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BSD Operating Systems News

BSDI Acquires Telenet System Solutions 84

Posted by Nik from the NP:-My-alarm-clock,-it's-0740 dept.
pestel writes: "BSDI has acquired Telenet System Solutions, a hardware supplier that sells systems built using BSD. You can see the press release over at Daily Daemon News. Good news for BSD people looking for hardware from workstations to huge servers." Built using BSD? Well, built for BSD rather. Interesting news for VA Linux; remember, competitors in the rearview mirror may be closer than they appear...
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BSDi acquires Telenet System Solutions More

BSDi acquires Telenet System Solutions

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  • "I don't see how buying a hardware company helps the bottom line. Yes it diversifies and adds to the impression that BSDi is more vertically integrated, but does it do anything other than annoy all the other hardware companies that ship boxes with FRbEsEdBiSD already installed?"

    Well.. if the company makes money then it helps your bottom line..

    Linux is a decentralized development model. It is very difficult for one point of failure (other than Linus T) to cause a total breakdown in development. With most of the major players in BSD now under one umbrella, if the ship sinks, will there be enough left to continue?"

    FreeBSD has more than 200 committers, and they don't all work for BSDi/WC (not by a long shot). AFAIK Open/Net BSD aren't 'under the same umbrella' as FreeBSD/BSDi either. If BSDi/WC go down then toilet then that is not happy news, but I think there are a LOT of other companies around which would NOT want to see that happen. Also remeber that WC and BSDi actually make money, unlike the IPO'd Linux companies which it is claimed will support Linux. Presumably Telenet ALSO make money, so now you have a very nice package to offer customers.

    IMHO the Linux community has more to worry about in this regard, most of the companies which a vested interest in Linux are fairly new, and hence have a higher chance of failure.

  • the subject says it all.

    -l
  • Your criteria for OS selection seems to be flawed.

    The more support offered the better, I don't have all the time in the world to fix/patch/debug the systems myself.

    The expansion of BSDI is a great thing, it'll give me a 'one stop freebsd shop' that I can depend on for my systems. And I'll be a much happier sysadmin, I'm sick and tired of all the do-it-yourself stuff already, I need to get _real work_ done and anyone else wanting to do the same (getting work done) would see this as a good thing .

    I really can't understand how one could enjoy the feeling of getting a new server without FreeBSD pre-installed, it's a nightmare of worry (will it work? will it boot? will it be stable?)
  • I don't get it. Another greybox me-too linux on generic hardware company. What lessons have we learned from the PC business. Nothing apparently. With razor thin margins and distribution problems all over the yard the PC hardware business is collapsing into a few mega vendors whose value-add is brand recognition, slightly different/better peripherals and SERVICES. What does investing in a HW company actually bring to the table for BSD? So you call up your friendly BSD rep and order the latest greybox you've never heard of with,....HOLY CONFIGURATION BATMAN.....BSD preinstalled. Wowie! Just doesn't seem that great.
  • Be especially cautious about using the "mega-vendor" TigerDirect. They've basically stolen $911 from me. "The check is in the mail," yeah right.. Their next call will be from my lawyer.

    I'd recommend using the smaller hardware vendors (like Telenet) instead. Just fire up pricewatch.com and see what you can find.

  • Does *BSD have HOWTOs?

    I found when I started out in Linux, the HOWTOs were really helpful. Even if they sometimes were wrong, or covered an old version of the software, they were often enough of a pointer to get me started or show me the right direction if I was stuck,
  • The thing that has me switching to BSD is that its a total system, rather than a kernel, a few kernel-dependent tools, and a lot of third-party bits, often weirdly integrated. Don't get me wrong, I like the GNU tools, and many of them actually have better functionality than their "built-in" BSD counterparts.

    Since the implementation of a Linux system is often dependent on the distro-maker, each one does things in a different way, and often doesn't seem consistant from distro release to distro release (redMumblehatMumple). Nowadays, it seems like the distros distinguish themselves not on stability, etc, but on the number of X11 gizmos they come up with and the number of "applications" they ship with. This is the part that makes me laugh -- they count every little 0.0.2ALPHA "open source" package they can get their hands on as part of this -- it's the equivilent of MS rolling in the old SIMTEL DOS archives as "included applications."

    FreeBSD has a stable base and the included applications are worthwhile system tools. Ports provides a consistant way to add applications as needed.

    Not that FreeBSD can get off scott-free. Too many ports that *can* be built with X often list X as a "requirement" and end up trying to fetch, build, and install X when you don't want it. Ports tend to get added to the collection and then rot due to lack of maintenance, and may be a week or so behind the Linux world when major packages update.

    Many of the base built-ins (ls, find, etc) aren't quite as feature-filled as the GNU equivilents -- I'm not sure why the features haven't been mirrored or the GNU versions merged in to replace the built-ins. I'm not sure if this is a licensing thing (GPL v. BSD), a feature thing ("We need foo -bar for our build scripts, GNU foo does foo -ber"), anti-GNU/Linux attitude ("If you want foo -ber, use Linux, we use foo -bar") or just more developer interest in extending drivers/features ("You can have foo -ber or gigabit NICs and IPv6.."). I'd buy the latter, but I wouldn't be suprised if it included some of the former as well.

  • Sorry, but slightly bored of the "linux vs bsd as holy war" thing. There so damn close, in the bigger picture.

    I've been getting hugely into BSD over the last six months or so, and have been slowling bringing it into work. The response has been hugely positive. The couple of linuxen we have want a 'go', and our NT admin is, like "God, you can do *that*?".

    Oh yes, my man, oh yes.

