Nikc, could you please explain the rationalization in having a completely seperate section for BSD related articles?
Sure. Rob or Robin can probably give you more of the inside scoop than I can though -- the first I knew about this was roughly a month ago, when they contacted me and asked if I wanted to 'edit' the section.
Basically,/. gets lots of submissions a day. The current queue of submissions to evaluate is 300 or so, and there are stories queued up for posting to keep/. going for the next couple of days to boot.
If we posted 3 BSD stories, 3 Redhat stories, 3 news stories, 3 YRO stories, 3 Debian stories, 3 "misc" stories, . . . the front page would rapidly get overwhelmed, and stories would cycle off the front page too quickly. 15 stories on the front page is a reasonable number.
Also, you get stories about things which aren't really 'news' in the sense of things breaking now. For example, I expect to be posting reminders when things like DaemonNews are out. But they will be kept to the BSD section (which you will be able to click to from the front page) rather than being on the front page itself.
By the same token, you wouldn't expect/. to post each week when a new issue of LWN is out.
How does having a BSD Section have an advantage over simply having more posted articles?
Stories stay on the front page longer, and it allows more BSD-geek-only stories to be posted to/.
How do you resolve the apparent inequality that results in a BSD section as compared with other Open Source Operating Systems (ie Linux, eCos)?
There's nothing that says that these won't get their own sections as well. For example, if there's been sufficient BeOS interest I'd be surprised if someone who's made themselves prominent in the BeOS community wasn't contacted to help out with this.
Note: This is not an invitation for hordes of BeOS supporters (or Amiga supporters, or Debian supporters, or whatever) to deluge Roblimo with applications for the mythical post of section editor. I've only been on board a short time, and don't yet have a firm handle on exactly how many of these kind of submissions/. gets. The BSD (and also the new Apache section) are experiments. Ones that we all hope are successful, of course, but experiments nonetheless.
If demand is the primary motivation for establishing a seperate BSD section, would you initiate a push with CmdrTaco and Hemos about a policy change to enact a more open submissions record, so that the Slashdot community as a whole had access to see the real numbers on types of articles submitted?
That's the first time I've seen that request on/.. As far as I know the numbers aren't secret, but as I say, I haven't been around on the 'team' long enough to know. Doubtless Rob or Robin will let me know in due course. But as I say there are ~ 300 submissions in the queue now -- perhaps 15% of those are duplicates, or have already been posted here. Some of them just aren't 'appropriate' for/., and the rest of them get looked at and scheduled for posting.
Questions that need a longer response are probably best e-mailed to me. If there's a lot of demand I'll either send out a standard reply to everyone who asks, or (if my prose is interesting enough) it'll get posted here.
I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles.
That's pretty much it. In response to someone else's "What does this mean?" comment --/. gets a fair number of BSD submissions, but (just like the large number of Linux submissions) most of them weren't deemed 'newsworthy' enough to justify the front page.
Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works.
I'm expecting not to have to write too many articles myself -- the number of submissions of BSD articles to/. should feed this section quite nicely. And to forestall comments from NetBSD or OpenBSD folk (and, indeed, Apple folk or BSDi folk) this section is emphatically not FreeBSD only -- I'd love to see submissions that relate to all things BSD.
I'll tell you the worst thing about this though -- like most other/. readers I used to check/. every day to see what new stories had been posted overnight. Now that I can see the incoming submission queue I can see them before they hit the main page any time I want, which takes a lot of the fun out of it:-(
If anyone's going to be around the Bay Area next week (whether or not you're going to the conference or not) drop me a line -- it'd be great to get together for a few beers and puts names to faces (I'm a Brit, and have been told that some of the beer at the conference will have been warmed especially).
Pretender wrote: I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles. That's pretty much it. In response to someone else's "What does this mean?" comment --/. gets a fair number of BSD submissions, but (just like the large number of Linux submissions) most of them weren't deemed 'newsworthy' enough to justify the front page. Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works. I'm expecting not to have to write too many articles myself -- the number of submissions of BSD articles to/. should feed this section quite nicely. And to forestall comments from NetBSD or OpenBSD folk (and, indeed, Apple folk or BSDi folk) this section is emphatically not FreeBSD only -- I'd love to see submissions that relate to all things BSD. I'll tell you the worst thing about this though -- like most other/. readers I used to check/. every day to see what new stories had been posted overnight. Now that I can see the incoming submission queue I can see them before they hit the main page any time I want, which takes a lot of the fun out of it:-( If anyone's going to be around the Bay Area next week (whether or not you're going to the conference or not) drop me a line -- it'd be great to get together for a few beers and puts names to faces (I'm a Brit, and have been told that some of the beer at the conference will have been warmed especially). N nik@slashdot.org / nik@FreeBSD.org
SD people say Microsoft use FreeBSD as hotmail's servers. But I learn that it is hacked!
