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BSDForums Interviews Scott Long
Dan writes that BSDForums is featuring and interview with FreeBSD's Scott Long. Scott fills us in on some of the new things in FreeBSD 6.0 including Apple G4 PowerMac, AMD64, and wireless compatibility. In addition to specifics Scott also abstracts on the overall snapshot of BSD development with respect to OpenBSD, NetBSD and the ongoing debate between BSD vs. Linux.
There's a debate between Linux and BSD? Hmm, I must have missed it.
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Scott Long is dying!!!
Speaking of which, whatever happened to all the "FreeBSD is Dying!" drumbeats in the last year or two? I haven't kept up with FreeBSD/NetBSD news, but it would seem some series of events has really turned people around, even though it doesn't seem BSD use is necessarily skyrocketing.
I'm happy to report that the R&D arm of GPL: BSD is getting along just fine.
FreeBSD seemed to have some issues around the 5.0 release because of the major features that release brought (and the ensuing nervousness about upgrading). Hopefully 6.0 won't be plagued by these kinds of issues and should be taken up rapidly. I've had nothing but good experiences of FreeBSD in server environments, and the fact that increasing out of the box hardware support is being included for desktop platforms is great.
Business Voyeur
Very few things regarding computers die quickly (with exceptions for the HST standard and some other things that were 'hot' for awhile but disappeared) ... another example, Netware has been passing away slowly for years... if FreeBSD is going to be dying as well, it just takes time.
... [depending on your meanings on those two words]... ;)
Hell, COBOL is still "alive" and "well"
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
The main thing I've noticed is just better 'out of the box' support for hardware in 6.0. I don't have massive requirements, as I'm running FreeBSD 6.0 for my primary server (mail, web, chat, database, file) at home. I didn't need to rebuilt the kernel as I did with 5.2 - but that was to support an older NIC. Basically it 'just works' and I've stuck with GENERIC for the kernel with no issues. I use Ports like they're going out of style, and I haven't had anything break (that I couldn't fix ;))
Anyway, better 'out of the box' support, which would manifest mostly for folks installing 6.0 for a desktop, or someone who has some new(er) RAID or 1G NIC to support. I couldn't be happier, not using Linux for a server anymore, but it's still my Desktop of choice.
fak3r.com
From a TI-99/4A to years of wintel boxes, then Linux, I've now made the move to AMD 64 and freeBSD. I've moved onto freeBSD because somewhere I saw a quip that went...Linux is for people who hate windows; *BSD is for people who love Unix. I see Unix is an OS written by scientist for scientist and, as much as possible, I'd to discover that idea.
They seem to talk more about Linux than an interview about Linux talks about MS
Anyone else find it ironic that Long points to BSD's academic roots as a good reason to become involved with it?
One of the greatest strengths of Linux is that it works practically rather than theoretically.
Destination FreeBSD: Interview with Release Engineer Scott Long
This is a bsdforums.org first! BSDForums interviews FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long relating to various aspects of FreeBSD. Topics discussed include FreeBSD general issues, its academic roots, how FreeBSD compares to other BSDs - OpenBSD, NetBSD, and the ongoing debate on FreeBSD vs. Linux.
Scott gives us his perspective on the corporate adoption and popularity of FreeBSD. He brings us up to speed on FreeBSD 6.0, its new features and enhancements, including Apple G4 PowerMac, AMD64 and wireless compatibility. Scott also discusses FreeBSD 6.0's upgrade path and release timetable.
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Destination FreeBSD: Interview with Release Engineer Scott Long
BSDForums interviews FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long relating to various aspects of FreeBSD. Topics discussed include FreeBSD general issues, its academic roots, how FreeBSD compares to other BSDs - OpenBSD, NetBSD, and the ongoing debate on FreeBSD vs. Linux.
