It seems they might consider thttd (well, I'm at the part of the messages when someone brings it up). At first glance it looks pretty nice (the OpenBSD folks only need to add ssl support for it). From their webpage:
thttpd is a simple, small, portable, fast, and secure HTTP server.
Simple: It handles only the minimum necessary to implement HTTP/1.1. Well, maybe a little more than the minimum.
Small: See the comparison chart. It also has a very small run-time size, since it does not fork and is very careful about memory allocation.
Portable: It compiles cleanly on most any Unix-like OS, specifically including FreeBSD, SunOS 4, Solaris 2, BSD/OS, Linux, OSF.
Fast: In typical use it's about as fast as the best full-featured servers (Apache, NCSA, Netscape). Under extreme load it's much faster.
Secure: It goes to great lengths to protect the web server machine against attacks and breakins from other sites.
It also has one extremely useful feature (URL-traffic-based throttling) that no other server currently has. Plus, it supports IPv6 out of the box, no patching required.
After reading its man page it seems to me they have similar philosophy to pure-ftpd: simplicity and security. (thttpd, just like pure-ftpd, doesn't need a config file, but if you decide to write one, it has a very easy syntax... not that apache was terribly complex).
So this is a submission about three screenshots showing a GNOME desktop - oops, I mean waimea. Seriously, even though 3 screenshots might be interesting, but can someone point out something waimeaish on those screenshots (aside from that 16x16 pager like thing on the right bottom corner)?
A link would have been helpful to the source of the info. (Unless the developer whispered it in the submitter's ear).
This is from Jem Matzan, in his review of SUN JDS (rel2).
"Sun JDS Release 2 is the most heavily restrictive software package I have ever seen. Sun takes the heavyweight championship belt for the worst software license ever to have crossed my desk. . . .
That's exactly what I've been pondering: a good cross platform filesystem. Not that fat32 isn't good, but the 2GB filelimit makes dumps a hassle.
Currently ext2 might be an alternative. There are two open source drivers, both quite buggy. There is also a commercial solution, which produces strange things. It worked for a while, then writing under (2k) makes double double sized - so it becomes full pretty quickly, unless you switch back and forth to do an fsck (which will repair, I mean correct the size without data damage).
It is a pity there is little interest in writing a good ext2 driver for windows - I think some of us would make good use of it, for good (and fast) data storage.
BTW, I don't use the commercial solution, its on my friends puter, and as I said, it worked fine for a while - and we don't know what caused it to register double sizes for data. It might be a windows thing, otherwise it worked perfectly (read-write).
Name for commercial driver is Paragon ext2fs anywhere, or something like that (try google).
For your interest: the ATI driver maintainer in KeithP's kdrive server is Eric Anholt (FreeBSD XFree86 and now x.org maintainer). http://people.freebsd.org/~anh
Why would divergence be a problem if the majority of distroes/flavours* (*the proper term for BSD variants as I learned on osnews) standardizes on one? Now almost the complete X.org implementation is in ports, and I think x.org will be the default (or 4.3 at worst) in 5.3 release. Also, note that one of the freedesktop.org developers (DRI work) is Eric Anholt. So don't worry, only good can come out of this fork:)
Perhaps you should read up on the ongoing development and restructuring (unless you are a troll). They branched the development into -STABLE and -CURRENT (much like bsd development) - CURRENT being KeithP stuff developed on fd.o, -STABLE being the branch out of which the current release is created. This release is their first release after the transition & restructuring period, which was pretty fast considering the importance and size of the project. But even though forking such a big project is not hassle free, there are already many improvements/changes in the current x.org release. Go read the changelog before opening yer mouth.
heh, using freebsd for some time made slack my favorite gnu/linux distribution as well. the keyword(s), as you aptly put it: most logical, simple, and easy.
