Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD Project Launches New Website
UltimaGuy writes "The FreeBSD Project has launched a new website today. The new design was created by Emily Boyd, a student at Smith College that they had the pleasure of working with through Google's Summer of Code program. The old website is also still available."
Well that's a heck of an improvement on the old one. Now if only some of the other BSD's (Open, i'm looking at you) would do something similar, would be good. And yes, i know, better they spend time hacking at the source than making their site pretty, but as was shown by the summer of code thing, finding people willing to take on the responsibility of sorting it out isn't hard.
...this is much much better than the old website. The important details are much clearer (i.e where to get it, what the current releases are) and the whole thing generally feels very fresh and modern.
Hopefully they will give the handbook a bit of a spring clean next...whilst informative it sometimes lacks in either explaining concepts sufficiently or just assumes a lot of prior knowledge in certain areas.
Kev
<div class="frontgetroundbox">
etc.etc.
call things what they are not by their attributes
and grey text on grey background, HELLO some of us are hard of sight
you 20 somethings think everything will be rosy when you lose 30% of your ocular capacity in 30 years
hehe bitch bitch
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Didn't know it was that new... I was just looking for info on FreeBSD Java on wednesday on those pages (the new ones).
The FreeBSD website was in dire need of an overhaul.
Looks like the new site keeps the best of the old site, but in a better form.
It'd be nice if the 'Large' stylesheet also made the columns wider however.
I must admit, it makes it look more like they're providing a serious product rather than something made by a group of hippies and slackers.
*dives under a table with his Powerbook*
Direct away from face when opening.
I posted this yesterday
:)
( " The New FreeBSD Website is UP Thursday October 06, @06:15AM Rejected" )
as news only to be rejected. I dont know why it was rejected so i cant complain i was treated unfairly. But when someone posts news and is rejected then the news appears a day later posted by someone else. It makes me wonder what the fsck is going on round here.
On the topic. The new design is a major improvement, much nicer to look at, and hopefuly it can get carried through to a HTML version of the Handbook some time soon. that could do with a style overhaul, just to make reading the thing online nicer
XML - A clever joke would be here if
What! A new web page a no new logo? I couldn't see anything about the logo contest at first glance. (disclaimer: I didn't submit any logos, no personal agenda).
Come on FreeBSD, it has been 3 months since the contest ended, are you having trouble deciding which is best out of the 500 submitted or which is the least worst? At least post the submissions in a gallery.
Am I the only one who thinks it looks horrendously derivative of Red Hat's Bluecurve theme? The old look was distinct, although not entirely intuitive. The new one looks very generic.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I am not sure whether the new headline on the homepage is a very wise and professional move of the FreeBSD project.
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
lets here it for primary colors.. yellow to red.. .. nice layout, but I'm not a fan of the red...
I wonder if they did any research on usablilty and making it easier to find things..
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. I
Given their unshakable devotion to that stupid looking demon guy, maybe they should rename it Satanix.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
No.... cant have change.. noo... All kidding aside, i was used to the old format and knew where stuff was, but this seems to address that issue for new comers..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Contrast isn't so great now, text is tiny and yet too big with the large stylesheet.
It's also following the brain-dead trend to LOCK the size/alignment of the layout making window resizing useless; a PRINT versus WEB layout. Sorry, my windows aren't primarily 800x600.
If you are centering your layout, you have a whitespace flaw/problem.
Yet another sickening blow has struck what's left of the *BSD community, as a soon-to-be-released report by the independent Commision for Technology Management (CTM) after a year-long study has concluded: *BSD is already dead. Here are some of the commission's findings:
.005% of internet servers. A recent attempt at a face-to-face summit in Boulder, Colorado culminated in an out-and-out fistfight between core developers, reportedly over code commenting formats (tabs vs. spaces). Hotel security guards broke up the melee and banned the participants from the hotel. Two of the developers were hospitalized, and one continues to have his jaw wired shut.
Fact: the *BSDs have balkanized yet again. There are now no less than twelve separate, competing *BSD projects, each of which has introduced fundamental incompatibilities with the other *BSDs, and frequently with Unix standards. Average number of developers in each project: fewer than five. Average number of users per project: there are no definitive numbers, but reports show that all projects are on the decline.
Fact: X.org will not include support *BSD. The newly formed group believes that the *BSDs have strayed too far from Unix standards and have become too difficult to support along with Linux and Solaris x86. "It's too much trouble," said one anonymous developer. "If they want to make their own standards, let them doing the porting for us."
Fact: DragonflyBSD, yet another offshoot of the beleaguered FreeBSD "project", is already collapsing under the weight of internal power struggles and in-fighting. "They haven't done a single decent release," notes Mark Baron, an industry watcher and columnist. "Their mailing lists read like an online version of a Jerry Springer episode, complete with food fights, swearing, name-calling, and chair-throwing." Netcraft reports that DragonflyBSD is run on exactly 0% of internet servers.
Fact: There are almost no FreeBSD developers left, and its use, according to Netcraft, is down to a sadly crippled
Fact: NetBSD, which claims to focus on portability (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for BSD use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our NetBSD boxes out to the backyard and shot them in the head. We're much happier running Linux."