Scott gives us his perspective on the corporate adoption and popularity of FreeBSD. He also brings us up to speed on FreeBSD 6.0, its new features and enhancements, including Apple G4 PowerMac, AMD64 and wireless compatibility. Scott also discusses FreeBSD 6.0's upgrade path and release timetable.
1. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, your first encounter with FreeBSD and what motivated you to use it ? How has FreeBSD evolved since the time you have been involved with it?
I'm 31 and live near Boulder, Colorado, with my wife, 2 kids, and 3 cats. Before I moved out here 6 years ago, I was in the US Navy for 6 years. My other day jobs have included a 4/5 year stint with Adaptec and my current job with SPARTA, Inc, doing work related to TrustedBSD and TrustedDarwin.
My first experience with BSD came when I discovered the Sun and HP labs at the University of Michigan in 1992. I decided that I absolutely had to replace my Windows 3.1 machine with Unix+X. That led to me discover 386BSD 0.1 and X386. So asking how it evolved in the time I've known it is like asking how a Model T evolved into a Mustang. Well, that's a bad analogy for those who don't like Ford. Anyways, it's come a long way =-) For a short while I toyed with the idea of using Linux, but the lack of a working network stack combined with the limitations of the minix filesystem made it pretty unattractive. I guess I was either oblivious to the legal battles with USL at the time, or I cared more about the technology and less about the politics.
In all, my involvement with FreeBSD has been very good for me in terms of exposing me to excellent engineering and extremely gifted people, as well as opening job opportunities for me.
2. Specifically what has been your role in Release Engineering relative to the entire release process, from a technical, authoritative and responsibility perspective?
I joined the release engineering team in Nov 2002. When I started, my only motivation was to increase the communication between the team and the rest of the developers. But, I quickly slipped in to doing the 5.0 release, and from there I took on the lead role in the team.
The job of the release engineering team is not only to do the mechanical work of producing a release, but also to ensure that the release is high quality. In order to do that, tools like code freezes, commit reviews and approvals, and bug status reports are used. So, a certain amount of authority and responsibility is implied there, but we also work very hard to make the process as open to others as possible, both inside and outside of the developer community.
And, this coordination and leadership of development is absolutely essential. Between having to coordinate the development and debugging activities of 220 developers and handle building and verifying releases for 5 hardware architectures, the old days of a single person freezing the tree for a few days and cuttin
First 3 questions said nothing about Linux.
First 3 answers did.
muahahahahhahaha
Anyways my take on the debate: Multiple times I've written some simple software without even CONSIDERING portability, written on my (Linux/BSD/OS-X) box, and when the time came to make it run on a new platform (Linux/BSD/OS-X), it did, with barely any modifications. So who cares, target any UNIX, they all rock, and you probably wont end up permanently stuck to one of them.
Why stick up for big business?
From the interview:
4. Some critics claim that FreeBSD has not been as popular among corporations as Linux, not even close. Microsoft acknowledges Linux as a viable threat but FreeBSD is not even on their radar screen.
Wasn't FreeBSD the only other operating system Microsoft ported C# to? Didn't Hotmail run for a LONG time on FreeBSD? Doesn't Microsoft use BSD code in their operating system?
There's your debate.
People will wonder why this is great. Darwin is not FreeBSD... there are too many things going on with the Mach Kernel. Yes, Fink or DarwinPorts solves some problems but still. I'm a happy fella.
When challenged with the notion that Linux is more popular that FreeBSD, Scott answered:
``There is no denying that Linux is gaining popularity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the BSD family is not. A great example is Mac OSX. Under the hood it is very much a BSD operating system. That means that BSD is now the second most popular desktop OS, far more popular and widespread than Linux.''
