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FreeBSD 3.4 released
On the networking front, the 'netgraph' code has been integrated, giving a much more modular networking framework, allowing arbitrary protocols and transports to be connected together. Amongst other things, this means that PPP over ISDN and PPP over ethernet now work. Many ISPs want to support PPP over ethernet now, and FreeBSD is ideal for this environment. The netgraph code was written and donated to the FreeBSD project by Whistle, and interested hackers can read more information about netgraph.
ISDN support has been improved, with an updated i4b(4) driver. Amongst other things, this adds support for more ISDN cards, including Asuscom ISDNlink 128K, AVM Fritz!Card PCI and PNP, and the Siemens I-Surf 2.0.
There have been security improvements across the board, including a new FreeBSD auditing project, to inspect the source code for potential problems, and fix them as necessary. ICMP redirects, outgoing RSTs, and incoming SYN|FIN frames can all be blocked, to negate certain DoS attacks, and the packet forwarding system can be configured to do so without decreasing the TTL, making gateways and firewalls much less visible, to list a few of the security related enhancements.
The Linux ABI has been improved, thanks to the efforts of Marcel Moolenaar. Linux versions of Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament work flawlessly (and often faster) on FreeBSD, as do many other apps for which only Linux binaries are available.
As well as these, there have been the general plethora of fixes, updates, improvements to the documentation, and additions to the ports tree. There are currently more than 2,800 software ports available, from Apache, to Zope, which makes software installation that bit simpler for everyone.
FreeBSD 3.4 is available now.
ink.
;)
;)
"Those will come with the 4.0 release, later next year."
Not really "late" next year.. Q1 or Q2, depending.
Sysinstall is finally being replaced with something a little more modular. Expect to see X-based installs, just like Caldera and RedHat, as an option for users who don't care about the OS but are instead writing a magazine review
The second biggest change with sysinstall is that if one of the packages is interactive and prompts the user for a question about their mail relays or something else, when the progress meter on the first tty stops, the dialog will come up (For the weenies you don't realize you have to do Alt-F2, i watch _entire_ installs on that screen. Progress bars are for weenies)
Enough of that. I'm going to give sysinstall source a whirl.. dcs and jkh have been fighting over who does what next
-bugg
Does anyone know how the installation of FreeBSD is compared to Linux? Compared to lets say...hmm....RH6.1 (GUI) or RH6.0...also, does it support most of the same hardware?
Why should I change? (not a flame, just a serious question)
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Markus
--
seems like far too large a percentage of Slashdot's stories are other sites' old news.
on the other hand, its not that big a deal since slashdot doesn't actually aim to be an up-to-the-minute news source, but rather an all-encompassing method of keeping geeks informed. (read: don't flame me)
Intercarve Networks, LLC
Here's a few things you might be interested in:
Why Yahoo uses FreeBSD written by David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo
Booting Linux and FreeBSD using BootEasy
Booting Linux and FreeBSD using LILO
Linux+FreeBSD mini-HOWTO Excellent resource for installing and using FreeBSD and Linux on the same system
This comes at a good time. I can upgrade my fireweall to OpenBSD 2.6 once the CD arrives, and while it's down I can update my second programming box with FBSD. Im having a geeky holiday....and loving it! ;)
After Linux was announced officially supported the Linux RFE was obsoleted and now support for FreeBSD is the number one Request For Enhancement on Sun's Java Developer Connection!
Check out the Top 25 RFE's. (Free JDC membership requiered)
Markus
--
its a known fact that linux is far more secure out of the box
;) FreeBSD can run Linux binaries faster than Linux. Yes Linux has better support as in "more Linux only apps", but FreeBSD can run them (UT, Q3, etc)
hate to break it to you...but no. *BSD isn't as "admin-friendly" as Linux, but even FreeBSD's security beats all Linux distros that Ive seen. And OpenBSD makes everyone else's security look like Win 3.11.....out of the box that is.
runs faster, and has more support HMMMM...in my tests (not damn benchmarks
If it looks like a newbie, smells like a newbie, walks like a newbie, and talks like a newbie,it must be a newbie.
Odd then that so many people would continue to use it. Odd that its IP stack code should be so well thought of. Odd that a standard install still doesn't require 400+MB of cruft to be installed on your hard drive (RedHat) to be functional. Fucking troll.
We need this, really bad.
The current state of Java on FreeBSD frankly isn't encouraging.
Jikes helps, but I'd really love to get IBM's JDK for linux working on FreeBSD at the very least.
The current JDK port for FreeBSD is too slow...although I really appreciate the work Nate has put into it.
