I was going to make a joke like "You mean other than Apple?" but that's too easy.
BSD's desktop users fill the same nitch as Slackware. Advanced users that want to do it themselves. That said, most Linux distro's were put together because, as we all know, Linux is a kernel, and not a complete OS. BSD's, are a more complete distro, and the ports system alleviates the need for a lot of stuff that Linux distros take care of (like a package manager.) Still, they both are "worth it" to develop for for their devel
Gentoo fills the same niche with the Linux kernel. And since when is Slackware not a complete distro? Perhaps you meant “Linux From Scratch”...
P.S.: Please get your spelling right. It’s “niche”, “distros”, “BSDs” (second one only), and “develop for their developers”. Be happy that no grammar Nazi is close. With that amount of errors he would have ripped you to shreds. ^^
"Seriously though, is there even enough BSD desktop users to even worry about? That must be a truly itty bitty number, like 0.0001% or something."
Seriously though, does it matter a damn? If it's good for the purpouse, then it's good for the purpouse no matter how many (or how little) people use it. If number of users were a quality indicator, Windows would be the best system by an order of magnitude (hint: no, it's not).
And then again, for the casual desktop user, there's no difference between KDE on Free
Some of the network utilities in windows did originate with BSD but the stack in Windows XP / Windows 2003 Server and beyond was written by Microsoft.
False. Windows XP has the same stack as Windows 2000, which was lifted from BSD. We know because of fingerprinting and the attacks that it was once susceptible to. The new stack is in Server 2003 as you suggest, but it doesn't appear in desktop Windows until Vista. The same stack is also used in Windows 7. You can tell the change doesn't happen in XP due to the lack of integration of IPv6, which still demands the use of all the same management tools as on Windows 2000.
A number of apple employees are FreeBSD committers. I believe a number of FreeBSD guys were hired by apple, and still work on the FreeBSD core. If you don't know about FreeBSD give it a shot. Its different from Linux, so it will take a little while to get your head around, but its good. I left linux for it after 5 years of linux. The learning curve going from Linux to BSD is nowhere near the curve as say, going from Windows to Linux. Most of the ideas are the same, they're just implemented slightly dif
I'm not sure about the learning curve from windows to linux being harder then linux-bsd, I've just installed my first bsd firewall about 1-2 weeks ago, and I personally think bsd is harder just becouse it is alot like linux, but the little diferences are the things that make it alot harder..
True, you can get caught out if you make assumptions. However if you read the docs before assuming, its easier than being totally foreign. Also, once you get the "BSD way" for a few applications, the rest of the OS is configured and operates much more consistently than the mish-mash of ways linux apps seem to do things.
Stick with it... might take a little while for the thought process behind BSD to "click" but once it does for you, linux is full of glaring inconsistencies and just feels "dirty" by compa
"First of all, there is no reason to act like a douche when someone asks a question."
Any kind of question? Yours was obviously a "flamebait" one. And your answer to mine is too, so I betted my opinion on the first answer and I'm sure of it on this second.
"it is THAT kind of attitude that has non Windows/OSX platforms labeled as Operating Systems for the maladjusted. Nobody likes THAT guy"
You seem not to understand -again. All your rant basically begs for this answer: so what?
If i'm running a free unix desktop, its usually freebsd. Give it a shot if you're a linux person, and give your head a little while to get around to the unix way of doing things (rather than the bastardised linux way) and you may like it.
I used to use Linux, but found FreeBSD to be easier to configure from the command line, more consistent in its filesystem layout, more responsive under load, and generally "smoother" in terms of process scheduling. I gave up linux desktop use (for FreeBSD, and later, OS
That depends on your definition of BSD. Some people look at the userland and the large amount of BSD code in Mac OS X and call that BSD. I'd say there are more than 0.01% of users that are on mac os.
I started a project to make a desktop friendly BSD operating system called MidnightBSD. There's also PC-BSD and the now defunct DesktopBSD. The new problem is that Linux folks have grown inpatient with the linux on the desktop idea. They want it now and feel that supporting other operating systems in their FOSS work is slowing linux down. A few projects have really done some serious changes to their software to make it function poorly (or not at all) on other OSes including *BSDs. Sometimes it's a lack of people to make reasonable updates to the kernels for various things like "new" video interfaces. Even things like X.org have done shifts that make hardware acceleration a real pain in the butt on BSD platforms. I've been shunned many times for trying to provide patches both for MidnightBSD and previously FreeBSD to other projects.