Irrelevent. The web-mail application that's run on those servers was 'hacked' (in point of fact, the 'hackers' exploited a hole that Microsoft had left in there deliberately for their own software to use -- just another reminder that security through obscurity doesn't work). The underlying OS wasn't hacked, nor was it responsible for the hole in the first place.
2) Most of the ISPs use FreeBSD as their servers to handle large volume of data/file transfer Is this true?
"Most" probably implies more than 50%, and no one can give you figures with that sort of accuracy. But, many of the ISPs that I know run FreeBSD internally, either exclusively, or as a core part of their internal network.
My ISP in the UK, Demon Internet uses FreeBSD all over the shop. For example, they run a bunch of games servers (Quake, Half Life, Team Fortress, and so on). The astute among you are probably realising that there aren't any FreeBSD binaries of these servers available. So they run the Linux binaries under emulation -- rock solid performance, and it integrates nicely with the rest of their (predominently) FreeBSD based network.
Here's a question for ya. How easy would it for a Linux user to learn?
Good question. No one's really sure, but the daily migration of users from Linux to FreeBSD is probably a good indicator that it's not too difficult:-)
FWIW, we're in the middle of a push to write a "FreeBSD for Linux Users" guide. If you think you might be able to help with this, please contact me.
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.
This is one of the points that BSD fans keep bringing up. "You can run Linux (and SCO) software on BSD, so why use Linux". Yet I have never seen the issue of performance brought up anywhere. Great BSD can run Linux software, the question is can it run it as well as Linux, and if not how much worse.
There's two questions here. First, how fast is it, and second, how complete is it?
To answer the first question -- FreeBSD's Linux emulation is as fast as FreeBSD is.
"Emulation" is the wrong choice of word really. To put it in fairly non-technical terms for a moment. When you run a binary on a FreeBSD (or Linux system, or other Unix system for that matter) the "image activator" examines the file to determine what to do with it.
Most Unices have an image activator that does one of two things. If the first two characters are "#!" then it recognises it as being a shell script, and does the right thing. Otherwise it loads the binary, fixes up any shared object references, and runs it as normal.
FreeBSD's image activator does something slightly different. As you know, program make lots of system calls, and in the binary these calls are specified as numbers rather than names (i.e., open(2) might be number 57). FreeBSD's image activator pulls in an array that maps these numbers to the actual FreeBSD system calls.
For FreeBSD native binaries these are one and the same thing.
If the image activator sees this is a Linux binary, it pulls in a different array. This might map the open(2) call from it's Linux number (34 say) to the FreeBSD number (57 -- remember, these numbers are hypothetical).
That's all. So this is not really emulation at all, but simply implementation of a different Application Binary Interface.
Because there's no emulation to slow the process down, resource-intensive Linux binaries benefit from FreeBSD's better handling of heavy loads. This is the main reason for the claim "Better Linux than Linux" that you'll hear bandied about.
Before you ask, no, I don't know of any benchmarks, because I don't know of anyone that's taken the time to do it. If someone in the UK wants to throw a spare hard disk my way, I'd be happy to do it.
As to the second question -- despite what some of the more enthusiastic FreeBSD supporters here have said (and my address is nik@FreeBSD.org, so you can expect some bias) FreeBSD's Linux emulation is not perfect. Some (very much lesser used) system calls are not properly mapped, and some have no direct FreeBSD equivalent. But the vast majority of software works with no problems (that includes things like StarOffice, WordPerfect, and Oracle, to name three of the big heavyweights).
In addition, a couple of people have just joined the ranks of the FreeBSD committers expressly to work on FreeBSD's Linux emulation, so it looks as if the final wrinkles will be ironed out sooner rather than later.
See http://www.kaffe.org/ for all the information you need. Pay attention to the links in the FAQ, particularly the bits that talk about the relationship between Kaffe and Transvirtual.