Maybe if he had some help from Sun it wouldn't be such a struggle.
This is obviously someone who has never used any BSD. And hardly used linux.
A.) Linux is NOT UNIX. Linux is it's own kernel, OS, etc.
B.) Linux does not have a ports system. The ports system is incredibly awesome, ask anyone who has used it.
C.) FreeBSD is WAAAAAY more secure than linux out of the box. You should just see how many advisories there are in BSD vs. Linux. Linux has more than all the BSDs combined.
D.) SMP scalability is one of the many things that FreeBSD has worked on, and it is getting better and better as time goes on. Linux was once shaky on this this type of thing before, just so ya know.
E.) Most of the programs you use in Linux, came from UNIX first. (sendmail, apache, vi, C/C++, etc).
F.) can you say GNOME? that's just stupid. GNOME works under a lot of forms of UNIX, not just linux.
The moral is: Get a Clue. Duh.
I am a big fan of Linux, in fact I was a huge fan of linux, until I used FreeBSD and OpenBSD. Now I run more boxes w/BSD than I do with linux.
Wonder when the ISO will be downloadable. Probably as soon as it's mirrored to the other sites...
--
WorldServe Consulting
Wait a minute... there is a whole bunch of things in this post that pisses me off...
:-). And as far as "Linux, the choice of a GNU generation" isn't gnu developing their own OS, Hurd? I know absolutely nothing about hurd and thus have no clue, but Gnu is not tied to linux... last time i heard Debian was thinking of a BSD port... don't know how they'd go about that but anyway... i'm done ranting.
per the previous intel/freebsd hype story... this is pure hogwash, intel should be sued by the linux community.
For what? Is that what you think linux is about? Linux is not about suing.
its a known fact that linux is far more secure out of the box, scales better, runs faster, and has more support.
I'd like to hear the source of this "known fact". All of MY sources say OpenBSD is the securest OS out there.
freebsd and any other bsd for that matter cannot stand up to the superiority and mass appeal of linux.
Huh? In my opinion, once the people convert to linux then other people will show them how similar and interchangable all the Unixes are.
linux has won the unix war. it crushes *BSD, Solaris, IRIX, AIX, etc. no other os can match its superior SMP scalability, security, and more advanced features.
Huh again? SMP? As far as I know, linux does NOT scale well past 4 processors... i'm not a comp science degree so correct me if i'm wrong, but that's what I've heard.
can you say GNOME???
Linux, the choice of a GNU generation
LOL what does GNOME have to do with anything you've said before... is gnome even tied to linux? It's my understanding (flame me if i'm wrong) that pretty much anything Open source is useable on pretty much any platform that has X. Now someone who has gnome running on a BSD box let me know and prove me right
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
4.0-current is starting to look real cool. For the inside scoop, you should check out the -current mailing list archives at FreeBSD.org, but here are a few things:
The new sysinstall will have the CAPABILITY to support X installs. The talk on -current is all for having a fancy dancy configurator, but they don't want to leave the possiblity out. (The sysinstall that exists now is utterly horrible for changing, but it does a whole lot of stuff)
The ata driver is nearing completion and will replace the old wd driver. This means UDMA-66 support and other goodies.
Sound is being wrapped up into a new pcm driver, with support for most PCI sound cards, and work on the mmap support is improving.
A lot of drivers are being turned into KLDs, I'm able to load and unload nfs, msdos, vesa, various ethernet cards, USB (doesn't work too well yet), netgraph, cd9660, yadda yadda yadda.
I also here talk of after 4.0 FreeBSD will get a new ports/packages system. The ports tree is the best part of FreeBSD: cd /usr/ports/type/port && make install clean makes installing software hassle free. I don't know how it could get BETTER but that's what they're saying.
marotti.com
---
FreeBSD is to Linux as Linux is to Windows
every time soneone posts a BSD story 400 lusers always post questions that are answered at freebsd.org.
I beg your pardon. OpenBSD has telnetd enabled by default, as well as most other standard services (see inetd.conf). You _have_ to perform manual changes on every O/S, be it FreeBSD, Red Hat Linux or OpenBSD to secure it appropiately. A good admin will secure every O/S; an incompetent admin won't be able to install OpenBSD, independent of how good OpenBSD is.
Hello,
;-)
.sample files, you have to manually choose what you want to start upon boot, and enable it yourself. Personally, I like this - especially for a home system. I don't necessarily want Apache running all the time, just when I need to test a website I've created.
I've been using FreeBSD for a few years now, along with most other OS's I can get my hands on.