    My favourite linux distribution is FreeBSD.

    Dave :)

  • Shocker, eh?

    What does this mean in the bigger picture? Particularly when we shine the same torch on a profitable BSDI as we do on a shriking TurboLinux or Linux Care. Or even the evaporating market cap of VA and/or RedHat, Caldera et al?

    I honestly don't know. The only thing it says to me is either "No forgone conclusion in this one", or "Don't believe the hype". Depending what mood you're in.

    BSD != competitor, anyway. BSD is your friend.

    Dave :)

  • I was one of the original senior System Admin's at USA.NET (before they were even USA.NET), and a 3 year resident of Colorado Springs (up in Denver now). They aren't at all a BSDI house. They were, for a long time, one of Sun's biggest customers. I think they may be moving towards HP now for some stuff, but its most definately not a BSDI shop. Also, they aren't in the same building as USA.NET. USA.NET is on Kelly Johnson Blvd, and BSDI is over on 30th St (next door to another former employer of mine).

  • On laptops and such it makes sense to run Linux;

    Actually, I prefer to run FreeBSD on laptops, for one reason: USB support - the multitude of hot-swappable USB devices can make laptop life much easier.

    Unlike x86 linux, FreeBSD has good USB support, including USB mice, printers, USB to parallel adapters, digital camera conduits, zip drives, ethernet dongles, and keyboards

    It used to be that many people chose Linux over FreeBSD on intel boxen because Linux had support for a wider range of hardware. It seems to me that FreeBSD is rapidly catching up in most areas, and has surpassed linux in a few. Perhaps FreeBSD hasmore low-level hardware hackers these days?

  • I honestly do not know that much about BSD. I have heard many good things about it and understand that it has been around for quite some time. I've seen the issue raised several times of "Linux Vs. BSD" and that this battle of the systems is somewhat of a holy war amongst the free OS community. It seems that so much effort is being thrown into Linux that too me it would make sense that Linux will emerge on top eventually by the sheer development/advancement effort thrown into it. Is BSD really needed? How much longer will it be around? Does Linux really need more "competition" besides trying to compete against the Redmond giant? Just a thought on my mind. It's late and so far a bunch of junk has been posted. So, thought I'd throw out something with more substance.
  • No it was not a troll. (Yeah, I did post it very early in the morning when I should've been sleeping, but not to troll.) Considering the lack of interest in this article overall (currently half of the 98 comments are score 0 or less) and the state of the discussion while new on the board (a bunch of A.C. trolling and flamebaiting) I thought I'd try and get a discussion going. Honestly the original article was very "ho-hum" boring. Sure, it was news that pertains to geeks, but sometimes geek news is boring.

    Maybe you know everything, but I don't. I thank those that bothered to post decent replies. I actually learned some good things about BSD and am now going to take a closer look at it as an option for a good server OS for a business idea I'm developing. Hopefully others learned some stuff as well. Hopefully one day I'll be as 31337 as some of you are. Until then, I guess I'll just have to "Troll" for information.

  • "Hey Kirk, what's left on the IPO checklist? You gonna be ready to go around September 1?"

    I don't see how buying a hardware company helps the bottom line. Yes it diversifies and adds to the impression that BSDi is more vertically integrated, but does it do anything other than annoy all the other hardware companies that ship boxes with FRbEsEdBiSD already installed?

    "The investment bankers said, "Hey, you need a hardware company." So hey, we purchased a hardware company. Next we'll figure out what to do with it."

    Linux is a decentralized development model. It is very difficult for one point of failure (other than Linus T) to cause a total breakdown in development. With most of the major players in BSD now under one umbrella, if the ship sinks, will there be enough left to continue?


  • Well.. if the company makes money then it helps your bottom line..

    I think (and obviously your opinion may vary) that BSDi till now was a software company and had no apparent bias towards any hardware. Now there is a bias.

    Further, does BSDi have infinitely deep pockets? I doubt it. There is such a thing as management focus, and now there is one more thing to focus on. I'd much rather they were an excellent software company than a ho-hum hardware, software, systems integration, window washing, tire changing, house building, eCommerce, medical records, BtoB etc etc etc company.

  • Did I really post that or did I just think it? (Yeah, I know it's a quote from a different psycho but it seemed to fit)
  • I think that Telenet was a reseller of BSD/OS, not a "client" in the strict sense of the word.

    Yes, and the PC manufacturers like DELL and Gateway are re-sellers of M$ Windows... :P

    Let's see the DOJ's response if Microsoft buys DELL...

    What it DOES do is allow a corporation to buy pre-tested and "approved" hardware without worrying about compatibility issues

    It is not strictly necessary for the software supplier to OWN the company that sells the hardware. Companies like DELL, Gateway, Compaq etc. also sell pre-tested and 'approved' hardware, and I bet they need not be owned by Microsoft to do that correctly. It is even better if they are not since they may either refuse to use or replace (parts of) the software on their system when these cause problems.

    Brand hardware for re-sale

    I think you forgot Microsoft Powerpoint there ;) Seriously, I think most examples there are not very discutable. Point is, TelnetSystems is not going to make a switch to Linux now, are they? Previously they could, now they can't. End of choice, and if you would take it to the extreme, no real 'market'.

    Or, you could be joking, and if you were

    Heh...

    --

  • Isn't it bad form for a company to buy their clients? Isn't that the ultimate way to force the client to stick with your stuff?

    Isn't the basis of a free market that clients keep their options open? I bet if Microsoft would do this the world would be screaming murder.

    --

  • FreeBSD was started for the purpose of making a quality UNIX port to the x86 architecture. All of the ports of FreeBSD to other platforms are really secondary, and often not for production-level machines.