The FreeBSD project has had trouble getting patches upstreamed for things like GCC and binutils in the past. In general, I think many GNU projects are starting to get grumpy with respect to *BSD patches. There's a backlash with BSD developers trying to write alternatives that are under the BSD license because we must to survive. Also, you get into situations like Apple buying cups and switching to LLVM because of fear of the GPLv3. Perhaps fear is not the right word.
The open source community is not one big happy group but a series of factions that don't get along. It's a shame really.
So you've found one algorithm bug that affects some tiny number of users (in 10 years of using BSD, both in an ISP and a 13 site international company, i've never encountered or heard of it).
There are plenty of bugs in linux that don't get fixed because the patch was "not invented here".
As far as BSD being useless as a modern desktop system, apple don't seem to think so, and neither do i or plenty of other users. There's certainly less visible brain damage in it than plenty of other "modern" operating
> (in 10 years of using BSD, both in an ISP and a 13 site international company, i've never encountered or heard of it).
Most ISPs have migrated to Linux anyway. Even *BSD-friendly companies move away from it because features which most users expect simply don't work right.
Example: Zend, the PHP company doesn't support FreeBSD anymore. The reason is simple, instead of fixing the bugs in the FreeBSD kernel, the FreeBSD maintainers forced the Zend engeneers to invent workarounds for kernel bugs in FreeBSD.
The main problem here, is that you don't know what you're talking about. - probably because you are blindly ignorant due to your view that the GPL way must be the only way to go.
Apart from Apple, 2 off the top of my head:
Yahoo contributed accept_filters and currently house servers on behalf of the freebsd project.
Blue Coat has contributed network routing architecture done by their senior network architect, Qing Li.
That's just 2 off the top of my head - google for the many others
FWIW, I'm a long-time FreeBSD user (and can't wait to install and try out 8 even if I don't desperately need anything over 7) and I think you had good and interesting questions there. I'm a bit ashamed for the community (or rather the Slashdot faction) that you got so readily misunderstood and attacked.
To my knowledge there is no such corporate backing for BSD. It would be very interesting if there was, and in several ways it is just perfect for it. (Architecture, uniformity, licensing, etc.)
It's not quite true to say that there is no corporate backing for FreeBSD. There are no major companies that heavily back the project, but Yahoo! used to employ six developers full time to work on the kernel (not sure if they employ anyone now - do they have any money left?), Apple's Darwin team often contributes code, Juniper sends patches back, and a few other companies contribute financially. You may remember a couple of years ago that the FreeBSD foundation was in danger of losing its non-profit statu
OpenBSD, on the other hand, gets very little corporate support, in spite of the fact that everyone ships OpenSSH.
I wonder if it's Theo's charming personality:D Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't but god damn he can spew some bile if you get on the wrong side of his argument.
I don't think your question is wrong so much as it is just annoying. Frankly the answer is yes, there's enough resources to support the users that have FreeBSD on the desktop, otherwise, they wouldn't be doing it.
I don't know how much or how little companies contribute to FreeBSD, but it doesn't look like they throw much in. They are trying to raise $300,000 for the *year* (http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/). A company like Apple or Yahoo or Juniper or others that rely on it probably spend many times more than that on coffee. I hope that there is a lot I don't know about to help fund it (along with the other BSDs, Linux, and open source projects in general, for that matter), and there probably is, but bein
I'm getting a surplus Dell Latitude from work. Was going to load Ubuntu but FreeBSD 8 plus KDE 4.3.0 (or later) looks like a fairly crisp choice for me. Anybody have any experience with this combination?
It's what I run at work, runs well but have to know what you intend on using it for. Also IME KDE 4 is easier to install and has less quirks than on linux.
Virtualbox runs vista quite well for me so it takes care of that problem to.
If you run 64 bit, use the nouveau driver, it's far better than nv.