Currently I have RedHat Linux 6.1 installed on one box, and FreeBSD 3.4-Stable on my gateway machine.
The simple answer is, very similar in most ways, but that really doesn't tell you much. I'll instead mention some of the most obvious differences.
First of all, unlike RedHat, FreeBSD doesn't install and enable everything under the sun. With FreeBSD, if you choose to install "everything", you still have to configure and then enable most added-value type daemons. This is both good & bad, depending upon the user and what they can handle. If you're used to having some sort of defaults set and Samba, Apache, AnonFTP, etc. all startup on your first boot - you may be frustrated that these aren't running the first boot into FreeBSD. Although base defaults are places in
The second difference, and most important to me, is FreeBSD's install lets you choose the base "distribution" you want (Developer, X-Developer, X-User, Minimal, Everything, etc.) BEFORE it fetches anything. This is really important to me since I install via FTP from the Internet. I just replaced RedHat 6.1 with FreeBSD 3.4 on my laptop. Since I have the full 3.4-Stable sources on my gateway machine, I only need a minimal install on the laptop. I can then NFS mount the gateway's fs and compile/install the complete system from there. This cuts down drastically the amount of transfers over my modem. When I installed the minimal RedHat distributing on my laptop it took quite a few hours to complete. FreeBSD was done with the minimal base in about 20 minutes. Then, since I had already compiled the updated source on my gateway, I just had to mount the NFS exports and do a "make installworld" - BAM! Complete install on my laptop within about an hour.
As for technical differences, Linux uses one entire "DOS" extended partition for it's further slicing into swap and fs points. With FreeBSD, this "DOS" partition is created as a primary, not extended. This makes it easier to delete if you're just playing with OS's, since a DOS diskette with fdisk on it can remove the FreeBSD partition. With Linux, you can't remove the extended partition because extended drives exist, but DOS can't read the extended drive, so you're SOL.
The init scripts are also completely different. Many folks may argue that System V scripts are better than BSD scripts, or vis versa. I don't particularly think either is better, they're simply different.
hmmm... Think that's the major things you'll notice right off the bat. The hardware support is pretty much the same, I rarely find a device that one can use and the other can't. Usually, it's either supported by both FreeBSD and Linux, or neither of them at all.
Good luck! Remember, new experiences are opportunities to learn and grow! I have used/still use about 15 different OS's. Most of them Unix or Unix-like variants. They all have strengths, they all have weaknesses, and they all are different in many ways. But then again, they are all mostly the same.
Michael.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Yes, telnetd is very secure. Duh. Name an example.
You should just see how many advisories there are in BSD vs. Linux. Linux has more than all the BSDs combined.
Linux has also more users than BSD combined. Where is your point? And just to conquer your virtual argument, we also look at..
Most of the programs you use in Linux, came from UNIX first.
As you say, much of Linux' software was written for UNIX. So, if there are advisories for Linux software, does not that mean that the UNIX programs are vulnerable? And in turn, does not it mean, if BSD uses this UNIX software, that BSD is vulnerable as well?
FreeBSD currently has some problems. For example:
(FreeBSD-current user too lazy to login)
Man, you're pretty evil.. are you in league with the devil?
This didn't mention that it also has a very efficient PPPoE implementation.
Should I take it you speak for everyone that supports microsoft. I guess since every pro-ms person is that same, then that means you all type in capital letters and rant about "linux zealotry" and "communism". Lemme guess, you are a MS "Patriot", right?
You are a product of your own stupidty
We still need a fast JavaVM for the FreeBSD platform, alongwith an efficient Java-sockets library. FreeBSD as many would claim is the ultimate networking platform, so why could they not put the time and effort into making an extremely fast VM on FreeBSD? It would be ideal for all businesses running a webserver, and using Java servlets.
Now, I'm almost expecting to sound like an idiot for asking this, but I've been hearing about it for a while and still can't figure it out. Why would a person want ppp over ethernet? If you have an ethernet connection, what good would layering a ppp connection on top of it do?
ok, I am a big alpha fan, and dude, I think every other point has been covered, but I'll be damned if you think linux scales better than tru64 over multiple processors. Either way you are a troll, but its nice to get my alpha plug in there :)
Note that they said ISP's really want this. That leads me to believe that they really mean making servers running pppd answer connections over ethernet instead of serial lines, so maybe they can hook up modem pools/terminal servers to their LAN infrastructure, instead of directly connecting them to a whole bunch of serial ports. This especially makes sense when talking about DSL and cable modem services - I'm sure that Cisco, Lucent et al. are soon/now shipping what amount to gateways between Fast/Gigabit Ethernet and DSL/Cable. Disclaimer - I don't work at an ISP so maybe I don't know what the hell I'm talking about ;-). But I do work at TI which churns out a lot of the DSL & cable modem chips (see e.g. www.ti.com), so maybe I do....
