I just went through this a few days ago. Seems every year or two, I re-visit FreeBSD and ask myself, what would I miss if I switched entirely. A brief description of my encounters with FreeBSD 10.1 this week below:
1. ZFS cross platform worked beautifully. I have a multi-disk "ZFS on Linux - created" pool. I had no problems importing the pool with FreeBSD. And, as I switched back after running the pool under FreeBSD for a few days, I encountered no issues re-importing the pool under ZFS on Linux.
2. I have many KVM/qemu VMs. I'd love to run bhyve, but many VMs are Windows. It's not too hard to convert the images to boot up under VirtualBox. VirtualBox under FreeBSD works very well. For managing multiple VMs across several servers, I prefer virt-manager/KVM, but VirtualBox could certainly fill this need.
3. While copying large vm images, I realized BSD's cp command doesn't support sparse files. One is left to use rsync. There is the linux/compat cp command which does support sparse, however this cp command crashed on me while copying large files.
4. Minecraft -- It worked great under FreeBSD -- just be sure to follow the directions to point to the correct Java runtime in your Minecraft profile.
5. I installed serveral other programs I use frequently (some binary installs from pkg and some source compiles): Chromium, Thunderbird, Blender, KDE, Gimp, Kdenlive, LibreOffice, OpenJDK , NVidia driver using a 3-headed display, VLC, MPV, HandBrake, FFMpeg, and others. All these worked fine. For the most part, my FreeBSD desktop was indistinguishable from my Linux desktop.
6. I set up several NFS4 exported mount points. No issues mounting these from multiple Linux hosts.
7. Webcam tested no issues. I had to install webcamd and follow the instructions.
8. Audio tested and worked well out of the box.
9. VNC server and clients worked fine.
Overall, I'm -- once again -- very impressed. Setup was fast ( even ports package compiles were very fast ). I'm familiar with FreeBSD, so that helps with the install time. Newcomers should always expect to put in extra time (As mentioned, PCBSD can help get you into a graphical environment quickly, so less of a learning curve).
What would I miss if I switched over 100%??? I would miss KVM/virt-manager, native cp support of sparse files, native mkvmerge, and I'd love to get a native Eclipse IDE Luna port., and an intel 7260 Wifi driver.
To be fair, I still need to give it more time. I might try again this weekend and coming week, since I'll have some free time.
If you enjoy tinkering and learning the details of configuring your OS, FreeBSD is great. For a quick, get-it-up-and-working, PCBSD works very well.
As does zfs: man zfs
copies=1 | 2 | 3
Controls the number of copies of data stored for this dataset. These copies are in addition to any redundancy provided by the pool, for example, mirroring or RAID-Z. The copies are stored on different disks, if possible. The space used by multiple copies is charged to the associated file and dataset, changing the used property and counting against quotas and reservations.
Changing this property only affects newly-written data. Therefore, set this property at file system creation time by using the -o copies=N option.
I'd been running KDE 4.8 on Debian Wheezy for several weeks now. I chose KDE, since GNOME 3 fails miserably on my 3 headed display -- 3 separate X screens with no Xinerama and NVidia 302.11 binaries GTX 560 Ti and a Geforce 9600 GT. KDE at least would load. GNOME3 menu bar gets all messed up with duplicated calendars and other horrific menu strangeness ( even on a new, clean user account ).
KDE 4.8 works well, but a few anyone things like trying to open a konsole from the menu never opened on the active head. Composite would sometimes just stop working on one head, but continue to work on the other heads. A kwin --replace would fix this issue ( after several attempts ).
My biggest complaint with KDE is my computer just felt slooooooow. for a quad core with 12GB mem. Even with composite disabled, things felt slower than what I had been used to from running GNOME 2 for some time prior. Slow login and even after login I would launch a Konsole icon and sometimes sit and wait for 20 seconds while KDE continues to initialize or do something. Alt tab between apps, min/max windows and general paints just seemed very sluggish. Not a scientific benchmark, but spending years and hours in front of a Linux desktop, and you just know.
I switched to XFCE4 / Slim packages a few days ago and couldn't be happier. I feel like my computer is back again. Very fast, and it understands the 3 heads very well for placing Panels where I want them placed. And the Terminal Emulator menu actually opens the terminal on the active head with mouse focus. Compositor works well, though not as feature rich as KDE, I get nice transparencies and shadows that work.
I noticed xfce4 tears playing video in VLC more that KDE when compositor is enabled, but a quick disable of the compositor works fast and well to turn on and off which fixes the tearing. Turning composite on/off with the KDE system caused issues.
