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BSD Operating Systems

Tim O'Reilly Confirms BSD Publications 112

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can-they-use-a-tasmanian-devil? dept.
InfoMonk writes: "I attended a library conference over the weekend. Tim O'Reilly spoke at a presentation on Open Source Software for libraries. After the conference I asked him about the long running interest in O'Reilly putting out BSD publications. He confirmed that two projects are currently in development, the expected BSD in a Nutshell and another book whose subject is not yet clear. This is very good news of course, to BSD hackers who are slightly tired of the press coverage that Linux has been given in the past year."
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Tim O'Reilly Confirms BSD Publications More

Tim O'Reilly Confirms BSD Publications

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  • Good point. And GNU/Linux users may not know this, but to su to root on a BSD box, you must be part of the 'wheel' group. (Extra levels of security never hurt, right?) I believe I posted a poem about this (possibly while on a caffeine overload) with another UID a few months ago. Bonus point to anyone who finds it! ;-p

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  • Take that Tux (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Take that [attrition.org] Tux
  • It is interesting to note that in the Apache book the authors used BSD for all of their examples very friendly towards BSD. Now the OT question. I'm looking at starting to learn openbsd any suggestions on a good book?
  • I think you're trying to start a flamewar, but that's irrelevant. The answer is: BSD4.4-lite. BSD Unix was born in the early Eighties, when the CSRG at Berkeley got hold of Unix. (Shortly after its birth at Bell Labs, many Universities were allowed to use it for research and educational purposes. Much of this development made its way back into the official code.) The CSRG did developed much of what Unix is today, from vi and the C Shell, to Unix TCP/IP.

    Yes, TCP/IP. Back when ARPANet was being developed, DARPA needed an OS implementation of TCP/IP to work with. Thus, they funded Berkeley CSRG during the mid-late Eighties, and BSD is intricately tied to the roots of the Internet.

    TCP/IP made its way back to AT&T, along with a lot else. Even with the commercial proprietary OS boom of the Eighties, there was much code sharing, and so the many Unices never got too far apart. Obviously the major reason for this is they all had to license it from AT&T. ;-)

    System V, Revision 4 (SVR4) brought together the best of the Unix world, and while based largely on AT&T's UNIX, also includes a lot of BSDish stuff. Other companies' work was used as well, including pieces of Xenix. SVR4 is POSIX, what your beloved GNU/Linux is based upon.

    SRV4 is the "modern" UNIX base, used in all commercial UNIX OSes. (Solaris, AIX, Irix, HP-UX, et cetera.) A note on Solaris: SunOS (as it was originally known) was formerly BSD based; not surprising, considering that Bill Joy is its father. But Sun switched to SVR4 in the late Eighties/early Nineties, and it has been known since as Solaris. Solaris 8 is really Solaris 2.8, which is SunOS 5.8. (Look at your Solaris bootlog...)

    In the early Nineties, the original Berkeley CSRG was ready to call it quits. Before they did, they wanted to release their complete modern OS codebase to the community, as 4.4BSD. But there were still lingering pieces of UNIX code in BSD, which were removed after a series of messy lawsuits. The commercial code was rewritten, and the OS, now completely free, was released as 4.4BSD-Lite.

    This codebase, whose history goes back to the very beginnings of UNIX itself, was adopted by several groups of developers who wanted to revive BSD Unix. The two most successful were FreeBSD, who concentrate on being the most advanced BSD Unix for the x86 arhictecture, and NetBSD, whose goal seems to be to run BSD on every processor ever designed. :) Not long ago, a disgruntled BSD developer forked the NetBSD code and created OpenBSD, an OS with tons of cool integrated cryto-nrrd stuff, which is famous as being perhaps the most secure network OS currently in use.

    So, to the point, all *BSD OSes are based on the 4.4BSD-lite code which was the Berkeley CSRG's final work.

    The BSD which you forgot to ask about is BSDi. BSDi is a commercial BSD company, whose board of directors includes a few original CSRG members (I believe). BSDi recently purchased FreeBSD's distributor and will be merging the codebases. The best news to come so far of this is that FreeBSD will finally have a native Java2 development kit.

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  • i agree with you, i was just answering your question :)
  • Although the "other" book mentioned is probably not what I'm thinking of, I think ORA should do a MacOS X-oriented BSD book -- basically something that relates the command-line tools and the use of the filesytems (Macintosh HFS, BSD UFS) to the rest of MacOS X, and perhaps some material on how MacOS X's configuration design differs from traditional BSD.
  • It's growing in total users, however.

    That's the important part.

  • All modern commercial Unices are SVR4. GNU/Linux, based on POSIX, is more SVR4-like, but is really a mongrel whose command syntax is usually a mesh of both, with stuff of its own added in. Regardless, the kernel structure is close enough to SVR4 to be considered such.

    POSIX is the official standard which defines UNIX (as in the trademarked, licensed kind). A POSIX OS is essentially the same thing as SVR4. Close enough for this discussion, anyway.

    Read my other response in this thread for more info.

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  • It already happened anyway, long ago.. it is called Windows Nt or something like that.

    So what he says is not really unprovable...

  • Linux runs on Alpha, PPC, Amiga, and god knows what else. Name a single plat that BSD runs on but Linux does not, and I could probably send you a link to the linux distro that does work on that platform.

  • hehe this one should be moderated up as funny.
  • Howard, I thought you'd be an expert in Hebrew not Latin ;-)

    So now you have to sink to racism that isn't even accurate?
  • Posted by BSD-Pat:

    Thanks Rob for the more agressive BSD coverage on Slashdot.

    It amazes me how many people can't just co-exist peacefully. I use Linux at work, I prefer BSD. I've spent countless hours working with BSD.

    BSD runs the pr0n industry too! =)

    Anyway, my point is, can't we all just get along? At USENIX this year, Nik Clayton and I hung out with many Linux oriented people (including Stephen Tweedie and Theodore T'so) and had interesting coversations with them, ranging from SMP to filesystems, etc.

    If the people at the forefront of these communities can get along, share information, even socialize with each other, what's so wrong with Slashdot readers getting along?

    We use FreeBSD for firewalling at Andover, it works EXTREMELY well, slashdot's been fast, survived several DoS attacks (of which people barely noticed)

    We also run the back end on Linux, we've got some plans in the works for some OpenBSD too....

    Use what's best for the situation, this isn't some religious argument.

    This coming from the Devil's Advocate.....

    -Pat
  • Surprise surprise, BSD books coming to O'Reilly... and MacOS X coming out soon (public beta this summer, 1.0 for Macworld SF in January 2001).

    MacOS X will mean a lot of Mac developpers/IT people needing to get BSD books. That's quite a market.