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
#include "disclaim.h"
"All the best people in life seem to like LINUX." - Steve Wozniak
Or just use pkg_add if you don't care about having the source around. (pkg_add -r is nice for
/usr/ports/security/openssh
/usr/ports/security/openssh
installing from the Internet; Debian has a similar mechanism for downloading and installing, I don't
know whether any of the RPM-based package installers do.)
RPM has URL handling built-in (rpm -Uvh ftp://foo.bar.com/path/to/baz.rpm for example), just like Debian's apt.
One thing the Linux packaging systems all support that FreeBSD doesn't, as far as I can tell, is package versioning. What I mean by that is say that I install my FreeBSD 3.4 box, and then I
cd
sudo make CC=gcc install
So far, so good. I've installed OpenSSH 1.2 on my box, and I'm happy.
Then, a couple of days later, I cvsup my box, and some more patches for OpenSSH 1.2 come in. So, I
cd
sudo make CC=gcc install
and it refuses to install. Since it's still OpenSSH-1.2, the FreeBSD pkg system sees it as being the same package that's already installed, so I have to
sudo make deinstall; sudo make CC=gcc reinstall
which isn't that big a deal, except that it means all my customized configuration files (/usr/local/etc/sshd_config, in this case) get blown away.
With Linux packaging, however, there's versioning of packages. So, the first install I did would have been something like openssh-1.2-1.src.rpm (or openssh-1.2-1_src.deb), and the second one with more patches a couple of days later would have been openssh-1.2-2.src.rpm (or openssh-1.2-2_src.deb). Because of the versioning on the package, it can tell that it's later, and it upgrades, and w/o blowing away my configs.
Am I missing out on a major functionality of BSD packaging that I just haven't figured out how to access, or is this an area where BSD packaging is lacking in comparison to Linux packaging?
Really make me not want to even bother with FreeBSD. (Yes, I /do/ currently use Linux(Slack4.0), and I yes I /would/ like to try FreeBSD)
Talk to Corel about that :)
From inetd.conf on my OpenBSD 2.6 laptop (recently installed, not yet tweaked):
#telnet stream tcp nowait root ...
Your other points, however, are well taken. Most open source OSen can be made as secure or as insecure as the admin is capable of. In the case of OpenBSD, it simply takes less effort since the emphasis is on security, whereas other OSen seem to be focused on ``gee whiz, look what I can do'' out of the box.
Think about all the fascinating socal factors involved. Who is drawn to irc? Who becomes a regular there? How is pecking order determined? How is it preserved? How does a community age? How does an established power or prestige structure react to new members in that community? How does the lack of face-to-face contact change interactions? Does communication suffer, or is it smoothed? Are we quicker to show kindness if the other person is a person, not lines of type? Are we quicker to do casual harm if all there is on the other side is a line of type? How do we perceive the "us" and "them"? Are strangers always "them", and if not, which ones are "us"? Does the speed of feedback change any of this? What behaviours produce positive reinforcement, what behaviours negative ones? How does the overall friendliness of the group change with time? Do members come and go randomly, or are their entrenched figures? How well do these group dynamics scale as membership increases? Are there regular patterns of behavior that occur only in specific sorts of groups but not in others? Is it long-term helpful to give individual attention to each newcomer's duplicate questions rather than creating a FAQ? What differences and similaries in communications can be found between mailing lists, newsgroups, IRC, and Slashdot? Are these different than the group dynamics you find in a real-time live club devoted to a common interest that meets regularly, or from what you'd find in an informal bunch of pals hanging out at there favorite pub? Is Slashdot really something of a time-delayed webchat?
There's a very interesting paper or three waiting for some budding sociologist to write about interactions in the hacker community's electronic forums.
I find several references to this supposed ability scatttered on sites across the world. The company that I work for has about 20 FreeBSD and OpenBSD boxes (both webservers and firewalls) and 12 Linux boxes (used for development, webservers, mailservers, and fileservers), and I can't say that I have seen anything more than VERY simple Linux binaries that run faster on FreeBSD than on native Linux. This very definitely includes the Quake3 demo. We play it extensively after (during if no ones looking) work and we fight for the available linux machines and whine about getting stuck with the FreeBSDs. Has anyone ever seen anything more than a trivial Linux binary run faster on FreeBSD?
stuff about IBM's java for Linux not working under FreeBSD
But what about FreeBSD's Linux compatibility layer? Is it more hype than reality, and can't run real-world Linux apps? Or is it a technical problem specific to Java?