    If you think Linux is a serious competitor to Solaris on Sparc, you've got another thing coming. Linux doesn't scale nearly as well as Solaris on any platform, including x86, nevermind Sun's native platform. Perhaps the OSes should stick with what they do best instead of half-assed approaches to secondary platforms?
  • The man pages in BSD are generally of a much higher quality than Linux's. Best to ahve the documentation on the box rather than on random web sites.

    matt
  • given a choice between a license that is friendly to big companies and a license that is friendly to me, I'll go with option #2. That is the GPL, ...

    I just want to point out that the BSD license is friendly to big companies, small companies, GPL software, and you.

    The rest of your trolling about competition?

    His points about many different distributions of Linux are valid. The BSD's all share the same design in the sense of configurating the OS and placing files. This makes it much easier to design software for all BSD's at the same time.

    Competition is good, but the Linux companies should have a little more cooperation in the layout of the system.

    I just switched to FreeBSD last year from Linux. I first tried Linux when there was a 0.7? version--I think. I then used Linux from 0.99.14[a-z] (SLS distribution) on to Linux 2.2.12. I had to be careful during software installation since some software was designed for RedHat while my system more closely followed Debian and Slackware. I don't miss these problems a bit. 'make install' can be your friend too.
  • What package management? Linux package management blows goats. It tells me I need a bunch of files and dies. If it knows what it needs it sould go get them.

    FreeBSD ports and packages have had the ability to update themselves and get/install the needed parts for years. So all I have to do is say "I want cyrus" and it goes gets gmake/tcl/autoconf/whatever else it needs if they are not already installed.

  • >The rest of your trolling about competition?

    Hey, as far as I'm concerened, the original post was a troll. 'why bother with BSD/how long can it last'. But lets say it was a ligit concern....is not the fragmentation of the 150+ linux distros a concern?

    I'm happy for you that the GPL works for you. But for people with IP concerns, the GPL doesn't work. And the BSD code is the way to go, and will continue to go.
  • >This is flamebait.
    The comment is not pro-linux therefore you call it flamebait. YET YOUR NEXT SENTENCE you admit that:
    >Yes, the vast number of distros can get a little bit chaotic
    Looks to me like you AGREE with my point, you just grade the chaos, I left it ungraded.

    I note how you didn't address the point about how programs don't work from one distro to another.

    >one of the BSDs would have a functional desktop if the various Linux distros hadn't been so "chaotic"
    Really?
    Tell that to Apple and Mac OS X.
    Tell that to Afterstep.
    Looks like BSD has *2* functional desktops tha have nothing to do with Gnome or KDE.
    Oh, wait...you are defining desktop as 'looks like Microsoft's offerings'. Silly me, I guess I want something better in my life. How DARE *I* doubt the linux collective at /.!

  • Then score one for Debian. 'bout time someone did that.
  • Well, I guess I won't be moderating this topic :)
    Slashcode will run just fine on *BSD. It can, however, be painfull to get apache to recompile itself with mod_perl if you get a BSD that doesn't include it by default. I personally have Slash 1.01?? running on OpenBSD 2.6. I had to download a new version of Apache and Mod_SSL (Mod_SSL is installed by default). Other than that everything went very smoothly.

    Les Weinmunson
    les@weinmunson.net
  • one saying comes to mind: "if you want it done right, do it yourself." All my friends use SWAT for samba administration, but none of them understand the smb.conf file. By going through that stuff, you learn it. I can see the benefit of bundled HW/SW to guarantee compatibility, but I'd just reinstall it when i got it, to make sure its installed like i want it.

    If you want to get "real work" done, you should set it up yourself and make sure its right. sure it not as fast as other setups, but how often do have to mess with it now? easy...I don't.

    Something like this would be good for more options, as long as it stays optional.
  • Thats my point. OpenBSD doesn't have guys in suits. no VP's there.
  • oh yea...one more thing. I can move from *BSD to *BSD without as much hassle. They pretty much follow the same format for config files, etc. Moving from RedHat to Slack to Debian....they're entirely different in terms of setup.

    on a sidenote...I tried OpenBSD because it was the only "free" *nix that i could find that supported my isa pnp nic cards and had a ftp install. I got scsi cards that only it can see, I have scsi cards that only slack can see...

    OpenBSD makes the best NAT (ip_masq for my linux brethren) box, but Slackware makes a great Desktop box. blah blah yackity smackity. If you don't get the point by now, you probably won't. so i'll shaddup.
  • This might be off-topic, but hey.

    OK, so I am going to be installing the Slash code to run a portion of my web site. My major question of the day (Or at least my Major 4:00 AM Question of the Day) is:

    Can I run the Slash code on a *BSD? If so, does it require any special considerations?

    What does Slashdot use for their server OS? They credit Debian and Red Hat on the Slash Code Site [slashcode.com], but I haven't seen what they are using. I'd really be interested in finding out what distro it is, not because I'd necessarily use it, but because it might help me decode the Slash documentation. I've run Caldera, Mandrake, and SuSE before, but I'm willing to try others of course.

    Anyway, I was also considering running OpenBSD or FreeBSD as my web server OS for Dragonfly Dynamix [dragonflydynamix.com], but then I decided in the car today on the way home that I wanted to run the Slash code...

    Anyway, I know this is slightly off-topic, but I at least nailed the right forum. Right? Guys? Right?

    *gulp*

    *Watches Karma plummet...*

    =P

  • Is BSD really needed? How much longer will it be around? Does Linux really need more "competition" besides trying to compete against the Redmond giant?

