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.

Comments

Pathetic Fallacy

[matr0x_x]

Scott LONG... long as in the length of time it is going to be until 6.0 is released. It was June... then August... now they are saying the August deadline has slipped *yawn*.

Re:A n00bs look in

[Anonymous Coward]

You changed your OS because of a quip you saw somewhere!?
Geez, you must be an impressionable idiot. FreeBSD is the right OS for you, no doubt.

My Experiences with BSD...

[Anonymous Coward]

...have left me cold. I'm only posting this AC because I can't afford the direct karma hit right now. But, I've tried OpenBSD as my desktop several times now because I want the most secure desktop I can get. Why bother with NetBSD or FreeBSD when they aren't geared towards security since that's what one of BSD's primary features is supposed to be. So here's what I've found and what I have to gripe about:

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.

2. Lack of LVM support. Who in their right mind would use an OS that doesn't support Logical Volume Manager? Do you really like starting all over again when you want to move to a bigger drive and then restoring your data from tape instead of just adding more space onto the original filesystem and just growing it? If you do, then you need help. Go see a shrink and... get into the 21st century! LVM + Unix is a marriage made in heaven. Your data is no longer constricted by your storage hardware.

3. Serious instability. I installed OpenBSD from the internet using the boot floppy which is about the only cool thing I've found about BSD, but it's still old fashioned. After installing on a known good system under all other OSes, my system would just lock up randomly. I was in the middle of a compile and BAM! it just stops. I can still pping the system, so the TCP/IP stack survived, but my X terminal wasn't responding. So I go down to the living room to look at the server on the console. I can switch through virtual terminals OK, but I can't log in pas the user name. I couldn't ssh in. That is... I could and my client would just sit there never timing out or anything. And this happened with every time over the past three years that I've tried to use BSD. Two installs back, X window system wouldn't launch xdm without a coredump and the process dying. Fucking tragic.

4. The use of a non-standard make. When I was trying to build part of GNOME manually, it complained that the version of make was GNU make. So I had to build and install GNU make and rename the crap make that comes with BSD. Just use the goddamn standards you munchers!!!

5. No Bash by default? Please. Ksh is a sad imitation of Bash which has far more functionality and admin friendliness when compared to ksh. And sh? Who the fuck in their right mind uses sh as their default shell? sh sucks. There is no up arrow history so you always have to retype every command or use the stupid history command. Sorry, I'll keep my Ctrl-R to cycle through commands in a search.

All your bullshit about how Linux was made by people who hate Windows and BSD was made by people who love Unix is probably true since most commercial Unices SUCK ASS in the usability area. This is where Linux is cleaning your cocks.

Re:My Experiences with BSD...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hard to tell if you are trying to be a troll, or just an idiot who is trying to be intelligent.

-d

Here's some drivel for you

[mcrbids]

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.