That's utter crap. First of all, the question was about FreeBSD vs. Linux, not *BSD vs. Linux. Secondly, Darwin isn't very much like the other BSDs. Based on a Mach kernel, with lots of GNU and Apple stuff thrown in, and with some dynamic linking weirdness, it differs significantly from other open source Unix-like systems at every level. Darwin is at best the bastard child of BSD, and using its popularity to support the notion that FreeBSD is popular makes it look like FreeBSD isn't popular in its own right, which is far from the case. So why resort to deception?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I have a love for operating systems (and programming languages, but that's for another time), and I've tried most of the open source operating systems that I'm aware of. These days, I have three favorites: OpenBSD, for being the only OS _really_ serious about security; NetBSD, because I love the portability, minimalist feel, and pkgsrc; and GNU/Linux for generally being up to date (in features and hardware support) and easy to maintain (apt-get is the best). FreeBSD seems to have fallen by the wayside; it's a great system, but to me it seems it doesn't really stand out. Are there any great features unique to FreeBSD that I'm overlooking?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
he said long.....
"1. Partitioning. Why in the fucking hell do you have to partition TWICE? Why do you need a standard partition that can be seen by other OSes and then those weird ass partitions within that partition that only BSD can see? How is that useful? Here's the answer: IT ISN'T. Get into the 21st century and realize that your stupid partitioning scheme should have disappeared with the 'ed' line editor."
/, swap, /tmp, /usr, /usr/home, /var....
Because I may want more than 4 partitions/slices. You know, for
"2. Lack of LVM support"
I guess that's why you have a issue #1.
"3. Serious instability."
Right. Did you send in a bug report? No? "Fucking tragic."
"4. The use of a non-standard make."
I did not know there is an International Standard Make Standards Body.
"5. No Bash by default?"
No, it's not linux.
"This is where Linux is cleaning your cocks."
So, linux DOES suck?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
It has generally been my experience that the people who argue "BSD versus linux" fall into one of two categories.
1) BSD people who have no in-depth knowledge of linux, and therefore speak from a position of ignorance
2) Linux people who know very little about any particular BSD, and therefore speak from a position of ignorance
The people with truly deep knowledge of both systems always say "use the right tool for the right task" and typically have no time for OS religious wars.
Why is there no "-1 Retarded" ?
I had used FreeBSD excusively in the 4.x's on both my desktop and servers up until about a year ago. I really liked ports and found that everything just seemed like it fit together like one seamless product instead of the hodge-podge that my previous experiences with RedHat and Slackware had been. Subjectively I also found that it felt faster than the Linux at the time of my switch. I stuck with FreeBSD but also with the 4.x tree because I was a bit put off by the whole stable vs development nature they kept putting forward for 5.
That changed when Novell bought SUSE and started offering their certifications. I was asked to evauluate it by some people at work who had fond memories of Novell and wanted to see what they did with Linux and I was given the opportunity to sit for the Novell CLP (Certified Linux Professional) practicum exam if I wanted as a carrot for doing it. I decided that the only way to get comfortable enough with it for the test was to dive in and install it on my primary desktop OS and force myself to use it.
What I found was surprising. There, obviously, were some growing pains when it came to various BSD vs SYSV things and directory layout and ports vs RPM etc. What I was surprised by was that everything worked out of the box. I am used to, and almost looked forward to, having to roll up my sleeves and figure out the config files and recompile the kernel and go through newsgroups and mailing lists for fixes. This has been especially true since my primary machine is a laptop (Dell Inspiron 8600). What also surprised me was that Yast configures, with either a console or X-Win GUI, just about eveything that I wanted to configure and every setting that I wanted to change. I kept waiting to run into a gotcha so I could swear it off and convince myself I had to do it all by hand but it hasn't come yet. The whole magic-black-box aspect of it scares me a little but I am amazed how little I have had to get my hands dirty. It almost feels like Windows Server 2003 -- in a good way. Also, while I was put off by the 6 CD thing at first (I have always had a pretty streamlined and small FreeBSD install for my desktop) I find that having pretty much any piece of software that you might want in RPMs you can trust (and don't suffer from the dependency hell I remember) right on the CDs is actually pretty nice.