    This is a good question. FreeBSD isn't really needed just like Linux isn't really needed. This isn't about competition or need; these are free software projects. One's existance doesn't need to be justified in terms of the other (or in terms of "The Redmond Giant", for that matter).

    And if BSD's current age is any indecation, it should be around for a long time to come.

    -- Anony Mouse

  • In a recent article in the SF Chronicle ...

    Gee, an Anonymous Coward referring to an article without providing a reference? ;) I'd hate to see Slashdot's spotless reputation tarnished by someone posting FUD. Seriously, though, care to provide a reference? I'd like to hear why it is that The SF Chronicle thinks that FreeBSD "continues to decline in the marketplace" (or why they think it has shown a trend toward decline lately at all).

    -- Anony Mouse

  • not trying to troll but...
    >> there are a gazillion linux distributions out now, but i only know of 3 that support sparc. OpenBSD and..

    last time i checked 3>2 even for large values of 2 :-)... now i get his point(that a larger majoity of BSD distros support SPARC) but.. i couldnt resist
  • For those of you interested, I've ordered a few servers from Telenet, all of them Linux boxen. They are a tad expensive, but their support is very good, their salespeople knowledgeable, and their products solid and built with standard products. I recommend them to anyone looking for good servers...
  • Linux is verry easy to build from scratch. I did it by first purchasing RedHat5.2 from eBay($5) and I then built my first kernel and transfered it to another partition on my scsi hdd. After that, it takes many, many hours of configuring the filesystem and getting the modules and daemons working correctly. To this day, I am still working on getting it perfect. The many different distributions of Linux are verry thoughful in preconfiguring everything for you, except they not only configure it, but sneak all these unnecessary and especially unstable bloatware programs into your computer. Most of those bloatware programs will not even run correctly on their installation. Have you ever click an icon and nothing happens? Well, you most likely have to find the properties of that icon, open an xterm, and run it manually so you can catch the output of error messages. Web browsers and the KDE are a perfect example. I was forced to use netscape at first, but I got another console SVGAlib webbrowser named "wb0" and it has propper graphics gray-scaling as opposed to Netscape. Why would I use Kfmclient as a webrowser? Too many alternate programs are installed with Window Managers. The other problem with the every Linux distribution is that they install on average 10 different mail clients. I ask myself, "what were they thinking?" Even though it may take an average system to install a Linux distribution in 15 minutes, it takes about 5 *HOURS* to remove the unneaded programs and get everything configured *CORRECTLY*. Plus, you must hunt down those distribution-specific daemons that cause all the unnecessary DNS queries; causing Diald to bring up a link. My incesant ranting is not of dislike, but distaste. I have conjectured that every Linux ditribution's phylosophy is that everyone is stupid and needs every Linux program that exists. Even on a class install, like "base install", or "minimum server" install, on a distribution, you still get too much unnecessary programs. Linux is awesome, but it is becoming more different in every distribution. The only way to make Linux useful: stay verry close with GNU and build your own Linux from scratch and backup your handcoded configuration files. Else, you will be busy most of your time when hunting-down the configuration files that were supposed to be in /etc and you'll find them in either /usr/lib or /var or /usr/var or whatever. I have BSD and am experimenting with it. BeOS is my next test after BSD.
  • It is possibly the sad truth. Linux seams to be alot of bloatware Nowadays. BSD was on the first Netpliance I-opener and is known to be the first on many of the PDAs simply because it is slightly smaller than the Linux kernel. I'd like to see BSD progress past linux by means of performance. Or does it already? BSD gurus claim that it runs Linux programs faster than Linux itself and that it has better SMP support. That is verry notable.
  • Catch me if I'm wrong here, but I'm an avid reader of the BSD section, and everytime, without fail, when an article is posted, at least half of the responses fall under one or both of the following categories:

    1. Why doesn't x hardware work with *BSD?
    a. RTFM

    2. Linux vs. BSD
    a. Troll.

    Why can't we stick to the f*ing topic here people. None of the other Sections, etc. have anywhere near the useless crap to valuable information ratio as does the BSD section (well, polls, but that doesn't count).

    I realize I'm being a hypocrite here, but the situation is so out of hand, that the only way to influence it is to play by it's rules.

    ------------------------------------------------
    How did this post get past the lameness filter?
  • I noticed that Telenet systems seems to make x86 servers only. What does this bode for the future of FreeBSD on Sparc, or other ports? Will this become yet-another x86-only OS? I surely hope not.

    While I'm not just another whiner about x86-only software, I think that it'd be good to have FreeBSD continue on multiple platforms - it could be a serious competitor to Solaris and Linux on Sparc.

    Does this also mean that Telenet will be ditching their NT 5 servers?

    ---------------------------------

  • For the enterprise-level servers that Solaris is good for, I wouldn't use Linux at all.

    For the SparcStation 5 I'm sitting in front of, I'd rather have Linux than Solaris.

    ---------------------------------

  • On FreeBSD, the Linux emulation is good enough that I run Blackdown 1.2.2rc4 without trouble. Just install it from the port, not by hand, since there's no reason to re-invent the wheel. With the better JIT, it's faster than the native port anyways (although the freebsd-java project is changing that). In fact, the only thing I've ever had fail under emulation was a port of linux wine, and that just needed linux-proc, which wasn't installed. The whole emulation thing is rock-solid.
  • Debian's package management is one of the few in the Linux world that actually does this. If it needs something, it just gets it, no muss, no fuss.
  • BSDi buys Walnut Creek, giving them a software/publishing outlet. BSDi buys Telesys, giving them a hardware outlet. Sounds like somebody's been taking lessons from Microsoft and Sun - which begs the question 'when will we see our first BSDi-branded peripherals?'. Or, maybe the better question is 'who will they buy next?'. I think we'll see movement in the applications arena next - maybe something like Applix or BRU. Or I could just be wrong. It appears to me that BSDi is taking the right steps to combat the establishment on all fronts, and I'm happy for them.
  • This is a troll. If not, I suggest you try thinking next time.
  • Debian and FreeBSD. Easy to secure. Easy to use packaging systems that allow you to avoid thinking.
  • Next door to another employer? I lived a block away and walked to that GOG facility.

