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VMWare/Quake 3/Unreal Tournament on FreeBSD
There have been a spate of reports about the usefulness of FreeBSD's Linux ABI recently. First off, Daeron wrote in with the news that VMWare now runs on FreeBSD, thanks to the efforts of Vladimir Silyaev. Vladimir has a page up with instructions and caveats. Secondly, Jacob Hart has confirmed that the Unreal Tournament Demo works flawlessly. Finally, Mark van Woerkom has created FreeBSD ports skeletons for Linux Quake 3 Test.
At last the BSD world is being recognized as an alternative to Linux. I've seen linux go download IMHO, and would like to see a proper OS get some time in the spotlight.
Yeah, slashdot is just a propaganda machine for Linux. It really should be under the "News for nerds, stuff that matters" category. Instead it should be "News for Linuxers, Stuff that only matters to them".
You gotta realize that Slashdot has lots of people running it, and they all have differing opinions. Not only that, but they like to play fair, and let other good OSs' have the spotlight sometimes.
This is *not* flamebait, just a true opinion of a dedicated slashdot reader :)
Sosumi. just kidding. DONT!
And I came in here looking for some intellegent posts. Maybe I'll come back later when all the hotheads, trolls, etc. have wasted everyone elses Mod points.
I like your -5 karma. -- from one message !!!
I wonder if it is going to go down anymore?
The front page of Slashdot provides a mixture of news which may or may not be of interest to people. If you aren't interested in the topic, then don't read it. That is the simple option. There are a lot of people out there who are interested in FreeBSD, and run it at home (like me) and the news that some more software will run natively is great.
Not everybody runs Linux. I have run Linux (SUSE and Red Hat) and I have recently turned to FreeBSD 3.3. I also run AmigaOS, because I like its architecture, messaging system, ARexx, datatypes and proper shared libraries, amongst other things. Doesn't mean to say I think it rules supreme though, as it is way out of date in many areas.
Variety is the spice of life. Otherwise there would only be DOS.
Everytime the name "BSD" is mentioned, some morons feel the urge to tell us that Linux "rulez" or stuff like that. Hey, what's your problem?
I'm using FreeBSD on my server and Linux on my laptop and I'm happy with both of them. I want to read news about both these operating systems on Slashdot.
I don't need news about Star Wars, but - hey, no problem - I simply don't read them.
If you really think that BSD systems shouldn't be mentioned here, why don't you propose a poll in that direction?
Two more things:
1. In case you still didn't realize: This article IS in the BSD section.
2. What about a statement like "Why don't you Linux cats give it up? Windows rulez the know universe - and then some" two or three years ago?
Just wanted to point out that NetBSD originated the Linux syscall emulator FreeBSD uses. By definition, we run anything they do in this stuff -- we created the code, after all. :)
This has happened to other platforms. The Windows emulation in OS/2 virtually eliminated development of native OS/2 applications.
Another example: FreeBSD has a larger installed base than Solaris, and yet there are more native ports to Solaris than to FreeBSD. FreeBSD users should be concerned that this is a sign that the phenomenon mentioned above is starting to happen.
My take: FreeBSD users will have to bombard manufacturers with requests for native ports to overcome the negative effects of emulation.
--Brett Glass
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My mom's going to kick you in the face!
the one piece of software that I really regretted not being able to
run under FreeBSD.
I suppose it is too early to hope that there is much user experience
of the port in terms of robustness?
I don't know the specifics on a beowulf cluster. But if they just use PVM, then by all means, you could set up a cluster with FreeBSD.
The short answer? You can't.
Nobody has ported the Linux /dev/3dfx interface to FreeBSD (yet) so you'll have to be content accessing your 3DFX hardware the "old fashioned" way by running the program as root.
Now before you all start screaming about the security implications of doing this, remember:
It's not like you'll be running the client on some critical machine such as your network's firewall, proxy, DNS, etc. If indeed you choose to do this, it's probable that the game client is the least of your network's security conserns...
Only the root user can make use of the XFree86 DGA extentions' full potential.
In the Q3A documentation ID recommend running Q3A as root anyway. 'Nuff said.
It's nice for FreeBSD users that Quake, VMWare, StarOffice, and other products published as native binaries for Linux can run on the Linux ABI, but it may be bad for the platform in the long term. Vendors will simply say, "We don't need to support FreeBSD; just run the Linux version!" Such an approach would consign FreeBSD to being Linux's ugly stepsister -- potentially forever. This has happened to other platforms. The Windows emulation in OS/2 virtually eliminated development of native OS/2 applications. Another example: FreeBSD has a larger installed base than Solaris, and yet there are more native ports to Solaris than to FreeBSD. FreeBSD users should be concerned that this is a sign that the phenomenon mentioned above is starting to happen. My take: FreeBSD users will have to bombard manufacturers with requests for native ports to overcome the negative effects of emulation. --Brett Glass
Moderators: Please moderate the above down to -2, or remove it altogether.
Well said. Go BSD!
You know, it's kind of ironic... I can't get the selectable boxes to *remove* the damned Linux news to make slashdot tolerable. Bitch, whine, moan. If I see another goddamned penguin despite having marked "NO NEWS ABOUT THAT FUCKING PENGUIN" one more time, I think I'll puke.
Run it as root, the /dev is not required...I never use it in linux
No vendor wants to support a multitude of platforms. The cost of porting the software and creating distributions for a fragmented market is high. The sales channel faces similar difficulties. However, a combined market that encompasses all Linux distributions and *BSD can be very attractive to a vendor. The goal should be to homogenize these OSes sufficiently to allow a single binary software distribution to serve all. This would require a consistent binary interface in addition to an abstraction of the file system layout. I believe that this could be done without jeopardizing the uniqueness of any of these OSes. As GPB pointed out in an earlier post, FreeBSD already provides binary compatibility with Linux rather than an emulation of Linux.
Doesn't this whole binary compatibility thing ignore platforms other then x86?
wow. me too.
[w00t@freaky.bish]# rm