XFCE4 is now also on my laptop and it works very well for me.
How they got root access after logging in. Was it something simple like a sudo? Was it a known, unpatched kernel vulnerability? Or, was it some new vulnerability current kernels are susceptible to? Last I read, they logged in under a user account, then they got root access.
Although the content offered by Starz on Netflix was good, I was always disappointed the encodings were not high definition or even with a 5.1 surround sound channel. I won't be missing Starz ( too much ).
I still prefer the separate process per tab Chrome provides over the alternatives. And, as long as I can still enable the location bar if I want to, it's all good.
I can tell you why I just switch over to Eclipse ( 3.0 M6 currently ) for good. I've been using NetBeans 3.5.x for the past year on a large scale system, and occasionally would go back and try eclipse, then end up sticking with NB. Speed was never really an issue for me--bot were fast enough on a P4/1G of memory. Thought, Eclipse is definitely more responsive overall.
I think you're right about the J2EE part. Netbeans has a lot of built-in templates and stock tools and templates for building. There are some plugins for Eclipse, but you have to hunt for them. I've found that I never really used the templates anyway, but they were nice to have there.
I thought the project management of Netbeans was nice--mount a jar, it's on the classpath. However, after using the Eclipse project management now, reading the manual, and figuring out how to add things and group projects, I really prefer Eclipse's project management.
I first preferred CVS for netbeans as one could mount a local file system. Once I started using the pserver versions of eclipse to check it out, I really love their CVS interface of being able to immediately check out and visually view versions and branches--very nice interface to cvs visually, and the synchronization tool is very intuitive. You immediately see exactly what has changed in your system. The diff in Eclipse is very cool--graphical lines around and linking the changed areas.
Netbeans has a nice built-in GUI builder for quick prototyping. Eclipse does not, but it should be on the way.
Refactoring in NB 3.5.1 is non-existent, unless you want to pay for a plugin which my and my team found to be quite limited and buggy--maybe the full version is better now. Eclipse has it all built in. One click to get to all kinds of refactoring methods, hierarchal class views, etc. Very graphical and easy to see what's happening in large systems. The next version of Netbeans promises to have the refactoring built in, so we'll have to see how it is.
Debugging is nice in both. Netbeans let's you connect to a shared memory segment or socket server for remote debugging, I've only seen a socket implementation on Eclipse. Eclipse, though, has a lot of nice views like thread trees and some others I didn't find in netbeans...maybe they are there.
The database explorer plugin I was using in netbeans was okay, but the free one ( com.diligentit.dbexplorer ) I found for eclipse is Very Cool and graphical. Easy to view schemas and work with the sql layer.
Those are the main point I've found. Any my reasons. I think both are good, and both deserve an in depth trial period to see what features best server the user. Eclipse has a lot there, but a lot is not stock...it's in plugins. There are a lot of pay-for plugins, but so far, I've been able to find some very nice free ones to work with.
Can you name the game that has true 5.1? The last game that came close was Pirates that I tried with a semi-DTS 4.0. In any case, the point was ALL games on xbox do 5.1, only a handful of games on PS/2 attempt to through a custom design developers have to code in ala EA sports games or SSX trickery---we're not talking about DVD 5.1, we're talking about games. And uh, xbox has 2 memory slots on each controller.
Coming from a big PS/2 background and advocate, I was converted to the Xbox from my brother. For the same price of a PS/2, I got Dolby 5.1 in all games, network adapter, built-in hard drive, etc. The Xbox is very cool, and from what I've read, the #2 console. So despite the current losses, I think there is a lot Sony has to live up to in its next gen console to even catch up to what the Xbox now offers. And #2 ain't bad for a 15 month console life span!
I use mozilla and its email client exclusively on linux. The new features are great and I think it's a great browser. I just keep waiting for the day when I'll be able to play a wav file upon new mail. The gui is now there, and from what I've read, the windows plays wav files fine now, yet still no wav sounds on Linux. Hopefully the developpers will come up with a solution, as this seems to be touchy subject.
The public source is all there/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod, and you are prompted to go and re-build the c files on your own if the rpm can not do so by itself. I had to rebuild since I was running a newer kernel not supported by default. The proprietary code is contained in one static library-- libfglrx_ip.a -- which is linked into the final module.
Slashdot Mirror
I just went through this a few days ago. Seems every year or two, I re-visit FreeBSD and ask myself, what would I miss if I switched entirely. A brief description of my encounters with FreeBSD 10.1 this week below:
/KVM, but VirtualBox could certainly fill this need.
