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BSD: "The Net's stealth operating system"
conio writes "MSNBC has an excellent article about BSD titled "The Net's stealth operating system." It gives a brief history of BSD and discusses why it's not as mainstream as Linux. It also delves into the BSDL vs. GPL holy war, and talks about how BSD will soon work its way into the workstation market. It's both accurate and well-written. "
Without GNU or GCC, some other free compiler and OS would have filled the bill. I don't believe any GPL products were/are necessary to build Minix or *BSD.
No apps? I suppose you never typed cd /usr/ports, did you?
(8-DCS)
Neither BSD nor Linux is Unix... talk to the Open Group...
---- sonoffreak
Well, technically, it can then be said that Hotmail originally ran on BSD. The fact that it was switched to NT and then back to BSD doesn't make that untrue.
Nope, Linux has much better SMP support then *BSD. In current BSD variants SMP is somewhat like that of Linux 2.0. However, there is plenty of anecdotal "evidence" that FreeBSD has a slight edge over Linux on single CPU systems.
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Good technical merit will get you just as far in the BSD camps as it will in the Linux camp. You just sound like someone who had one of their submissions turned down...
The NetBSD/mac68k mailing list has one of the friendliest groups of people I've ever seen on the Net. Questions get answered patiently, often with pointers to references. In the last (nearly) two years, I've seen only one questioner get flamed, and that was because he was being thoroughly obnoxious about getting an answer.
Running NetBSD on an SE/30, and Linux on a G3,
-- Dirt Road
-- Dirt Road
Improvise - Adapt - Overcome (unofficial USMC motto)
for RedHat?
Of course. If you were a software developer, would you want to support distributions X, Y, and Z that you've never even heard of? Quick: what patchlevel is glibc at in the latest release of Mandrake?
Sure, it RUNS on other linuces, as well as more mainstream ones like slackware and SuSE, but they're saving their own asses by saying "RedHat".
-Chris
Yes, NetBSD has the ports stuff, except it's called "packages." In the NetBSD camp, "ports" are the many many different architectures that NetBSD runs on -- so a different name was needed to avoid confusion.
-- Dirt Road
-- Dirt Road
Improvise - Adapt - Overcome (unofficial USMC motto)
Both.
I have noticed similar sentiments among some of the "older" gentlemen attending meetings at our LUG. They prefer the community feel of Linux over the Elitist view of many of the die hard UNIX/BSD users/developers.
Personally, I knew one (he was one of the owners of a company that employed me) of the core developers of the NetBSD distribution. He seemed nice enough, yet carried a massive grudge over OpenBSD and FreeBSD.
He hated OpenBSD for breaking off and "not keeping" up with NetBSD's development process. He also despised FreeBSD because they concentrated on the Intel platform and that is strictly for "weenies".
I definitely felt the elitist sentiment when I worked there. The fact that I used Linux seemed to make me that much less of a person, since according to them Linux is simply an insecure system riddled with holes and containing no modular/hard-coded code. Ah well tis is life.
This may also be a reason for the popularity of Linux. Who would you rather follow? Linus and a community of young, enthusiastic hackers... Or a reserved body of elite programmers?
** On a side note. FreeBSD is detected as a typo and offers Freinds as the only correct spelling on Communicator mail. Interesting I found **
Linux != FSF. What is the goal of Linux, to write a free unix-like OS. What is the goal of BSD, to write a free unix-like OS. True both camps have chosen different methods of getting there, but in the end the goal is the same. Both strive to produce a secure, stable, and fast unix-like OS. IMHO, BSD is good for linux is good for BSD. If we'd stop worrying about whose dick is bigger and go back to writing software both camps would be happy. Although some comparison is good, ie if both are always trying to out-do each other, then we'll end up with two amazing families of OSes, which IMHO is a very good thing. I personally use linux, I've tried freebsd, i just felt more comfortable with linux, i'm sure it works the other way too. Who really cares which free OS someone is using. Atleast they aren't using NT.
-matt
Native: "And what kind of football team has the devil as a mascot?"
/.'d w/o anyone accessing them.
Hey, here's a good one: the Diablo Valley Soccer Club has a 'Red Devils' team, heeee. Where I grew up in WV there's a HS w/ a 'Red Devils' mascott, Oak Hill - but their sites all seem to be
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Okay correct me if am wrong (well that goes w/o saying), but I always thought UNIX was the operating system and Unix/unix/*nix was a philosophy of taking a lot of small, useful, stable, configurable software tools and making them inter-useable (sp? or is it even a word?). Thereby empowering the user, developer, sysadmin,...
Now besides that I think that the argument is one of semantics and personal outlook. In other words people will say what they want. Linux and DOS are not even comparable, but definitions can be so subjective and tentative that it doesn't matter. Some argue that DOS is not even an OS but a collection of interrupts.
I can understand (given some of the personalities on this site) why some misunderstandings may cause as much confusion as they do, but people will derive what they want and assimilate it accordingly. Now I must stop before I digress into information theory (hhmmm..something to think about).
nothing excels in every environment
The reason why 386BSD was "splitted" into NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD is because the developers had a different view of what should go into an operating system, and what the priorities ought to be.
That is the same reason why there are different Linux distributions. People have different ideas about what should go in the operating system, and have different priorities.
btw, I thought Red Hat was distributed with a kernel using some Red Hat specific patches...
(8-DCS)
It's agnother gnu! :-)
> what patchlevel is glibc at in the latest release of Mandrake?
Why should they care. Just link statically. Have you ever downloaded Netscape Communicator? They have an executable with the motif library linked statically and another dynamically.
So the question is why do they make two tarballs, one for libc5 and one for libc6? Maybe it's a matter of space.
But in essence if you link your application statically you won't depend on what's installed on the machine, just the kernel.
My old ISP (before I got a cable modem)http://www.op.net/ used SunOS and FreeBSD. IIRC the reason why they used FreeBSD over Linux was pretty much "I like the way FreeBSD feels better." Which is the reason I use linux, to me it feels better. I'm just glad they didn't use any *doze.
-matt
OK Mr. Pedantic:
Why don't you tell me who owns The Open Group?
Can you or can you not call a product UNIX without having to pay The Open Group (owned by SCO - see answer to above - who itself is 17% owned by MS) and pass their tests?
It frigging runs on anything.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Linux's gain...BSD's loss...if it wasn't for that lawsuit we'd probably be having Linux Vs BSD wars...instead of NT vs Linux wars...
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
> what patchlevel is glibc at in the latest release of Mandrake?
Why should they care. Just link statically. Have you ever downloaded Netscape Communicator? They have an executable with the motif library linked statically and another dynamically.
So the question is why do they make two tarballs, one for libc5 and one for libc6? Maybe it's a matter of space.
But in essence if you link your application statically you won't depend on what's installed in the machine, just the kernel.
I wanted to ask the question: what did the move of putting Linux under the GPL do for attracting developers? it would be great to get the response of kernel coders on this. I would speculate that the fact that the kernel belonged to the "community" at large thanks to the GPL and could not be co-opted into another proprietary OS(tcp stacks in NT for example) played a part in assuring developers about the ownership, rightful use, and legacy of their code.
The Inscrutable Gargoyle
7) Dust Puppy!
8) Alan Cox?
--
QDMerge -- data + templates = documents.
how to invest, a novice's guide
That and who can't love the cute little Daemon logo? (:
Hopefully not related to Microsoft Bob :)
You forgot the all important bitmap of Bob (still available at a few places in Slackware).
All Hail Bob.
at my job, we have decided to move our rh5.1 webserver over to openBSD...simply because of what we have seen. The rh5.1 system is flawless, but sometimes chokes up under heavy loads...personally i love linux, but i think this was a good move for the company.
Now, before you break out the flamethrowers, let me make clear that this does NOT, in my eyes, mean that one OS is better than the other. That's a silly argument to begin with under any conditions. Linux and *BSD each serve different niches that just happen to have some overlap. Use what works best for you, and Be Happy.
You're right -- at least about NetBSD/OpenBSD.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I've had nothing but good experiences getting help from the FreeBSD lists. Most recently I needed some help getting my USB equipment up and running. Nick Hibma (the FreeBSD USB guy) was very kind and very responsive and got me up and going in a day. In the past I've gotten responses from David Greenman, Soren Schmidt, Joerg Wunsch and John Dyson. All were polite and courteous and willing to help me get things right. None of them were derogatory, nor did they act elitist or snobbish when it turned out that the problem was just normal stupidity on my part.
SW
Unix is terrible .. the problem is that there is nothing really outhere to replace this .. :-)
So we are stuck
Yes! Thank for saying it.
In addition, many *nix users are hobbyists, not admins. I use linux at home because I get to play with more software and there is an active, friendly, helpful and cooperative user base. If I were trying to set up secure server that handled heavy traffic, sure I'd use BSD. Its proven! You just can't beat that! Its A-O-K! Linux is still great!
There isn't a single path to success, innovation, and improvement.
Jeez, I'd kill for either one right now, as I'm stuck on NT at work...