  • Re:Linux v. BSD (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @08:13AM (#943896) Homepage Journal
    From where I sit, there's no denying that the total number of BSD users is growing. Saying that "BSD continues to bleed market share" is another way of lying with statistics. For example, if the BSD market is growing at a 10% rate then the BSD market is pretty healthy, even if other market segments like Linux are growing faster.

    Do you have any statistics at all that the number of BSD users is diminishing? If not then don't bring it up. This isn't television and the Nielson ratings. BSD won't get cancelled for being rated number two in the minds of newbies. Unix veterans do not abandon their favorite OS just because the Netwatch numbers are low.
  • I may be particularly dense today, but how does the "secret cult" thing affects the challenge? And given that, from a user interface point of view Linux and FreeBSD (and for all I know, the Hurd once is finished) are virtually equivalent, why is the challenge greater in one versus the other?

    And lest we forget, would you be so kind as to explain what is this pollution that you keep talking about? Final question: are you a programmer?

  • thats not the point. my point was that linux is portable !!! its not more portable than netBSD but another thing

  • Re:Linux v. BSD (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @08:35AM (#943899) Homepage Journal
    I can see how a little resentment can creep into the most level-headed individual when things like political, religious or operating system choice are at play.

    This "resentment" does not necessarily stem from ideological sources, or even disappointment that one's favorite OS is not number one. Rather, a lot of it arises from Linux bigotry. Hear me out!

    It's extrememly frustrating when Linux is reported as being the only free OS. It's doubly frustrating when even those who know better say the same thing. For example, many applications written for X that use no OS system calls are advertised as "for Linux".

    Walk into any given bookstore and the odds are high that you'll find open source related books under the heading of "Linux".

    In terms of O'Reilly books, Tim said once upon a time that he would not publish a BSD book because it would be redundant. Yet there exists multiple redundant Linux books. How redundant is "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" coupled with "Learning Redhat Linux". For really eye-opening redundancy, check out the content of "Linux in a Nutshell" and "Unix in a Nutshell".
  • The GPL is a little restrictive, but only to those who wish to take and not give back.

    What is restrictive is that I have to give back in *exactly* the way that you demand. I am not allowed to make the license more free. I am not allowed to make the license more bullet-proof. Hell, I can't even write a program that links to a 100% free library like Qt without putting in a disclaimer.

    There is a large difference between charity and taxation, between donations and fees, and between sharing and surrendering.
  • Several months ago the bay area BSD users group (I don't remember the name, if someone else would like to add to the details in this post, please go for it) had a meeting topic of 'BSD vs Linux' (it might have been FreeBSD vs Linux, I don't recall)

    Originally it was supposed to be a head to head comparison of Linux vs (Free?)BSD -- winner take all, or so I was gathering.

    What happened was that it came out that both OSes have their strengths, both have their weaknesses. Both sides often argue the 'point' with old information. Yes linux has better 'newbie support' and more hardware support, and *BSD degrades more gracefully under load and has nifty better things in the kernel. What ended up coming out was more of a sense of cooperation, than a bloody war..why this should be such a surprise I don't know.

    In other words, use the right tool for the job.

    Anyone who was there want to add their comments? I'll grant my memory might be fuzzy, it was a bit back.

    In any case, I think that Linux popularity has been a good thing for Unixes in general and Freenixes in particular (how many Unix [of any flavor] users under the age of, say, 25, at least in the U.S., got their start on a Linux system?) and I do think that it's been a shame that *BSD has sort of been the neglected child. One would think there would be enough room for both.

  • All signs of sharing and cooperation are welcome. However, it seems to me that soon the Linux and BSD communities are headed to a de facto total divorce, although this will be denied for a while.

    The instrument of this in my opinion will be the inclusion of ReiserFS as part of an official stable Linux kernel. From what I have read from various mailing lists such as those at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=reiserfs&r=1&w=2 [theaimsgroup.com] and Debian, ReiserFS will only be licensed for free operating systems under the GPL. In my opinion this means that ReiserFS will never be part of the base distributions of the free source BSDs.

    I believe that in five years ReiserFS will be the default file system for most Linux distributions. Of course ordinarily with Unix associated filesystems the particular one does not matter all that much for data interchangeability, but ReiserFS is but a small part of Hans Reiser's rather persuasive and exciting vision http://devlinux.com/projects/reiserfs/whitepaper.h tml [devlinux.com]. True right now there are many statements about how there will be upward compatible migration paths for different filesystems and even operating systems, but I see no way to avoid eventual nonportability of information between ReiserFS and other filesystems.

    And that's when the total break will occur. ReiserFS is getting support right now from some of the heavyweights such as SuSE, which means that there will be a high degree of integration between ReiserFS and the distributions. Conversely if ReiserFS isn't part of the base free source BSD distributions, it will not enjoy those communities' professional quality integration efforts.

    In my opinion the free source community would have been better off a while ago adopting a common stance for open implementable standards regardless of GPL, BSD, or MIT X licensing, but that window of opportunity of probably past.
  • can someone please explain me why this guy was marked as troll ?
  • As a recent newbie to linux, the oreilly books actually helped me make Linux into a productive environment, and i still find them good reference.
    I hope that the BSD book does the same.


    free 31337 translation onthis link [geocities.com]

    {shhhhh... the froggies are asleep.}
    spam-proofing?
  • Still no answer to

    "Please show me a Linux distribution (yes distribution, no gross kernel hacks) with a unified, clean source tree complete with all the platforms in the tree."

    The emphasis is on all.

    And I doubt that Debian/arm is as complete as Debian/i386...
  • It's like the long running IT joke, isn't it? Computer systems would work a lot better without the 'pollution' of users!!
  • Humour is subjective.

  • On Growth of the BSD Community (Score:4)

    by SecretAsianMan ( 45389 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @02:33AM (#943908) Homepage

    Well, I'd be willing to bet that most BSD people would welcome additional growth to the community. After all, BSD thereby gets more users, attracts more developers, and gains more/better software. With the increasing popularity of Linux -- or if I may, free UNIX -- I can only see growth as inevitable as *BSD gets swept up in the whole thing.

    However, there's something to be said when you've got such a small, tight community as the BSD communities. Take the FreeBSD community, for instance. It's decidedly the largest group of *BSD afficionados out there, but it's still tiny compared to the Linux community. You can still get in touch with all of the main hackers. Greg Lehey, who wrote the book on FreeBSD (that is, literally the one printed book), still participates on several of the official mailing lists and answers when contacted by e-mail. I'm a complete nobody in the FreeBSD community, but I've talked (e-mail) with Greg many times.

    Let us savor these things, us BSD people, because like it or not, the times they are a-changin'. I hope we can be as good big as we have been small

  • Old news, no news. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Over the years O'Reilly published several BSD offerings. All went out of print due to lack of sales. The first to go out of print was "BSD Unix in a Nutshell". Don't confuse this book with "Unix in a Nutshell" which never went out of print. O'Reilly is cleaning out the fridge and is going to gas up an old leftover. Same ol' same ol'.