I think one of the few things to look out for is the size of/usr/ports. If one uses ports extensively, some builds can take a lot of space (openoffice ~4Gb). Also, you can't put it on a separate partition (unless you have GBs to waste) for the ports tree is only ~300 Mb. - and buildspace is temporary. There is no good solution to this problem - you end up with a big/usr anyway, so having your home dir there as well (the freebsd default) also makes sense, for it isn't very often than one build openoffice (or java), and usually data in the home dir (music for instance) can be backed up easier than most anything else. So, although I have different needs and uses of freebsd (I think) - I know what you're talking about (defaults worked for me pretty well though: 256Mb for //tmp/var respectively, rest for/usr - but I had to change default config later for progs liking var by default, like mysql).
funny... bsd terminology is so pervasive. I have hard time speaking in terms of extended and logical partitions, for slices make more sense now. I also found myself referring to linux 2.4.x as their stable branch (without any intention to suggest that 2.6.x is not stable). OTOH it wasn't very easy at first to see how all those branches and releases work - now it is linux that confuses me (Is there a 2.7.x 'branch' yet? - I can't wait for their console driver to be fixed:P).
eermm... not insmod (and no modprobe).FreeBSD-Linux dictionary:)))
insmod = kldload - in his case, that would be kldload pcm or kldload snd_hissoundchipset - try ls/boot/kernel to see what's available
lsmod = kldstat
rmmod = kldunload
I'm sure there is, though I didn't check it for I use ports. But yes, pkg_* knows which version you have installed, knows if there is an update - well, you can install portupgrade too for more automatic stuff. portupgrade -a would upgrade every port. If you want to use packages in combination with ports, portupgrade -P does the trick. Portupgrade -PP (or portinstall -PP in case of new stuff) will use packages only.
There are also free binary security updates for freebsd - one of the developers (and./ user with the nick cpercive) provides them.
Also, you can specify a remote site when adding packages. The fruitsalad project provides fresh binary kde packages. I think you would install it with pkg_add -r url_to_their_ftp_repository.
Someone (who was also a deb user) asked me for an incentive to try out freebsd. I told him this: if you are 100% satisfied and not curious about it, don't try it. Otherwise, I think its a great OS and it is very rewarding (and convenient) - so go ahead! Also, the community is very friendly and helpful (and before I switched, I came from mandrakeusers and pclinuxonline, so you might guess that I had high standards:)) - www.bsdforums.org is invaluable if you want help:)
I was surprised myself by the easyness of building & configuring freebsd. Although I built kernel in linux (only a few times) I reluctant to try it out first (what, no menu? editing config file by hand?). But I needed scsi support for k3b to work (freebsd can write to ata cds directly with burncd, I think it even had direct ata cdwriter support before linux, but there is no graphical frontend to it).
So I had the handbook open on one desktop, going through the text file on a terminal, following the book point by point, commenting out unnecessary stuff, putting in some lines - than after 5 minutes, I noticed that I can't scroll down any further. I said: what? First I thought I edited the wrong file. I checked the handbook... and saw that the next page is a different chapter. Even then, I was a bit bewildered: that was it?? Yes.
Many folks would think that by using FreeBSD one can earn geek points, cause it sounds more 'difficult' - this is not the case. If you see someone feeling cool cause he uses freebsd, you can be sure he is bluffing. FreeBSD is easy! Of course, it caters to those who are not antagonistic towards the command line, but anyone who used slackware or debian would easily learn FreeBSD - if he or she is willing to read. Their handbook (see it on their homepage) is the best OS documentation I ever read, their man pages are superb, and configuration is much easier than any linux was for me. In other words: it is a great learning platform, thanks to the great documentation and the consistency and cleanness of the system. Forget about synthetic benchmarks and bsd vs. linux flamefests. FreeBSD is fun, and is an excellent desktop system, and ports just works (no freaking use-flags, its the job of port maintainers to provide lean and mean yet rich experience with the ports - now almost 11000!).