-crb
I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
For a lot of the cross platform apps, it's simply a matter of:
unpack the source tarball
change to the source directory
./configure
make
I primarily use NetBSD, which is supposedly the most obscure of the three free BSD's. Just about anything I want to do is available for it. Except I haven't found a CDDA2WAV or CDParanoia app that works with IDE.
Linux - or, to be pedantic, "a GNU/Linux system", although a pile of the userland stuff in such a system doesn't come from GNU - is a UNIX-compatible operating system that's free software.
As far as I'm concerned, that's enough for me to call it a "free UNIX".
Besides, the BSDs have some GNU userland code as well. Hell, I think some commercial UNIXes have some GNU userland code....
They use racks of FreeBSD frontends to Sun e4500
machines.
There's a similar emulator from SCO called Merge, I haven't tried it, but see if you can run the SCO x86 binaries under iBCS, I'd be curious as to the results.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
I do not believe the GPL has anything at all to do with the rise of Linux. It has everything to do with Linus being at the right place, at the right time, with the right OS. Think back to 1991. MS-DOG was king, and the OS hobbyists were playing with Minix (a cute lil' free OS by Andy Tanenbaum). Minix was an okay cross-platform Unix-like OS. Linus wanted a great 80386 Unix. (Sigh. Nostalgia. Anyone else remember the Minix-Linux flame wars? The biggest criticisms of Linux were the monolithic kernel, its x86 platform dependency, and its lack of basic utility programs.) At the time, there was no really good free Unix for IA32. (I think at the time, Minix was really an 8086 OS -- can someone confirm that?) Linus produced the first good free IA32 Unix, and the rest (up to today) is history. I'd say Linux stole the show early on and has never had a serious competitor in its home field, x86 free Unix.
The article says BSD stands for Berkeley Software Design. I've see other things that say it stands for Berkeley Standard Distribution. Is it the former, latter, or neither?
No, acually NetGate uses BSDi machines:
u1{narf} % uname -a
BSD/OS u1.netgate.net 3.1 BSDI BSD/OS 3.1 Kernel #0: Tue Jul 14 19:33:36 PDT 1998 brooks@u1.netgate.net:/usr/src/sys/compile/U1 i386
u1{narf} %
shhhh... I can almost hear the black helicopters coming.
Something to add to what you just said:
Boring=Stable
NewKernelEveryWeek=Unstable
Someone can sell me a binary only package under the BSD lincense, and give me no access to the source. I no longer have the right to change it and make improvements.
Linux is popular because it is *free*. I don't want my code used by some company, thanks.
Not to mention an NHL team from New Jersey, a basketball team from a university in Durham, NC, and a popular line of vacuum cleaners. Gotta love them rednecks.
But then, this happened pre-Dallas Stars' cup victory.
"Oh, I hope he doesn't give us halyatchkies," said Heinrich.
Heh thats pretty weird, cause' I'm writing this message in X e + gnome on FreeBSD right now. I also have Civ: Call to power opened behind this window and really haven't run into many apps that I can't compile on FreeBSD (or use linux binaries). If I do have problems I usually go look in the ports collection instead. There, all you type is make install and it downloads the program, untars, automakes, and installs. It also keeps the package info so you can make deinstall or check what was installed by looking in /var/db/pkg. The ONLY thing I am missing on FreeBSD is vmware. Unfortunately FreeBSD can't emulate linux kernel modules, so I can't use vmware. Also, the SMP support is admittedly pretty ugly (even on BSDi 4.01), but we use solaris over here with 6 processor boxes if we want SMP. I haven't found linux SMP much better than FreeBSD 4.0 though.. they both need a lot of work.
It seems a bit disingenuous to criticize the behavior of the BSD folks, when the Linux crowd, especially many of the regulars at our /., are getting a very deserved reputation, as being bomb-throwing, foaming at the mouth, OS-bigoted, extremeists.
/. users were mentioned as doing something other than flame-mailing someone, just because that person didn't swear that Linux was the most important incention of the last several millenia.
" Do you doubt that this has all the makings of a good old-fashioned computer science religious war? Ask Peters, who wrote an article for online magazine daemonnews.org earlier this month. His even-tempered prose spurred a thread 600 messages long on geek news site Slashdot.org. "
I suppose that on the plus side, for once
I'm starting to get the same feeelings about this site, as I do about living in San Francisco. I love the location. And what it has to offer. But I'm starting to really hate the local population. Extremeism is not a healthy situation. No matter how cool the thing that you hold an extreme opinion may seem.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
SCO owns the AT&T source code, but the trademark is owned by The Open Group (I think)
There are a number of reasons why Linux is more popular. I don't have any experience/exposure to Net/Open so I will write based on my FreeBSD experience. A few of the reasons are:
-- Either by choice or by luck FreeBSD was originally seen as a Server OS. Most attention was on making fast and efficient. It was not until relatively recent that any meaninful attempts were made to make it easier to use.
The result of that was that people using it were more concerned with performance than usability. This further pushed the developers in favor of performance over usability since this was what the user base demanded and their reason to use FreeBSD.
-- Because there is a "core" team that either implements new code or reviews it before it makes it to the OS there have not been emphasis on making it easy to contribute code/man pages/documentation.
This is becoming easier and there are "projects" that make contributing easier (i.e. the documentation project), but FreeBSD still has a long way to go in terms of facilitating the work of volunteers.
Many people have been discouraged from trying to help, out of fustration on the hurdless they needed to overcome in order to help. These hurldess were(are?) mostly lack of documentation on how to contribute and lack of tools.
The perfect example is the FreeBSD "Handbook".. the official online manual for FreeBSD. This Handbook is done with SGML and for someone to help with it the would first need to figure out/install the tools and then deal with SGML. Last time I tried to help with documentation there was barely enough info on what tools to get and even less in terms of SGML documentation.
-- Marketting. Walnut Creek, Freebsd Inc, BSDI.. have done limited marketting in traditional media. BSDI probably are the ones that have done the most, yet most people don't even know who they are.
>Is it just me or does this seem amazingly hypocritical?
I think it goes back to the hunter/gatherer era, where people had to band together to hunt/gather (amazingly enough) enough food to survive. If a person wasn't helping your "group" it was competing (for resources) against yours. Therefore, in essence, the other groups were your "enemies." IMO, it just isn't so anymore. But some people still believe it is. Kinda like how some people still use racial slurs--until you consciously accept the fact that it isn't all/nothing, you won't be able to see past it.
.AsmodeusB
My ISP uses FreeBSD. In fact, they have been
for years!
http://www.mcs.net
Rich
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
While reading the story, I couldn't get the image of Slim Pickens out of my mind!
Anyway, I'm from Texas and you only meet folks like this in Country and Western bars and steak restaurants. YeeHaw!
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
(erm, OK)
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
I think it's primarily based on my writing style. Recalling a quote that I once heard, it stated that one could use even the most flowery words and come out with a very insulting message.
Unfortunately, my use of third person perspective (for the most part) and passive writing probably hinder things.
Elite however, is a word that applies to the core developer that I know. He knew his stuff, designed the software for some kind of board to be used on a PC et cetera. He knew his stuff, no doubt about it.
SCO owns the company that owns the UNIX name. AT&T sold it to Novell, and Novell sold it to SCO as part of the UNIXWARE selloff. If you want to call your product "UNIX" then you have to pay and pass the UNIX branding tests.
About 15 years ago I remember hearing that about a chuch led campaign in Dumas, Texas to change the name of the High School Mascot. They are the Dumas Demons, and the Fundamentalists lost that battle.
I believe that redneck religious freaks are on decline in my home state of Texas, and that's a good thing.
I needed a good flame war to cure my ADD at work and get my attention back.
Over the years, the UNIX/Unix/Free *nix community have been doing a great job at "sewing (sic) confusion in the minds of the public and IT management" all by themselves. They've never needed Microsoft's help before - why start now?
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
As with all good things, it's quite likely that one day the source for Linux and the source for the various BSD's will be essentially the same. There're usually a couple of good ways to do something, but one is almost always the best. And given another few years of development, the various systems will be (hopefully) using the best ways to accomplish all the needed OS tasks. Granted, I don't expect any of them to just fade away and die off, but I expect that the only real user level difference between any of these OS's will be the messages printed at boot and login. Performance and such should essentially be the same. Thoughts?
