Every BSD article posted, trolls come out and post about BSD dying. Naysayers at every turn, mostly pro-Linux, say that BSD doesn't have the marketing and advocacy to succeed. Greg Lehey, author of The Complete FreeBSD and FreeBSD core team member, takes a look at naysayer's claims, the history of BSD, the root of the "quiet" BSD advocates, and the relationship of Linux to it all, in this month's Daemon's Advocate at Daemon News

Patrick Mullen writes: "OpenBSD 2.8 is a big release in many ways, but who has time to read the long release information pages? The Duke of URL has just reviewed OpenBSD 2.8 and covers all the new features, installation (including a mini-HowTo for those new OpenBSD users), information about the organization, and much more."

howardjp writes "Today, Feb. 7, Tucows announced they would bring back the BSD section. Apparently a number of users sent mail encouraging the Tucows/BSD group and with the help of both Wasabi Systems and BSDi, it will be back."

A reader writes: "This byte.com article finds byte.com's Linux guru wondering why he isn't running FreeBSD. 'Linux 2.4.0 is available for no money. So is FreeBSD. Linux uses advanced hardware, so does FreeBSD. FreeBSD is more stable and faster than Linux, in my opinion. We penguinistas sometimes believe we are having more fun than anybody. But then I lean over the fence and discover the FreeBSD folks are having a hell of a party, too. And their OS is as fast as I have seen. I have to ask myself why I don't just switch my server to FreeBSD.'"

hubertf writes: "NetBSD now supports the SEGA Broadband (i.e. ethernet) Adapter. Check out the screendump of someone telnetting into a Dreamcast running NetBSD!" Considering that this adapter only came out a short while ago, this is pretty fast work. Next stop: electric toothbrushes.

sparcv9 writes "The NetBSD Team has added another port to their ever-growing list. This time, it's NetBSD/hpcsh (HPC = Handheld PC, SH = Hitachi Super-H processor), and it currently supports the SH3 processor, with the SH4 promised in the future. It currently runs on the up-until-now WinCE-only HP Jornada palmtop PC."

Wolverine writes "IBM has finally seen the light and modified the BIOS on their T20/T21 laptops so users can now install FreeBSD without worrying about turning their machine into a paperweight. Although the official fix is listed as a fix for "System can not boot from a hard disk with partition ID of n5h.(n is 1 or greater)", they may have well just posted "You can install FreeBSD so stop whining". ThinkPad T20 bios can be found here and T21 bios update can be found here."

Brew Bird writes "Qwest explains how they handle the various issues that crop up being a large ISP/Backbone Provider. They've got the presentations setup in a nice little website." It's very *BSD focused, since I believe that's mostly what Qwest runs but the presentations are interesting in the scaling issue - what do you do with that much data and that many machines?

BSD Today ran a comment on Tucows shutting down the Tucows BSD Section after flames from the BSD community about the misinformation they had on the site. Tucows says that they cannot meet the demands of all the "factions" within the BSD camp. It's a cop-out in my opinion; BSD Today and Daemon News seem to do it fine. All any of us asked for was for the inflammatory pro-linux/anti-BSD flavor of it to be toned down, and the misinformation cleared up. DaemonNews also carries some appropriate comments.

Last Friday we solicited questions for Robert Watson, hard-core FreeBSD and TrustedBSD developer. His answers (below) are breathtakingly deep and instructive. Whether you're "just curious" about BSD or a FreeBSD user who wants to see what's going on with the inner circle of developers, you'll want to spend the time it takes to read everything here, and possibly even send Mr. Watson a brief "thank you" email.

hubertf writes: "The NetBSD pkgsrc crew has released a 2-CD-set loaded with apps for NetBSD 1.5/i386. The set consists of the two files i386pkg1.iso (680MB) and i386pkg2.iso (660MB), and is also available on any mirrors of ftp.netbsd.org. See the README file that describes the contents of the CDs for more details."

Robert Watson is a core developer for FreeBSD, and a member of the TrustedBSD project. He is one of the best people in the world to ask about FreeBSD security, and about FreeBSD development in general. Please post your questions below. We'll send 10 of the highest-moderated ones to Watson by email, and post his responses verbatim as soon as we get them back.

daniel writes "This is the first I've heard of a dedicated Webcam machine that runs NetBSD. See the mmEye, It's based on the SH3 and its parent corp has contributed towards the netbsd SH3 port and work on SH4 support. I think this could be pretty handy for people running Webcams."

mccormi writes: "Dr. Dobb's Journal is covering a roundtable with four key members of the BSD movement at the recent USENIX Security Symposium 2000. The participants emphasized that reliability and security are achieved through simplicity. Other topics included the evolving distinction between Linux and BSD, why they don't use std::string, and why no one to likes IKE."

Csy writes "John Byrd, manager of the Sega of America Developer Technical Support department, sent a message to the port-dreamcast NetBSD mailing list to express his approval, interest and support of the effort."

BSD Today carries an editorial rant on the misinformation that Tucows has on their BSD Section. The author wants to clear up the many misconceptions that Tucows seems to have about BSD now that they are distributing software for it. It talks specifically about licensing issues and availability.

sparcv9 writes: "The NetBSD/sh3 developer Saitoh Masanobu, who was able to boot the NetBSD/sh3 kernel on his Sega Dreamcast last summer, has now officially forked a NetBSD/dreamcast port. The Dreamcast effort will focus specifically on supporting the Dreamcast hardware, rather than just the Super-H processor contained within. Currently, it only boots into single-user mode, and the only function hardware is the serial port, but, hey -- it's a start." This project ranks right up there with all the tivo hacking going on in my eyes. When all is said and done, we could have really inexpensive, but reasonably powerful machines to play with.

howardjp writes "DaemonNews will start printing a bi-monthly print magazine starting on January 15th. The magazine will contain new original articles not found on the website. You can preorder a subscription for only 24.95 USD (38.95 USD outside the US) from the DaemonNews Mall."

mikey wrote to us with the news that a new issue of DaemonNews has been released. Get your fill of the little devil there.

Brett Glass writes: "This paper, first presented at BSDCon 2000, describes state of the art methods of blocking spam and malware using BSD and Sendmail. The techniques described here are also applicable to other operating systems and mail transfer agents, so this paper is worth reading even if you're using NT, Linux, Postfix, qmail, etc. If you've never heard of a Rumplestiltskin attack, are baffled by the finer points of Sendmail configuration, or want to know how to block worms like ILOVEYOU before they reach vulnerable Windows clients, you'll enjoy this paper. Slides from the presentation are also included."