Nice explanation, I just wanted to add something: it is so very convenient that the OS and ports are clearly separated. My roommate didn't update his gentoo box for two months, and after a massive update a week or two ago, now nothing compiles (I think it was glibc...). Anyway, that can happen in FreeBSD too (well, not glibc exactly, but something can go wrong, like in any OS - so this is not a linux vs freebsd thing). But thanks to a separate src tree, there is a one command solution for every serious problem!
I ruined my system by deleting stuff from/usr/lib - and nothing would compile. I could reinstall stuff from the CD but that would be a forced downgrade and its just too unconvenient. But thanks to the fact that the entire OS (the 'world' - which is different from gentoo's world: world is the OS in freebsd land, and ports are programs installed on top of the os) build is self contained in/usr/obj, even though I didn't even have a working gcc, I could repair the system with one command: make installworld and a reboot. Oh yes, its a good idea to keep/usr/obj - because you have an OS reinstall one command away, and you don't have to fumble with config files, reinstalling ports, etc...
Hey, you are wrong (sorry for being blunt). Every now and then the entire ports collection is built on their clusters, providing binary packages. In fact, you don't even have to install the ports collection, you can just go using packages:)))
In fact, package management in FreeBSD is very similar to apt-get (different commands, same result... a case in point: pkg_add -r kdebase = apt-get install kdebase)
yeah, you are right in some respects - there wouldn't have been any 'surprises' if he bothered to read the handbook. Everything about slices and partitioning scheme is described in details. On the other hand, I don't think it is an unfavorable or biased review.
He does have some very positive things about FreeBSD, like its being the fastest distro he has ever tried. Like it or not, this is my personal experience too - it just seems faster compared to my earlier linux distroes (on the desktop - my primary use of FreeBSD) on the same machine. This isn't exactly a popular opinion around here - well around anywhere, now I expect tons of quotes of synthetic benchmarks - yeah, I know about fefe, and no I DON'T HAVE ANY PROOF! - but this is how it feels, can't help it:P
I like the way they package things - one cd full of goodies (KDE 3.2.2, GNOME 2.6) and one rescue (live) cd for all releases (since 4.8 at least).
BTW - FreeBSD seems to be included on distrowatch now (good thing!) and there is even a nice review there of the 5.x branch. There are even some nice tips included in the review:)
This is one of the most interesting news I read today on./ - its a pity it received so little attention. Not only because the info proper, but also because the way in which it is presented: to the point, explanatory/informative and most importantly - devastating.
What really amazes me is that this kind of research doesn't require much (well, it does in a way: you have to be clever and motivated) - ctrl+PrintScrn, archive.org, google, whois/dig, etc, yet it does have a significant impact.
a concession: I see you your point, but I don't think its that much an decision influencing factor as orig. post would suggest. Besides, your points I think are mainly valid for the entry level. FreeBSD already has an established market, which showed (according to netcraft - hello trolls btw:)) a steady growth over the years. I think, at this point, brand recognition (including logo) outweigh the potential hidrance.
On the other hand, I think you are right about netbsd logo, but for different reasons (political climate doesn't favor 'parodies' or jokes nowdays), and absolutely right about the project from hell:) - but I think they are not for conquering the market just yet. They are for geeks who appreciate wacky humour. Devs are not as touchy as PHBs you know. In other words, I don't think Inferno is ready for the market anyway... (the market might be ready for Inferno though, if current tendencies continue).
"It amazes me how bad open source people are at marketing."
Maybe these folks don't give shit about marketing... they just do it because they like it. WASTE is a good name IMHO - funny reference to Pynchon's Crying of lot 49. I don't think WASTE author wanted to 'take over the market' with his prog either.
FreeBSD's beastie... yeah, sure, the OS logo is the first thing everyone would consider when choosing a solution (yahoo seems very much discouraged by chuck - name for beastie btw -, as does NYInternet, Pair Networks, netcraft itself or the apache project).
Linux was criticized for the 'idiotic' looking penguin as well, remember? Yet I don't think that its market entry was very much hindered because of its logo.