Guess what? The similarities so far outweigh the differences as to render these latter wholly inconsequential. Quite obviously, here we are at most speaking variant dialects of the same common language called Unix, not completely different languages.
We shouldn't let flaming bigots get in the way of open mindedness. When I have a spare box one of these days then I would like to give OpenBSD a try as a secure cable modem router. I'm worried that if I do that I might have a hard time getting newbie help. But maybe I shouldn't worry? After all, not all Linux advocates are flaming elitist bigots. Most Linux users I've run into are quietly helpful. Perhaps this is true of the BSD camp as well. It's been my observation that truely clued in computer users have little use for bigots, advocates and promoters. They simply use what works. In the LUG I attend, the strengths of the various BSDs are acknowledged and some the attendees use BSD boxen for various purposes. This does not have to be a "either or" world. If you're interested in a BSD then try one out. You might just make some friends instead of the enemies you're expecting.
JDK 1.2 for Linux is available and working on FreeBSD, check the mailing list archives for more info on this. But native support would of course be preferred.
JDK 1.1 on FreeBSD is in excellent condition. Performance is IMHO good. Read mailing list archives on more info and discussion on this.
It's JDK 1.2 and future releases that are requested. Also some of the extensions could be worth having.
Markus
--
Having worked for Yahoo! for several months, I have the following points to make about their usage of FreeBSD:
David Filo tried an early version of Linux (a Slackware distro I beleive), but didn't have much success in getting it installed. The legend at Yahoo! is that a copy of FreeBSD was passed onto him, and he only gave it a try because it installed first time. A slightly dubious reason for choosing one OS over another, but at the time FreeBSD was certainly more mature than Linux.
Yahoo! use large numbers of uniprocessor machines with each HTTP request marshalled out on a round-robin basis. When the load gets too great, it's simply a case of adding more machines and tweaking the boxes that assign requests. This approach was taken because multiprocessor setups are that much less reliable.
My experience of FreeBSD was that it makes a fantastic server OS, but version 2.2.* didn't cut it as a desktop platform. I have a copy of 3.3 sitting in my desk drawer and I'm keen to see what's changed from a workstation user's perspective, so don't flame me about using an old version.
My major gripe with FreeBSD is that upgrading can be a pain. The ports and packages collection is not the panacea that many FreeBSD users seem to believe. My hard drive soon became full of half-working applications, with little or no control over what was being installed and where.
This may have been an issue with running FreeBSD 2.2.8 when version 3.1 was already available, but the ports and packages I tried came from the 2.2.* branch. Now that I've left Yahoo! I'm back to using Linux on the desktop, and NetBSD on my Sun servers.
There is undeniably an elitism amongst FreeBSD users that I neither liked nor could I understand. One of the regular complaints I heard was that Linux installation and configuration tools were uneccessary bloat. Well, I can hand edit a kernel config file on both Linux and FreeBSD as well as the next guru, but I'd much rather use 'make menuconfig'. This kind of carping was sheer elitism, and underlined that a sea change in FreeBSD users attitudes was required (if not in that of the developers). Otherwise, the OS would become nothing more than a *tiny* niche platform. With the alternative installation programs touted for version 4.0, it looks like this change is coming.
Chris Wareham
sysinstall is extremely buggy with ide hard drives. I was simply amazed that I had to reboot my computer and wait again for the 2 boot disks to load each time I screew up with partitioning. It turns out that after sysinstall puts you back in the main menu, it will no longer recognize a second drive. The only way to get sysinstall to recognize it is to just to start over. This was my experience with installing sysinstall with freenbsd 3.2 on a second partition of the second ide wd disk. I believe linux is great with ide and buggy with scsi and bsd is the exact opposite.
.xinitrc and /etc/inittab to start xwindows automaticall. I needed to edit the path variables to run linux apps and the env command wasn't there. I know freebsd has equalivent commands and apps but I find the splintering kind of frustating. I bet if I started freebsd first and then switched tolinux I would have similiar problems finding *bsd apps and files. We need to merge them together somehow. I am glad they are going modular. It will help fix bugs and make installations easier.