I'm getting a surplus Dell Latitude from work. Was going to load Ubuntu but FreeBSD 8 plus KDE 4.3.0 (or later) looks like a fairly crisp choice for me. Anybody have any experience with this combination?
Not with that particular make and model, but a while back I've been running FreeBSD (6.2 and 7) on my laptop for some months.
Sadly, I've had to give up on it because it didn't provide decent ACPI (suspend/resume) support and hardware graphics acceleration.
Think lucky. If you fall in a pond, check your pockets for fish.
-- Darrell Royal
Awesome! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
I won't believe it until Netcraft confirms it.
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Which explains why Win2000 was the best version of windows ever made.
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I was going to make a joke like "You mean other than Apple?" but that's too easy.
BSD's desktop users fill the same nitch as Slackware. Advanced users that want to do it themselves. That said, most Linux distro's were put together because, as we all know, Linux is a kernel, and not a complete OS. BSD's, are a more complete distro, and the ports system alleviates the need for a lot of stuff that Linux distros take care of (like a package manager.) Still, they both are "worth it" to develop for for their devel
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Gentoo fills the same niche with the Linux kernel. And since when is Slackware not a complete distro? Perhaps you meant “Linux From Scratch”...
P.S.: Please get your spelling right. It’s “niche”, “distros”, “BSDs” (second one only), and “develop for their developers”. Be happy that no grammar Nazi is close. With that amount of errors he would have ripped you to shreds. ^^
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
Be happy that no grammar Nazi is close. With that amount of errors he would have ripped you to shreds. ^^
Yes, well, you'll do until he shows up.
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With that amount of errors he would have ripped you to shreds.
'Numbers' would be the better word choice. 'Amount' is more appropriate for indeterminate quantities.
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'Number'. Not 'Numbers'.
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"Seriously though, is there even enough BSD desktop users to even worry about? That must be a truly itty bitty number, like 0.0001% or something."
Seriously though, does it matter a damn? If it's good for the purpouse, then it's good for the purpouse no matter how many (or how little) people use it. If number of users were a quality indicator, Windows would be the best system by an order of magnitude (hint: no, it's not).
And then again, for the casual desktop user, there's no difference between KDE on Free
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Some of the network utilities in windows did originate with BSD but the stack in Windows XP / Windows 2003 Server and beyond was written by Microsoft.
False. Windows XP has the same stack as Windows 2000, which was lifted from BSD. We know because of fingerprinting and the attacks that it was once susceptible to. The new stack is in Server 2003 as you suggest, but it doesn't appear in desktop Windows until Vista. The same stack is also used in Windows 7. You can tell the change doesn't happen in XP due to the lack of integration of IPv6, which still demands the use of all the same management tools as on Windows 2000.
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Stick with it... might take a little while for the thought process behind BSD to "click" but once it does for you, linux is full of glaring inconsistencies and just feels "dirty" by compa
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"First of all, there is no reason to act like a douche when someone asks a question."
Any kind of question? Yours was obviously a "flamebait" one. And your answer to mine is too, so I betted my opinion on the first answer and I'm sure of it on this second.
"it is THAT kind of attitude that has non Windows/OSX platforms labeled as Operating Systems for the maladjusted. Nobody likes THAT guy"
You seem not to understand -again. All your rant basically begs for this answer: so what?
"My question is very simple-
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Now is Apple actually supporting BSD with serious funding
Absolutely: http://maryniuk.blogspot.com/2008/03/asiabsdcon-2008.html [blogspot.com]
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I used to use Linux, but found FreeBSD to be easier to configure from the command line, more consistent in its filesystem layout, more responsive under load, and generally "smoother" in terms of process scheduling. I gave up linux desktop use (for FreeBSD, and later, OS
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Interesting)
That depends on your definition of BSD. Some people look at the userland and the large amount of BSD code in Mac OS X and call that BSD. I'd say there are more than 0.01% of users that are on mac os.