Slashdot Mirror
You are right, a link or two might have helped. After googling a little, I found this announcment on undeadly.org
A link would have been helpful to the source of the info. (Unless the developer whispered it in the submitter's ear).
So don't hold your breath.
Currently ext2 might be an alternative. There are two open source drivers, both quite buggy. There is also a commercial solution, which produces strange things. It worked for a while, then writing under (2k) makes double double sized - so it becomes full pretty quickly, unless you switch back and forth to do an fsck (which will repair, I mean correct the size without data damage).
It is a pity there is little interest in writing a good ext2 driver for windows - I think some of us would make good use of it, for good (and fast) data storage.
BTW, I don't use the commercial solution, its on my friends puter, and as I said, it worked fine for a while - and we don't know what caused it to register double sizes for data. It might be a windows thing, otherwise it worked perfectly (read-write). Name for commercial driver is Paragon ext2fs anywhere, or something like that (try google).
For your interest: the ATI driver maintainer in KeithP's kdrive server is Eric Anholt (FreeBSD XFree86 and now x.org maintainer). http://people.freebsd.org/~anh
Why would divergence be a problem if the majority of distroes/flavours* (*the proper term for BSD variants as I learned on osnews) standardizes on one? Now almost the complete X.org implementation is in ports, and I think x.org will be the default (or 4.3 at worst) in 5.3 release. Also, note that one of the freedesktop.org developers (DRI work) is Eric Anholt. So don't worry, only good can come out of this fork :)
so show me a good card with good open source accelerated (not just 2d mind you) drivers ;)
See also what KeithP & Co. does in -CURRENT. This is their to do list. Release notes.
heh, using freebsd for some time made slack my favorite gnu/linux distribution as well. the keyword(s), as you aptly put it: most logical, simple, and easy.
I think one of the few things to look out for is the size of /usr/ports. If one uses ports extensively, some builds can take a lot of space (openoffice ~4Gb). Also, you can't put it on a separate partition (unless you have GBs to waste) for the ports tree is only ~300 Mb. - and buildspace is temporary. There is no good solution to this problem - you end up with a big /usr anyway, so having your home dir there as well (the freebsd default) also makes sense, for it isn't very often than one build openoffice (or java), and usually data in the home dir (music for instance) can be backed up easier than most anything else. So, although I have different needs and uses of freebsd (I think) - I know what you're talking about (defaults worked for me pretty well though: 256Mb for / /tmp /var respectively, rest for /usr - but I had to change default config later for progs liking var by default, like mysql).
funny ... bsd terminology is so pervasive. I have hard time speaking in terms of extended and logical partitions, for slices make more sense now. I also found myself referring to linux 2.4.x as their stable branch (without any intention to suggest that 2.6.x is not stable). OTOH it wasn't very easy at first to see how all those branches and releases work - now it is linux that confuses me (Is there a 2.7.x 'branch' yet? - I can't wait for their console driver to be fixed :P).
insmod = kldload - in his case, that would be kldload pcm or kldload snd_hissoundchipset - try ls /boot/kernel to see what's available
lsmod = kldstat
rmmod = kldunload
There are also free binary security updates for freebsd - one of the developers (and ./ user with the nick cpercive) provides them.
Also, you can specify a remote site when adding packages. The fruitsalad project provides fresh binary kde packages. I think you would install it with pkg_add -r url_to_their_ftp_repository. Someone (who was also a deb user) asked me for an incentive to try out freebsd. I told him this: if you are 100% satisfied and not curious about it, don't try it. Otherwise, I think its a great OS and it is very rewarding (and convenient) - so go ahead! Also, the community is very friendly and helpful (and before I switched, I came from mandrakeusers and pclinuxonline, so you might guess that I had high standards :)) - www.bsdforums.org is invaluable if you want help :)
So I had the handbook open on one desktop, going through the text file on a terminal, following the book point by point, commenting out unnecessary stuff, putting in some lines - than after 5 minutes, I noticed that I can't scroll down any further. I said: what? First I thought I edited the wrong file. I checked the handbook ... and saw that the next page is a different chapter. Even then, I was a bit bewildered: that was it?? Yes.