Fact: *BSD has no support from the media. Number of Linux magazines available at bookstores: 5 (Linux Journal, Linux World, Linux Developer, Linux Format, Linux User). Number of available *BSD magazines: 0. Current count of Linux-oriented technical books: 1071. Current count of *BSD books: 6.
Fact: Many user-level applications will no longer work under *BSD, and no one is working to change this. The GIMP, a Photoshop-like application, has not worked at all under *BSD since version 1.1 (sorry, too much trouble for such a small base, developers have said). OpenOffice, a Microsoft Office clone, has never worked under *BSD and never will. ("Why would we bother?" said developer Steven Andrews, an OpenOffice team lead.)
Fact: servers running OpenBSD, which claims to focus on security, are frequently compromised. According to Jim Markham, editor of the online security forum SecurityWatch, the few OpenBSD servers that exist on the internet have become a joke among the hacker community. "They make a game out of it," he says. "(OpenBSD leader) Theo [de Raadt] will scramble to make a new patch to fix one problem, and they've already compromised a bunch of boxes with a different exploit."
With these incontroverible facts staring (what's left of) the *BSD community in the face, they can only draw one conclusion: *BSD is already dead.
All the submissions remain the copyright of the artist.
Then why did the contest rules fail to grant FreeBSD Foundation a limited non-exclusive licence to display each submission publicly for the duration of the contest?
Ok, it needed some improvements, and also a lot may be because I'm used to it, but overall, I preferred the old site.
For a start, it made full use of my browsers screen size (the new site only uses a quarter of my browsers window.. damn 'fixed sized' web sites)
It also (and maybe as a consequence) squashes too much into a small space.
The news/upcoming events/in the media/security advisories sections now have too much prominence. Sure, this may be handy for 'regulars', but regulars know where to look anyway.
Surely, the purpose is to grab -- and keep -- new visitors to FreeBSD. As such, this large section merely confuses.
But, ultimately, I resent this page being squashed into a quarter of my window!!
Sig out of date
She has some nice OSS designes under her belt. A Google search shows she designed the pgsql site, for one. Her designes are attractive, but not as accessible as I would like. For example, most of her fonts are below 1em (1em being the size you tell your browser that you want). It is fine to go less than 1em for things such as copyright notices and advisory feeds and whatnot, but the majority of the text on the site should always be 1em: the user should have his say on what the font size is. I would also prefer more of my monitor real estate be used. I'm not a fan of squashed designes. Overall, everything is an improvement on the eyesore that was the status quo.
$ whatis themeaningoflife
themeaningoflife: not found
I think the old web site looked better. The new look appears to be modelled on GNAA.
Berkeley Software Distribution, better known as Commie OS, proves once again that communism does not work. Redesigning its facade is unlikely to stem the massive exodus of defectors to other operating systems, such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 and its free clones.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.
Fact: *BSD is dying
... facts are facts. ;)
FreeBSD:
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project (Jun 2004)
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD (Jun 2004)
"[FreeBSD] has secured a strong foothold with the hosting community and continues to grow, gaining over a million hostnames and half a million active sites since July 2003."
What's New in the FreeBSD Network Stack (Sep 2004)
"FreeBSD can now route 1Mpps on a 2.8GHz Xeon whilst Linux can't do much more than 100kpps."
NetBSD:
NetBSD, for When Portability and Stability Matter (Oct 2004)
NetBSD sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (May 2004)
NetBSD again sets Internet2 Land Speed World Record (Sep 2004)
OpenBSD:
OpenBSD Widens Its Scope (Nov 2004)
Review: OpenBSD 3.6 shows steady improvement (Nov 2004)
OpenSSH (OpenBSD subproject) has become a de facto Internet standard.
*BSD in general:
..and last but not least, we have the cutest mascot as well - undisputedly. ;)
Deep study: The world's safest computing environment (Nov 2004)
"The world's safest and most secure 24/7 online computing environment - operating system plus applications - is proving to be the Open Source platform of BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) and the Mac OS X based on Darwin."
BSD Success Stories (O'Reilly, 2004) (pdf) ~ from Onlamp BSD DevCenter
"The BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and others - have earned a reputation for stability, security, performance, and ease of administration."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
Yes, we are having trouble deciding.
Which way, which is the best? In that case, any one will do, or which is the least worst? In that case, take your time.
20 days and counting, till announcement deadline
http://bulma.net/beowulf/greasemonkey/fix-new-free bsd_org.user.js
Try Ubuntu GNU/Linux, it's great!!!
If you are going to get someone to redo your website, get someone competant. In addition to what the doctor pointed out, the design is fixed width, so it looks like shit and wastes half your screen if you have a high resolution, and the menu is even fixed size, so if you are using larger fonts so you can read, it wraps around under the images. The new design sucks nuts, and the designer definately needs to go back to school.
She does shit like make the default size for the whole site 0.8em. That is smaller than 1em. That is bad, and makes the text smaller by default than what everyone wants, and has set their browser for.
And she doesn't learn when people complain that she makes fixed width layouts and makes stupid assumptions about fonts that make the page messed up. This site contains the exact same problems that were pointed out in the new postgresql site.
That is so awesome. I think that from now on when anyone dives to take cover in a television program or film, particularly behind a piece of furniture, a Powerbook or at least an iBook should be included in the shot.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
... just like its web site
It's dead.
This list makes no mention of FreeBSD.