    The next BSD disaster at O'Reilly was the death of the 4.4 BSD series manuals. I was at a flea market a couple years ago and some guy had a pile about a cubic yard in size of these manuals. They were going for a dollar each and he couldn't give them away. They did have their front covers ripped off but these books were originally over 120 dollars for the set. There they were in this crummy Sebastopol flea market for sale--a dollar each and no takers.

    Does anyone think that O'Reilly will make any money off another failed attempt to publish BSD material? There isn't a market for it. After the first hundred zealots buy it, wait a few months a pick it up at Midgley's Flea Market in Sebastopol.

  • You're logged in too, for extra bonus points. But you're not quite there. Nice try, the effort's noticed, but you're still trolling.

    He made a valid point. Between the Walnut Creek boot and UNIX in a nutshell, I have all I need to maintain my FreeBSD server.

    I once made a joke with my co-authors, we could right FreeBSD in a Nutshell with an OCR'ed copy of UNIX in a Nutshell and sed.

    George
  • I love Japan. Did you know that they have a BSD magazine?! I really wish I could read Japanese. Oh well; ANSI C is a universal language. :)

    Japan has never been held under Wintel's iron grip. There's even a competing format over there, called PC98. Consequently, "alternative" OSes such as FreeBSD have done quite well there. Proof is that FreeBSD comes with PC98 support and lots of Japanese language software.

    I recently watched a translated "mainstream" Japanese movie, and I started laughing out loud when I heard someone in the movie say, "He's so dumb! He can't even use Windows!" LOL!!! Man, I really gotta learn Japanese and get the hell over there. I can put up with xenophobia and beatings if there are half as many clueless lusers...

    Otaku might remember the episode of Magical Girl Sasami with the scary Bill Gates guy. Well, they didn't say he was Gates, but he was an American software mogul who tried to push his crappy OS onto everyone, and he was a scrawny white guy with short reddish-brown hair and glasses. Close enough for me.

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  • Don't tell anyone, but I used to evangelize the exact same thing. I gave up when replies consisted of nothing but flames saying that I was responsible for ther perception of BSD users as snobby and elitist.

    But it's true. ^_^

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  • Don't mod this guy down. He's not a troll. Stallman did say that.

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  • Oooh, good idea. It might not go over as well with the regular BSD crowd, but it would sell like mad. Just think of all the Mac users who will be upgrading, and some of them may want to learn the CLI stuff, now that they have an OS where it's really useful. I didn't even think of that.

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  • How to get a complete set: 1) get the distro; 2) crank the docs through 'troff'

  • (Score:1)

    by MUJAHID ( 209982 )
    If you think some *BSD kernel is great, then give me a "RedHat" distribution that has substituted the kernel you love for the linux kernel (call it "RedHot"). Wouldn't that be cool?

    wha?

    Then, having achieved a beachhead, BSD can start to push deeper into Linux territory.

    guh?

    i don't know man. maybe DEBIAN should put everybody's favourite MICROSOFT kernel into their os and call it DEBIAN WINDOWS. or wait, take QNX kernel, put it in DR-DOS and port MS OFFICE to it eh? we'd sweep through the Windows territory like Rommel through North Africa! how poetic.

  • I agree that this is a very good thing in general. One of the problems I see with Linux being so touted is that organizational users feel more comfortable using Linux now, not because they have tested it and find it to be a superior operating system, but frequently because it is so popular. Possibly if there were more press on BSD variants, those same people would see how stable they are and make a more informed decision.
  • While it's great to see a book on BSD in a nutshell - I can't really see what the requirement for it is. Unix in a Nutshell is an excellent resource, and as a FreeBSD user, The FreeBSD Handbook (available from Walnut Creek [cdrom.com] never strays far from my desk.
  • I will move to Linux when it is as stable as FreeBSD, or as secure as OpenBSD, or as portable as NetBSD, or as free as any of them. Linux has a long way to come in the fields that matter most to me.
  • Personally i've never been a great fan of O'Reilley books but it's never a bad thing to have a wide selection of relevant books on any one topic.

    Any guesses what animal it'll have on the front?

  • Actually, the original "Unix in a Nutshell" book covered BSD unix. Their sales bombed when they did a "BSD Unix in a Nutshell" because it was virtually identical to UIAN.

  • How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My understanding is that FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD are different systems, from the kernel and upwards.

    Do they have things in common between them (but different to commercial Unix and Linux)?
    In other words would this book contain all the things that people can find in any Unix/Linux, or are there features present in the 3 BSDs that are not present elsewhere?
  • This sounds more like the user doesn't know Latin. etc translates best to, "and the rest."
  • Even if he did say that - it's totally offtopic.

  • As linux became more mainstream, many moaned about various changes that took place within both the system, and the community that surrounds it. Do people really want this to happen to BSD as well?

    just wondering...

  • Why on earth is anyone surprised that a company whose first successful product was the 4.4BSD documentation, and whose headquarters is but a wee bit up the bay from Berkeley, should belly up to the table with a concise handbook to one of the most useful operating systems of our time?

    Oh wait, it isn't GPLed, it must not be any good... ;-)
  • How utterly weird! I seem to be running Netscape Communicator 4.73 under FreeBSD without using Linux mode. Is 4.73 now considered outdated? If so, then I am doomed to always being outdated because I can't keep up faster than this.

    But just what do you mean by "no native apps". Do you mean apps that are available *only* for FreeBSD? If so, then even Linux has an extreme dearth of applications. I don't know what FreeBSD you've used, but mine currently has Gimp, XEmacs, gcc, KDE, xmms, ssh, and hundreds more applications installed. And and I have several thousand more packages and ports available to run under FreeBSD natively. If I remember correctly, the precompiled packages that come with FreeBSD 4.0 number around 1500 or so. The ports collection contains many, many more.

    But if you're talking about native closed-source or proprietary commercial software, then there's only about a dozen or so. So I guess you're right. When it comes to what RMS calls subjugating and dominating software that takes away your rights, then Linux has BSD beat hands down!

    p.s. You are right about Acrobat though, my goof...
  • Do you have any statistics at all indicating that the total number of BSD users is declining? Any at all? I didn't think so... Why won't you give us your statistics and their source? Why do you insist on hiding behind AC?

    As for the number of native FreeBSD apps, the numbers are in the thousands. KDE, GNOME, Enlightenment, Netscape, Acrobat, gcc, emacs, sendmail, bind, xmms, and the list goes on and on. Maybe you don't realize it but any open source unix application that doesn't use kernel-specific system calls and otherwise follows common standards will compile under FreeBSD. For a closed source app, the manufacturer needs only recompile.

    Spend a few minutes browsing through the ports collection to understand how utterly stupid your post really is. FreeBSD has a linux emulation mode but I've never had to use it yet.