After I take my practicum in the next few weeks I am going to try Novell's desktop offering. If it is as slick as SLES then Novell, especially when you figure in NDS and ZenWorks, is going to make huge inroads versus the other distros and FreeBSD. And, strange as it sounds to me who missed the Novell hayday, there are alot of people in the industry who seem to remember their interaction with Novell fondly for whom their name and support seems to be a big plus.
Which text editors are being used for the debate between Linux and FreeBSD? Vi or Emacs?
http://saveie6.com/
I use Linux. I like it. It's plenty "good enough" for reliable, production use. Any area that BSD is better than Linux, it's not "better enough" to justify the expense and time to port over all our apps and data to it.
Linux has supported SMP for longer, and is thus more likely to be mature and stable on it. More hardware is supported by Linux than BSD. At numerous things it's faster than BSD, and at others, it's not much slower.
Linux has more mindshare - nobody talks about "Windows vs BSD", but "Win v. Lin" is a common theme.
So, I certainly don't mind BSD, and I might make the switch at some point the indeterminate future, but I spend my time getting stuff done, and for now, that getting done works wonderfully on RedHat/Whitebox Linux.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
BSD not complying to standards? At least it has some, which is more than can be said for Linux
1. Partitioning. Why in the fucking hell do you have to partition TWICE? Why do you need a standard partition that can be seen by other OSes and then those weird ass partitions within that partition that only BSD can see? How is that useful?
How useful is the partitioning scheme of Linux and Windows? First you have primary partitions, then extended partitions, and then logical partitions. Huh?
Here's the scoop, numbnut: way back in the beginning of harddisks on the PC, the idea was that every OS got its own primary partition. Then the OS could slice up its own partition however it wanted to. Microsoft decided to use extended/logical partitions, while 386BSD decided to use the traditional BSD slices. Then Linux came along and said "let's do it the Microsoft way!" The truth is that neither method is better or worse than the other. In the absence of any standard, each OS is free to subdivide their primary partition however they want.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Please be accurate - Wind River (note it's two words) bought the BSD/OS assets from BSDi in spring 2001. Not the late 1990's.
Sorry, wrong. I challenge you to find any posting that said that 6.0 would be released in June. It was widely publicized that the release process would START in June and hopefully conclude by August. It was also widely publicized that it would be released when it was ready, and not before.
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
I use both so I'm more practical than a fanboy of either OS.
Currently, I use FreeBSD for servers and Linux (Ubuntu) for desktops--I find this combination perfect for my needs. I also still use Windows 2000 because of all the software that isn't available on other OS.
I think FreeBSD 6.x will be very compelling for servers, but I think the new FreeBSD-derived desktop distros will lag far behind more polished Linux desktop distros for many years.
---
OS: FreeBSD (servers), Ubuntu (desktop), Windows 2000sp4 (desktop)
Browser: Opera 8.5
"Scott, I thought you used Linux? Anyway, I never knew you were so important!"
DAMMIT, here we go again!
"Please be accurate - Wind River (note it's two words) bought the BSD/OS assets from BSDi in spring 2001. Not the late 1990's."
:-P
Pfft. That is the 90's! It was in nineteen-ninety-eleven!
Boy we have a lot in common... I too was in the Navy, got started with BSD in the mid 90's after I got out, and live in/near Denver as well.. and now we have the TI-99/4a in common too... You didn't by any chance own a Apple II clone called a Franklin Ace did you?
I cannot challenge that statement. However, I do take exception to your prancing around pretending to be FreeBSD's shlong! Release engineer indeed ;^)
In response to one of the questions in the interview, Scott Long mentioned FreeBSD 7-CURRENT as the next development branch. Does this mean that FreeBSD 6 is the new STABLE branch, bypassing FreeBSD 5? The fact that FreeBSD plans to create a 5.5 release of the OS does not answer the question. Will we have three STABLE branches now (4, 5, 6) and one CURRENT branch (7), or two STABLE branches (4, 5) and two CURRENT ones (6, 7)? This is confusing.