Anyway I think the freebsd kernel is great and my bad expereince was just with the install app. I just wish the *bsd and sys v were more similiar. As a unix newbie for about a year, I had trouble finding
It's remarkable how much "technical competence" or "discerning professional judgment" gets branded as élitism. In fact, current usages of "élite", "élitist", and "élistism" are just part of the whole dumbing-down of America theme. Or, if you would, part of the supreme dominance of uninformed consumerism and the mass media's manipulations.
It is not "élitist" to prefer food that doesn't suck, or cars that don't break down, or software that doesn't crash. It is not "élitist" to want a clean, digital CD instead of a scratchy phonograph disc. It is not "élitist" to ask for a senior surgeon instead of an intern. It is not "élitist" to prefer BSD over CP/M.
In short, pay very careful every time you see someone using terms like "élite", "élitist", and "élistism". In almost every case, what you're seeing is a form of bigotry and prejudice that's bashing someone with a politically correct putdown that Joe Bubba can lend his cheerlead to. But it's still a disrespectful and facile insult.
This tred is subtly but seriously dangerous, and it's not just in our schools that it's happening. In recent years, the country as a whole as come to extoll the stupid, the dumb, the intellectually challenged if you would. There is no excellence, no pride, no "going the extra mile". To pretend that everyone is the same, that we are all no different in what we know or *can* know or what we do or *can* do, whether it be from training or education or intelligence or energy or motivation, is a damned lie.
So don't grab a nice little trendy buzzterm like "élitism" and bash down technical and professional competence, any individuality or drive or vision--any personal flare. By condesendingly scoffing at élitism, you're just furthering our current national hobby the Dumbing of America.
(And don't worry, you folks outside of America. Your time, too, is coming.)
dpkg has an advantage over RPM (not sure about pkg_add) when it comes to dependencies. If you want to install a new package, you tell apt-get to install it, and it figures out what other packages you need. This vs. RPM, which tells you what _files_ you need...though I suppose you may want to install those library files manually anyway, but probably not in most cases.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Oh yeah, you get Theo DeRaadt instead. Hrmmm...I still can't decide.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Linux is a Unix as far as I'm concerned (at the API level), but there are other ways to define what is/not Unix.
IIRC the 'Unix' trademark is now owned by Usenix (spelling?), Novell giving it to them when they sold off their Unix investments. Again, IIRC, Usenix set up a branding program so that Unix-like operating systems could call themselves 'Unix' if they met a series of compatability tests.
I remember dealing with a person from IBM technical sales who said that OS/400 (the AS/400's operating system) could pass the standards needed, but 'IBM doesn't want the AS/400 lowered to the status of a Unix box'.
Has Linux received this branding? I believe that *BSD got it by being grandfathered in, but I could be wrong...
Jeff
I'm getting very tired of this "out-of-the-box" mentality. What is it that you want? If you want an OS to be totally secure OOTB, then it's impossible (different crypto for US v. other parts of the world). Plus, the idea of something being ready OOTB is so that less clued people can install it? This is a VERY BAD IDEA...you NEED cluefull people to at least set up the machine and put:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
in a cron job (or install AutoRPM, or whatever), preferably to stay around and admin it, or it's NOT SECURE.
So, OOTB is for desktops then, you say? OK, if I shipped a system to be what I considered secure, it wouldn't have telnet, FTP, etc. enabled (or even present), so a lot of newbies would have a hard time using it. You can either have it be easily usable or secure to start with, take your pick. Desktops run svgalib much of the time anyway, so there goes your security.
Also:
1. The ports system sounds a lot like the Debian package system, which has never let me down. Other than WebGlimpse, I haven't needed to do a single non-package installation (other than compiling SSH, for which I would never use a package)(but it DOES have a Glimpse package! and also htdig!)
2. As Tom said below, linux IS unix; and as YOU said, many linux apps originated in unix.
3. Personal preference: I think that SysV is a much better system than BSD. But that's just me.
The post to which you replied WAS crap, but please get away from this notion of "out of the box"; it really needs to die.
Growl.
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
Theo is with OpenBSD, not FreeBSD. http://www.openbsd.org/
Dare we ask for a bit of professional knowledge?
Yes, but the FreeBSD attitude I encountered was along the lines of ``Why make it easy'' or ``If it is easy it must be crap''. As I noted, I can configure my networking with route and friends. I can configure my kernel by editing a commented text file. But this shouldn't preclude the inclusion of simple to use tools, or make me any less of a `power user' if I use them. Your whole comment just reeks of elitism, and that isn't anything to be proud of. Most people are elitist because they're insecure, not particlularily good in their field. That's why I refrained from lumping FreeBSD's maintainers with the users.
