. And I dare say the vast majority wouldn't see a benefit to SMP if it were given to them.

To most Linux advocates SMP is merely a checkbox. It's something to brag about even though they don't use it. Let's face it, *EVERY* OS out there (but for a few embedded variants) has SMP. All of the BSDs do. Bragging about SMP is like a corporation bragging about their ISO 9000 status. BFD!

Re:Looking for Easy *BSD firewall distro

[ulib]

I'm reluctant to post in BSD-related discussions on Slashdot because they tend to attract the most severely disturbed people on Slashdot (in addition to normal and better-than-normal people...).

I found that installing an easy Linux-based firewall box was an excellent way of getting familiar with Linux without risking my main computer.

I'd like to try setting up a *BSD firewall for the same reason - to get myself familiar with some BSD
variation. Can anybody recommend a custom *BSD firewall distribution, or a comprehensive (and current) guide to setting up some-bsd-or-other as a firewall?

OpenBSD makes an excellent firewall, but FreeBSD and NetBSD are good as well, so it's really up to which BSD you'd like to learn first.
Personally, I would recommend FreeBSD since it's the most popular, and that makes it an excellent starting point.

If I were you I'd ask here as well, for any BSD-related issues
http://www.bsdforums.org/forums/

--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.

June to December Status report...

[trixy_1086]

dead.