"so don't let ./ trolls convince you otherwise (or journalists, who like this kind of x vs. y stuff because, like all controversies, they make better headlines)."
RIAA/MPAA versus P2P
Corporations versus workers.
Government versus citizens.
IP versus free.
China versus Taiwan.
Boxers versus briefs.
> Then Linux came along and said "let's do it the Microsoft way!"
More like the IBM/Microsoft/Novell/SCO/Sun way -- the partitioning was always seen as a feature of the hardware architecture and not some nefarious MS invention.
BSD slices exist due to VAX legacy or some reason, it's a totally uncommon design on PC hardware, and IMO a valid if not mostly unimportant complaint. If you go to Troll Point #2, a LVM would make the issue irrelevant.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
and
"2. Lack of LVM support"
I guess that's why you have a issue #1.
Exactly my point. If there was LVM support in the BSDs the stupid old concept of partitioning could go away for ever. It was stupid to begin with in the same way that it's stupid to hand crank a car to start it up these days.
"3. Serious instability."
Right. Did you send in a bug report? No? "Fucking tragic."
Bug report??? I thought the BSDs were infallably perfect the way you morons rail on against Linux. Why can't we combine the best of Linux with the best of the BSDs to get an OS that is both user friendly AND incredibly secure and stable? But nooo... you guys always go on the attack against the Linux users. Where is that spirit of cooperation. I've been assailed by too many BSD zealots to ever really want to deal with you fuckfaces again. At least most Linux users don't pull attitude when someone needs help.
"4. The use of a non-standard make."
I did not know there is an International Standard Make Standards Body.
Look... EVERY distro of Linux that comes with dev tools comes with GNU make. Every source code tar ball out there uses GNU make. Personally, I hate package managers. I prefer to install from source because of the stability and high level of security in using the latest patched code. I also like installing from CVS if I want the latest and greatest stuff instead of two year old left overs as the BSDs seem to package. The ports collection sucks too. And what is it with you folks not recommending that someone uses the ports collection? How are you supposed to get the latest (read SECURE, STABLE and FEATURE COMPLETE) stuff on your box anyway? GNU make is what the Free/Open Source community has chosen as the defacto standard. Why must you force people who are moving from Linux to BSD to use incompatible crap that is bundled into your system? Why not offer them a decent migration path and use GNU make with the suggestion that the other less well known make is an option? Wouldn't that be more democratic?
"5. No Bash by default?"
No, it's not linux.
You didn't answer any of the questions, you just attacked the Bash preference. Back this up with something stronger than that. Face it 'sh' sucks. 'ksh' is a piece of crap. 'zsh' is a joke. Bash is the greatest shell I've ever seen. It's user friendly and extremely flexible. Anyone who isn't using Bash these days is a total moron. I've got Bash running on all the commercial Unixes I support at work: HP-UX, Tru64 and Slowlaris. (Note that HP-UX is about the best commercial Unix out there) Face it, I came up with valid points and you had weak counter arguments. You lose.
"This is where Linux is cleaning your cocks."
So, linux DOES suck?
I won't even dignify that with an answer. So sue me. I made a typo. Sure it's a funny typo, but a typo none the less. You BSD guys must not get out much. at least Linux dudes get laid...
Before you lamer Linux and BSD Loonix users start getting off on yet another weird tangent, consider this: If you used Windows all of these things would be a non-issue.
Partitions? Yeah we use em. But we've also got Dynamic Disks which beat the pants off of LVM any day in the water.
LVM? Hah! Don't make me laugh. It's just a pale imitation of Microsoft's Dynamic Disks from Windows 2000. Once again, the Unix world are the Johnny Come Latelys in a Windows world.
Stability? Anyone who thinks any version of Windows after Win2k is unstable is either ignorant or lying. I haven't had a single OS crash since Win2k. Any percieved stability issue shave always been from people who have had some piece of crap application that ate up resources like your fat mother gobbles up her dinner.