How much has Apple donated to *BSD projects? It hasn't given anything to OpenBSD. I suspect similar tallies for FreeBSD and NetBSD.
The story doesn't mention it. However, about half the userland code is from NetBSD, and Apple have supplied improvements and changes which have been integrated back into NetBSD. If OpenBSD track the NetBSD userland then those changes are probably in OpenBSD as well.
Apple are planning (or already have) used code from the FreeBSD kernel in the mach kernel. I assume this is to get ideas and possible implementations, rather than simple cut-n-paste. As Apple's engineers refine those ideas and implementations (where refinement is possible, obviously, FreeBSD already has a very good kernel) those refinements will be fed back to FreeBSD (from which the other BSDs can grab them). Again, this probably won't be a simple cut-n-paste job, but more a "We were able to get x% speed up here by doing x, y, and z. Here's diffs, so you can reimplement it in your code".
Is this a Linux only discount? Or do *BSD User Groups get a discount as well?
Given the code is "UG" and not "LUG" I assume it's open to all the user groups, but it'd be nice to know for sure.
N
Re:I want to try BSD .. but which one?
on
*BSD News
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but with an ABI layer you are running at the same speed as the processor, just adding and extra translation layer inbetween the running program and the OS.
If my understanding is correct, this isn't true, at least not for FreeBSD.
The image activator that is responsible for initally loading the program image, fixing up references to shared objects, and the like, also selects the translation table used for system calls.
FreeBSD (in common with Linux, and probably the other *BSDs as well) has several image activators, and one is chosen depending on the binary format. For example, there's the a.out activator, the ELF activator, the gzip activator (that lets you run binaries that have been gzip'ed) and the Linux activator.
The Linux activator is much like the normal FreeBSD activator, excepts it selects a different syscall translation table. That's it. There's no on-the-fly translation of Linux instructions, or anything like that, so there's no performance hit.
Very true. freefall.freebsd.org holds the master copy of the CVS repository, and runs the web server. We used to have a machine called thud as well. This is because Rod Grimes is/was a skydiver (I think it was Rod that was responsible for the names, but I could be wrong).
Now they have names like beast, kickme, and bento.
If i'm nost mistaken the rendering software used was linux based and thus emulated on the freebsd machine.
Correct. Renderman.
Doing so was just cause the main person in charge was a hardcore freebsd guy and didnt really like going linux.
Charles Henrich uses FreeBSD in preference to Linux. He's contributed code/docs to the project, but he doesn't have commit access. This is a somewhat strange definition of "hardcore freebsd guy" you seem to be using.
They did sacrifice a lot of preformance due to that (refering to an older/. article on this subject). Also, that article went on to state that if they had freebsd based tools it would have done a better job.
False. A cite/URL for this/. article would be appreciated so I can respond to its FUD. If you don't have one, please don't bother repeating these allegations, because they're false.
And to others who've pointed it out; the description on this/. post is deceptive -- it's not a story about the Matrix, it's a Press Release (the words "Press Release" in the title of the web page and in the heading should have been a tip off to the more alert amongst you). This is why it's light on technical details. A more detailed story will hopefully be forthcoming for DaemonNews.
the way all the system utilities pointed to one big executable were very strange. I like to know how much space ls takes up. I hope this isn't a standard configuration, but rather something done for this boot disk. However, it was odd.
It's done for the boot disk, and it's not odd if you stop to think about it.
If you've got 15 different small programs (even if they use shared libraries) some of the code (like the C run time startup) is going to be duplicated in all the binaries.
If you can merge all the binaries together, and choose which chunk of code to run based on argv[0] then you've just saved yourself a bunch of disk space.
Take a look at the FreeBSD manual pages and look for crunchgen for more information.
So, if you wrote a web browser based on KDE, DjVu, and maybe some BSD-ish networking code, then you release it under the GPL, every time your program starts up, you have to display 80 lines of notices disclaiming everything 4 times. Whee fun yay.
I'll respond, since you include the BSD comment in there.
You have greatly mis-understood the BSD advertising clause (also called the claim credit clause).
It only applies if you use a BSD related feature of your product in the advertising. For example, if your advertising boasts that your product includes "The BSD TCP/IP networking stack" then somewhere else in the advert it has to say "Includes software developed by UCB and its contributors" (not an exact quote, but close enough).
