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BSD Operating Systems

ekkoBSD Officially Dead 69

Posted by CmdrTaco from the crying-a-single-tear dept.
sniperu writes "The EkkoBSD team leader announced the project's premature death , only 12 days after their latest release . No clue is given about the causes of such an unespected end other than saying "It's been a stressful fun trip" . You can still get the last release from the downloads page . Get it while you can ."
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ekkoBSD Officially Dead More

ekkoBSD Officially Dead

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  • to those in the know, what the hell was ekkoBSD?

    • Re:inthe know (Score:5, Informative)

      by iggymanz ( 596061 ) on Sunday July 18, 2004 @12:47PM (#9731791)
      it was forked from OpenBSD 3.x (twice actually, first from 3.0 then 3.3) the idea was to make a easy gui based admin & install BSD oh well, still plenty of free / open / closed /proprietary BSD flavors to choose from that are very much alive and growing. The idea of an easier admin/install is very good & would help attract new users. Sure, an experienced person could whip out a configured machine in under 15 minutes for any flavor of BSD, but there's alot of confusing stuff for a newbie.
      • but there's alot of confusing stuff for a newbie.

        No kidding. I took me about a dozen installs to get the hang of it. I spent a few days (a few years ago) reinstalling FreeBSD and trying different things to see what would happen if I did it this way. Most installs worked. I figured it was the best way to learn how.

  • heh.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18, 2004 @12:24PM (#9731673)
    This is the trolling equivalent of pouring blood in shark-infested waters. *shudder*
  • I tried ekkobsd and for my tastes, it was indistinguishable from regular openbsd. From the get-go it seemed as though there was no real compelling reason for this distribution to exist (aside from itch scratching, of course).

    However, I do wish the ekko project members success in their future endevours.

  • Does this surprise anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 18, 2004 @04:58PM (#9733519)
    ekkoBSD was the idea of a guy named Rick Collette... now if you spend a little time googling that name you'll see that this guy has had his named attached to a few failed linux distributions. And on the ekkobsd.org webpage he even says: "Rick Collette - I actually only provided the Intel hardware, colo, marketing, path to completion, etc. I didn't do any coding at all - so my involvement was strictly in starting and attempting to guide the project. " the Operative word here is "didn't do any coding at all" This guy is a about as close to human hot air balloon as it gets. He starts up some project, makes a lot of noise, doesn't do a damn thing except get other people to do the work for him. This is just another failed attempt for this guy. Perhaps he'll learn to stop trying to make poor ripoff's of existing operating systems and wasting peoples time.

    Some choice urls:
    http://linuxpr.com/releases/1319.html
    http ://lwn.net/2000/0323/a/deeplinux.html

    Ever heard of SPIROlinux? DeepLinux? Same guy, same story.
  • Why stop at forking a real OS project when a subproject would have been perfectly okay? That's just minor-league questionable thinking. Go for the gold! Clearly we must rewrite EVERYTHING. We should all run Freedows [slashdot.org]!

    Remember, if it's worth re-doing, it's worth re-doing stupidly!

    ... My apologies to the ekkoBSD people; I probably don't know enough about that project to question the need for its existence. But it did remind me of Freedows, which was a fascinating late nineties exercise in "developer-free o

    • Re:Shades of Freedows (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The project lead graduated from the university I'm currently attending - The University College of the Cariboo [cariboo.bc.ca] (I kid you not) in Kamloops, British Columbia.

      If you do some Googling on Reece Sellin, you'll find that he's moved on to running some sort of BC lobbyist group for the elderly.

      Not a big surprise that he was able to graduate from UCCs Computer Science program when he was 16. It's quite horrid. Entirely Windows based, and terrible course offerings beyond the bare minimums.

      Most of the UCC comp

      • > Most of the UCC comp sci graduates go on to find work with Convergys - the local helpdesk outsourcer that handles most of RoadRunner cable's tech support calls.

        Hmm.. last time I worked for them (soem 2 years ago) Convergys was a lot more then a helpdesk outsourcer. Their main business seemed to be providing billing systems for (mobile) phone providers.

  • Confirmation from netcraft? (Score:5, Funny)

    by MavEtJu ( 241979 ) <<gro.ujtevam> <ta> <todhsals>> on Sunday July 18, 2004 @06:11PM (#9733968) Homepage
    The EkkoBSD team leader announced the project's premature death

    Did somebody get a confirmation from Netcraft about this?
  • So, EekkoBSD really is dying, eh?

    C'mon, guys, you're just giving it right to the trolls...
  • How interesting.. not a single comment that actually has any information value at all.. I knew the standard was somewhat low here, but this low?