1. ZFS cross platform worked beautifully. I have a multi-disk "ZFS on Linux - created" pool. I had no problems importing the pool with FreeBSD. And, as I switched back after running the pool under FreeBSD for a few days, I encountered no issues re-importing the pool under ZFS on Linux.
2. I have many KVM/qemu VMs. I'd love to run bhyve, but many VMs are Windows. It's not too hard to convert the images to boot up under VirtualBox. VirtualBox under FreeBSD works very well. For managing multiple VMs across several servers, I prefer virt-manager
3. While copying large vm images, I realized BSD's cp command doesn't support sparse files. One is left to use rsync. There is the linux/compat cp command which does support sparse, however this cp command crashed on me while copying large files.
4. Minecraft -- It worked great under FreeBSD -- just be sure to follow the directions to point to the correct Java runtime in your Minecraft profile.
5. I installed serveral other programs I use frequently (some binary installs from pkg and some source compiles): Chromium, Thunderbird, Blender, KDE, Gimp, Kdenlive, LibreOffice, OpenJDK , NVidia driver using a 3-headed display, VLC, MPV, HandBrake, FFMpeg, and others. All these worked fine. For the most part, my FreeBSD desktop was indistinguishable from my Linux desktop.
6. I set up several NFS4 exported mount points. No issues mounting these from multiple Linux hosts.
7. Webcam tested no issues. I had to install webcamd and follow the instructions.
8. Audio tested and worked well out of the box.
9. VNC server and clients worked fine.
Overall, I'm -- once again -- very impressed. Setup was fast ( even ports package compiles were very fast ). I'm familiar with FreeBSD, so that helps with the install time. Newcomers should always expect to put in extra time (As mentioned, PCBSD can help get you into a graphical environment quickly, so less of a learning curve). What would I miss if I switched over 100%??? I would miss KVM/virt-manager, native cp support of sparse files, native mkvmerge, and I'd love to get a native Eclipse IDE Luna port., and an intel 7260 Wifi driver. To be fair, I still need to give it more time. I might try again this weekend and coming week, since I'll have some free time. If you enjoy tinkering and learning the details of configuring your OS, FreeBSD is great. For a quick, get-it-up-and-working, PCBSD works very well.
As does zfs: man zfs
copies=1 | 2 | 3 Controls the number of copies of data stored for this dataset. These copies are in addition to any redundancy provided by the pool, for example, mirroring or RAID-Z. The copies are stored on different disks, if possible. The space used by multiple copies is charged to the associated file and dataset, changing the used property and counting against quotas and reservations. Changing this property only affects newly-written data. Therefore, set this property at file system creation time by using the -o copies=N option.
I'd been running KDE 4.8 on Debian Wheezy for several weeks now. I chose KDE, since GNOME 3 fails miserably on my 3 headed display -- 3 separate X screens with no Xinerama and NVidia 302.11 binaries GTX 560 Ti and a Geforce 9600 GT. KDE at least would load. GNOME3 menu bar gets all messed up with duplicated calendars and other horrific menu strangeness ( even on a new, clean user account ).
KDE 4.8 works well, but a few anyone things like trying to open a konsole from the menu never opened on the active head. Composite would sometimes just stop working on one head, but continue to work on the other heads. A kwin --replace would fix this issue ( after several attempts ).
My biggest complaint with KDE is my computer just felt slooooooow. for a quad core with 12GB mem. Even with composite disabled, things felt slower than what I had been used to from running GNOME 2 for some time prior. Slow login and even after login I would launch a Konsole icon and sometimes sit and wait for 20 seconds while KDE continues to initialize or do something. Alt tab between apps, min/max windows and general paints just seemed very sluggish. Not a scientific benchmark, but spending years and hours in front of a Linux desktop, and you just know.
I switched to XFCE4 / Slim packages a few days ago and couldn't be happier. I feel like my computer is back again. Very fast, and it understands the 3 heads very well for placing Panels where I want them placed. And the Terminal Emulator menu actually opens the terminal on the active head with mouse focus. Compositor works well, though not as feature rich as KDE, I get nice transparencies and shadows that work.
I noticed xfce4 tears playing video in VLC more that KDE when compositor is enabled, but a quick disable of the compositor works fast and well to turn on and off which fixes the tearing. Turning composite on/off with the KDE system caused issues.
XFCE4 is now also on my laptop and it works very well for me.
How they got root access after logging in. Was it something simple like a sudo? Was it a known, unpatched kernel vulnerability? Or, was it some new vulnerability current kernels are susceptible to? Last I read, they logged in under a user account, then they got root access.