  • ??? (Score:5)

    by BJH ( 11355 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @01:46AM (#943929)
    Walk into any medium-to-large bookstore in Japan. You'll find, n the Computer section, several shelves of Unix-related books. Among them, you will see many along the lines of "Build a Linux server", "Play with Linux", etc. etc. You will also see a nearly equivalent number of *BSD-related publications, everything from "Running MacBSD-68K" to "OpenBSD Security". There are beginners' books and weighty tomes on BSD kernel internals. And all this in a country with a population of half that of the US, and which is basically unable to export books to other countries because of the expense involved in translation (not to mention the "lag time" it adds).

    My question is, "Why hasn't O'Reilly already published BSD books?" There's certainly enough potential interest to make it worth their while if they can put out books on Lego, f'Chrissakes.

  • Re:Linux v. BSD (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @03:05PM (#943930) Homepage Journal
    These people are not stupid, they are using Linux because it fits the job they are deploying it for.

    Of course they're not stupid. They use the OS best suited for the job. In some cases that will be Linux. In others it will be Solaris or AIX. Still others use BSD.

    I really don't understand the point of this. What difference does it make to BSD if somebody is using Linux instead? Is this some sort of all or nothing warfare where there can only be one winner? BSD never set a goal for world domination. Such an idea is abhorrent to it. That eleetist attitude belongs to Linux and Windows.

    What Linux lacked from the beginning is the eleetist attitude that some in BSD land are trying to get rid of.

    You are right when you accuse BSD of having elitist subgroups. But you are equally wrong when you say that the Linux community does not have the same. Every operating system has its elitist and self righteous advocates. Some of the most elitist and arrogant OS folks I have met are Linux users. Just go to any Slashdot story about the release of any Linux distribution and you'll see it. Debian users have the only moral operating system, Slackware users have the one true distribution, Redhat users possess the real Linux standard, ad nauseum. They won't say it in so many words, but the elitist attitude is there and very visible.

  • Linux v. BSD (Score:5)

    by bat'ka makhno ( 207538 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @01:46AM (#943931)
    This is very good news of course, to BSD hackers who are slightly tired of the press coverage that Linux has been given in the past year.

    I can see how a little resentment can creep into the most level-headed individual when things like political, religious or operating system choice are at play. Nevertheless, I see the mindshare gains acquired by Linux and Open Source over the past two years as a patently good thing for other- some, I'm sure, will argue, better- free Unices. A lot of organizations have, it seems, warmed to the idea that commercial software might not be only available option, and as they discover that viable alternatives exist to their, say, Windows-centric perspective, Linux will not be the only OS that will gain popularity simply because once shown the possibility of choice, one's point of view usually becomes quite a bit more flexible.

    That said, the fact that a great number of closed-source ISVs only support Linux or even, commonly, one particular distribution, does irritate me immensely, as does the growing disregard for portability in Open Source software written by Linux users for Linux users.
    --
    Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
    H. Rap Brown
  • Wow, so much false information, it's not even funny. First, it is Tim O'Rielly. Second, there is no Solaris in a Nutshell. Third, BSD was not a code fork from Solaris. BSD predates Solaris by ten years, even longer than Linux has existed.
  • > NetBSD is dying. Check out Usenet. The ratio of OpenBSD posts to NetBSD posts on Usenet is about
    > 7:1. The sudden decline in NetBSD is awesome.

    Because Usenet is dead. It's only used by spammers and perverts these days.

    Everybody uses mailinglists now. Check out the mailinglist archives of OpenBSD and NetBSD. The ratio is more like 1:7.
  • My question is, "Why hasn't O'Reilly already published BSD books?" There's certainly enough potential interest to make it worth their while if they can put out books on Lego, f'Chrissakes.

    My 4.4 BSD manual set is from O'Reilly, it was bought in 1995ish. The first O'Reilly book I saw was "BSD in a Nutshell", possabbly as far back as the 80s.

    Most of the other O'Reilly books have been about generic-ish Unix applications (News, Sendmail, Lex n' Yacc), and are as applicable to BSD as to Linux, or SysV and HP/UX. Many predate the current Linux mania.

    So they surely are not anti-BSD. Surely it was obviouse they wern't anti-BSD before they announced they would be doing another BSD book.

  • Surely it was obviouse they wern't anti-BSD before they announced they would be doing another BSD book.

    About a 2 years ago, I wrote a letter to Tim O'Reilly (from the O'Reilly Website Ask Tim section).

    I inquired as to why there were no books devoted to FreeBSD (or any other BSD), and asked if there were any plans for some of those?

    The reply I received (not from Tim), was there are already too many books devoted to FreeBSD, go find one somewhere else. (Just a little rude).

    Anyway, the only book devoted entirely to FreeBSD that I have ever found is the FreeBSD Handbook (2nd edition was just released I think)...

    But it would be nice to see some O'Reilly books devoted to FreeBSD.

  • So think twice before you hand this book to someone. Do you really want to deal with the consequences?

    Typical Elitist troll garbage.
  • Humour is subjective.

    So is the spelling of humour.
  • Posted by BSD-Pat:

    What makes you think that the BSD camp is even thinking about ReiserFS right now? We have our hands full with Soft Updates, and possibly LFFS in the future. Reiser is nice and all, but its creator can't even decide on a "release" version. Linux and BSD will always share information, they will also almost always do things in completely different manners. The other thing you neglect to realize is that the BSD distributions include GPL'd code, etc. Someone will probably port a GPL'd filesystem to *BSD and well, it'll go under /sys/contrib instead of under /sys/reiserfs. The spirit of copperation is important, and of communication. That doesn't mean that Linux will have everything BSD has and vice-versa. -Pat
  • Slackware's init process is quite a strange animal. It's a compromise between SVR4's runlevels and BSD's few simple config files. Slack keeps several files -- under a dozen in all, IIRC -- in /etc/rc.d, each corrsponding to a different runlevel, and a few others for specific system events. I think the end result is pleasing and makes admin on personal Slack boxen that much easier, but the BSD-feel is an illusion.

    GNU/Linux does things its own way, but you can definitely see that the kernel and much of the low-level system stuff takes its hints from SVR4. The BSD influence is there, but much weaker. I will stand by my statement that if Linux had to choose a side of the fence, it'd be SVR4.

    And while AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, et cetera all have their eccentricities and quirks, the important thing is that they're certified with the modern UNIX standards, so there's a great deal that they're guaranteed to have in common.

    I love my FreeBSD boxen, but I believe that SVR4 and POSIX managed to integrate the best of BSD, and that any groundbreaking BSD development these days won't mean much. Of course, I hope I'm proven wrong. In the meantime, I'll try to straddle the fence as best I can, as I always have.

    ---------///----------

  • BSD has not been as successful as linux in garnering marketshare in the past, right? Well, unfortunately for the BSD lover, that makes it even less likely that BSD will gain share in the future. It's not too hard to see a path to BSD improving its chances, but pay attention to the customer.