If your advertising doesn't mention the BSD derived features then you don't need to give UCB credit.
All these people on/. saying "It's only a word, what does it matter what we call it?" are the same people who were getting pissed at Kipling's misappropriate of "hacker".
Say what you like about RMS (and being a BSD license advocate, I disagree with the GNU Manifesto), at least he's consistent.
Of decendants of these brave pioneers who spend 2100 years getting to Alpha Centauri only to discover that it's a long-settled backwater with a bunch of hick cyborgs running antimatter fuel depot.
Or worse. At 500 years per light year, Alpha Centuri is going to take a little over 2000 years to reach. But in that time progress on Earth won't stand still. Imagine if ~ 500 years after launching it some form of 'warp' travel becomes possible. Your generation ship is still plodding along, and will arrive at AC only to discover that it's already been colonised by people from Earth, and that they are probably viewed as historical relics.
There's a good SF short story that has this as a plot, but I forget the title and author:-(
Yes, the removal of drivers at the end of 1998 was restored. No problem. But what have you done to prevent this from happening in the future, and with the same people?
Well, given that the root cause was lack of communication, perhaps you'd actually like to read the "State of the Union" message. I'm paraphrasing (and anyone who wants to can see the original at http://www.freebsd.org/news/sou1999.html but;
Intention to remove code must be posted to the appropriate mailing list first (-current or -stable) and ample time must be allowed for discussion.
Seems clear enough.
And at the end of the day, the person with final say is David Greenman, as FreeBSD's principal architect.
Gosh. One person with final control over FreeBSD. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
Oh. Wait. There's only person with final say over Linux as well.
Regarding election of fbsd core members, I would like to see those 160 developers you mention have a greater say in who their leaders are.
Sure. When are you going to get the chance to vote for Linus, or Alan Cox?
You're not, right? They're there because of technical ability. Funnily enough, so is the FreeBSD core team (and the NetBSD core team, and the OpenBSD core team).
If you thought that it looked like E0.15 sucked, would you try and vote Raster away from it?
Slashdot Mirror
phypor wrote:
Nikc, could you please explain the rationalization in having a completely seperate section for BSD related articles?
Sure. Rob or Robin can probably give you more of the inside scoop than I can though -- the first I knew about this was roughly a month ago, when they contacted me and asked if I wanted to 'edit' the section.
Basically, /. gets lots of submissions a day. The current queue of submissions to evaluate is 300 or so, and there are stories queued up for posting to keep /. going for the next couple of days to boot.
If we posted 3 BSD stories, 3 Redhat stories, 3 news stories, 3 YRO stories, 3 Debian stories, 3 "misc" stories, . . . the front page would rapidly get overwhelmed, and stories would cycle off the front page too quickly. 15 stories on the front page is a reasonable number.
Also, you get stories about things which aren't really 'news' in the sense of things breaking now. For example, I expect to be posting reminders when things like DaemonNews are out. But they will be kept to the BSD section (which you will be able to click to from the front page) rather than being on the front page itself.
By the same token, you wouldn't expect /. to post each week when a new issue of LWN is out.
How does having a BSD Section have an advantage over simply having more posted articles?
Stories stay on the front page longer, and it allows more BSD-geek-only stories to be posted to /.
How do you resolve the apparent inequality that results in a BSD section as compared with other Open Source Operating Systems (ie Linux, eCos)?
There's nothing that says that these won't get their own sections as well. For example, if there's been sufficient BeOS interest I'd be surprised if someone who's made themselves prominent in the BeOS community wasn't contacted to help out with this.
Note: This is not an invitation for hordes of BeOS supporters (or Amiga supporters, or Debian supporters, or whatever) to deluge Roblimo with applications for the mythical post of section editor. I've only been on board a short time, and don't yet have a firm handle on exactly how many of these kind of submissions /. gets. The BSD (and also the new Apache section) are experiments. Ones that we all hope are successful, of course, but experiments nonetheless.
If demand is the primary motivation for establishing a seperate BSD section, would you initiate a push with CmdrTaco and Hemos about a policy change to enact a more open submissions record, so that the Slashdot community as a whole had access to see the real numbers on types of articles submitted?