-Mike
Not *all* from Texas are like that ;)
I think that is what happens when a news(?) site begins to decay... The moderators and operators who are supposed to treat people and opinions equally begin to take sides based on their feelings and beliefs. Just because the moderator had a beef against FreeBSD, which a good majority of the Linux community appears to have, the article gets marked down. I do not understand what is with the BSD and Linux wars. People are entitled to their opinions and freedom to use whatever they want. I, myself, prefer FreeBSD as a server because some of its features such as saving system cores in kernel panics, its fast and efficent networking, its stability and ease of admining, and its logical layout. Unlike Linux, all the sources are nicely put before the operator in /usr/src, so you can find the source to ANYTHING on your system. Before people start bashing on Linux, BSD, and *even* Windows, I would hope they would at least have the decency to try it for a long enough period of time that they get a good opinion. The Linux community has dissappointed me lately because of behavior like this. I've even found myself branding things before I fully try them, such as Enlightenment, GNOME, and KDE. Would you try it before you rate it? I'm also tired of hearing about licenses. It doesn't matter if soemthing is put under the GPL or BSDL. Both licenses allow distribution. It should be the programmer's choice as to which he uses. I'm even okay with commercial licenses, if the software is good enough (such as WordPerfect). For those of you who claimed this story was Microsoft FUD to confuse the Linux community, I have not much to say to you. If you really think Microsoft would use one opensource operating system as a sword against another to defend their commercial box of exploding blue monkeys, you need help. Even if they did, we should not fall for such stupid things. For gods sakes, read the BSD license and then the GPL license, they have the same goals. They just have different guidelines in the way they reach the goals. Basicly, before you start replying with random crap to a story, think about what the hell the story is about and think about what you are saying. The Linux and BSD community could work together if the two sides would just quit picking fights with petty words like the comments I see attached to this article.
Beware, Nugget is watching... See?
Heh. Yep. Smug bastards the lot of us.
Still. The day i see a BSDUG is the day that.. well, it'll be a weird day.
One interesting thing i've found about the BSD 'market'... it may not have the market share, but with cdrom.com, yahoo.com, and other high-profile high-traffic sites, it's got one hell of a resume
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
Please contact me with REHAT IPO affinity program with ETrade Securities.
Thanks
James
sorry
Heh. Sounds like a job for lex or sed...
Unfortunately doing this literally would probably lose a lot in translation, and doing it any other way would be difficult. Maybe one day, 40 years later, when the Cyc project is considered an 'applet' or something, we'll have smart text-filters...
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
It's the pro-freedom crowd vs. the ego stroking crowd, by the way.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
- open source = source code
- manpage = documentation
- Enterprise = that spaceship from Star Trek
- binary edit = patch
- physical disk = hard drive
- box = computer
- mount point = hard drive
- file = binary file
- open source = shareware
- binaries = programs
- alpha = beta
- CGI scripts = CGIs
- partition = drive letter
- off the net = offline
- obvious = subtle
- MS-ASCII = text
- alpha = new technology
- computer secretary = admin
- logical disk = hard drive
- Evil One = Bill Gates
- program = script
- criminal = hacker
- bug fix = upgrade
- commonplace = ubiquitous
- programmer = software engineer
- floppy disk = disk
- luser = surfer
- network = web
- hide = protect
- computer scientist = mathematician
- net = web
- daemon = server
- legal extortion = per-seat licensing
- diskette = disk
- hacker = coder
- physical disk = drive letter
- secretary = HTML programmer
- sysadmin = sysop
- cracker = hacker
- IRC client = IRC browser
- computer = server
- memory = RAM
- logical disk = drive letter
- programmer = scripter
- mail messages = e-mails
- flexible = difficult
- beggarware = shareware
- paid bug fixes = updates
- disk drive = hard drive
- Internet Exploder = Internet Explorer
- eye trash = banner ads
- shell command = system call
- couldn't care less = could care less
- drive = hard drive
- greatest common factor = least common denominator
- Unix = UNIX
- Microsoft's mistakes = virii
- copy = upload
- competence = elitism
- monolithic program = application
- programming = scripting
- computer scientist = engineer
- fleeceware = software
- lying = marketing
- file system = hard drive
- controller = hard drive
- PC = home computer
- coredump = blue screen
- offline = away from the computer
- millennium = millenium
- partition = hard drive
- beginner = newbie
- business = enterprise
- competent = elite
- bloatware = apps
- fleeceware = commercial software
- function = command
- configurable = confusing
- Mordor = Redmond
- mail = e-mail
- challenging = impossible
- kernel = kernal
- disk controller = hard drive
- mails = sends e-mails
- executables = programs
- binaries = shareware
- crippleware = shareware
- buggy = beta
- mark-up language = programming language
- system call = command
- internal network = Intranet
- beta = production
- open source = freeware
- system call = operating system function
- copy = download
- fix = hire a consultant for
- luser = user
- disk space = memory
- code = software
- MS-HTML = HTML
- netiquette = useless manners
- newsreader = news browser
- IRC channel = chat room
- disk = hard drive
- Evil Empire = Microsoft
- GUI annoyance = wizard
- operating system = kernel
- kernel = operating system
- newsgroup = chat room
- editor = text editor
- bloatware = application
- patch = source edit
- file = text file
- file system = drive letter
- expert-hostile = user-friendly
- login = shell account
- mount point = drive letter
- connect to http://www.foo.com/ = logon to foo.com
- access the web = surf the net
Your job now is to write a program than converts from one lingo to the other, or vice versa.Sheesh, Microsoft Bob is as pink as they come!
err..umm..how do you *uninstall* a tarball ? Most tarballs scatter bits of stuff all over the drive anyway. While on linux you can do : rpm -U xyz...
The Open Group owns the UNIX name and you pay the Open Group, not SCO. The Open Group also administers the tests.
Do your homework before posting.
...I keep my threshold at -1 and ignore moderators comments. Why bother?
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
FreeBSD already runs most linux applications, except vmware, without a problem, and still companies port software for FreeBSD, including realplayer and Netscape. OS/2 was not helped by it's lack of apps, but it failed to gain use for other reasons as well. OS/2 was direct competition with NT (Old versions)and couldn't compete with the user base/support/already made apps for NT. Also OS/2's place amongst Geeks was removed by Linux and FreeBSD which are both superior to OS/2. Plus IBM didn't market or support OS/2 very well. Plus the author of the article (IMHO) is not trying to say that FreeBSD is vastly superior to Linux, but that it has it's place in the world, and that it soon may get a surge of new users.
Brian
P.S. It's the end of the day, and after working all day i'm too lazy to check for spelling/grammer mistakes
The following sentence is TRUE. The previous sentence is FALSE.
According to the applicable section of the A HREF="NetBSD FAQ, you should be using cdd for that.
Well, my school, Duke University, is the Blue Devils.
But the nickname comes from the French Army (no Jokes please!).
Then I decided it wasn't worth it. Then I thought: what the heck.
It's ironic to note that the whining that goes on here about moderation has as (IMHO) more effect on the quality of discussions than the subject of the whining.
--
--
The Internet is the Suppository of All Knowledge. You get it in the end.
And here's a better one: Manchester United
</flame>
Sure. The Gartner Group had a test with NT, Linux and FreeBSD. NT sucked, of course. FreeBSD was first, with Linux a somewhat close second. The test, unfortunately, is not available on the web anymore.
What they benchmarked was the ability of the system to degrade gracefully underload. In other words, forget how fast your system is when everything is cached in RAM... when things get ugly, you have a lot of processes, and swap is heavy, during the "peaks" of your workload, how well does the system handle that? FreeBSD showed the best scores by far under the heavier loads, with the scores (err, FreeBSD and Linux) getting closer under lighter loads, and both NT and Linux surpassing FreeBSD under no load to speak of.
As it goes, they somehow reached the conclusion that Linux was the prefered server under a number of environments analysed, even though FreeBSD performed better and had none of the drawnbacks they found in Linux. Go figure.
Then, there is the Mindcraft benchmark. I'm told Linux performed significantly better than FreeBSD, with NT performed way better, and Solaris beating everyone. Alas, this test measured the perfomance of the system under very few processes, and everything cached. At least, as far as NT went. Gartner results say that if the environment of the test changed so that number of processes increased and swapping became necessary, NT would soon find itself trailing everyone.
(8-DCS)
I'd have thought they still had TENEX and Multics machines on the ARPANET then. Multics, at least, wasn't, I think, as lively as it was in the '70's, so maybe they had them, but its networking stuff wasn't cutting-edge. Perhaps the same was true of TENEX/TOPS-20. (When did Digital shoot the 10's/20's in the head?)
( Tom Van Vleck's Multics Web site claims that TCP/IP was introduced in the late '70's, but, given that RFC 791 says "September 1981" on the cover, he's off by a bit, I think.)
I'd heard that BBN had a stack for BSD before the 4.1aBSD stack, and that the BSD stack was derived from it, with a lot of changes by Bill Joy; I don't know if that's the case, though.
(I also vaguely remember hearing of older stacks for UNIX, but those may have been NCP stacks.)
(Gee, I wonder if your appearance here will further surprise the guy who was surprised to see me show up on Slashdot; this article seems to have brought out the old folks, for some reason. :-))
'Nuff said.
:-).
I need Applix Office (or StarOffice if I have to, but I'd prefer not). WordPerfect would also be nice, but not critical.
Looking at the Linux emulation stuff it looks like I can get it to run, but trying to 'brand' all the individual little ELF binaries as 'Linux' did not make it work, so I gave up and switched back to Linux. I did make sure that the emulation worked by running a few little Linux binaries (running the Linux version of 'gnu tar' then feeding it through the FreeBSD version of 'gnu tar' was a blast
I think the guy had a valid point -- while FreeBSD may run many Linux binaries, it is by no means as easy to do for non-trivial programs as some people like to say. ("non-trivial" == "has more than one object module").