  • Thanks for the advice. I will certainly look to switch over to FreeBSD from Debian GNU/Linux in the future, or perhaps run them both and see which one delivers a better computing experience.

  • I thought it was Berkeley Software Distribution. I could be wrong, though. I've tried FreeBSD and OpenBSD fleetingly on my Intel boxen, and although their installation was painless, I didn't experiment with them for very long (reinstalled Solaris x86 and Debian/GNU Linux).

    I'm just wondering about support for the Java platform in the way of JDK, etc. With Linux emulation, would it be possible to run JDK 1.2.2 under *BSD, or is the Linux emulation on the *BSD platforms not quite there yet? Java support is the main factor in any platform (At least, to me), so if anyone has information on this aspect I'd be very interested.

    Thanks,

    Charles Balthazar Rotherwood

  • Point is, TelnetSystems is not going to make a switch to Linux now, are they?

    Do you guys do ANY research before posting?

    Telenet does sell hardware with Linux on it, just as WC does sell a "Distro" of Linux.

    I've not seen anything about that changing, have you?

    I'm assuming that if BSDi started doing technical support for Linux that would mean that they are trying to "corner" that market as well?

    And, as always,

  • During that time we also were migrating the entire operation to Linux from BSDI - because BSDI was unstable, outdated and generally sucked in a major way. So I guess it's a good paring - a confused hardware company and a suckass distro.

    While BSD/OS (what you are calling BSDI) is not perfect, it is far from "unstable", and unless Telenet was trying to pawn off old software, it was probably not "outdated".

    Lastly, BSD/OS is not a "distro" but a distinct variant of the BSD line of operating systems.

    I'm assuming that for whatever reason you are not working there anymore? I'd like to know how the big transition went.

    Have a GREAT day, and remember,

  • So, what O/S did you request? It seems to me that installing Linux (of some flavor) would be fine as a "toss-away" system.

    Simple to remove if needed, no requirement to pay M$ a royalty, and a relatively good test of the hardware.

    Were you expecting blank disks?

    Rember,

  • I noticed that Telenet systems seems to make x86 servers only.

    Gee, I hate to poke holes in such deep research, BUT.. if you look at Telenet [tesys.com]'s homepage, you will see references to "Intel / Alpha / Sparc".

    Perhaps you looked at the wrong company?

    Don't Forget,

  • Isn't it bad form for a company to buy their clients? Isn't that the ultimate way to force the client to stick with your stuff?

    I think that Telenet was a reseller of BSD/OS, not a "client" in the strict sense of the word. Since it seems that most of Telenet's products are "clone" type boxes, I also don't see exactly how this locks anyone into anything. What it DOES do is allow a corporation to buy pre-tested and "approved" hardware without worrying about compatibility issues

    Isn't the basis of a free market that clients keep their options open? I bet if Microsoft would do this the world would be screaming murder.

    What? Brand hardware for resale? Like the "Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard" the "Microsoft Mouse", the "Microsoft Super-Gizmo-Whirly Joystick"? How about "Microsoft Hotmail", "Microsoft Frontpage", and "Microsoft SourceSafe" just to name a few.

    Or, you could be joking, and if you were,

  • I think (and obviously your opinion may vary) that BSDi till now was a software company and had no apparent bias towards any hardware. Now there is a bias.

    As I stated in a previous (or latter) post, it appears that Telenet is primarily a "clone" vendor without any "real" hardware of their own.

    As long as they don't suddenly start creating their own motherboards, or whatever, the only bias is toward making sure that the software sold by one division(?) of the company works on the hardware that is sold by another division of the company.

    Seems like a non-problem to me.

    but if it is,

  • A little bird at BSDi [bsdi.com] told me that the "release" of the information on the Telenet merger leaked and that the transition to the "new" web pages (really nice looking, btw) was forced a few days early.

    No, I've never screwed up anything on my own web pages, and even if I had,

  • Second, since the BSDi + WC merger, they've gone out-of-their way to hire a large number of the effective committers. If BSDi gets in trouble now, a large chunk of the FreeBSD people doing the heavy lifting will be in trouble too.

    As someone else has stated so nicely, the vast majority of FreeBSD coders are NOT employed by WC/BSDi/Telenet (whatever the glom is called).

    The "heavy lifting" is still done (as far as I am aware) by the community, just the "Distribution" (gawd I hate that term) by WC, and BSD/OS by BSDi.

    Hardware being done by Telenet seems a good thing, but that is for a different thread

    And if you don't agree with me,

  • Only FreeBSD has SMP

    BSD/OS has pretty good SMP from what I understand.