    The slashdot audience is filled with geeks, and geeks don't quite get it when it comes to understanding why and how other people decide what to buy or install. I don't want to go into gory detail about this, but a good example is a guy a few months back who basically said he was waiting for strongarm chips in the Palm [Pilot] because they are better than the chips in there now. Hello? Is there any device that hides the chips more thoroughly than a Palm? It's sort of a twisted version of the Turing test: can you tell what kind of chip is in there? No? Good!

    The reason I bring that example up is that kernels are the same way. If you think some *BSD kernel is great, then give me a "RedHat" distribution that has substituted the kernel you love for the linux kernel (call it "RedHot"). Wouldn't that be cool? I'll believe you that it's better, I'll install it, and it'll run better, and you and I will both be happier. Then, having achieved a beachhead, BSD can start to push deeper into Linux territory.

    So, I know you hate the idea, but you can't say I'm not trying. Otherwise, BSD will be the world's best OS to languish in obscurity.

  • No idea when the Java 2 kit will actually be released. But as long as BSDi is committed...

    We trolled Sun's Java RFE page for months trying to get something like this. The FreeBSD/Java 2 RFE was number one, by over 300%, for half a year, and I never heard one peep of response from Sun. Recently we started in on IBM Alphaworks, and at least they were honest enough to tell us that they had no plans to do Java work for FreeBSD.

    I think that with BSDi's backing, the current work done by the FreeBSD team, and the available Blackdown code, December isn't too soon to hope for. Alas, I was forced to stop Java development in FreeBSD in March. A year behind the current technology is just too much. I now do Java work from Linux and NT.

    ---------///----------

  • debian has x86, powerPC, sparc, alpha and one more (dont remember its name). those 5 platforms account for 99% of all hardware being used today.
  • 'about time. FreeBSD is great and should get more press.

  • You have to remember that the BSD market is very small. According to IDC and Gartner Group the BSD market share continues to shrink. This year. Last year. The year before.

    I suspect BSD's market share will significantly grow [apple.com] beginning possibly as soon as next week [macworldexpo.com].

  • Yep. Amazing how easy it is to get good responses to even my (dumb) questions. The OpenBSD mailing lists are fairly high-traffic-volume for the number of members, IMHO, but the signal to noise ratio is very low.

    This would certainly change if the number of users increased.

  • Re:??? (Score:1)

    by BJH ( 11355 )
    I buy BSD Magazine - it's really very good. They have a continuing series about dissecting the kernel; I believe last issue covered device drivers.

    WRT the PC98 "standard" - (A) it's dead (NEC killed it in favour of a normal AT architecture) and (B) it ran Windows on Intel chips (although there were some using NEC-made Intel-compatible CPUs a long time ago), so I'm not quite sure how that proves that Japan isn't in Wintel's grip, but yes, Windows isn't as universally accepted as the "default" as it is in some other countries.
  • Small quibble: according to the creators of Plan 9, it isn't Unix-based, although it certainly takes ideas from Unix. They said that Plan 9 is what Unix would be, if they could do it all over again, having had the experience with Unix's wide-spread usage.
  • You are correct. I apologize for not mentioning that.

    ---------///----------

  • Re:??? (Score:1)

    by BJH ( 11355 )
    I never said that O'Reilly is anti-BSD; merely pointed out that many smaller countries in a country with a much smaller potential customer base still manages to have more BSD-related publications on the shelves at one time than US bookstores have ever produced in the last twenty years.

    BTW, hate to tell you, but 4.4BSD is gone. It's like someone trying to sell a Linux book about the 1.3 kernel series; it's dead in the water before it even ships to the bookstores. It might give you some insights into ancient history, but it won't sell to people who just want to try installing OpenBSD because they've heard that it's secure.
  • Front covers are remopved from books when the retailer returns the books unsold to the publishers.
    Such books are not "sold", as in no money has been given to the publisher or author.

    Anyone "selling" such a book is selling something which they have illegally obtained and which they are not entitled to sell.
  • Well, not really... we were in a men's rest stop at the time, and I was understandably distracted. But we all (all 46 of us) said things that we didn't mean that night, so I'm not one to hold it against Ballman. Did I say Ballman? I meant Stallman.

    ---------///----------

  • Re:??? (Score:1)

    by BJH ( 11355 )
    s/countries/companies/
  • Well, I guess I posted my note because I was under the perhaps naive impression that Mac OS X was not going to be a disaster. I admit that I haven't evaluated it yet, but I have a lot of experience with NeXTStep (as a user, at least) and have been following its progress on all the usual places on the net. Most of the negative comments I've seen on the net have to with the differences in the UI (as compared to Classic), not stability or performance.

    If MacOS X is not a disaster, it will be the first credible, no excuses Unix-based OS for mortals. If it is, you will be vindicated and can reveal how smart you are.

  • Re:??? (Score:1)

    by BJH ( 11355 )
    Shit. "manages to have" should read "manage to put", and "bookstores" should be "publishing houses". I really have to reread my posts before hitting that button...
  • Hear yea, hear yea!

    This is Free Software, and that means freedom! And freedom is much too precious a thing to remain unregulated. Therefore all developers will get in line and do exactly what I say. In order to ensure the continuance of Free Software and Freedom, we must now eliminate the subversive notions of free will and free choice.

    Remember, Arbeit Macht Frei!
  • there is a arm support!!! have you ever actully tryed any of these ? it seems to me that you have based your opinion on linux portability without even trying it.

    here is a list of architectures debian is available for:
    Contents-hurd-i386.gz --> x86 debian with hurd as kernel

    Contents-sparc.gz@ --> sparc debian with linux as kernel

    Contents-i386.gz@ --> x86 debian with linux as kernel

    Contents-alpha.gz@ --> alpha debian with linux as kernel

    Contents-m68k.gz@ --> m68k debian with linux as kernel

    Contents-arm.gz --> arm debian with linux as kernel

    Contents-powerpc.gz@ --> powerpc debian with linux as kernel

  • Re: Markets in a Nutshell (tm) (Score:3)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @10:24AM (#943957) Homepage Journal
    But they don't make this information public

    Then this information is pretty much useless then, isn't it? Stop citing statistics that you won't release.

    But even if you did release them they wouldn't draw the conclusions you do. Because you don't have the faintest clue what "marketshare" even means.

    Is BSD losing? ... who is winning?

    Marketshare has nothing whatsoever to do with winning or losing. This is not some Mayan game where the winners get to execute the losers. It ain't a game at all, especially not one of those zero-sum games beloved by the economically illiterate.

    Let's look at a non-OS market like beverages Coca Cola and Pepsi have huge market shares while Royal Crown has very little. Does this mean that Royal Crown is a loser? Hardly. People who like Royal Crown cola will continue to buy it. And no statistics that could possibly cite about marketshare will ever convince them that Coke and Pepsi taste better.