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
pkg_delete name
or
cd /usr/ports/appname; make deinstall
The ports system is very useful.
I often stumble accross new software by examining my CVS updated ports tree.
Just type make and it pulls the tarball from the net and builds it. Works like a dream.
There do exist easy-to-find MP3 players in FreeBSD. Try 'splay'. Or 'freeamp' if you wish. Or even 'x11amp' if you don't care about that stupid license (its template is in /usr/ports).
Web browser: what's the beef? I installed KDE off the FreeBSD CD-ROM by using pkg_add (gosh, how horrible can that be!), then used its built-in web browser to download the FreeBSD version of Netscape off of ftp.netscape.com. What, you don't like Netscape? Tough, that's all you get on Linux too.
The only real problem I had with FreeBSD was that I could not get a commercial-quality office suite working. That's the only reason I switched back to Linux. Otherwise, it's fast, it's stable (more stable than Linux in fact -- the memory leak in the Netscape text input widget occasionally locks up my Linux machine, but all it did on FreeBSD was make Netscape core-dump once it reached the limits of virtual memory), and reasonably well laid out (though I prefer the way OpenBSD is laid out, to tell you the truth -- FreeBSD is trying to get too fancy nowdays).
Of course, there WERE some problems... I had to pull out the sound card I had in it (an Ensonique AudioPCI) and replace it with an old SoundBlaster pulled out my junk box in order to get sound support... but if I hadn't had four years of accumulated Applix files that I did not want to succumb to bit-rot(*), I would probably still be running FreeBSD.
-E
*bit-rot: what happens when a file can no longer be usably read, executed, or altered. Generally happens when the OS that the file was created for no longer will run on obtainable hardware, or when the applications software that it was created with will no longer run due to OS upgrades or etc.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
"and easier to configure than I expected"
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/ are executed at startup. Just how many files are there again in the Linux Init?
"When *BSD is as easy to use, configure, and setup for my own personal needs and wants"
You contradict yourself. As it is, I find FreeBSD far easier to configure than Linux, for two reasons.
1) I find the BSD style Init process to be less complicated than SysV. There is one master rc script that is configured via one single config file. Local programs can be run via a single rc.local, and scripts placed in
2) FreeBSD is an entire system, not just a kernel and a hodge-podge collection of packages the distributor includes with it. The entire OS can be rebuilt with 2 commands.
This doesn't mean FreeBSD is better (it is better in other ways for other reasons.) I'm just reacting to your totally baseless claims.
"no apps!"
StarOffice and WordPerfect run just fine under Linux emulation.
The problem is that far too many Linux users think that Unix software is only for Linux. It doesn't occur to them that source code is *supposed* to be portable. Linux software developers are as guilty as this as anyone...they present their software as being for Linux, even if it compiles on BSD without modification!
Many "Linux" programs compile cleanly on FreeBSD. The ones that don't only require a few changes. That's what the ports system is for..someone's already made the changes for you.
Not only does the Linux Netscape run under emulation, but there's a native FreeBSD version as well, and has been at least since 2.2.2.
The xmms (formerly x11amp) homepage says It works on most unix systems with sound, preferable OSS but on i386 systems any sounddrivers that is OSS compatible should work without any problems.
Of course..then they go and ruin it all by saying This player has most of the features as the original winamp from Windows 95/98/NT but it will of course feature some specials only available for the linux version.
This proves my point above about Linux software. People are being misled (though unintentionally) by the very people who write their precious software!
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
"elite" has become an insult lately. I suggest "31337" as a replacement. *grin*
I know that many companies use BSD to run secure servers and I know that BSD is more stable and secure than Linux, because it has been around for more years and is maintained by die hard server people. My question is, What is the performance difference between the two OSs? I have a feeling that BSD has superior SMP support, bu I do not know why exactly. Anyone have any input from experience?
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
... I don't think so.
K, so internal flamewars are not nice. BSD and Linux are both great OSs. NT is not. Let's take a look at where the bias sits on this article though.
The big deal here is all about the licenses BSD vs. GPL. The BSD license does not protect open source.
The article, and the accompanying poll suggest that creativity is stifled by the GPL. Let's take a look it this statement... It relies on the statement that creativity can only be spawned by monetary profit. It also relies on the statement that monetary profit can only be spawned by proprietary software. The conclusion that they draw, then, is that Linux allows no proprietary kernel modifications, thus no profit, thus no creativity. This line of reasoning has been shown to be false - in fact, both of the precepts have been shown to be false. In fact the level of creativity and innovation in non-proprietary software is higher than or the same of that in proprietary software. Why, then, would we allow somebody to proprietarize and close development on the kernel, when proprietarization improves nothing and causes problems (like kernel fork, slow bug-fixes, etc.)?
So where is the bias? Can GPL'd software fit into Microsoft's business model and have modifications closed and proprietarized? No. Can BSD software fit into Microsoft's model and be proprietarized? Yes.
So if you buy into the BSD license, think about that quote from Ben Franklin that fortune gives us all the time. If you buy into the BSD license, you are sacrificing liberty for the sake of short term stability. Please, help us to innovate on a truly perennial open source system.
I suggest you check your dictionary. They are two different words. People who are the true "elite", i.e., those who are the best or most skilled at what they do, generally do not engage in "elitism".
"elitism" means (to quote the American Heritage Dictionary): "Belief in rule or domination by an elite".
Frankly, I would prefer not to be ruled by a self-proclaimed "elite". Frankly, that reeks of www.stormfront.org, where you can read the rantings of these self-proclaimed "elites" who want to rule our nation. Ick.
-- E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue33/bentson.html
Yeah, those Linux developers are just a bunch of college sophomores. Sure. College sophomores with PhD's and 10 years's experience.
'Nuff said.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
"The whole Article is biased towards M$."
/. having a link to a MS owned and operated site. How dare Hemos even admit that MS might have some affiliation with something worth doing. I suppose that we should all flame Hemos for corrupting our browsers with an MS owned http. Flush your cache, and get over it already. You're not gonna burn in hell, for reading an MS site. You're really not.
Apparently the link to the article was broken at some point, and connected Pit boy to some other article entirely.
"I wonder: Hell, why does an M$NBC Article show up on slashdot anyway?"
Ummm, because it's about something that is relevant to computers, and Open Source issues. Seems obvious enough.
"There isn't even information in this article - it's redundant ! I leared this much about GPL vs BSD licenses just by listening comp.os.freebsd.misc for 2 days !"
I'd say that at least 95% of the material on the web is "redundant". Just because the information is available in the darkest bowels of the net, if you know where to look, doesn't mean that taking it, and compiling it in a reasonable readable format is a waste of time. Prior to reading this, I had no idea about BSD, and AT&T, et al.
"I thinks slashdot is getting worse."
I have to assume, that the only reason for this comment, is the above comments about
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Well people often point out that one of BSD's problems is its fragmentation but the different BSDs are probably closer from a layout and design perspective than most Linux distributions.
I can just feel a flamewar coming on.
Flames can sometimes be useful. Most flamewars however, aren't constructive. They tend to be destructive, that's why they're named after a "destructive force."
And in this instance a flamewar would be pretty stupid. This isn't a case of who's better. The BSD's cover different areas, as does Linux. Is there a point to fighting? Its like saying, "My boat is faster than your car" or "My orange is sweeter than your apple."
The OSes in question are very powerful. What they do well they excell in. Its not like we're comparing Solaris (yay) to NT (boo!).
Before jumping into the BSD/GPL debate, think about it. We're all on the same side! We like solid OSes. We can have a few beers and start scoffing at the NT folk together.
Together. That is a word that both the BSD and Linux worlds should be using more often. Or at least we can hope.
I that this open_unix vs. open_unix stuff is absolute bullshit.
OS developers & contributers - work together.
Users - choose what's right for you.
Debating over which is better and which is more popular is a complete waste of time. Lets all cooperate and off the 50 billion pound Gorrila in Redmond.
Because LMBench puts it faster than any other Unix stack.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
The artical says that the difference, as if it really means anything, is that BSD developers have degrees and 10 years of experience and are managers in their work, while Linux hackers are all unwashed masses without degrees (loosely interpreted). It said it as if that implies a certain quality of the code that won't be found in Linux.
You misunderstood this part of the article. They were explaining why Linux development has been faster and more successful in those years than BSD. The average BSD developer has less time to spend hacking than your average Linux user.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
That's sort of the point, really. It shifts the focus away from the operating system itself to the jobs that the operating system is there to perform.
It is an operating system you can forget about, and in many contexts, that's a good thing. Focus on the work, not the environment the work has to run in
Another damned comic
+++ NO CARRIER
ARRGGHH NOT AGAIN!!!! I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!!!!
Deleted
>No matter, says Diercouff. Soon, the various BSD distributions will be able to run Linux applications, including office productivity suites such as StarOffice.