    I was wrong once, and if this is #2,

  • Given that BSD has the BSD licence, it friendly to the intellectual property concerns of big companies. The GPL is all about getting all source code published, and this does not match the adjenda of most companies with IP concerns.Here's what it boils down to for me (and I'm sure for others): given a choice between a license that is friendly to big companies and a license that is friendly to me, I'll go with option #2. That is the GPL, and that is why Linux is successful and BSD will never be as popular among free development communities.
    The rest of your trolling about competition? Well... it is a blatant troll, so I really shouldn't respond, but if you don't think that competition (either amongst the Linuxes or between Linux and BSD) improves the breed, then you haven't seen RH's new installer. Or Gnome 1.2 and KDE 2.0. Or any number of other things. Competition works, and Linux is case #1 for why we need Unix #3. And Unix #4 (in the HURD.) And whatever else comes next. Bring 'em on.
    ~luge
  • Insightful? This is not insightful. This is flamebait. Yes, the vast number of distros can get a little bit chaotic. But the competition between them all undeniably improves them, which this guy doesn't seem to understand. None of the BSDs would have a functional desktop if the various Linux distros hadn't been so "chaotic" that they produced Gnome and KDE. Where is that complete newbie friendly installer? Hrm... well, that was the result of competition too- RH and Corel's need to get ahead. Go ahead, call it chaos. I'm sure the uni-cellular creatures in the primary ooze were thinking much the same when some things decided to go multi-cellular. That was chaos too... look where it got us.
    In conclusion: insightful? Are you on the $3 crack? Or the more expensive kind?
    ~luge
  • ... And they're OK, but our 2Us don't have hot-swap drives and the redundant powersupplies are fed by a single power cord instead of one cord per supply like Compaq's 1850R.. Kinda important if your datacenter has 2 separate power mains running into each rack and you want to remove a SPOF... Kinda pricey to blow those options IMHO, and for 1 extra U I'm quite tempted to stick with Compaq and its 6 hotswap drives..

    btw: telenet won't play nice with our financing dept (lease terms) so we're switching linux/bsd server vendors. Our purchaser wants us to go with Dell but I refuse because of questionable RAID drivers (and an aversion to Dell by nature), so I've got them down to selecting a preferred linux/bsd server vendor.. Any experience outside of VA? (apparently penguin can't do the terms we want either :p ) I'm leaning towards IBM, Compaq or VA (or HP's LPr, but I think they're kinda, uh, ugly).. Any other suggestions for an enterprise buyer?

    Your Working Boy,
  • We have large numbers of both FreeBSD and Linux (and Solaris) boxes in production.

    I assume you mean Yahoo ... but when I worked there last year not a single Linux box was in production use. In fact the only machine I saw running it was a Sparc sitting unused at the Santa Clara offices.

    The European server farm was running nothing but FreeBSD (version 2.2.7 as I recall), altough I assume stuff like the personalisation database was running on Solaris.

    So where have Yahoo started using Linux (if you're allowed to say)? I was always told David Filo considered Linux to be crap, based on his brief encounter with it - and FreeBSD was now too entrenched to be replaced.


    Chris Wareham
  • The USB code is nice, which is why, of course, I run NetBSD on my laptop. :)

    I think the turning point was around the time when bus_space got integrated. Drivers have come out faster since then.
  • Sure, just like there's no market for sparcs with solaris pre-installed, because everyone wants to buy their own sparc (you can get them separately) and then install the OS. :)
  • BSD/OS has SMP, too, and has for quite some time. :)

    SMP is a really neat feature, but I admit it's not that heavily used; frankly, I'd guess 90% of the people I talk to don't need it and don't care.
  • I don't see how this counts as "buying" the competition. BSDi wasn't in the hardware business before. :)
  • Note to the clueless: The above is a joke, not flamebait, not a troll, and not "offtopic" in context. It's funny. Laugh.
  • Interesting. As one of the support staff, I actually *prefer* email; I generally have much better luck troubleshooting via email, because people cut and paste. Exact error messages are very useful.

    This is probably less of a problem with experienced techies, but with the newer sysadmins, it's almost impossible to understand problems from the descriptions you get. ;)

    I do like to think we're fairly knowledgable, though. Glad to know we give a decent impression to the customers. :)
  • Keep in mind, the entire *company* isn't in that little building. There are at least four of us in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, and I know a number of other people who are distributed around the world; we even have an engineer in Norway.

    Telecommute rocks.
  • I didn't say I hated OpenBSD. Read my post again. Like Debian, it's developership *tends* towards extreme arrogance, but that does not detract from the OS.
  • "em>Although I suppose that another merger between two internet companies is the best example of competition."

    It isn't competition that causes mergers, buyouts and takeovers. It publically traded corporations. When you put your business up for sale to any and all comers, don't be surprised or angry when it's gets purchased. And that's what a public corporation is, a company perpetually up for sale.
  • "given a choice between a license that is friendly to big companies and a license that is friendly to me, I'll go with option #2."

    Okay folks, I'm getting tired of this, so I'll flame a bit...

    If you would stop kissing Stallman's but for just one minute, you will see that those are NOT your two choices! Have you even read the BSD license? Do you even know how to read?

    Here are your two choices: a) a license that is friendly to big companies and also friendly to you b) a license that is friendly only to you. Now, RMS may have loaded your head with spurious definitions of fairness, but in my book you can only be fair when you treat everyone the same. There is a reason why Lady Justice is portrayed blindfolded.
  • Who the hell moderated Bruce's post down? Get a clude dudes! It was a valid opinion, on topic and insightful. Who cares if it was wrong? Anyway...