I started a project to make a desktop friendly BSD operating system called MidnightBSD. There's also PC-BSD and the now defunct DesktopBSD. The new problem is that Linux folks have grown inpatient with the linux on the desktop idea. They want it now and feel that supporting other operating systems in their FOSS work is slowing linux down. A few projects have really done some serious changes to their software to make it function poorly (or not at all) on other OSes including *BSDs. Sometimes it's a lack of people to make reasonable updates to the kernels for various things like "new" video interfaces. Even things like X.org have done shifts that make hardware acceleration a real pain in the butt on BSD platforms. I've been shunned many times for trying to provide patches both for MidnightBSD and previously FreeBSD to other projects.
The FreeBSD project has had trouble getting patches upstreamed for things like GCC and binutils in the past. In general, I think many GNU projects are starting to get grumpy with respect to *BSD patches. There's a backlash with BSD developers trying to write alternatives that are under the BSD license because we must to survive. Also, you get into situations like Apple buying cups and switching to LLVM because of fear of the GPLv3. Perhaps fear is not the right word.
The open source community is not one big happy group but a series of factions that don't get along. It's a shame really.
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There are plenty of bugs in linux that don't get fixed because the patch was "not invented here".
As far as BSD being useless as a modern desktop system, apple don't seem to think so, and neither do i or plenty of other users. There's certainly less visible brain damage in it than plenty of other "modern" operating
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
> (in 10 years of using BSD, both in an ISP and a 13 site international company, i've never encountered or heard of it).
Most ISPs have migrated to Linux anyway. Even *BSD-friendly companies move away from it because features which most users expect simply don't work right.
Example: Zend, the PHP company doesn't support FreeBSD anymore. The reason is simple, instead of fixing the bugs in the FreeBSD kernel, the FreeBSD maintainers forced the Zend engeneers to invent workarounds for kernel bugs in FreeBSD.
I
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The main problem here, is that you don't know what you're talking about. - probably because you are blindly ignorant due to your view that the GPL way must be the only way to go.
Apart from Apple, 2 off the top of my head:
Yahoo contributed accept_filters and currently house servers on behalf of the freebsd project.
Blue Coat has contributed network routing architecture done by their senior network architect, Qing Li.
That's just 2 off the top of my head - google for the many others
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
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To my knowledge there is no such corporate backing for BSD. It would be very interesting if there was, and in several ways it is just perfect for it. (Architecture, uniformity, licensing, etc.)
I total
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's not quite true to say that there is no corporate backing for FreeBSD. There are no major companies that heavily back the project, but Yahoo! used to employ six developers full time to work on the kernel (not sure if they employ anyone now - do they have any money left?), Apple's Darwin team often contributes code, Juniper sends patches back, and a few other companies contribute financially. You may remember a couple of years ago that the FreeBSD foundation was in danger of losing its non-profit statu
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I wonder if it's Theo's charming personality :D Sometimes I agree with him, sometimes I don't but god damn he can spew some bile if you get on the wrong side of his argument.
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I don't think your question is wrong so much as it is just annoying. Frankly the answer is yes, there's enough resources to support the users that have FreeBSD on the desktop, otherwise, they wouldn't be doing it.
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I don't know how much or how little companies contribute to FreeBSD, but it doesn't look like they throw much in. They are trying to raise $300,000 for the *year* (http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/). A company like Apple or Yahoo or Juniper or others that rely on it probably spend many times more than that on coffee. I hope that there is a lot I don't know about to help fund it (along with the other BSDs, Linux, and open source projects in general, for that matter), and there probably is, but bein
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I'm getting a surplus Dell Latitude from work. Was going to load Ubuntu but FreeBSD 8 plus KDE 4.3.0 (or later) looks like a fairly crisp choice for me. Anybody have any experience with this combination?
Re: (Score:2)
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It's what I run at work, runs well but have to know what you intend on using it for. Also IME KDE 4 is easier to install and has less quirks than on linux.
Virtualbox runs vista quite well for me so it takes care of that problem to.
If you run 64 bit, use the nouveau driver, it's far better than nv.
Re: (Score:2)
Not with that particular make and model, but a while back I've been running FreeBSD (6.2 and 7) on my laptop for some months.
Sadly, I've had to give up on it because it didn't provide decent ACPI (suspend/resume) support and hardware graphics acceleration.