I agree that a trend towards not teaching complex computer subjects is dangerous. I was taught assembler, but program in C or Objective C. My point is that knowing assembler makes my code in C slightly more optimal, but I'm not going to code in assembler if I can avoid it. Perl is often touted as a language that non computer-scientists can benefit from - it gets the job done without necessarily requiring knowledge of what's going on in the guts of the machine. Are you saying that all those people who aren't programmers by trade, yet use Perl for the odd hack should be sneered at? It certainly looks that way judging by your post.
Having most likely burnt my bridges I'll leave it at that.
Chris Wareham
Theo is openBSD's top gun Jordan is FreeBSD's. (Not that he'll admit it)
It has the lowest volcano mark of any jdk port, even windows.
well, i'm not an expert, but it is trying to compile against libraries that BSD doesn't have.
As for Perl, I strongly resent its mention in every article that addresses me. I would also appreciate it if you would avoid putting words into my mouth I never said.
For a server OS I require a system I can remotely administer and depend on not to crash. FreeBSD suits this purpose very well. I have historically worked for companies with remote (think on the other side of the world, or next continent) server farms. Developing on those machines was either painfull, or out of the question because they were production machines. This meant I needed a desktop system that I could use for development. As I'm often the person evaluating new software (entire packages or simply upgrades), root access to a machine that no one else depended on was also essential.
...
For the desktop I require something that I can rapidly upgrade and has a wealth of niceties. The typical Linux distro comes with a massive amount of software, and something like RPM make upgrading a doddle.
I found FreeBSD performed poorly on low end hardware, something that Linux excels at. The libraries on FreeBSD 2.2.8 were odd - they deprecated BSD system calls that I had been used to on SunOS. I had much more success coding on the more SVR4 like Linux, and then compiling on FreeBSD for production purposes.
Arguably, you could consider Windows as a good desktop OS. It has lots of simple toys, and you can telnet to your development box. Run an X server and it's like you're on a Unix workstation. The flaw with this logic is if you're developing for a Unix OS, why not run one? This is why I always replace NT with Linux when I arrive at a new contract.
To conclude, I'm not knocking FreeBSD. It is a fine OS, and if you're from a BSD background (as opposed to a System V one) it makes the logical choice. My *personal* choice is Linux for the desktop, and my posts state my *personal* issues with FreeBSD in that environment. And with version 4.0 it looks like most of these will disappear.
As simple as that
Chris Wareham
me neither.
I just realized: Tom Christiansen uses OpenBSD. Doesn't it just figure that he'd be a Theo the Rat supporter?
The common intpretation of `elitism' is as a pejorative. This could be attributed to a fear of ones peers, but at the close of the twentieth century I link it to something else. Elitism - a belief that something is better than something else - has been one of the most destructive forces in this century. Look at Nazism, Social Darwinism or the Khmer Rouge. Elitism has been adopted as a term for paternal or downright oppressive ideas.
I'm impressed that you still associate it with it's original dictionary meaning, but that doesn't stop others interpreting it differently. The English language evolves, and todays slang will be part of tomorrows codified language. I'm particularily aware of this as a learnt Finnish at university. The codified language is overseen by a government body, and all loan words (foreign words adopted into Finnish) are closely scrutinised. This has lead to a dialect that reflects a certain section of Finnish at best. In fact, no one speaks the language as it is in the dictionary.
The same is true of English. In the UK we have societies that campaign for the `Queen's English', an illusory dialect that scoffs at slang or regional pronunciation. This is `elitist' as in the popular definition of the word, and tries to stop the spoken language evolving.
Some of this is evident in the way ``old school'' Unix people look at Linux and projects like GNOME/KDE. It simply masks their fear of the new, just as Nazism often masked the German middle classes fear of the future.
This is why many people suspect FreeBSD bigots are clinging onto an antiquated set of tools, API's and configuration methods. This attitude is clearly not evident in the FreeBSD developers - but then what incentive is there in maintaining the statis quo?
Chris Wareham
Ah, both a coward *and* a bully. Does your mother know what you're doing here?
Just try installing RedHet without perl (or even sendmail I think). You can't deselect those packages in a custom install.
Ummm... I don't agree with the tone of the original poster's message, but I just tried out the link and he's right. It is dead. Kind of an egg in the face thing for FreeBSD. I then checked the news group comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc., and there is a discussion about a last minute bug that was found, causing the ISO to be frozen until the bug is fixed. Noone on the official FreeBSD core team was quoted, but it does seem like a reasonable explanation.
