Another month, another issue of DaemonNews. Highlights this month include a report from ApacheCon 2000, an interview with the NetBSD Foundation about the BSDI/Walnut Creek merger, Greg Lehey's Daemon's Advocate column, and the latest article in the "Managing Websites using Unix" series.

O'Reilly's FreeBSD DevCenter is currently running an interview with Keith Bostic, one of the principal architects of 4.4 and 4.4-lite BSD, and a co-founder of BSDI. In it he discusses the genesis of BSDI, the merits of the BSD and Linux development models, marketing open source software, and more.

Elik asks: "I have been looking for solid support for the ISDN cards for FreeBSD in the U.S. considering the drivers currently available are for the Europe-based ISDN Cards. Is there anyone willing to help write the drivers using the ISDN4linux as the base for the ISDN4BSD for American users? It sucks to purchase the external ISDN when I have quite a few ISDN Cards around and I would like to put them to use. "

The AC crowd were the first to write in with the news. From Wilfredo Sanchez's diary at Advogato, "Today another big milestone has come up. I imported the sources to the kernel into the Darwin CVS repository today, which means that at this point all of the sources needed to build Darwin are available externally for the first time." For those not in the know, Darwin is the foundation on which MacOS X is based. It's a BSD Unix, including significant contributions from the NetBSD and FreeBSD kernel and userland code.

LinuxWorld carries an article by Michael Lucas, Customizing The FreeBSD Kernel. The twist is that it's written partly from the perspective of a Linux user, highlighting the similarities and differences between the two systems.

sekure writes "I was just on OpenBSD.org, and as I was reading the wanted hardware page I noticed that the OpenBSD project needed more Alpha gear, and if they don't get what they need, they won't ship OpenBSD/alpha on the 2.7 CD-ROM. I don't know what everyone else thinks, but I think it would be a shame. I know I'm going to talk to my boss about lending (or maybe even giving?) an Alpha to the OpenBSD project. Maybe people have old (or new) Alpha's kicking around they don't use anymore, or maybe there are some multi[million|billion]aires that wouldn't mind donating some fresh new Alpha's. What do you think?"

SecretAsianMan writes, "With all the hoopla about the WC/BSDI merger, it's easy to forget that FreeBSD 4.0 will be out soon. Boardwatch has an interview with Jordan K. Hubbard about what's new in FreeBSD 4.0, porting to different architectures, and what the future holds for FreeBSD. "

Elwood writes "Andrew Gillham has booted NetBSD/i386 -current on his Netpliance i-opener. He did this without opening the case and without using a 2.5" IDE hard drive." Read on for details.

spr writes, "Actually it is uploading as of this posting. Looks like about 200+ MB is already up. You can get it at: ftp.freebsd.org. To quote the README: "This should be enough to install the full operating system, though if you're looking for the full experience or wish to support the project through your CD purchase, please see the FreeBSD Mail."

Mitch Connard was one of several to note that "Google now has a BSD search to go along with its Linux search. The search seems very accurate." I never played with the Linux version, but from what I can gather this means that your searches are restricted to BSD specific sites. Very handy.

Elik asks "What available ISDN cards are available for FreeBSD that is designed in US, that works extremely well with FreeBSD 2.2.8 and FreeBSD 3.3 and 3.4 and upcoming 4.0? Reason I been asking this is that in comparison to Linux's documentation, there is not much documenations can be found regarding the hardware on the ISDN cards, except for the reference to the ISDN4BSD which seems only to cover Europe's support for the ISDN connection, which is not what I need. Any help there for this?"

Mike Lockwood writes: "I haven't seen a formal announcement yet, but the Releases page on the NetBSD Web site says, "The latest patch release, NetBSD 1.4.2, was released on March 19, 2000." Now that I have already downloaded a copy of the mac68k port and installed it on my Quadra 700, I figured it is safe to tell the rest of the world."

Got a Cobalt Raq 2, but want to keep your BSD fetish going? If so, Soren Jorvang's announcement of a prelimenary port to this particular piece of blue iron should be right up your street.

AC writes in with a pointer to a story from LinuxMall: "In the wake of all the press surrounding the BSDI-Walnut Creek merger, there's one thing Kevin Rose, Marketing Director of Berkeley Software Design, Inc. wants everyone to remember: BSD was here first.

Nick Sayer writes, "Enlighten Software makes system administration software and currently offers a port for (various distributions of) Linux. We are considering native support for FreeBSD (given what our software does, running it under the Linux ABI emulator really isn't an option). We are soliciting comments from people who would purchase our software if it were available for FreeBSD. Please send mail to bsd@enlightendsm.com. "