    I don't see some of these distros co-existing very well at all. Sorry to say, your distro is the worst offender in the "getting along" department. I quick trip through your mailing lists will give you ample evidence. (When will you guys quit spilling over into the opensource and kde lists? Geez, it's like the ending scene of Blazing Saddles when the barroom brawl breaks through the wall and into the sedate lounge) Unlike your distro, FreeBSD does not consider itself the One True OS or a haven of indignant moral superiority. True, the BSD community has a splinter as rancorous and self-righteous as Debian, namely OpenBSD, so I guess licensing doesn't have much to do with it after all.
  • I worked for an ISP that was acquired by an electric company. The IT department was filled with old school pro IBM staff. The guys in the suits wanted accountability and support. I often got the impression no one wanted to take the blame and they did not want to work very hard so they strived for support contracts and having someone else to blame. Enter the ISP...
    For the aforementioned reasons, the overseeing manager picked BSDi and their somewhat heafty support contract. I believe the contract was around $2500 a year. And since BSDi recommended servers from Telenet, the same manager went with Telenet servers.

    A struggling startup ISP would have gone with FreeBSD and a put-together-yourself Intel Box and had similar performance for a lot less money. The BSDi contract was somewhat useless as you have to go through the usual ticket troubleshooting que or wait for an email response. It is just too difficult to troubleshoot problems through email.

    Now having said that. I must say that the help staff at BSDi were very knowledgeable when you did get a hold of one of them. Also, the systems from Telenet were of good quality. And they were very responsive to RMA's and getting replacements shipped overnight. Back when we ordered systems from them, they also put pre-installed Linux and Windows NT on their boxes.
  • No HOWTO's, but many resources do exist. Here are the resources for FreeBSD [freebsd.org]:

    1) Resources for Newbies [freebsd.org]
    2) FreeBSD Tutorials [freebsd.org]
    3) Frequently Asked Questions for FreeBSD 2.X, 3.X and 4.X [freebsd.org]
    4) FreeBSD Handbook [freebsd.org]
    5) FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages [freebsd.org]
  • >Is BSD really needed?

    BSD is the 'second' Unix. AT&T is the 1st. So, why is a 3rd Unix - Linux needed? Consider Sun built their company on BSD, and Apple is moving to BSD. To date, what does Linux have to show for it? A bunch of high flying IPO's and little profit.

    >It seems that so much effort is being thrown into Linux that too me it would make sense that Linux will emerge on top eventually by the sheer development/advancement effort thrown into it.

    What do you mean by this? Do you mean things like GNOME? Or GIMP? Or sendmail? If so, guess what....all of these are on BSD.

    >Does Linux really need more "competition" besides trying to compete against the Redmond giant?

    150+ different Linux distro shows how Linux has its own problems with "competition". An example of this 'problem' is shown by the web site featured on /., redhatisnotlinux.org.

    Linux is too busy "competing" with itself. If you feel that BSD development is a waste of time due to the 'sheer development' of Linux, then you should be wailing about how Linux has so many versions.

    Given that BSD has the BSD licence, it friendly to the intellectual property concerns of big companies. The GPL is all about getting all source code published, and this does not match the adjenda of most companies with IP concerns.

  • >Linux is a decentralized development model.

    Yea, with the 150+ linux distros its not decentralized, it is chaos.

    Programs that work with one linux distro won't work with another.
  • well since redhat has a root exploit a week... I'll stick with my "3 years without a remote root exploit" OpenBSD.

    Hotmail runs of FreeBSD.
    ftp.cdrom.com runs of FreeBSD.
    many ISP's run FreeBSD.

    NetBSD works on everything.
    yes EVERYTHING.

    there are a gazillion linux distributions out now, but i only know of 3 that support sparc. OpenBSD and NetBSD support Sparc...

    Linux has it strong points though. Slack is a tight distro, and its the closest to Unix that I know of.

    Linux makes a great desktop OS and has many more applications that *BSD lacks. But seriously...No linux distro has such a focus like OpenBSD's security, FreeBSD's scalability, or NetBSD's portability.
    FreeBSD isn't as secure as Open or Net, it only supports x86 and alpha, but its the only one with SMP at the moment. Do you see the strengths and weaknesses im pointing out? if you do...

    ...*BSD has its uses, just like BeOS has its uses, as well as Linux. The BOTTOM LINE is that one isn't "better" than the other...its which one is best suited for the job. even RedHat has a use...its good for newbies who don't want to jump straight into full blown *nix.
  • Only FreeBSD has SMP, but the others are working on it as we speak. I agree with the bloatware statement. When i first tried Linux...i used RedHat. My dumb newbie ass installed everything and had everything run on startup. scary isn't it. I can fit a full OpenBSD install on a 250 hard drive with 32megs of swap and still have enough space for a few mp3's.
  • Remember when Linux was small and it was run by people? Before all the IPO crazyness, the shelves full of distributions, and all the crazy hype?
    Now look at which free *nix's still keep a small and tight distribution.
    RedHat, you'd think they invented the buffer overflow.
    Mandrake, wait. i already mentioned RedHat.
    Corel, windows with a linux kernel. riiiight.
    SuSe, not even gonna comment.
    FreeBSD, not yet. but its bound to end up like those above.

    so whats left? Slackware, Debian, OpenBSD, NetBSD, and a handful of others.
    Sure the big distro's are pushing free *nix forward, but why'd we start it all in the first place? To have a unix-like system that everyone could get. Not to sell out to the big companies, not to sell t-shirts, not to sell mugs or shot glasses either. Microsoft was a little grass roots company once too. So i'm not too happy for all these buy-outs and mergers. You're supposed to make companies, not buy them. You're supposed to beat the competiton, not buy them. blah blah. im done
  • Hey, thank you very much for the help, Les. It's cool to see someone who actually will give up moderating a story because they happen to know the answer to a (some would say "dumb") question. ;-)

    Here's a funny little story: I hit "post", looked at the clock here (4:18 AM I think), went to sleep. Woke up at about 11:00, and thought, "Hey, I wonder if my post has any replies!"