    But the OS market is not the beverage market. The marketplace for beverages is saturated. The only thing that can increase the total number of beverage consumsers is an increase in the total population. But the OS market is still growing. It is near to pointless to cite BSD's marketshare as an indicator of its death, when the total OS market is doubling every year or two.

    Think about it. If the BSD market share lost 5% last year, they must be doing awesome! Because the total number of new OS consumers was much much more than 5%. BSD has more users today than they did last year. That's successful in my book.

    In addition, lumping all operating systems together is erroneous. Just as Windows is targeting a different audience than Unix is, so Linux is targeting a different audience than BSD. Other than Debian and Slackware, the Linux distros seem to be targeting unix newbies and corporate users. The BSDs on the other hand are targeting unix veterans. They have never claimed to be the one OS for everyone.

    The fact is this: as long as BSD continues to gain in total number of users, then BSD continues to gain in total number of users.
  • To quote BOFH:
    "Right, I'm your temporary replacement demonstrator and today we're going to put our assignments aside for half an hour to learn about the REMARK function, or, as it's known to the computer literate world, rm..."

    Seriously though (considering the parent post is a troll) WTF should you give the root password to these clueless newbies ? That is one of the biggest problems for MS shops, so if you want to avoid trouble keep the root/administrator passwords away from lusers. Or let them fix the mess..
  • True- they're out of print. But much of the still useful content from those books are still on the FreeBSD CD-ROMs. There's good reason that the original books went out of print- there's only two papers from the SMM (which still sits on my shelf by my FBSD box at home, I was someone who paid full cover for them!) that I can think of off the top of my head that is still really that useful- 1) How to build a BSD kernel, and 2) the paper explaining why 8-character passwords are better than 5 or 6. The Amd docs in the book are woefully out of date, and have been for years. They still have the original sendmail paper, and who finds that useful besides for historical interest? Most of that stuff can go next to my "Managing UUCP and Usenet" book that talks about B-news.

    The reason the books were so great at the time were that they had papers that were (a) timely and (b) useful. Many of them were from Usenix conferences as 4.3, 4.4 was being developed.

    Remember, it was Usenix that first put out those manual sets, not O'Reilly, and made them available to members, not all of whom would have access to conference procedings. A newer printing of the texts would, I would hope, have more recent papers on various File Systems and administration tools from more recent USENIX/LISA/Whatever conferences. That's really interesting stuff going on!!

    True, those papers are on the web, and all members can read them, but sometimes, one needs hard copies of those things to bring a system up. I don't need the manpages in the FreeBSD book when my computer is working, I need them when my computer is down.

    And there's one thing I really, really miss from the original, Usenix manual set, believe it or not-- The permuted index! The 4.3 BSD manual set was the first Unix documentation I ever ever used- and the permuted index was one of the most wonderful things about it. Instead of having the index sorted on the first word in a string, it was sorted on a select middle word of a phrase, and had a blank column down the middle where the sorting took place. I found it incredibly useful to find things, and also found many interesting new things just browsing down that stripe.

    --

  • Imagine this situation: you get called to a user's BSD box because they, for some reason, find that they can't connect to the Internet. You immediately find that the network cable was pulled out. However, plugging it back in doesn't fix anything. You discover at this point that they deleted everything in /etc. "Hey, it says 'etc', and that means unnecessary, right?"

    A true admin would never experience this, as he would never trust such a luser with root.

    Also, he would have a system in place for a painless unattended reinstall of fsck'ed workstations.
  • Hmmn I am firmly convinced now moderation does not occur on a fair basis. I replied to this merely to see if someone would pay attention to what I was saying or mod me down for replying to an obivous and well thought comment. Oncethat /. mindset gets kicked in its hard to break tho


    If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
  • I think the Release is something everybody can look forward to. It also shows that OpenSource is not only Linux.
  • Tasmanian devil?
  • I use FreeBSD on my webserver. I use NetBSD on my Macs. I am putting OpenBSD on my DNS servers which were recently hacked (were Red Hat).

    As for freedome. It is also restrictive to those who do not mind others wishing to take and not give back.
  • So ? I replied to a question about the number of platforms, not the number of common platforms. Besides, there's nothing wrong with fringe hardware (that's the way you make it sound:) If you want to conform and use what 99% of the world uses you can get Windows.

    You see, I get this weird hardware from time to time and It's nice that there's an OS that supports them. Besides, when you're doing embedded programming it helps that there's a portable OS. The sheer number of platforms is a side effect of portable code.

  • printed BSD manual (Score:4)

    by The_Messenger ( 110966 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @03:07AM (#943966) Homepage Journal
    I would love to see the BSD manual published. O'Reilly breifly did that (probably almost ten years ago), but now it's all but impossible to find. I contacted them, and apprently they don't even have any copies in their warehouse. I'd love to have an updated copy.

    But where will they get the manual from? CSRG is gone, and there are now three major BSD4.4lite-based OSes. My guess is they would go with FreeBSD's manual, since FreeBSD is the most successful, well known, and, some would argue, the most advanced of the three. But, truth be told, OpenBSD has an excellent manual, and I'll sometimes even consult it when I work with FreeBSD boxen.

    Speaking of manuals, an excellent resource is the FreeBSD Project's manual webpage [freebsd.org], actually a CGI script which allows to you to consult manuals from CSRG BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, several Linux distributions, SunOS (pre- and post-BSD-Exodus), as well as less common Unices such as Minix (har har), Plan 9, Ultrix, and Seventh Edition.

    While we're ontopic, Sun Microsystems publishes a Solaris reference which is essentially the printed manual, but I would not recommend this book. All of Sun's Solaris books are absolutely horrid. (Which I've never understood; their Java books are wonderful.) Complete wastes of money. The only remotely useful things are the discussions of the mail system and network filesystems in the "Advanced System Administration" book.

    Hands down, the best single Unix command reference book you can buy at the moment is O'Reilly's Unix in a Nutshell, but that is straight SVR4, with some Solaris-specific commands thrown in for good measure. You'll get what amounts to an abbreviated manual, along with stuff on shells, editors, and maybe a few system calls. If you would like to do system-level programming, Stevens' Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment will counter-balance the Nutshell book nicely. Can never have too many reference books. :)

    Forgive me, I love computer books, and tend to talk about them a lot

    But that still does nothing for BSD users. Face it, guys, BSD is seen by much (dare I say most?) of the business IT world as "old" UNIX. Which it is, of course, but I don't find anything particularly wrong with that. But, it's a stumbling block which caused me to stop pushing it. (That, and the fact that my company is large enough to need the two dozen Sun and IBM boxen. I don't see many companies switching from Big Iron to clusters of x86 Free Unix boxen, but the high value and TOC of cheap x86 Unix are going to keep the current wave of IT startups going for another ten years.)