Any body notice this? Even though it might be completely different situation, but OS/2 had Windoz emulation(Or what ever they used) That only contributed to OS/2's demise. Nobody developed for OS/2 because their application will be able to run on it any ways. Even though OS/2 is technically much better machine(as bsd is being claimed to be compared to Linux), It never caught on.
=moJ
- - - - - -
swagmag.com
What? Did they finally succeed in converting it to NT?
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Yeah, FreeBSD can emulate SCO binaries.. I've used oracle for SCO with it -- it is annoying to have to add shared memory though.
There are several users in the higher up ranks of the BSD lists that are trying to change this.
One is a more open development model. While you currently just send a pr report with your patches included the new system would allow you to do direct cvs commits. There will still be a peer review process to make sure the stuff is good, but the line between you and the reviewer won't be as obvious.
On the other hand... Was that answer at any documentation sites? -questions has a few thousand emails daily, most of which are highly repetative.
freebsdrocks, freebsddiary, and the handbook answer 99% of most users questions. The rest in IRC where I spend alot of time answering questions.
-questions is way too overloaded... Should setup somekind of a structured questions list, with ID tags, etc.
It should also automatically give you a faq when you join it...
Rod Taylor
The article actually touched accurately on the reason why, too. One of the strengths of Linux is the rapid pace of innovation and feature addition. This is actually a negative when I'm looking for an OS to run my servers. There, I need a consistent source and a relatively modest change rate, with the priority given to features relevant to the running-servers activity. FreeBSD excells at that.
So at home I'll run FreeBSD on my house server, and Linux on my workstation. As others have said, the two are *complimentary*, with different focuses. And the BSD people should not be upset about the greater press given to Linux, IMO. Linux should have the most press because its strengths will ultimately play well in the consumer market. The BSDs will be found and supported, as appropriate, by those of us with services to run. And of course there will continue to be a lot of cross polination between the two, especially in the application realm.
By the way, I found the mentions of BSDi in the article very interesting in light of the licensing argument. I used to use BSDi exclusively, but the problem with BSDi is that they did exactly what the BSD license allows: they added proprietary code and kept it proprietary. For this reason, while I am maintaining my current BSDi servers for the moment, any new servers are FreeBSD or Linux. So as far as I am concerned, the ability to, shall we say, proprietorize using BSD-license code just gives companies the ability to shoot themselves in the foot. Open Source is the superior business model, whatever license you execute it under.
NB: I suspect that Linux could erode the FreeBSD server market share if some company would craft a distrabution aimed at service providers, characterized by a modest, server focused change rate, and providing reasonably priced support contracts.
--BitDancer
actully, i thought the article was pretty positive towards *ix in general
Commodore 64, Loading up the dance floor!
...IF somebody pays, would Linux pass the test?
Just curious...
<^>_<(ô ô)>_<^>
I just call it Linux; there are those who, by being either pedantic or sycophantic, depending on your personal beliefs (I do not share the personal beliefs of those who consider it sycophantic), insist on it being called GNU/Linux.
The person to whom was replying said "Linux is GNU!", which could be viewed as saying "it's GNU/Linux", i.e., "a lot of userland code in the OS is from GNU"; as I noted, however, a lot of the userland code isn't from GNU, so calling it "GNU/Linux" doesn't give credit to the authors of much of the stuff in a typical Linux distribution.
Besides, I love NetBSD. My old machines get upgraded to it when their manufacturers stop supporting them. My old Mac won't run MacOS 7.6 or newer -- voila, NetBSD/mac68k. I tried Linux, but it's not useable on my machine (yet). Solaris 7 theoretically works on my SPARCstation, but man is it a dog. Sun doesn't realize we haven't all upgraded to Ultras yet (or just doesn't care). It'll get upgraded to NetBSD soon (although I'll at least take a look at Linux -- but my experience trying to get it working on my old Mac makes me leary of wasting time trying it on my old SPARC -- I may reserve Linux for my newer, higher performance systems like my Pentium II. I love Linux too, but it just doesn't seem to run as well as NetBSD on my non-Intel systems, or at least that's what my Mac experience was).
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
This article certainly carries the attitude that many BSD users seem to have -- that BSD of for real users, users with experience, users who care more about a robust, secure OS than what's currently hip; and that Linux users are "hackers" who jumped on the Linux bandwagon because it's the hip thing to do among hackers, rather than because Linux carries any advantages as an OS.
The truth is, Linux carries with it several advantages that the article only hints at. The article mentions the splits in BSD, but it doesn't discuss the problems these splits carry with them. It's nice to know that with Linux, when a new feature or better security is added to the kernel, that feature will be available to every users on many different platforms. I am certainly not an expert on BSD, so I'd appreciate it if someone who is more knowledgeable than I would tell me how often developments in FreeBSD are integrated into the development tree of NetBSD, for example.
Personally, I prefer Linux. As a student at a large university, I'm surrounded by Linux experts. I couldn't say the same about BSD. The other main advantage that Linux has for me is the applications that are being ported to Linux more and more. However, I would be willing to switch to BSD if I saw clear advantages. Unfortunately, this article seemed to be more interested in cashing in on the Linux hype by subtly bashing Linux rather than presenting the real advantages.
Why is it that people have to bad mouth linux or freebsd. There's enough room for both of them to exist. I use both on my system, and they are both great OSes. So what if linux was written totally from scratch? So what if freebsd has less hardware currently?
Mike.
PS Just use what you like.
Tigger's like to read
Netcraft busts them again:
www.hotmail.com is running Apache/1.3.6 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.8 SSLeay/0.9.0b on FreeBSD
Apache is also being used by Javasoft, Financial Times, W3 Consortium, and The Royal Family.
FreeBSD users include Yahoo, The Apache Project, and MP3.com.
So as one can see, MSNBC is spreading FUD for their masters again.
In the parenthentical note in the side comment he makes at the end:
I think his memory doesn't serve; I think it's more like "(e.g., PDP-10)", although I don't know which OS had the first TCP/IP stack - Multics probably had one fairly early on, too. (We shall ignore the fact that UNIX originally ran on DEC machines - he may have meant "on DEC operating systems", although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the first PDP-10 TCP/IP stack was on a non-DEC OS, TENEX; yes, I think it eventually became the DEC operating system TOPS-20, but it was originally developed by BBN.)
First of all, it annoys me to see the constant emphasis on hostility and one-upmanship in articles on different Unix versions. This is ridiculous. Who cares if user X perfers Linux or person Y prefers BSD? I am not interested in which version has which percentage of the market share. I want to know more about the operating systems themselves, how they are similar and how they differ.
Secondly, it seems to me that the best route for future development would be to merge the various Unix versions, taking the best features from each. Perhaps Linux and freeBSD could combine to form freeLSD.
Finally, people who say that Linux is not a Unix version are silly. If it looks and acts like Unix, has the same system calls as Unix, it's Unix, regardless of what its history is. Any other definition of "Unix" is useless.
--- Brian
Slashdot needs a killfile of some sort.
Deleted
Who wants to bet that this article was commisioned by Microsoft to help stifle the Linux buzz by sewing confusion in the minds of the public and IT management about free Unix systems?
I'm wondering why thats a troll...
looks more like on opinion to me.
This wasn't accurate, it was just as uninformed as most articles. At least it's publicity, though.
I know that at least FreeBSD should be able to run linux binaries without too much trouble, just like Linux should be able to run, say, SCO binaries without too much work, etc. So it shouldn't really have fewer applications. Also, a lot of the same UNIX apps should be source-compatible anyhow, and some are released under the BSD license.
Since the owner of the source code can release it under multiple licenses anyhow, there's nothing wrong with making a kernel submission GPL'ed, and also releasing it to the *BSD's under their license, so I don't really see the argument there. The other arguments have been dealt with. Remember, the BSD license lets your competitors freely use your code too, and also lets people take that code and incorporate it into closed projects, which I don't think is necessarily a feature.
Past that, at least it's press. I don't believe that 70% of all ISP's figure, either. A lot of ISP's use Linux. Maybe if he meant the number, it would only take a few major ISP's to skew that figure. Still... that doesn't jive.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
.. Linux has a celebrity.
.. but she's heard of Linus Torvalds. The people who make the biggest splashes are the people that get the most press.
This is pretty much an extension of your comparison of the Linux community to a bunch of excited kids. Linus is a charismatic guy. He's funny, likeable, and direct. When it comes to PR, technical talent takes a back seat to some of the more interpersonal aspects. My sister, who is in nursing, doesn't even own a computer
Of course, this is not to say that the BSD community doesn't have its own important and colorful characters. But if you were to compare the number of Slashdotters who know who Linus Torvalds is against the number who know who, say, Theo DeRaadt is, you'd find a pretty evident bias.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
You say BSD, I say Linux
You Say Tomato, I say Tomato(work with me here, it's text)
Let's call the whole thing off...
Would these be considered different Linux OS's then:
Real Time Linux
Linux Router Project
They are patched versions of Linux, but I would still consider them different at the kernel level.