Many folks would think that by using FreeBSD one can earn geek points, cause it sounds more 'difficult' - this is not the case. If you see someone feeling cool cause he uses freebsd, you can be sure he is bluffing. FreeBSD is easy! Of course, it caters to those who are not antagonistic towards the command line, but anyone who used slackware or debian would easily learn FreeBSD - if he or she is willing to read. Their handbook (see it on their homepage) is the best OS documentation I ever read, their man pages are superb, and configuration is much easier than any linux was for me. In other words: it is a great learning platform, thanks to the great documentation and the consistency and cleanness of the system. Forget about synthetic benchmarks and bsd vs. linux flamefests. FreeBSD is fun, and is an excellent desktop system, and ports just works (no freaking use-flags, its the job of port maintainers to provide lean and mean yet rich experience with the ports - now almost 11000!).
I ruined my system by deleting stuff from /usr/lib - and nothing would compile. I could reinstall stuff from the CD but that would be a forced downgrade and its just too unconvenient. But thanks to the fact that the entire OS (the 'world' - which is different from gentoo's world: world is the OS in freebsd land, and ports are programs installed on top of the os) build is self contained in /usr/obj, even though I didn't even have a working gcc, I could repair the system with one command: make installworld and a reboot. Oh yes, its a good idea to keep /usr/obj - because you have an OS reinstall one command away, and you don't have to fumble with config files, reinstalling ports, etc...
In fact, package management in FreeBSD is very similar to apt-get (different commands, same result... a case in point: pkg_add -r kdebase = apt-get install kdebase)
They have a fine sense of humour too ... OpenBSD's deadly.org was renamed to undeadly.org :)))
He does have some very positive things about FreeBSD, like its being the fastest distro he has ever tried. Like it or not, this is my personal experience too - it just seems faster compared to my earlier linux distroes (on the desktop - my primary use of FreeBSD) on the same machine. This isn't exactly a popular opinion around here - well around anywhere, now I expect tons of quotes of synthetic benchmarks - yeah, I know about fefe, and no I DON'T HAVE ANY PROOF! - but this is how it feels, can't help it :P
building your own kernel in freebsd is a breeze in freebsd. you don't give much info, so if you already know this I'm sorry..
your kernel config file is /usr/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC. make a copy of it and edit it putting in:
device pcm
than in /usr/src:
make buildkernel KERNCONF=yourconfigfile
make installkernel
reboot
Than see if it works.
BTW - FreeBSD seems to be included on distrowatch now (good thing!) and there is even a nice review there of the 5.x branch. There are even some nice tips included in the review :)
It appaers that there will be a 4.11 release as well...
What really amazes me is that this kind of research doesn't require much (well, it does in a way: you have to be clever and motivated) - ctrl+PrintScrn, archive.org, google, whois/dig, etc, yet it does have a significant impact.
On the other hand, I think you are right about netbsd logo, but for different reasons (political climate doesn't favor 'parodies' or jokes nowdays), and absolutely right about the project from hell :) - but I think they are not for conquering the market just yet. They are for geeks who appreciate wacky humour. Devs are not as touchy as PHBs you know. In other words, I don't think Inferno is ready for the market anyway... (the market might be ready for Inferno though, if current tendencies continue).
Maybe these folks don't give shit about marketing ... they just do it because they like it. WASTE is a good name IMHO - funny reference to Pynchon's Crying of lot 49. I don't think WASTE author wanted to 'take over the market' with his prog either.
FreeBSD's beastie ... yeah, sure, the OS logo is the first thing everyone would consider when choosing a solution (yahoo seems very much discouraged by chuck - name for beastie btw -, as does NYInternet, Pair Networks, netcraft itself or the apache project).
Linux was criticized for the 'idiotic' looking penguin as well, remember? Yet I don't think that its market entry was very much hindered because of its logo.