That's the first time I've seen that request on /.. As far as I know the numbers aren't secret, but as I say, I haven't been around on the 'team' long enough to know. Doubtless Rob or Robin will let me know in due course. But as I say there are ~ 300 submissions in the queue now -- perhaps 15% of those are duplicates, or have already been posted here. Some of them just aren't 'appropriate' for /., and the rest of them get looked at and scheduled for posting.
Questions that need a longer response are probably best e-mailed to me. If there's a lot of demand I'll either send out a standard reply to everyone who asks, or (if my prose is interesting enough) it'll get posted here.
N
Pretender wrote:
I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles.
That's pretty much it. In response to someone else's "What does this mean?" comment -- /. gets a fair number of BSD submissions, but (just like the large number of Linux submissions) most of them weren't deemed 'newsworthy' enough to justify the front page.
Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works.
I'm expecting not to have to write too many articles myself -- the number of submissions of BSD articles to /. should feed this section quite nicely. And to forestall comments from NetBSD or OpenBSD folk (and, indeed, Apple folk or BSDi folk) this section is emphatically not FreeBSD only -- I'd love to see submissions that relate to all things BSD.
I'll tell you the worst thing about this though -- like most other /. readers I used to check /. every day to see what new stories had been posted overnight. Now that I can see the incoming submission queue I can see them before they hit the main page any time I want, which takes a lot of the fun out of it :-(
If anyone's going to be around the Bay Area next week (whether or not you're going to the conference or not) drop me a line -- it'd be great to get together for a few beers and puts names to faces (I'm a Brit, and have been told that some of the beer at the conference will have been warmed especially).
N
nik@slashdot.org / nik@FreeBSD.org
Pretender wrote: I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles. That's pretty much it. In response to someone else's "What does this mean?" comment -- /. gets a fair number of BSD submissions, but (just like the large number of Linux submissions) most of them weren't deemed 'newsworthy' enough to justify the front page. Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works. I'm expecting not to have to write too many articles myself -- the number of submissions of BSD articles to /. should feed this section quite nicely. And to forestall comments from NetBSD or OpenBSD folk (and, indeed, Apple folk or BSDi folk) this section is emphatically not FreeBSD only -- I'd love to see submissions that relate to all things BSD. I'll tell you the worst thing about this though -- like most other /. readers I used to check /. every day to see what new stories had been posted overnight. Now that I can see the incoming submission queue I can see them before they hit the main page any time I want, which takes a lot of the fun out of it :-( If anyone's going to be around the Bay Area next week (whether or not you're going to the conference or not) drop me a line -- it'd be great to get together for a few beers and puts names to faces (I'm a Brit, and have been told that some of the beer at the conference will have been warmed especially). N nik@slashdot.org / nik@FreeBSD.org
AC wrote:
SD people say Microsoft use FreeBSD as hotmail's servers. But I learn that it is hacked!
Irrelevent. The web-mail application that's run on those servers was 'hacked' (in point of fact, the 'hackers' exploited a hole that Microsoft had left in there deliberately for their own software to use -- just another reminder that security through obscurity doesn't work). The underlying OS wasn't hacked, nor was it responsible for the hole in the first place.
2) Most of the ISPs use FreeBSD as their servers to handle large volume of data/file transfer Is this true?
"Most" probably implies more than 50%, and no one can give you figures with that sort of accuracy. But, many of the ISPs that I know run FreeBSD internally, either exclusively, or as a core part of their internal network.
My ISP in the UK, Demon Internet uses FreeBSD all over the shop. For example, they run a bunch of games servers (Quake, Half Life, Team Fortress, and so on). The astute among you are probably realising that there aren't any FreeBSD binaries of these servers available. So they run the Linux binaries under emulation -- rock solid performance, and it integrates nicely with the rest of their (predominently) FreeBSD based network.
N
AC wrote:
I think the easiest way is to write a short docbook tutorial which spells out the commonly used elements by usage.
Excellent idea. Please check out the FreeBSD Documentation Project Primer, and in particular, chapter 4.
That pretty much covers it, I think.
N
AC wrote:
Won't Releasing this under GPL cause problems with intergrating with truely free OS's such *BSD's?
Possibly. There's a thread about this just started on the freebsd-hackers mailing list.
Matthew Alton is the person to talk to -- I'll not include his e-mail address here for spam reasons, but the post in which he announces he's working on it is http: //docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=269893+0+c urrent/freebsd-hackers.
You can follow the thread from that link.