Although the content offered by Starz on Netflix was good, I was always disappointed the encodings were not high definition or even with a 5.1 surround sound channel. I won't be missing Starz ( too much ).
...Btrfs is currently under heavy development, and not suitable for any uses other than benchmarking and review.
That sure limits the uses of a default Fedora installation.
I still prefer the separate process per tab Chrome provides over the alternatives. And, as long as I can still enable the location bar if I want to, it's all good.
Mounting the cgroup file system and multiplying the 4 lines by every user account on the system in order for Lennart's patch to work.
Oops, I meant to put a plug in for jfacedb--not dbexplorer.
I can tell you why I just switch over to Eclipse ( 3.0 M6 currently ) for good. I've been using NetBeans 3.5.x for the past year on a large scale system, and occasionally would go back and try eclipse, then end up sticking with NB. Speed was never really an issue for me--bot were fast enough on a P4/1G of memory. Thought, Eclipse is definitely more responsive overall.
I think you're right about the J2EE part. Netbeans has a lot of built-in templates and stock tools and templates for building. There are some plugins for Eclipse, but you have to hunt for them. I've found that I never really used the templates anyway, but they were nice to have there.
I thought the project management of Netbeans was nice--mount a jar, it's on the classpath. However, after using the Eclipse project management now, reading the manual, and figuring out how to add things and group projects, I really prefer Eclipse's project management.
I first preferred CVS for netbeans as one could mount a local file system. Once I started using the pserver versions of eclipse to check it out, I really love their CVS interface of being able to immediately check out and visually view versions and branches--very nice interface to cvs visually, and the synchronization tool is very intuitive. You immediately see exactly what has changed in your system. The diff in Eclipse is very cool--graphical lines around and linking the changed areas.
Netbeans has a nice built-in GUI builder for quick prototyping. Eclipse does not, but it should be on the way.
Refactoring in NB 3.5.1 is non-existent, unless you want to pay for a plugin which my and my team found to be quite limited and
buggy--maybe the full version is better now. Eclipse has it all built in. One click to get to all kinds of refactoring methods, hierarchal class views, etc. Very graphical and easy to see what's happening in large systems. The next version of Netbeans promises to have the refactoring built in, so we'll have to see how it is.
Debugging is nice in both. Netbeans let's you connect to a shared memory segment or socket server for remote debugging, I've only seen a socket implementation on Eclipse. Eclipse, though, has a lot of nice views like thread trees and some others I didn't find in netbeans...maybe they are there.
The database explorer plugin I was using in netbeans was okay, but the free one ( com.diligentit.dbexplorer ) I found for eclipse is Very Cool and graphical. Easy to view schemas and work with the sql layer.
Those are the main point I've found. Any my reasons. I think both are good, and both deserve an in depth trial period to see what features best server the user. Eclipse has a lot there, but a lot is not stock...it's in plugins. There are a lot of pay-for plugins, but so far, I've been able to find some very nice free ones to work with.
Playing Halo late at night by myself with the surround cranked up had me seeing the invisible monsters in my dreams.
Nope, if you read the post, you get 5.1 from the Xbox, not the PS/2
Can you name the game that has true 5.1? The last game that came close was Pirates that I tried with a semi-DTS 4.0. In any case, the point was ALL games on xbox do 5.1, only a handful of games on PS/2 attempt to through a custom design developers have to code in ala EA sports games or SSX trickery---we're not talking about DVD 5.1, we're talking about games. And uh, xbox has 2 memory slots on each controller.
Coming from a big PS/2 background and advocate, I was converted to the Xbox from my brother. For the same price of a PS/2, I got Dolby 5.1 in all games, network adapter, built-in hard drive, etc. The Xbox is very cool, and from what I've read, the #2 console. So despite the current losses, I think there is a lot Sony has to live up to in its next gen console to even catch up to what the Xbox now offers. And #2 ain't bad for a 15 month console life span!
I use mozilla and its email client exclusively on linux. The new features are great and I think it's a great browser. I just keep waiting for the day when I'll be able to play a wav file upon new mail. The gui is now there, and from what I've read, the windows plays wav files fine now, yet still no wav sounds on Linux. Hopefully the developpers will come up with a solution, as this seems to be touchy subject.
The public source is all there /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod, and you are prompted to go and re-build the c files on your own if the rpm can not do so by itself. I had to rebuild since I was running a newer kernel not supported by default. The proprietary code is contained in one static library-- libfglrx_ip.a -- which is linked into the final module.
Got it all working and it's working very well!!