He measures this by his experience on one system -- and thinks similarities between the two are ease of two.
I have far more luck with BSD than I do Linux -- but guess what? That's because I have more experience with it.
As far as comparing similar setups like Debian to FreeBSD, I see almost nothing differentiating the two -- besides some BSD's having some easier installs (well besides the partitioning process).
Good to see that changed. OpenBSD 2.5 shipped with telnetd, ftpd, rlogin enabled by default. It was changed before the 2.6 release. See the CVS log here: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi -bin/cvsweb/src/etc/inetd.conf
No, "setup" has not hit 4.0-CURRENT and from the looks of it it never will.
There has been _lots_ of talking about it on the mailinglists, freebsd-current iirc, with a thread similar to: sysinstall: is it at the end of its line?
You probably won't see setup until 5.0
Go search the mailing lists for more, too much to cover here.
-bugg
No devil, a dæmon.
His look is just a wordplay (dæmon <-> demon) in the tradition of UNIX jokes.
It's tradition as well with UNIX jokes that a lot of people (like you) don't get it. But that doesn't matter. Unix isn't made for stupid people.
Look here to read more:
http://www.freebsd.org/copyright/daemon.html
BTW: Do you run around with white capes, errect wooden crosses and burn them?
Oh, and please avoid KDE. KDE uses a dragon as mascot. Dragons rape virgins, you know.
If it didn't get Signal 11 errors and die when trying to choose custom packages.
Can anyone say rushed release?
..
"We must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom."
Bitchslapped? Give Rob a bitchslap from bitchslapped.com.
Why has nearly every BSD story a "Linux link" at the top of the "Related Links" section?
How does Linux relate to this FreeBSD release?
I don't see any BSD links in Linux stories...
Please explain!
In my experience when I "pkg_delete" something only those files which match exactly as when they were first installed are deleted. So if I say modified my smb.conf for samba, that file would not be deleted. However the feature you were describing is good. I wonder if they'll ever implement a versioning for patches and not just the release number.
I'm downloading the ISO from ftp.freebsd.org right this very minute. Finally! :D
Common sense is what tells you the world is flat.
I have successfully gotten GNOME to compile and run under X/BeOS. How's that for different? :) Now if only I could get my hands on an 8-way P3 system...
I would hardly say that someone who doesn't "get" a UNIX joke is stupid. Go down to your local hospital and tell one of the doctors there your little UNIX joke, I doubt they'll "get" it. Does that make your level of knowledge any less miniscule compared to theirs? I think not. Actually, I would say that someone who pretends to be more intelligent than they really are (like you) are in fact the truly stupid ones.
More than latter half of your comments do not seem to logically relevant to the title. What is your point? Yahoo!'s use of FreeBSD or your personal feeling about FreeBSD? Stick to the point.
Something relevant to the Slashdot article? Well what could one say beyond ``nice new features and bugfixes''. Relevant to the Yahoo! FreeBSD advocacy? Well, I think I illuminate the reason why Yahoo! use it.
As for my general comments on FreeBSD, I gained all my experience of FreeBSD (as opposed to NetBSD and pre-Solaris SunOS) while at Yahoo!.
Do you see the relevancy there? The logical flow of commentary? Maybe not - in which case I'll just point out that this is Slashdot, and any reasoned comments are a godsend compared to the Natalie Portman or gritsboy posters.
Or maybe you're just bitter that I can see faults in FreeBSD. Well, rest assured I can see the flaws in all the operating systems I use, so unfortunately for you I can't be labeled a Linux/Solaris/whatever bigot.
But there's the rub, had this been an article on a new Linux distro that I use, I may have been posting critiques of Linux. There's your relevancy.
Chris Wareham
Just got a response from the folks at FreeBSD about this - it has been corrected and is up now.
I'm the maintainer of OpenSSH for FreeBSD. There are two easy solutions.
The first solution is to "chflags schg" your SSH config files/key files. You should really do this anyway. Then, "make all deinstall reinstall clean" deletes what it can, and reinstalls everything except respecting the existing configuration files
The second solution is to do a "make -DFORCE_PKG_REGISTER all install clean". That will replace the old (but seemingly current) version correctly.
The actual problem is that OpenSSH doesn't make releases. Since there are no releases, it's rare that there's a time when the version is updated. But, would you rather have to wait months for new versions, or have me continue to update it often?
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
LinuxThreads itself has huge problems scaling. However, if you read -arch, FreeBSD will have a thread implementation (soonish) which spanks any free one out there, and will be comparable to the best commercial ones.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman