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DragonFly 2.4 Released
electrostaticcarrot writes "DragonFly — that fourth major BSD — has had its 2.4 release. The 'most invasive change' is the addition and usage of a DevFS for /dev; building on this, drives are now also recognized by serial number (along with /etc/devtab for aliases) as listed in /dev/serno. This is also the first release with a x86-64 ISO, stable but with limited pkgsrc support. Other larger changes include a ported and feature-extended (with full hotplug and port multiplier support) AHCI driver (and SILI driver based on it) originally taken from OpenBSD, major NFS changes, and HAMMER updates. A pkgsrc GIT mirror has also been set up and put in use to make future pkgsrc updates quicker and smoother. Here are two of the mirrors."
I've used DragonFly to build some appliances for remote network monitoring, like having something as solid as FreeBSD 4.x from which it was forked but with ability to compile latest BSD packages and small footprint. I've kind of lost faith in FreeBSD after 5.x and 6.x shakiness under high load, maybe they've fixed it.
That said, I've yet to use Hammer and wonder if/when it's production stable like some of the other parts.
devfs? and the next release will switch to udev presumably?
Well certainly not you, dear Linux user with blinkers on!
Aye, that is the MOTD in the Dragon Fly 2.4 release.
Maybe in 5 years I will buy x64. When Win 32S no longer works on Win 3.1
DragonFly â" that fourth major BSD
Mac OS X doesn't count as a BSD?
Now that I think about it, BSD users should use OS X to brag to the Linux users how they have 10x more users.
Yo AC, I'm happy for you and I'm going to let you finish, but that's what x64 said about DragonFly 3 years ago.
Just so you know, Mac OS 11, NT kernel 7.0, and Android 2.0 will all be forks of this.
I guess you don't read too much do you? Then again the New York Times is written at the 5th grade level, and that's too tough for you.
The DragonFly BSD project is one I have followed with great interest. I am a long time Free and Open BSD user, and DragonFly has brought a lot of new ideas to the table.
I'm glad to see another fine release by their team. It is really amazing what just a handful of people have accomplished with DragonFly. Great work guys!
I'm not up on the beastie's progress these days, but reading about the /dev filesystem reminds me of the penguin. Does this bring them closer together? Are things coming closer together in other ways as well?
I think it would be phenomenal to be able to select between Ubuntu Linux and Ubuntu BSD, for example.
that fourth major BSD â" has had its 2.4 release
Six more BSDs and they will officially go from "mindless roving undead" to "collectively intelligent zombie horde."
Trolling is a art,
Then select among Debian GNU/Linux, Debian GNU/NetBSD, Debian GNU/kFreeBSD and Debian GNU/Hurd.
http://www.debian.org/ports/
..why there are so many BSD variants while the linux kernel only has one? Is it more difficult to get patches in, or is the different BSD variants more like distributions with a (more or less) shared kernel? Or is it that the BSD kernel lends itself more easily to more radical experiments? I see from wikipedia that DragonFly dabbles in microkernel'ism.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
Now Now AC. Other children are present. Wouldn't it be kewl to run this CMS http://dragonflycms.org/ on dragonfly bsd. Maybe they can port this web server from the mainframe to bsd: http://www.dragonflyserver.com/
And where, pray tell, did you get THAT load of tripe? I'm a BSD fan and all, but to think that NT will switch to a BSD base, is absurd, Android less so, but still ridiculous, and Mac I can't see switching from it's Mach/FreeBSD hybrid that works so well for it.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I'd say Linux is almost as wide as BSD is afar from it. Meaning there are a lot of differences between different Linux distributions. BSD is not much more different than the two least similar Linux distributions.
Arch is probably the most BSD-like Linux there is. Compare that to your favorite Linux distribution and you get an idea of that.
Not trolling here, but why would I care? What focus or unique features does this operating system have?
That would be some hot dragonfly on dragonfly on dragonfly action!
How well does it work under virtualization? I've tried it in the past with various versions of virtual box and didn't have a lot of success. I know part of it was due to vbox not being complete enough but that was because DragonFly was using some older not well supported "chips".
In Republican America phones tap you.
Most people commenting here are not clearly aware why there is DragonFly BSD, how it is different from the other BSD/etc.
In my view, DragonFly BSD is unique, timely and exceptionally forward thinking system.
You can see these days somewhat incoherent approaches to scalability in Google MapReduce, Apache Hadoop, etc -- basically rewritting existing technologies such that with less functionality and new code the processing can be scaled
across multiple computers at the same time.
Commercial offerings such as TerraData and Netezza have been doing parallel clusters for Data mining for years and built I guess profitable business around it. Then Google hypes MapReduce, and then Hadoop project (and the small companies) around Hadoop startup to be the 'next-best-thing' for cloud computing.