N
Stonehand wrote:
Good question. No one's really sure, but the daily migration of users from Linux to FreeBSD is probably a good indicator that it's not too difficult :-)
FWIW, we're in the middle of a push to write a "FreeBSD for Linux Users" guide. If you think you might be able to help with this, please contact me.
N
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
There's two questions here. First, how fast is it, and second, how complete is it?
To answer the first question -- FreeBSD's Linux emulation is as fast as FreeBSD is.
"Emulation" is the wrong choice of word really. To put it in fairly non-technical terms for a moment. When you run a binary on a FreeBSD (or Linux system, or other Unix system for that matter) the "image activator" examines the file to determine what to do with it.
Most Unices have an image activator that does one of two things. If the first two characters are "#!" then it recognises it as being a shell script, and does the right thing. Otherwise it loads the binary, fixes up any shared object references, and runs it as normal.
FreeBSD's image activator does something slightly different. As you know, program make lots of system calls, and in the binary these calls are specified as numbers rather than names (i.e., open(2) might be number 57). FreeBSD's image activator pulls in an array that maps these numbers to the actual FreeBSD system calls.
For FreeBSD native binaries these are one and the same thing.
If the image activator sees this is a Linux binary, it pulls in a different array. This might map the open(2) call from it's Linux number (34 say) to the FreeBSD number (57 -- remember, these numbers are hypothetical).
That's all. So this is not really emulation at all, but simply implementation of a different Application Binary Interface.
More more detail about this is available at the FreeBSD Handbook Linux section.
Because there's no emulation to slow the process down, resource-intensive Linux binaries benefit from FreeBSD's better handling of heavy loads. This is the main reason for the claim "Better Linux than Linux" that you'll hear bandied about.
Before you ask, no, I don't know of any benchmarks, because I don't know of anyone that's taken the time to do it. If someone in the UK wants to throw a spare hard disk my way, I'd be happy to do it.
As to the second question -- despite what some of the more enthusiastic FreeBSD supporters here have said (and my address is nik@FreeBSD.org, so you can expect some bias) FreeBSD's Linux emulation is not perfect. Some (very much lesser used) system calls are not properly mapped, and some have no direct FreeBSD equivalent. But the vast majority of software works with no problems (that includes things like StarOffice, WordPerfect, and Oracle, to name three of the big heavyweights).
In addition, a couple of people have just joined the ranks of the FreeBSD committers expressly to work on FreeBSD's Linux emulation, so it looks as if the final wrinkles will be ironed out sooner rather than later.
Hope that helps.
N
People interested in seeing Forth used in interesting places should take a look at the current FreeBSD boot loader. . .
N
Suppose I come up with a new license, and want it certified.
How much are the OSI going to charge for this?
N
See http://www.kaffe.org/ for all the information you need. Pay attention to the links in the FAQ, particularly the bits that talk about the relationship between Kaffe and Transvirtual.
N
Vulcan wrote:
The story doesn't mention it. However, about half the userland code is from NetBSD, and Apple have supplied improvements and changes which have been integrated back into NetBSD. If OpenBSD track the NetBSD userland then those changes are probably in OpenBSD as well.
Apple are planning (or already have) used code from the FreeBSD kernel in the mach kernel. I assume this is to get ideas and possible implementations, rather than simple cut-n-paste. As Apple's engineers refine those ideas and implementations (where refinement is possible, obviously, FreeBSD already has a very good kernel) those refinements will be fed back to FreeBSD (from which the other BSDs can grab them). Again, this probably won't be a simple cut-n-paste job, but more a "We were able to get x% speed up here by doing x, y, and z. Here's diffs, so you can reimplement it in your code".
N
Is this a Linux only discount? Or do *BSD User Groups get a discount as well?
Given the code is "UG" and not "LUG" I assume it's open to all the user groups, but it'd be nice to know for sure.
N
If my understanding is correct, this isn't true, at least not for FreeBSD.
The image activator that is responsible for initally loading the program image, fixing up references to shared objects, and the like, also selects the translation table used for system calls.
FreeBSD (in common with Linux, and probably the other *BSDs as well) has several image activators, and one is chosen depending on the binary format. For example, there's the a.out activator, the ELF activator, the gzip activator (that lets you run binaries that have been gzip'ed) and the Linux activator.
The Linux activator is much like the normal FreeBSD activator, excepts it selects a different syscall translation table. That's it. There's no on-the-fly translation of Linux instructions, or anything like that, so there's no performance hit.