My ISP is all FreeBSD.
www.enteract.com
-ethan
SLACK! ;-)
--Matthew
That was blatent misrepresentation on the part of M$nbc geach
Wall clock time from packet arrival to time the data hits the user app. This is substantially different from throughput on a multi-threaded IP stack.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Dominican wrote:
Spot on.
That's why I wrote the Doc. Proj. Primer, available at http://www.FreeBSD.org/tutorials/d ocproj-primer/.
Feedback is welcomed.
N
God help us all. God help us all.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
I don't think the lawsuit was all that important.
More important was the fact the Bill Jolitz, who released the original 386BSD wasn't really well suited for running a Bazaar-style project. At times, his (rare) messages didn't seem sane, and his "press officier" Jesus, Jr, didn't made it better. This meant that the project was delayed until first the NetBSD and later the FreeBSD groups got fed up waiting for him to reelase a new version, and broke away.
The most important thing, in my opinion, was that the BSD developers were highly competent operating system engineers making great personal sacrifices for the cause, while the Linux developers were a bunch of enthusiastic kids having great fun doing what they wanted to do. At least, that was the impression one got from the BSD and Linux newsgroups. There is even some of it left today.
I suspect a lot of potential developers felt like me: I'd rather hang out with the kids who are learning and having fun, than the self-important professionels who are making sacrifices.
--Matthew
Geez this is what makes M$ laugh at people like us when we talk about replacing Windows on the desktop, arguing about a license agreement. If you read the article it says that you can't really say which license is "better". If you have read either the BSDL or the GPL you would understand this is true. GPL forces you to provide source code, which is a good thing for non competitive, usually non commercial (unless you're a service provider like Red Hat or SuSE). The BSDL license says you can release source code if you'd like, but you're not forced to, which helps competitive commercial groups to release just binaries for their work, even if they base it on someone else's work. Why does the GPL license always fall into the Linux catagory and BSDL always fall into the *BSD catagory, the GNU license was written by RMS well before Linus finished v.01, so I could put the GPL on my program I just wrote for BSD. Both licenses and both flavours of Unix have their uses and are both good at different things. BSD servers tend to be able to handle higher loads than linux servers, while linux has begun to appeal to the Joe Average user while still being a powerful server and workstation OS. Fighting about which one is better is like children arguing over who's a bigger fartface. It's not M$ and it works, don't complain.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Second, you usually don't want to run your server peaked. ftp.cdrom.com is not peaked even when its putting out 1TB a day.
Now, if FreeBSD performed worse than Linux under the Mindcraft test, we can also deduce that its TCP/IP stack is worse than Linux's stack.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
As another post points out, they still run FreeBSD. What I thought was funny was when they tried to switch the system over to WinNT IIS when they first took over Hotmail. It couldn't take the strain on the system and they had to switch back.
If you've ever read anything Noam Chomsky has had to say about the "media-industrial" complex, you'll have no trouble believing that MS may have indeed inspired just this type of article.
Remember, MS is in it for the kill and will use any resource they have at their disposal to kill Linux. That includes NBC.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
He he ....
But now the point: BSD is boring
Explain. I run Linux as a firewall. It must therefore be boring according to your definition.
I have been using Linux regularly since the 0.99.14x days--only briefly around 0.77 (I can't recall exactly). I will be trying out FreeBSD on my next system withing a month or two. What programs will I NOT be able to run with FreeBSD?
I have two favorite games: Netrek and AOE. The first can be played on most UNIX systems. The second runs just as well under FreeBSD as it does Linux: not at all.
You are entitled to your opinions, but please give evidence when you come down so roughly on something.
Call me a bit paranoid, but it seems an interesting coincidence that ZDNET came out with a story on this subject. It's possible that MS thinks they can sow confusion in the open source movement by subtley pushing whatever competes with their biggest problem right now... Linux.
Or... would that mean your precious world view that BSD is all mighty and perfect would be flawed?
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
Unfortunately this article has many historical errors. To correct a few of them:
BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution, not Berkeley Software Design. Someone seems to have snuck in and fixed that one.
The article states that BSD UNIX was created because Bill Joy wanted to create a free UNIX. This is, to put it mildly, incorrect. Berkeley was funded by DARPA to provide an Internet-capable operating system based on UNIX, to act as a common platform for DARPA researchers. Bill Joy was one of several graduate students funded to work on this project via the Computer Systems Research Group. CSRG got money from a few other people in later years, but the expiration of the DARPA grant eventually resulted in the expiration of the group. Joy was "first among equals", and did quite a bit of work (ex/vi, csh) before the DARPA grant came through, but neither then nor later was his aim to create a "free UNIX" - neither was it DARPA's. DARPA believed, correctly, that the Berkeley work would eventually be picked up by various vendors and would be supported through standard commercial channels. When this became the case, DARPA support ended. The open source movement, the "free UNIX" movement, et al. all came in the last days of CSRG, some time after DARPA's involvement had ended.
I believe that it is true that the copyright lawsuit did hinder the progress of *BSD in the free marketplace (though not in the commercial marketplace, where license fees were paid), and is partly responsible for the dominance of Linux in number of seats today. That, however, is opinion, and not historical fact.
The article was about BSD, not Linux. Have many--or ANY--Linux articles (read: not Linux-vs-BSD) said how BSD is equal to or better than Linux at Aspect #foo? If so, point me to it.
Microsoft just buys companies like Hotmail and LinkExchange after they are already established. They aren't stupid and so they don't force them to re-deploy all their software under a different OS (WinNT, whatever) for no good technical reason.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I work for an ISP, we run all our machines on FreeBSD boxes, and I've talked with many other business associates in the business that run it. Most of us use it on our home machines as well, much preferred to linux.
-lx
Especially since there was an identical post in the last perl article, which didn't get moderated down.
All hail moderation.
At least in the BSDs, packets being sniffed "come off the stack" from the network interface driver, and get handed directly to the BPF code; I suspect it may be similar in other UNIX-flavored OSes.
They don't come from the TCP/IP stack; they only pass through that stack if they're IP datagrams intended for that machine or broadcast/multicast to that machine; for sniffing, the interface may be in promiscuous mode, and the bulk of the traffic being seen may not be intended for the sniffing machine, and thus wouldn't go through the stack.
FWIW : The Belgian national soccer team is called the "Red Devils". Too bad they play soccer like Wet Drivels when they get on the field :-)
BSDI stands for Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated.
BSD stands for Berkeley Software Distribution.
and you know I linux better..
I have been using linux for a while now.. And
maybe freeBSD is more secure or "faster" but
I dont think it has the same kind of community
and I dont think it will grow as fast a linux will
TOG is a software consortium of which SCO is one of many members. For a complete list of members, refer to http://www.opengroup.or g/overview/members/membership_list.htm
Mooof!
here is one of the better comparisons I have seen between *bsd and linux on the net.
Slackware is actually cool. It's my favorite flavor of Linux OS. I've been running it on and off since I was weaned off Yggdrasil in about 1994. But I'm moving towards BSD for my own reasons. I'm sorry for sounding like I was trashing the slack in that comment.
A new poll idea:
Which is the kewlest Mascot/logo
1)GNU yacc/bison thing(I don't know what exactly it is)
2)BSD Daemon
3)Tux
4)That Salvidor Dali Window(M$ windows logo)
5)Pimp in the RedHat
6)That funky debian penguin
You don't exist. Go away. --SysVinit Halt
Golly, gee thanks. I guess I should prowl around the NetBSD site more often. Say goodbye to Slackware on that box if cdd works.
That article summed things up pretty well for me, though unwittingly, I think. I've toyed with *nix off and on for the last 6 years, only just a few months ago gone full-Linux, using RH. I played with FreeBSD 2.2.2 through that, and while it was nice, and stable, and easier to configure than I expected...no apps!
Maybe this has changed with the FreeBSD 3.x series, but for those of us out there who don't know how to mod our Linux apps (no matter how easy true hackers claim it to be) *BSD isn't worth it. No matter how stable an OS is, if it doesn't DO anything, it's useless.
Linux has the larger share of the publicity and market not because of the 'young hackers' but because it is the only *nix that Joe Average User has a change of understanding and _using_.
-- I'm sure this is amusing to someone.
Is that the same one who mentioned a number of Linux distributions, such as "Red Hat Linux", "Caldera OpenLinux", and "Deviant Linux"?
Tim (Jones) at EST says he's still looking for that "Deviant Linux" distribution. Think it maybe has pictures of nekkid penguins in it or something? Or maybe penguins doing unspeakable things to sheep? Or ???
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Sadly, I can't really see a resurgence of BSD happening. Linux has the momentum behind it now and, quite frankly, I think that the BSD fans are extremely jealous. I can't really blame them as, had things gone right, it would be BSD vs NT now and no-one would have heard of Linux. But that's not what happened and I'm certainly not complaining as long as I've got a good alternative to M$.