    I honestly don't think I would buy BSD in a Nutshell. I'd rather have a printed manual, to complement Unix in a Nutshell, rather than replace it. Isn't that all I'd need? The vi and emacs syntax will be the same. So will awk, sed, and grep (for the most part). I'll be carrying two books around either way, so that stuff is just redundant.

    Some say, "why have a printed manual at all, when everything is available on the system or online?" But you may be doing work at a location with both old and new SunOS boxes, and you're working on new SunOS, and you want to be make sure your shell scripts are portable between boxes. Having a printed BSD manual might come in handy then. Or you're on the subway going home from work, and you get in an argument with your geek buddies about proper BSD shutdown syntax. Or if you're like me, you just love computer books. So I'd buy the manual. But not the Nutshell book.

    Okay, I'm ranting again.

    "InfoMonk" mentions a mysterious BSD book in the works? I'm excited. I think a book on mid-level kernel work would do well. (Something to fill the void between The Complete FreeBSD and Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD-lite OS.) Or a book on BSD-specific networking and TCP/IP. Hey, Roblimo, get us an interview with TOR so I can bug him about this. ;)

    ---------///----------

  • Any guesses what animal it'll have on the front?

    Alan Cox!!

    ...no, wait. Bill Joy in a clown costume.

    Okay, okay, seriously... well a tasmanian devil sounds likely, but a devilfish is another possibility.

    ---------///----------

  • That was the funniest post I've seen in two weeks. You rule.

    ---------///----------

  • Back in '87 I was running MicroSoft Xenix. Which was basically a System III clone or version which was more or less Release 7.

    When I came to Linux when it was one, or nearly 1.0 anyway, via the SLR distrib I stumbled upon Slack. The second Slack cought.

    What I liked about Slack was that its resource configuration system was so very much akin to what I was used to!

    Now as already has been described, back in the olden days things were a bleedin' mess. We went to UNIX because in those days UNIX was hyped as the new OS that would kill all other OS's. Something we've since seen when NT came along as well as when Linux broke through. (Let's face it, 10 percent of the Fortune-500 is a big deal).

    From that mess two streams emerged. System V on the one hand and BSD on the other. BSD's rc system, like Slack's I still grock, SysV's OTOH can not capture my imagination.

    In that sense Slack's BSD feel is anything but an illusion. That's it's not BSD is a given, but qua feel it's much more BSDish then SVish!

    Please note that I come from the UNIX corner, not the BSD one :).
  • but you can definitely see that the kernel and much of the low-level system stuff takes its hints from SVR4

    "Takes its hints" in what sense?

    The implementation looks nothing like SVR4 (at least as of when I saw SVR4 code back at Sun and at Auspex).

    And if you mean the interface, which interfaces are you referring to?

    (Note that "signals" may be the wrong answer, given that the core signal interface on both Linux and current BSDs and just about every other UNIX on the planet is, err, umm, sigaction().

    "tty driver" is probably the wrong answer, too, as, at least if you use the termios stuff rather than the ioctls atop which they're built, Linux, current BSDs, and, I think, just about every other UNIX on the planet look similar - the termios structure and the flag bits and control characters in it are pretty much those of SunOS 4.0 (which, in turn, I based on a POSIX draft when I implemented the SunOS 4.0 tty subsystem).

    open(), close(), read(), and write() are pretty much the same everywhere, and the same applies to the socket calls.)

    Oh, and just in case your claim that

    POSIX is the official standard which defines UNIX (as in the trademarked, licensed kind).

    wasn't just a troll on the order of "BSD is a code fork from Solaris", that simply ain't the case. You're thinking of the Single UNIX Specification [opengroup.org], which is based on POSIX but has rather a lot of stuff in it beyond what's in POSIX 1003.1, and beyond what's in other POSIX standards as well.

    SVR4 has stuff beyond what's in the SUS, much less what's in POSIX, so claiming that

    A POSIX OS is essentially the same thing as SVR4. Close enough for this discussion, anyway.

    is hardly "close enough for this discussion" - were a BSD release to make itself POSIX-compliant (assuming it isn't already so), it would not necessarily be "essentially the same thing as SVR4".

  • Sorry, the "goat fucker" comment brings out the troll in me...
    1. Shoot The_Messenger [slashdot.org].
    2. Offtopic? Yes. Hilarious? Yes. True? Yes. IIRC, I heard him say this at the the Massachusetts Workers' (Communist) Party convention that year.

    With that off my chest... We all say stupid shit, especially when we're drunk, and RMS shouldn't be any exception. I wouldn't be surprised if he did say that. Drinking is an important part of the hacker/geek culture -- RMS is not a particularly friendly guy when he's sober, and from the experience of others and myself, code is better and comes faster with a few beers in your belly.

  • On a side note: According to Sun, Solaris is simply SunOS bundled with Openwindows. Solaris 1.x is SunOS 4.x, and Solaris 2.x is SunOS 5.x. As you mention, 4.x is BSD, and 5.x is SVR4.

  • Re:Old news, no news. (Score:3)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday July 12, 2000 @08:31AM (#943973) Homepage Journal

    I think this is largely due to the kind of people who tend to run BSD, compared to those who tend to run linux. While linux is admittedly installed in a wider variety of locations than BSD (IE, it is installed in the mission-critical spaces but is commonly used as "UNIX with training wheels) BSD tends to be run primarily by hardcore geeks and people who have work to get done.

    What I'm saying here isn't that linux isn't suited to doing work, but I am saying that the sort of people who run BSD tend to be those who don't need or want a book. If you get on #linux you'll see a trillion clueless newbies hopping on and asking things like "How do I start a program at runtime" without ever poking their nose through /etc. By contrast, those who don't have a good handle on init scripts and the like are probably going to have so much trouble with *BSD that they are going to give up and go to linux.

    I don't see this as a deficiency in BSD. It's a feature. BSD has been left fast and light. If that alienates some people, so be it. I didn't drag my way up from Xenix-286, through Slack and RedHat just to find that BSD had become bloatware. I know what I'm doing, and when I don't I know how to find out, by combing through manpages and poking about in /etc. I don't need documentation in twenty languages. Sometimes I need a book (Mastering Algorithms in Perl owns you) but at this point, I don't feel I need one to perform systems administration tasks. If need be, I'll poke through source and read comments and see what the variables look like throughout their lives. I can get it done.

    I suspect many of you are the same.

    How many people who commonly read the BSD news on /. are going to buy a nutshell book?

  • If the workstation's been fsck'd, shouldn't it be working fine now?

  • My question is, "Why hasn't O'Reilly already published BSD books?"

    We were discussing this recently on the freebsd-newbies list, and someone pointed out a quote by Tim saying that a BSD related book would be redundant. How redundant is "Linux in a Nutshell" + "Running Linux" + "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" + "Learning Redhat Linux"? We also noted that "Linux in a Nutshell" is 80% to 90% identical to the SysV-centric "Unix in a Nutshell" (subtitled for System V and Solaris 2.0).