N
Very true. freefall.freebsd.org holds the master copy of the CVS repository, and runs the web server. We used to have a machine called thud as well. This is because Rod Grimes is/was a skydiver (I think it was Rod that was responsible for the names, but I could be wrong).
Now they have names like beast, kickme, and bento.
N
Correct. Renderman.
Charles Henrich uses FreeBSD in preference to Linux. He's contributed code/docs to the project, but he doesn't have commit access. This is a somewhat strange definition of "hardcore freebsd guy" you seem to be using.
False. A cite/URL for this /. article would be appreciated so I can respond to its FUD. If you don't have one, please don't bother repeating these allegations, because they're false.
And to others who've pointed it out; the description on this /. post is deceptive -- it's not a story about the Matrix, it's a Press Release (the words "Press Release" in the title of the web page and in the heading should have been a tip off to the more alert amongst you). This is why it's light on technical details. A more detailed story will hopefully be forthcoming for DaemonNews.
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nik@freebsd.org
It's done for the boot disk, and it's not odd if you stop to think about it.
If you've got 15 different small programs (even if they use shared libraries) some of the code (like the C run time startup) is going to be duplicated in all the binaries.
If you can merge all the binaries together, and choose which chunk of code to run based on argv[0] then you've just saved yourself a bunch of disk space.
Take a look at the FreeBSD manual pages and look for crunchgen for more information.
And yes, this is only done for the boot disk.
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So, if you wrote a web browser based on KDE, DjVu, and maybe some BSD-ish networking code, then you release it under the GPL, every time your program starts up, you have to display 80 lines of notices disclaiming everything 4 times. Whee fun yay.
I'll respond, since you include the BSD comment in there.
You have greatly mis-understood the BSD advertising clause (also called the claim credit clause).
It only applies if you use a BSD related feature of your product in the advertising. For example, if your advertising boasts that your product includes "The BSD TCP/IP networking stack" then somewhere else in the advert it has to say "Includes software developed by UCB and its contributors" (not an exact quote, but close enough).
If your advertising doesn't mention the BSD derived features then you don't need to give UCB credit.
Make sense?
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BTW, is there a good moving BSD linux project yet? I like BSD, but am getting really tired of the splits in the BSD groups.
What splits in the BSD groups?
FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD. BSDi as well. And the most recent of those (OpenBSD) was years ago.
Splits in Linux dists are far more numerous (RedHat, Debian, Caldera, Slackware, SuSE, Corel (soon to be released). . .)
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If RMS wants his software to be truly free
That's the point. RMS doesn't want it to be truly free. Truly free == in the public domain, you can do anything with it.
There are many things you can't do with GPLd code.
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This is pretty funny.
All these people on /. saying "It's only a word, what does it matter what we call it?" are the same people who were getting pissed at Kipling's misappropriate of "hacker".
Say what you like about RMS (and being a BSD license advocate, I disagree with the GNU Manifesto), at least he's consistent.
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For an excellent example of someone else's efforts with another free OS, look at the FreeBSD Diary .
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Or worse. At 500 years per light year, Alpha Centuri is going to take a little over 2000 years to reach. But in that time progress on Earth won't stand still. Imagine if ~ 500 years after launching it some form of 'warp' travel becomes possible. Your generation ship is still plodding along, and will arrive at AC only to discover that it's already been colonised by people from Earth, and that they are probably viewed as historical relics.
There's a good SF short story that has this as a plot, but I forget the title and author :-(
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Well, given that the root cause was lack of communication, perhaps you'd actually like to read the "State of the Union" message. I'm paraphrasing (and anyone who wants to can see the original at http://www.freebsd.org/news/sou1999.html but;
Seems clear enough.
And at the end of the day, the person with final say is David Greenman, as FreeBSD's principal architect.
Gosh. One person with final control over FreeBSD. I'm shocked, I tell you. Shocked.
Oh. Wait. There's only person with final say over Linux as well.
Sure. When are you going to get the chance to vote for Linus, or Alan Cox?
You're not, right? They're there because of technical ability. Funnily enough, so is the FreeBSD core team (and the NetBSD core team, and the OpenBSD core team).
If you thought that it looked like E0.15 sucked, would you try and vote Raster away from it?
No. Didn't think so.
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