Of course MPI library (allowing applications to share data across multiple computers) have been available for long time.
However all of theses things above, force a complete rewrite (or a major rewrite) of the application or paying gazzillions
of dollars to TerraData/Netezza if you have 'Database-like' processing needs
I think that the job of process scheduling/priorotirzation/caching/memory sharing across multiple machines
is a job of an operating system.
That is exactly what Dragon Fly's ultimate goal is (with its file system and kernel design).
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=766375&seqNum=2
There will be time, hopefully soon. When I can configure 4 Dragon Fly machine to be presented as SSI,
install on that image postgres (or MySQL if it is still around), apache (or lighthttpd) -- and have
a endlessly scalable system that I can just add more inexpensive computers to increase performance.
I do not have rewrite anything, use obscure libraries and tools -- instead I just keep programming my C++/PHP/Java stuff
accessing databases when I need to, service web requests, open up files -- all being managed by the OS designed for this.
Linux is used in some projects to achieve SSI (Single System Image)
http://www.linuxlabs.com/nimbus.shtml
http://www.kerrighed.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
but nothing at the scale and deepness of the architecture as Dragon Fly BSD.
Why do groups releasing open-source operating system projects seem to not like to offer torrents of their wares?
OpenBSD and Ubuntu do not seem to offer them either.
I may not be able to host a mirror or contribute much money, but I can leave a torrent running for weeks.
20 characters max for the password? How will I use my favorite poems as passwords?
Basic game theory: *always* publish tactical code.
You cite "basic game theory" as a reason to not publish code, but in fact "basic game theory" dictates that you *always* publish non-strategic code; this accomplishes a number of things for you:
- community good will
- you offload ongoing maintenance costs
- you establish your interfaces and data structures as a de-facto standard, disadvantaging your competitors
The first some companies have decided they can live without; however, if you want a ready pool of people to hire from, then like many other companies, you won't discount the idea.
The second is practically priceless; a lot of comapnies have done this with Linux (Microsoft just joined these ranks).
The third is also priceless; certain SQL language constructs were published into the SQL standard because they were specifically difficult for Sybase and other Oracle competitors to implement them with the same level of performance. Bot VMWare and Parallels have also tried getting their VMM interfaces adopted by Linux, not because they want to be good guys, but because if their APIs get adopted, it makes it harder for their competitors to compete in the market.
You also publish strategic code under some circumstances:
- When the value of the strategic position is exceeded by the ongoing maintenance costs
- When the value of the strategic position is less than the value of the cost to competitors of keeping up with a strategy not their own
TiVO is one well-known company that has done the latter, keeping only those items with high strategic value back (and separate from the kernel to avoid licensing encumberment of the GPL), so it's possible to do the same thing there on Linux as it is for companies like RedBack Networks or F5 to modify the BSD networking stack for their L3/L4 switches.
So if you are going by "basic game theory", then you get the same things not given back to Linux as are not given back to BSD, with a couple of things not being given back to BSD by unenlightened companies (and then their interfacing and reintigration costs get higher and higher over time until they release the code or they go out of business because they are non-competitive).
-- Terry
You got it all wrong. He meant to say they will all "borrow" the code for their own use (since any BSD operating system is using the BSD license).
Catalin Braescu
Ofaly.com
This unholy abomination called System V will have to be sliced out ipcrm by ipcrm from the body of the penguin before any merger can be contemplated!
Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development.-- Frontinus, 1st cent. AD
If you define "basic game theory" as game theory reduced to whatever extent necessary to yield a single dominating strategy against all eventualities, then I agree with you.
It has been a presumption of intellectual property law that no intellectual property claim endures forever (at least until Mickey Mouse discovered the non-convergence of infinite series). I know very few claims to IP that lapse in less than a century. So, clearly, over a sufficiently long term, a company that continues to invest in the maintenance of a software base that is necessarily commoditized in the world around them, is unlikely to declare much profit.
All of your claims are asymptotically true. That's just dressing up what everyone already knows in a new notation.
I guess then that non-basic game theory is figuring out precisely *when* each of these moves make sense. I bet over the mid term (three years to a decade) it looks a lot more like the Texas Hold'em game tree than slot-machine simple scenario you portray.
If you are looking for another BSD-based distro, Tomahawk Desktop (http://www.tomahawkcomputers.com/) is worth looking at.
Yes it's the cool Amiga stuff Matt Dillon. I still remember getting DICE on two Amiga Shoper coverdisks and the ever useful FMS (thanks Matt!). It's interesting to note that Dave Jones (who later tweaked FMS) is a Red Hat Linux kernel hacker.