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.

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: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.