    This quote was old, and it's nice to know that Tim sees BSD as worthy material for yet another worthy O'Reilly book. At one time there were several BSD related books, including the original Unix in a Nutshell that covered BSD.
  • POSIX is an intersection between BSD and SVR4

    Well, it's sort of the intersection between various flavors of UNIX, with some stuff added on; it antedates SVR4.

    with BSD signals and terminal handling.

    The signal mechanism is derived from that of 4.2BSD (and also happens to be the "main" signal mechanism in SVR4; other ones are supported as well). The terminal handling is more SV-flavored than BSD-flavored (where "BSD-flavored" really means "Research UNIX V7-flavored"; BSD added a bunch of additional stuff, most of which is also in SVR4, albeit with a more SV-ish flavor). Modern BSDs, and Linux, also have SVR4-flavored terminal handling (i.e, termios, with the UI extensions such as ECHOKE, ECHOCTL, word-erase and reprint and... characters).

    Solaris is SVR4 as you say, but has a BSD filesystem.

    SVR4 itself has a BSD-based file system (as well as, at least when it first came out, the V7-flavored System V file system - but, then again, 4.1BSD's file system was also V7-flavored).

    I am still a bit puzzled about what you said about Linux: if it is SVR4,

    Linux is Linux, just as HP-UX is HP-UX, IRIX is IRIX, AIX is AIX, Digital UNIX is Digital UNIX, etc.. Most of them implement POSIX, and a pile of other stuff, over and above POSIX, which is mainly the same on all UNIX-flavored OSes.

    Linux isn't SVR4; most Linux distributions have a System V-ish init, although Slackware, I think, has a more BSDish init. Linux looks SVR4-like in a number of ways, but it's not SVR4.

    and it is also Posix which signals does it have: BSD (as it is Posix) or SVR4? Or both (is this possible)?

    At least on the RH 6.x (for some value of x) system here, there's a sigaction man page, which means it has POSIX signals; sigaction is derived from, and similar to, the BSD sigvec mechanism, but is not identical to sigvec.

    There's also a sigvec man page on that Linux system, but it says

    Under Linux sigvec is #define'd to sigaction, and provides at best a rough approximation of the BSD sigvec interface.

    SVR4 and modern BSDs also have sigaction(); one should use sigaction wherever possible, and fall back on 4.2BSD-style sigvec() or "traditional UNIX"-style signal() (whose behavior differs between BSD and other systems; I'm not sure which behavior Linux gives, and I'm not sure how much I should care, as one should use sigaction() if one is writing portable code - yes, I know, there are probably signal() calls in Ethereal, I'll fix them) or 4.1BSD/SVR3-style sigset() only if one cannot use sigaction()

    In other words, the correct answer to your question is "it has POSIX signals, just as SVR4 and modern BSDs do; those aren't exactly the same as BSD signals, but they're like BSD signals."

  • In the improbable case you're not just feeding us a line with this Hong Kong newspaper story I have to ask you: your sole motivation for using Linux (or FreeBSD) is because of its secrecy, this "being on the fringe" feeling? You might as well quit using computers (or posting to Slashdot!) because it is too "popular" nowadays. Consider joining a secret cult, or collecting stamps. Anything that might suit your little heart's desire for weirdness will spare our patience here.
  • Thanks for clearing some of the confusion.

    Actually, the post to which you're referring looks inaccurate enough to be a troll rather than just ignorance; I wouldn't rely on it to clear up confusion.

  • Re:an honest opinion (Score:3)

    by jarkko ( 40871 ) on Tuesday July 11, 2000 @02:15AM (#943991) Homepage
    Well you might want to prove that. Please show me a Linux distribution (yes distribution, no gross kernel hacks) with a unified, clean source tree [netbsd.org] complete with all the platforms in the tree [netbsd.org].
  • When I go to the zoo, I feed the monkeys 'cause they're so damn funny. When I go to Slashdot I feed the trolls for the same reason...

    BSD is a bunch of crooks and thieves who steal open source success and provide an inferior product to Linux.

    How do you steal something that is free? Everything in the BSD source trees meticulously follow the licensing. Neither is anything exploited. All source code and modifications for anything is readily available.

    As for being inferior, that is a purely subjective opinion. It has no basis in fact, and coming from an Anonymous Coward, can be ignored as tripe. Linux is better in some areas and BSD is better in others. Get used to it.

    Linux was here first

    BSD around before Linux. Hell, it was around before Minix! Sheez... Next thing you know you'll be claiming that Linus and not Algore invented the internet...

    Linux is what is innovating the internet generation

    Err, I spoke to soon, you are claiming it! Like it or not, the internet *is* BSD. TCP/IP is pure Berkeley. All of the big internet forces came from or were profoundly influenced by BSD. This includes bind, dns, sendmail, apache, mosaic, etc.

    BSD steals almost all their code and ideas from Linux.

    Again, how do you steal something that's free? And how can you steal in 1980 what won't be written until 1990 and beyond? What exactly did BSD steal from Linux? Page coloring? Softupdates? Vinum? Ports?

    I would suggest you keep your mouth shut until such a time as you can produce a Linux distro containing absolutely no BSD derived code.

    Open Source needs to be made Linux only and NOW!

    Open Source needs to REMAIN free! Freedom means a choice between operating systems. Slavery and tyranny mean that everyone must only use what you tell them to. That you advocate Linux only for open source indicates that you have absolutely no clue as to the meanings of "free" or "open". You try to shove your choices down the throats of free men and you'll be in a world of excruciating hurt.

    how long will we sit back and let them steal our inventions??

    Nothing has been stolen. Let me spell it out clearly and succinctly: if you give source code to someone, they have not stolen from you. And don't talk about "inventions". What exactly has Linux done that no other operating system has? Name just one idea inherent to Linux that is new and innovative. There may be a lot of prior ideas that it does better, but Linux still didn't come up with those ideas first. (And I don't see Linus' or Richard's names on any software patents, nor do I expect to until Chuckie goes ice skating)

    Linux the choice of a GNU generation

    What a great sig for someone who doesn't know the first thing about freedom. You're so ignorant that you don't even know that your post is a slap in the face to Richard Stallman and everything he's been working for!
  • They are all different, but they all grew from the same roots. Due to this common heritage, many things (especially from the user perspective, not as much so from a developer perspective) work the same, look the same, are in the same place, etc. Just as a user can get by for most tasks with a generic SVR4 reference on just about any SVR4 variant, a user with a fairly generic BSD reference should be able to deal with most of the BSDs.

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FORTRAN is not a flower but a weed -- it is hardy, occasionally blooms, and grows in every computer. -- A.J. Perlis

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