HH
date; talk; touch; unzip; finger; expand; strip; head; mount; yes; yes; yes; eject; more; sleep
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
Ever consider the possibility that there are some Microsoft shills posting as Anonymous Cowards, trying to create conflicts in the free software community that don't actually exist?
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I had a long rebuttle to this post which addressed every single item he brought up and pointed out they are all pitfalls or potential pitfalls of Linux as well. I erased it though, so I could be more succinct.
FreeBSD has not failed. Doesn't yahoo run FreeBSD? Aren't they the most popular site on the web? (or in the top few) Isn't the most popular ftp server in the world running FreeBSD? You might think FreeBSD failed, but that just shows you're not thinking too hard.
Personally I've never liked FreeBSD. One of my anti-BSD rants made it all the way to the CEO of BSDI. However, I'm not going to pronounce it dead when people are still using it for interesting things. Just remember there's been lots of questions about the direction of Linux over the years too, infighting, political posturing, bad blood, bad code, poor management. It's happening to BSD now, it could happen to Linux again tomorrow. Linux is riding a wave might now. It just might be BSD tomorrow.
-Rich
Well I for one "love" Corel's idea's of native apps, right now they have a Linux port of WordPerfect, but how long will they keep porting. Corel hopes to use the help they are giving to the Wine project to allow Corel's Windows products to run without being ported. Soon they will drop all Linux support content in Wine's emulation to run their products, while they still get to have their name in the open source community and appear as a great company. If they are doing this what's to stop other companies from doing the exact same thing? Now would you feel like a second class citizen for running apps under wine?
My two cents worth...
The following sentence is TRUE. The previous sentence is FALSE.
Funny, it describes the situation quite clear:
:-) and play at my machine. And here we go, the linux-folks is much more "innovative", got the straight target "world domination" instead of "high uptimes".
:-)
BSD crumpled under the struggle of copyright in 1993 (thats was right when I switched from BSD to Linux).
BSD is rockstable (I don`t say that linux isn`t stable, but maybe a little bit less).
But now the point: BSD is boring.
Simply said I don`t run a webserver all day and I don`t type "uptime" all day.
I actually try to work (to some extend
Beside of that both are very equal - it`s yet another *nix-lookalike. *nix is a tool, like toiletpaper. You use it, but you don`t arguee about it. But you may still prefer the pink one with funny penguins on it
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
I couldnn't run Minix in a sane fashion on my Amiga, so I did the next best thing and replaced just about everything except the kernel with U*ix like stuff from micro ports of GPL stuff. When I diteched my Amiga (well, it still lurks) Linux was a "not much thought" choice since for what I wanted to do Linux/FreeBSD were much of a muchness and it seemed there were more GPL people on Linux.
My ISP runs on FreeBSD and I'm tempted to find another box so I can play with FreeBSD...
Antti
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
ZDNet has a licensing agreement with MSNBC, under which MSNBC publishes ZDNet stories in its technology section (when relevant). As far as I know, it goes both ways, so ZDNet will sometimes publish MSNBC copy. In case nobody noticed the MSNBC logo on the ZDNet site...
Actually, Linux probably shares userland code a lot more than BSD does. That's because Linux really doesn't HAVE a userland -- Linux is a kernel, a few GNU tools necessary to boot, and a lot of little individual packages, most of which use the same code base. For example, there are not four different 'telnet' programs in the Linux world. Everybody uses the same "NetTools" package maintained by some guy whose name I can't remember (sigh). Similarly, everybody uses the same 'libc' library, it's all the same 'glibc' off of fsf.org, though everybody seems to be using a different revision of it (sigh). (even the old libc5 was that way, there was only one libc5, though some people, like Red Hat, for some inexplicable reason chose to ship an old version of it rather than the current version).
I like FreeBSD, but I'm posting this from SuSE Linux because I could not get Applix running despite branding all the ELF binaries in the Applix directory as Linux binaries and making sure the Linux emulation was compiled into the kernel. Bummer. I also did not have success getting WordPerfect 8 to run, though I've heard others say they managed to do it. I did run a couple of little Linux binaries to make sure the emulation was working, and they worked, so I do know the emulator works, but sometimes it's not easy to get multi-part apps to do right with it...
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
That will NEVER happen, if for no other reason, because people from both camps will never agree on licensing terms.
-lx
A typical inaccuracy was when they blithely repeated that Linux developers were a bunch of young kids and BSD developers a bunch of old pros, in blatant disregard of the facts.
l
See:
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue33/bentson.htm
for the details.
It does appear, though, that Linux has a whole lot of young kid ADVOCATES, some of who think it's, like, l33t (AGHH!!).
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Sure, head-to-head benchmarks have been done. But
they don't often matter in the IT world.
For example, www.intel.com was originally started,
guerilla-fashion, by an Intel CAD group using BSDi. They had numerous benchmarks showing BSDi and Apache blowing away NT and IIS. However, when
Intel IT finally jumped on the Internet bandwagon and took over the site it was quickly
force-marched to IT-standard NT despite the test data. There followed an intensive six-month collaboration process with Microsoft to deal with the resulting reliability/performance issues....
Uh-Oh, I smell a bait and switch here!
Put up a BSD article, then you see the ad up top. And you think, "Can't be all that bad, can it?" then you click, then your lost!
(Microsoft is not a partner in this posters' soul)
One thing you might not realise too, is that like anything that comes from a University and the people deeply embedded in that culture, is that the focus and emphasis is on the small private clicks that form around the institutions, giving rise to that old adage "It's not what you know but who you know". So in BSD, you need to win popularity contests to get your stuff into the system. In linux, however, you only need to demonstrate the technical validity of your proposal. Thus, BSD lags behind in the development arena and has a pathetically small developer community to support it. I also imagine that the several forks of BSD are largely due to interested developers not being able to win popularity contests and thus being forced to fork off the code base in order to get their own stuff added.
Remember that what linus torvalds did was to capitalize on the Internet and the available talent. And he was wildly sucessful in creating a worldwide development team, which in turn has turned out a tremendous product. BSD can't do that because it's about popularity contests and dysfunctional politics. The artical says that the difference, as if it really means anything, is that BSD developers have degrees and 10 years of experience and are managers in their work, while Linux hackers are all unwashed masses without degrees (loosely interpreted). It said it as if that implies a certain quality of the code that won't be found in Linux. Bullshit. The focus should be on technical merits and not who has the more prestegious paper. And in the Linux world that is most certainly the case.
Linux is a truely open develop model that does not discriminate based on popularity contests or worthless peices of paper. It is not about who your sponsor is or what friends you have on the inside or who owes you favors. It's about technical merit.
All languages are weird. Fact.
So which Unix has the fastest TCP/IP stack? I too have read at various places that the Linux TCP/IP stack is the fastest monoprocessor implementation (among Unices, presumably). Whether this still holds true (or has ever held true), I don't have the foggiest. Anyway, why are you screaming so much about something while providing no concrete information. Anything you are afraid of? Eh?
Excuse me, I wasn't thinking properly (obviously!).
So it points to deficiencies in the network interface driver, not the TCP/IP stack. Which is different in terms of problem correction but, as I udnerstand it, not much different for causing problems?
--Matthew
Or was it Gobbels?
BSD is another Good Old Boys(tm) club
The majority of FreeBSD developers is between 25-30.
The majority of the FreeBSD core team members is in their thirties.
I guess they are old if you are 17.
Linux is a truely open develop model that does not discriminate based on popularity contests or worthless peices of paper. It is not
about who your sponsor is or what friends you have on the inside or who owes you favors. It's about technical merit.
Is that why Linus hasn't fixed the VM system yet??
You can say the same about BSD, if you have different library versions on different machines you won't get the binaries to work right either. Linux systems have one thing in common, the same kernel. Will I have problems copying a binary linked against libfoo 1.5 to a system with libfoo 1.0? Yes. Is that Linux specific? No.
The only reason Gates says that is so that he can refer to Linux as "30-year old" technology in the next breath.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Just point your Netcraft site survey at http://www.widomaker.com and feast yo' peepers on yet another FreeBSD/Apache server - they used to run UnixWare but switched and never looked back. IMHO, FreeBSD seems pretty stable if maybe a little boring - like a machine that does it's job so well you forget it's even there - while a lot of the development excitement surrounds Linux trying to support all hardware and be more things to more people, but I might be hallucinating again. Either way, the price is right!
Chuck
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Have a look at the FreeBSD mailinglists sometime. I have a friend who's been using the OS for 5 or 6 years now, since back in the days of FreeBSD 1.x. He asked a rather difficult question on the -questions mailinglist a month or so ago, and was torn to shreds by the denizens of the list, who seem hell-bent on ego-stroking rather than offering any real help. He was treated as if he'd just installed the thing and he *certainly* was no "newbie" to the BSD scene.
Take a look at some of the comments here. I bet you'll see a lot of "Hah! I TOLD you so!"'s. Again, more blatant egomaniacal behavior offering little to no substance. Fun stuff.
