Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Good PC-BSD Guide Available

Posted by Hemos on from the read-and-learn dept.

Anonymous Coward writes "A very good and worth reading PC-BSD guide for the aspiring newbie is available at from a small site. We definitely need several of these to promote alternate OS. Well done."

7 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Coral Cached Links by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Just to be save.

    Part 1: http://www.michael-and-mary.net.nyud.net:8090/intr o/?q=node/23
    Part 2: http://www.michael-and-mary.net.nyud.net:8090/intr o/?q=node/49

  2. It's an easy one, but.. by wknoxwalker · · Score: 4, Informative

    ..the best guide I ever found for a new [Free]BSD user was the handbook
    It's everything, all of it. I've a printed copy still sitting, bound on my shelf. It's also one of the top 10 words uttered in most #freebsd s:

    [newuser] So how can I uh...
    [guru] YOU CAN CHECK THE HANDBOOK

    1. Re:It's an easy one, but.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Actually the handbook is starting to get somewhat out of date especially with the release of 6.0 just around the corner, the handbook is still very 4.0+ centric, although still way better then most other documentation availble.

      This is where FreeBSD could do with YOUR help, yes you the user can help, no you dont have to bbe able to write C code; SGML is desirable--easier to create a diff/patch from; but they will accept ascii/text instead.

  3. important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    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. 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's 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 AMD64 by means of hefty imports from the NetBSD source tree, and Linux runs on Motorola's ColdFire processor family thanks to the work previously for NetBSD

    1. Re:important by rsax · · Score: 4, Informative
      OpenBSD runs on very few platforms and even then only in single-processor mode.

      It runs in SMP mode on the i386 and amd64 platforms.

      OpenBSD is updated every three or four months

      A new release of OpenBSD is made available every six months - no more, no less. Each release is supported for 1 year. Although 3.4 and 3.5 still seem to be receiving patch support in some cases.

      One factor that mars OpenBSD's fair weather is its primary developer, Theo de Raadt. This individual is known to be highly unstable and even destructive at times ....... snip, snip, snip, snip, snip ....... Though excellent for network equipment, developers may wish to remain wary of this platform and its creator.

      I hear this a lot but I don't understand this argument. If by "developers may wish to remain wary of this platform and its creator" you mean developers who want to contribute to the OpenBSD project itself then sure, you will deal with Theo. If by developers you mean, people who are going to use OpenBSD as a development platform, then who cares whether Theo has an attitude problem? You're just using the fruit of their (OpenBSD developers) labour. What you do with the source is your business and you don't have to get approval from them or something. I'm not a fan of the uber geek attitude like Theo's but his behaviour has opened more doors for Open Source when it comes to hardware manufacturers releasing documentation. The other BSD projects, and some Linux developers, for that matter seem to be fine using binary drivers and firmware. Atleast someone is taking a stand where this is concerned.

    2. Re:important by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      An interesting combination of facts that are out of date with things that simply aren't correct.

      > The FreeBSD foundation is still upgrading its FreeBSD 4.x line and suggesting its use for production environments over FreeBSD 5.

      The Foundation has nothing to do with producing releases, so they aren't in the business of recommending what to install. The FreeBSD developers (in particular the Release Engineers) have far more say than that. And as of 5.3-RELEASE on 12/7/2004, they were recommending that for new installs as being the new -STABLE release. 5.4-RELEASE came out 5/9/2005 and is currently recommended for new installs; it was primarily a bugfix release. 6.0 is in the late stages of release engineering; it has several new features but is much less of a jump than the 5.X series represented. Future new major releases will continue this paradigm of having smaller sets of new features and come out more often, to try to make both developing and upgrading more smooth than the 5.X series was.

      5.2.1, mentioned in the article, was intended to be a developer-only release although this was widely ignored. But since it was so intended, support for it has already been dropped. From the PR statistics, most users have migrated to 5.3 or 5.4. These releases will be supported for a much longer time than 5.2.1 because they are not developer-only releases.

      A number of systems, primarily servers, remain on 4.X but no new development is happening there -- only critical bugfixes. It is very unlikely that there will be a 4.12.

      > Back in the late Nineties, when WindRiver bought BSD/OS [...], 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 BSD/OS code was never a make-or-break deal for FreeBSD. Some of the code did eventually make its way into FreeBSD but much of it in an "inspired by ideas from" mode.

      > Apple Computer, Inc.'s contribution of FreeBSD code.

      Apple has, and continues to, contribute some code, but by far the bulk of the work on the FreeBSD source base has come from neither BSD/OS nor Apple, and instead is from individuals. Again, although the project welcomes Apple's contributions, it is not dependent on them.

      Mark Linimon

  4. Re:Fails to Impress by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Ports - No Linux package management system can compare with the beauty that is the FreeBSD ports collection

    One word: Gentoo. Gentoo's portage does compare with FreeBSD's ports, for the simple reason that it's pretty much a straight copy of it. ;)

    License - I prefer the BSD license to the GPL

    This is surely a philosophical thing. The only time it actually matters is if you're actively engaged in using or modifying the source code. For something as specialised as a kernel, it's pretty much irrelevant.

    init scripts - I like the /etc/rc.d system better than the different sets of scripts I've encountered on a Linux system.

    Various Linux systems have various different systems. Some of them use /etc/rc.d, just like BSD.

    filesystem layout - I've found the layout of the filesystem to be more logical than most Linux distros. This kind of ties in to my "separation of base system and add-on software" point above.

    What exactly is different here? I have boxes running both Debian and FreeBSD, and I've never noticed any significant differences in where things are put, though to be fair I've never really looked for any either.

    stable, secure.

    I shan't comment for fear of provoking a holy war. ;)

    easy updating with cvsup and make *world

    Personally I consider "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade" to be just as easy and considerably quicker, although I admit it doesn't provide the same flexibility. The fact is that most Linux packaging systems these days are as easy to use as ports, so it's a question of what other features you consider valuable.

    My own very short list of reasons I marginally prefer Linux:

    - Software compatibility: lazy programmers code for Linux and don't check whether they're using non-portable GNU extensions or not. So you can compile any BSD software on Linux without hacking the code, but the opposite is not the case.
    - Drivers: Linux has more mindshare, so it supports more hardware.
    - Speed: Purely subjectively, Linux feels faster on my hardware than BSD. BSD supposedly shines more in server environments than on the desktop, though.

    Note that none of those things are at all significant! The simple fact of the matter is that most people will find that any Linux or BSD will serve their needs admirably.

    Me? I use both, because I enjoy the challenge of a multiplatform environment. ;)