    Come into my server room, the WAN light on my poor little Cisco is convulsing uncontrollably; my site is down (of course)...

    Anyway, from one simple four o'clock in the morning post, I got one flame, one joke, one post trying to justify the aforementioned joke, a denial-of-service attack, and one real, honest-to-goodness actual response! Pretty good, hunh?

    And to think that some people say the *BSD "community" is just a bunch of 'leet snobs...I haven't the foggiest where they'd get that idea. ;-)

    Anyway, I think I'll try to run the Slash code on OpenBSD... hopefully if I have problems, I can find people (like Les) who can help. Thanks again!

  • Although I agree with your overall post, I had a thought on this part

    You're supposed to beat the competiton, not buy them. blah blah.

    That's more than likely in all their business plans. They have to keep the VC's happy and that means profit margin and product expansion. In todays economy it's buy vs build and 9 times out of 10 it makes more sense to buy. Sad but true.

  • "Competition is good, it brings out the vital parts."

    Although I suppose that another merger between two internet companies is the best example of competition. But the competition between Linux and FreeBSD will probably benefit both. Just like the competion between M$ and Linux could bring out the best of both.

    This is just a vague generalizing post. I just felt the need to quote Q-Tip.

  • Colorado Springs is a very small town when it comes to technology. Everyone knows everyone else. The building BSDi is in is only three floors and really not all that big. It also happens to be the home of USA.NET. The own most of the top two floors. I don't know the relationship if any between BSDi and USA.NET, but I would have to imagine that it would be a good thing. Infrastructure-Grade environments are where BSDi lives and USA.NET is turning into an infrastructure-grade provider, with it;s deals with Netscape, United etc.

    I like the fact that there are several strong players in this market, not to sound like the republican pig, but it will strenghen the products overall, help hold the costs dwn and most of all give us some additional realistic choices. I'm happy for BSDi, there are some really top notch folks over there and it's nice to seem them conitinuing to be a strong player in the field. Not to mention how good this is for Colorado Springs, which although seems like "South Denver" it's actually not, it's still a small town and needs the employers to be strong to keep the local economy going.

  • Re:Yahoo and Linux (Score:3)

    by jabbo ( 860 ) <jabbo AT yahoo DOT com> on Thursday June 01, 2000 @01:21AM (#1034489)
    I do not work for Yahoo and cannot speak for them.
    Don't work for Google either, although one of my
    friends now does. You'd probably be surprised to
    find out who #7 on the web is -- that's us.
    (MediaMetrix numbers -- we bounce around slightly
    above Amazon and below Lycos most months) I'm not
    sure that senior management would be real pleased
    with me bashing Sun (or MS, for that matter) so
    I'll leave it to interested parties to figure out
    the rest. I simply use a Yahoo! email address
    because I like their spam filtering services.

    Yahoo has a long history of avoiding complexity
    wherever possible, and BSD (along with flat files,
    manual indexing, and their pile-o-netapps setups)
    fits in with this strategy. They're cool cats.

    Google takes a different approach. They take
    Linux, hack it up a bit, and scale like you would
    not believe. My friend who works there called me
    up a couple weeks ago asking about using IP
    multicasting to broadcast boot images. That's
    pretty sick -- think on it for a moment. I hope
    the stock market treats them as well as they
    deserve to make out -- we tried to buy them and
    they told us to go to hell (they want to IPO).

    I don't know why Google likes Linux, but between
    them and Yahoo!, both OSes should be healthy for a
    long time to come. eg. Yahoo is big enough to
    (apparently) get Oracle to do a build on FreeBSD,
    although I can't confirm that (just something one
    of the Walnut Creek guys passed along way back).

    If you don't need FreeBSD's slight performance
    edge, or need something in the Linux kernel that
    isn't supported by BSD, then you should use Linux.
    FreeBSD is just better for networking and I/O,
    really. But that covers a lot of ground...

    Also, I've seen some very strange things happen
    when using Linux on loadbalanced servers doing
    DSR. FreeBSD boxes in the same setup have always
    worked great. Just another minor quibble.

  • Networking, licensing (Score:3)

    by jabbo ( 860 ) <jabbo AT yahoo DOT com> on Wednesday May 31, 2000 @11:38PM (#1034490)
    Two very obvious reasons leap to mind:

    1) the free-er BSD license -- do whatever you want
    with the code, just give credit where it's due

    2) superior networking performance -- I'm an admin
    for one of the 10 largest sites on the web. We
    have large numbers of both FreeBSD and Linux (and
    Solaris) boxes in production. To be perfectly
    honest, FreeBSD is the fastest, most reliable,
    most configurable OS I have encountered so far.
    I run Linux at home for no particular reason other
    than I'm too lazy to switch; however I have found
    that FreeBSD offers so many compelling advantages
    as a single-purpose server that I deploy mostly
    FreeBSD boxes where there is not a compelling
    application forcing us to use Linux or Solaris.

    And I'll probably switch over to FreeBSD at home,
    too, maybe waiting until 4.1 comes out to be safe.
    On laptops and such it makes sense to run Linux;
    on a firewall, OpenBSD. But for maximum performance on web and mail servers, FreeBSD rocks
    the house. Don't take my word for it -- try it
    yourself. Many of the Apache and Qmail developers
    run FreeBSD as their primary platform, and that's
    not an easy bunch to impress.

    FreeBSD is to Linux as Postgres is to MySQL ;-).
    (which would bring us next to Solaris -> Oracle)

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