This is the kind of crap I've come to expect from BSD people; I've come to the conclusion that, while a lot of linux users are clueless, a lot of BSD users are heartless, and it seems to be a pretty even trade-off.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I have an ancient Slackware box I've been upgrading diligently for the past few years by hand. The other day I needed a copy of sshd 1.x, but I was buggered if I was going to download the whole thing and recompile it (I already had all the other crap compiled). FTP'd over to my friend's Debian 2.1 box, grabbed his copy, it ran fine. I can run libc6 binaries from another friend's Redhat 6 machine on mine, and have done so. I can run my own libc5 binaries from another old machine if I need to. I routinely compile binaries on my machine and run them on others' machines. Saves me from having to drag all my source code over to their boxes (I only have a 56k modem link) and do it there. Never have I had a problem with it, and I've been doing this for years.
There is *one* Linux. There are *several* distributions. There is *one* Linux kernel. When you hear Alan Cox announce that he's forking the codebase, you can call me and we'll talk.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
And it's killer hardware, to boot.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
anyway, my point about MS using BSD as a "weapon" is still valid. We should keep an eye out and see if we start seeing more articles that attack linux.
*sigh* ok flame me... I commited a sin. I posted before reading the whole article...
No they didn't.
The whole Article is biased towards M$.
I wonder: Hell, why does an M$NBC Article show
up on slashdot anyway ?
There isn't even information in this article - it's redundant ! I leared this much about
GPL vs BSD licenses just by listening comp.os.freebsd.misc for 2 days !
I thinks slashdot is getting worse.
* Signatures Lie * * The Lord of the Pit *
I really wish some of these articles would focus on the concept of using the best OS for a particular function. When we decided to get some network sniffers running for Intrusion Detection we went with OpenBSD for their security and top notch packet filter that tells an accurate assesment of the number of packets dropped. Linux will tell you it never drops any packets because it doesn't really know. Solaris is the same way.
However, when we needed a logging box running RAID and SMP, the documentation for *BSD (free versions) was not clear. Linux OTOH had both RAID and SMP support that was clean and ready to go.
To me, any ISP or serious admin will not restrict themselves to one OS as the solution to all their problems. Add free to functional as being the two biggest factors for a server OS to be implemented and your choices are Linux and *BSD. Do your research on what you need and then go with what fits.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Not that I know of, but from what I understand many of the BSD developers think that BSD and Linux would fair about the same. Especially in the mindcraft benchmark, since neither of them have a multithreaded ip stack, yet. I remember a while ago, a lot of linux users were proclaiming that linux had the fastest ip stack of any OS, commercial or otherwise. I honestly doubt that this is true, now or even at the time.
-matt
The reason that everyone says Linux is UNIX-LIKE is not because of its source code heritage (which has absolutely no bearing on how good it is), but based on the fact that the term UNIX is owned by SCO. If you want to say that you have a UNIX, then you have to pay SCO and pass all their pretty little tests.
Somehow I don't think you can legally call *BSD UNIX either, not unless you paid for and passed all the tests.
I use both daily, they both work well. Hey, as long as it is Unix, it's all good.
-Master Switch, one more element in the machine
UNIX is not owned by SCO nor do you have to pay and pass SCO tests.
It says in the article that Hotmail started out with BSD. According to my last netcraft lookup *it* *still* *is*. I guess they can't come out and say that NT isn't up to the task. Gee, with all those great benchmarks you'd think they could outperform anything anywhere (snicker)...
No get away! sit, sit, stay...
Perspective: I am a Linux user.
The thing that I am getting from the article is the idea that BSD users started on Linux so they have the experience of using Linux. The already know what Linux does well when they start to develop for BSD.
My Suggestion: Linux users should drag that old 486 out of the closet and put BSD on it. Play around with it for a while and see if BSD really does have some advantages. (I'm sure it has to be better at *some* things right?)
Now that doesn't mean you have to be a BSD developer does it? It simply means you will be a more educated and better Linux developer. I think the most dedicated and successful developers are the ones who are Open Minded (Tm) and are willing to share their data, AS WELL AS to learn from others who are also sharing.
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
OK. I have to buy a car. Yes, I'm looking for a good mecanics, but is that all? No. I'm not a professionnal driver. So, I first want a reliable car. Because I'm a new driver, I also want a car that I can open the hood to just see how it works (must be my engineer formation). I also don't want leather but a confortable tissu to sit, as well as some pretty options like CD-radio and a program for proximity support. I really don't care the nationality or even the company as long as it has a good reputation of fiability.
OS is the same thing. For me, all BSD or Linux is rock stable enough for my purpose. I found them both at the same time, including the internet world. I choice Linux first because FreeBSD seem to be less user friendly than slackware and have less options (it was a pre-2.0 FreeBSD I think, vs the old Slackware with 75 floppies to download). Now, I switch to Debian and quite happy with it for 2 years. I was looking sometime for FreeBSD but... well... I don't like the install process even if make world is very cool. Also, I'm now a bit use to the Linux way and don't feel much at home with BSD. Finally, Linux is more... do you feel the wave? ;) I like the community sense of Debian and can't find a similar one in FreeBSD.
So, I used Linux simply because I'm used to and because it has all the dynamism I'm looking for. Maybe one day, I will change for something else. MkLinux? Hurd? BSD? I don't know but it surely be Debian for anything else[1]!
Fabien Ninoles -- Debian GNU/Linux Developer
Well, regarding the comment "I haven't seen one ISP use *BSD" I can reply that I use Netgate Internet in Santa Clara, CA. Their entire operatio n runs on NetBSD boxes. I run a co-located server there, MkLinux on a Mac clone.
This is MS FUD at it's finest. Sure, split the *nix crowd even more. Point out to the unconverted that basically "Users of BSD and Linux hate each other and constantly gripe. Nothing ever gets done. Microsoft doesn't have any competitors, so there's nothing to argue with!"
I can see some IT manager/director reading this article and saying "Well, I certainly don't want to migrate our mission critical systems over to OS that are maintained by a bunch of pathetic whiners!". The reference to the 600 message thread on slashdot (i missed that one) was an interesting punch, too.
I believe that the bitterness and competition between Linux and the BSD camps are actually good for both communities. It keeps both camps from getting lazy, in a form of motivation unknown to MS (well, until recently)......COMPETITION. Competition is good. With competition comes innovation..trying to stay one step ahead of the other camp.
In a way, I got the impression Microslop is really, truely taking Linux as a serious threat. I really hope we're witnessing M$'s last stand with the Linux v.s Windoze war....
I've had personal experience with biasing ethics for self interest. I was working for a company that was a major contributor to a not-for-profit. A major competitor of theirs wanted to place an event listing in the NFP's newsletter. I was also a member of the NFP (a bike club). We came to a meeting and let everyone know (employees of the company and others) that we should not put for-profit rides in the newsletter. The club officers agreed and the rides were not put in future newsletter (they had appeared in one rogue one). Also, the company paid for the newsletter distribution, so they would in effect be paying for their competitor's advertisement.
/. be biased????? Nah!
Ethically, this type of behavior is questionable. It's like the MS-NBC site trying to publish objective commentary on MS's pseudo-competitors (pseudo because Linux and BSD are not companies, they are entities). It doesn't work. Our newsletter exceuded all for-profit events, even by our sponsor. (But, our sponsor had access to our mailing list, so...)
Only a truly independent media organization can objectively report news. Even the non-profits, NPR, PBS, and PRI are biased by their sponsors. The writers will think (perhaps not consciously): "Helping my company (i.e. the MS part of MS-NBC) will help me."
Could
Why is the computer/internet community so insistent on having one OS, or proving what OS is "better". I think that obviously each OS has its strengths and weaknesses. Linux and BSD are both workstation and server platforms that are excellent performers in a wide variety of applications. Windows 9x is a perfect consumer OS (at this time) becuase it doesn't require hardly any know-how to use. Windows NT also has strengths as a server due to its wide application base and ease of use. Novell has a large following in the large corporation. Personally, I think already having seen what happens to innovation and interestwhen "the best OS" is taken to the extreme. A development in the Linux or BSD community will spur Microsoft or Novell to act and vise-versa. People will preach about "write once, run anywhere" but how will that realistically work? There will always be a proprietary OS that runs its own thing. We should concentrate on the betterment of the OS that we use. I use Windows NT and Linux about 75% and 25% respectively, but I also work hard to ensure that I'm doing the best, most productive work for both OSes. I hope that Microsoft keeps thriving. It creates healthy concentration and focuses the attention other OS developers. In short, as Adam Smith proved in economics hundreds of years, competition will bring out the best. We don't need a "one best" solution for anything because more often than not, it WON'T be the best.
Some people take their .sig way too seriously
Hotmail runs FreeBSD on the front end and Solaris on the backend, last I heard.
As for the 70% of ISPs, I am surprised it is that low. I know many people at many different ISPs. With one exception, they run FreeBSD or BSD/OS. The exception is one site running Solaris. When you ask them why they do not run Linux, they all give the same basic responses: too slow, crash-prone, weak under heavy loads, easily hacked.