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Looking at FreeBSD 6 and Beyond
Provataki writes "OSNews published an interview with core FreeBSD developers John Baldwin, Robert Watson and Scott Long. They discuss about the upcoming FreeBSD 6 and its new features, the competition, TrustedBSD, Darwin and much more."
FreeBSD 5 was the first FreeBSD major version that actually worked properly on my laptop. I'm really excited about FreeBSD 6. Possibly the best feature will be the inclusion of WPA for 802.11. Everything seemed to work on my Thinkpad when I was hardwired, but wireless support was TERRIBLE in FreeBSD 5. Having native drivers for wireless adapters, as well as WPA support will make a transition to FreeBSD full-time on my laptop possible. The only other thing I could really ask for would be an easy-to-use DVD transcoder. I've used most of the packages out there for *nix, but they're still in their infancy. It won't be too long before they're ready for prime-time.
I enjoy FreeBSD a lot, it is a great OS and it's fun to use, and I'd like to thank everyone involved.
:)
Having said that, there are a few areas where FreeBSD sadly lacks behind Linux. For example, support for USB 2.0 is flakey, devices often don't work or behave oddly, and if you have atapicam compiled into the kernel, good luck with your iPod (firewire works flawlessly, though).
Another thing is WPA, there's no support for it in the stable branches, only in -CURRENT. I find support for USB 2.0 and WPA to be very important for an OS 2005, and frankly, support for both should be taken for granted, I think.
Other than that, it's a great OS and I am looking forward to 6.0. And I encourage everyone who is unfamiliar with FreeBSD to try it out - you might love it.
Yeah; I've never used any of the BSDs other than occasional sitting-at-a-mac-console, but Solaris is what's running on the school machines I program on. But really, other than the desktop environment, it doesn't feel different from Linux. Of course, that's from the perspective of a dude on a student account making scripts and programs and browsing the web.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
Why should I use FreeBSD over Solaris 10?
Linux and the associated cloud of distros are like an English garden - mad experiments in all corners, and a mostly clear middle.
FreeBSD is like the lawn of the commanding officer at Camp Pendleton. Each blade the same distance from the blades around it, all the same height, and if one should slip out of place someone comes and corrects this quickly.
I love the flow of cool GPL stuff ending up in
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
There is a PC operating system revolution in the making. In the next few years we will see a display of software battlery like never before. Mac OS X will be available on x86-based PCs, and FreeBSD 6.0 will be released. Solaris 11 promises to be perhaps the greatest true UNIX workstaton release ever. The new offerings from Mandriva, based on Debian rather than RedHat, will surely be amongst the top of their class. And of course there will (maybe) be the release of Longhorn.
With the advent of multicored CPUs, the level of concurrent performance will explode. OSes like Linux, FreeBSD 6.0, Solaris 10 and 11, and Mac OS X will be prepared for that change. They will be able to effectively take advantage of the first generation of multicore PC CPUs. There are questions as to whether Longhorn will be able to cut it in the New Computing Order that will soon be upon us.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
There's Plan 9 and Inferno. I haven't had much opportunity to experiment with either one, but they both look really interesting. There's also Hurd, but as far as I can tell (which admittedly isn't very far) it's currently about where it was in the nineties in terms of actually working.
It's three sixes. Not six hundred, sixty-six (or 616)... three sixes. Simple explanation:
:) And it's probably a mistake to rely on adding up the letters of a person's name to find out if they're the Beast. I've seen people make the most imaginative distortions of alphabets, numbers and logic to show that the Pope, Michael Moore, George W. Bush, Barbra Streisand, Mother Teresa or whoever/whatever the object of their hate might be, are all the Beast.
;)
Hebrew does superlatives by repeating the adjective three times. (E.g., "Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus" is Latin words with Hebrew grammar. A full translation to Latin would have been "Sanctissimus.") The number 7 was the ideal/perfect number and one less than 7 (i.e., 6) was the worst/imperfect number. So, just as 7, 7, 7 would be "the best," 6, 6, 6 would be "the worst." True, the Greek text says "six hundred sixty-six," but the idea behind it is three sixes grouped together.
In other words, it's not 616.
Come one, I'm sure there's a slashdotter out there that can add up "Microsoft" such that it equals "666."
This made my day. My favorite distro is finally important enough to be used in a "Linux is dead" post by a BSD troll. Go Ubuntu.
Open Source Sushi
I think Linux and FreeBSD are the most popular. Can't say much about Open, but I agree with the NetBSD comment. Of all the OS's out there now, I think NetBSD is the most underrated.
Linux and FreeBSD tend to be the best choices because they have more up-to-date hardware support. NetBSD has great hardware support too in everything except multimedia. In general, NetBSD doesn't support any 3D hardware acceleration. It also only supports the basic SoundBlaster audio. No 3D surround sound stuff that I'm aware of. For that alone, many people would probably avoid NetBSD as a workstation OS.
However, NetBSD is a great OS when all you want is a clean OS that's stable. In regards to education, I think NetBSD should be THE classroom OS. Why a college would use Linux for instruction is beyond me. NetBSD has a strong emphasis on design. Everything is pretty much designed to be generic. It's why NetBSD is the most easily ported OS. Linux on a PDA? Why? NetBSD is a much more natural choice. When one thinks of embedded Linux, they're looking at ucLinux libraries and Busybox and tools like that. In NetBSD, you can build ONE SINGLE BINARY that contains the kernel, libraries, and all the unix commands you want. I haven't done it yet, but really it sounds pretty cool. And you use the exact same source tree you would for a normal system. NetBSD is so generic, that it can emulate Linux, FreeBSD, and OpenBSD, as well as Solaris and possibly AIX and HP-UX binaries. Yes, that's right! You can run Linux binaries directly on top of NetBSD. You can run Solaris binaries directly on top of NetBSD. Although NetBSD accomplishes this through emulation, it's remarkibly fast.
So yes, NetBSD is a poor choice for multimedia. However, it's great for stability (ie: you want an OS that runs like an appliance) and it's great for emulating other UNIX OS's. I use it as my desktop of choice because I find it very easy to manage. That and it has a small footprint comparied to other UNIX OS's. The actual application support is very good. Packages for NetBSD are much more up-to-date than Debian. I don't do 3D graphics and I don't play games (other than Wesnoth), so I don't really miss the 3D acceleration. Besides, if I really needed good 3D acceleration, sadly, I wouldn't be running a free unix system. I think NetBSD is a great OS if you just want to do work.
As a small testiment to driver support of Net vs Linux: I had a slightly older laptop I wanted to run unix on. I always used Linux for that sort of thing, but I always had to jerry rig with modules and conf files to get the all the hardware working just so. After trying to get Debian-stable working (twice), I thought I'd give NetBSD a whirl just for fun. I was amazed! Just in the boot process alone, the boot and root floppies detected ALL hardware and network adapters. No extra driver disks or configuration farting around. After the install, everything just worked. Didn't have to configure a thing. Audio, wi-fi, lan....ok, video gave problems, but it was an XFree thing (would have been the same in Linux). And the base image was small. After that I was sold. I realized unix was unix. Firefox, XFce, Abiword, ...etc all work the same no matter what's under the hood. I suppose I shouldn't tout NetBSD but rather say that if you're a unix end user, one owes it to themself to try other unix varients. They all have their strengths.