Bash? I still don't understand why you unix-heads prefer terse, hard to remember, illogical commands like 'ls' and 'cat' and 'grep', when CMD uses more sensible things like 'dir' and 'type' and 'find'. At least 'dir' indicates "Show me what's in the directory I'm in" and it does it with the flair of displaying the diskspace free/used as well. 'type' does what it says: "Type this file to the screen". 'find' does what it says, "Find this string or file". If anyone wants to get fancy with useless stuff like | and > and >>, it's supported. But no one uses that crap anymore anyway. The GUI is king. Accept it you fossils.
Other than that, I'll leave the 'cock cleaning' to you Unix loving retards. Meanwhile I'm going to go rake in more cash from my handy dandy Windows Server 2003 system. Sayonara suckers.
LVM? Hah! Don't make me laugh. It's just a pale imitation of Microsoft's Dynamic Disks from Windows 2000. Once again, the Unix world are the Johnny Come Latelys in a Windows world.
You realise LVMs were invented by IBM and put into their AIX UNIX in the early 90s, right? And that all enterprise unixes had similar functionality by the mid 90s.
Stability? Anyone who thinks any version of Windows after Win2k is unstable is either ignorant or lying. I haven't had a single OS crash since Win2k. Any percieved stability issue shave always been from people who have had some piece of crap application that ate up resources like your fat mother gobbles up her dinner.
OK little man. Come back when you measure your uptime in years or, like IBM mainframes and VMS, decades.
Bash? I still don't understand why you unix-heads prefer terse, hard to remember, illogical commands like 'ls' and 'cat' and 'grep', when CMD uses more sensible things like 'dir' and 'type'
The little man tries to argue that CMD is better than a unix shell. Nice joke little man.
Other than that, I'll leave the 'cock cleaning' to you Unix loving retards. Meanwhile I'm going to go rake in more cash from my handy dandy Windows Server 2003 system. Sayonara suckers.
Why do you have to go anywhere to do that? Is the machine hung and in need of a reboot? Or do you just need to make some more gay porno for your gay faggot's porno website?
Look you dont want a BSD you want a different linux distro. BSD is not just another linux disribution, its a different operating system, the kernel is radically different then linux and even among the big three (Open,Net and Free) there are huge differences, the kernel dosent come from one source named linus. Each operating system also maintains there own very different userland (IT IS A DIFFERENT OPERATING SYSTEM AFTER ALL) e.g. the OpenBSD mount command which is a little or a lot different then the one on FreeBSD and neither is very similar to the GNU one typically used on Linux. The C Runtime library is very different for each as well and shares nothing with GNU libc I REPEAT AGAIN ITS NOT THE SAME OPERATING SYSTEM.
Bug report??? I thought the BSDs were infallably perfect the way you morons rail on against Linux. Why can't we combine the best of Linux with the best of the BSDs to get an OS that is both user friendly AND incredibly secure and stable
Well I don't want to speak for a whole community (or group of communitys remember that part about different operating systems not variants on the same theme) maybe we dont share they same goals with the linux "community" perhaps we like the tradition that a BSD typically embodies, or that we try to be as altruistic as possible with our licence choices so that the tested, debugged code (but not perfect what code is?) can be deployed on as many systems as possible even if they dont want to share their improvements or changes with us ?
You didn't answer any of the questions, you just attacked the Bash preference. Back this up with something stronger than that.
Ever hear of single user mode, you know that place where you get dumped when a drive goes bad or some other nasty thing happens ? bash is really fucking huge, more so when its not statically linked you cant use shared libs in single user mode so why bother including it in the base system even if you could (most of the BSD projects wont include GNU code when there is code with a licence more compatible with their own project philosophy this is also one reason for not including GNU make its a fine make system but what advantages does it offer to one of the BSD projects that our own make does not? I wont bother with the rest hopefully you will read this one day later and reflect on how truely childish your behaviour is...