  • And? (Score:3, Informative)

    by setagllib ( 753300 ) on Monday July 19, 2004 @03:50AM (#9736299)
    Saying ekkoBSD's death is a "crippling bombshell" to the entire BSD community is analogous to saying that the burger some McDonalds patron dropped while walking home is a "crippling bombshell" to McDonalds itself. Nonsense. FreeBSD 5-CURRENT is steadily approaching a good level of stability, after which it will be a Linux-killer for most desktop and some server applications. NetBSD has been and always will be the best operating system for portability, and the 2 branch is making admirable progress into modern standards and functionality while retaining amazing stability and cleanliness. OpenBSD had some scalability issues which are resolved, and now is making way into modern SMP and other useful applications. DragonFlyBSD is making astonishing progress given its currently small (but talented and enthusiasatic) developer base, and is already very close to being a viable alternative to FreeBSD for those who want something different. None of the BSDs are 'dead'. Their developer bases are largely comprised of people who focus on their Operating System (yes, technical note, all BSDs are entire Operating Systems, unlike Linux which is a toy kernel often accompanied by a user space tool chain you can run anywhere, and some hackish utilities for interfacing with the kernel), not on how many file systems they can add barely-working support for, how many undocumented kernel options they can hack on without anyone's understanding, and how many tshirts they can sell for market saturation. Linux developers lost their goal as well, what began as a valiant and successful (even if more via media coverage than technical merit, as benchmarks of even 2.4 will show) development effort of a kernel from scratch, has become an orgy of random features, some to directly oppose Windows development, some for performance [on one machine in the world, with all else being much worse off], some for 'l33t points' which amount to nothing in the real world... look at all the different patch sets for the different versions of the Linux kernel, and it's hard to respect the project at all. Some of these will get integrated if they get enough hype, some will die away, some will set your machine on fire (or in my case of trying 2.6.7-mm6, completely misuse your standard 3Com 905B network adapter, which works in any other kernel). Most of the negative slander BSD gets is the few Linux-using trolls on Slashdot who post the same terrifyingly misinformed crap, many as Anonymous Coward. "NetCraft confirms: BSD is dying", and yet NetCraft servers run FreeBSD? Do your homework people. BSD is not dying. Neither is Windows, since even that has some place in the world, believe it or not. Linux is not a magic bullet. It is and, by design, always will be a curious project to see what features can be hacked on to a bootable kernel. It is not an Operating System. It only survives from amazing marketting and corporate sponsorship, the two being mutually sustainant. The most interesting aspect of all of this is how most BSD-haters have never actually properly used and administered a BSD machine (may as well be FreeBSD since that is ahead in ease-of-use and Linux-killing power). Most BSD users won't bother slandering Linux, but for once I'd like to. I've used it lots, watched the transition from 2.4 to 2.6 and so on, and at no stage did I consider it a work of art. The transition to FreeBSD was an utter bliss of administrative elegance and system design, to the point I never looked back [except to test emerging Linux kernel versions against FreeBSD-CURRENT, with Linux never being impressive]. Say what you want about the brilliance of Gentoo's Portage (based on the design of FreeBSD Ports and NetBSD pkgsrc, lest you forget), it is not Linux itself. Type up lengthly propaganda involving Linux' amazing growth in corporate and governmental applications, it only provides more evidence of globalisation at work, even if of free software. Post the same "BSD is dead" article over and over on /. with the kind of blind propaganda that would make a preacher blush, a
    • Should probably remember that HTML-formatted posts on slashdot need explicit line breaks :)

      I just don't like to see a handfull of users (who, come on, we all know run Linux anyway) post the same crap on Slashdot flaming a series of projects that have a lot more hard work and engineering than anything they've ever used. If Linux was taken seriously by its own developers, they might at least document it.

      One new Linux kernels, the new option for 'register arguments', is/was (not sure about current state)

    • Re:And? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 20, 2004 @08:21AM (#9747796)
      My god, you have a real bad attitude. And a big chip on your shoulder as well, by the sounds. Let's go through and dismantle some of your FUD.

      FreeBSD 5-CURRENT is steadily approaching a good level of stability

      Apart from being a few years late, and looking like being at least another year, they still have serious scalability problems (see for example the recent thread about MySQL not even improving performance when going from 1 to 2 Opteron CPUs), their threading models and scheduler are still in the air, and not stable. Their "tier 1" amd64 architecture is pretty unstable.

      after which it will be a Linux-killer for most desktop and some server applications.

      Why would it be a Linux-killer for most desktop applications? Both kernels (and computers in general) are past the point where performance really matters for most desktop situations. The main things that matter are device drivers and what userspace programs can be run. You could argue that they are about equal in terms of programs, but Linux has far more device drivers at the moment.

      As far as servers go, yeah it is possible and even probable that FreeBSD would be a better choice than Linux for some things. In what areas would it be a Linux killer though? (Please spare me the leet netcraft uptime or other template zealot bullshit).

      NetBSD has been and always will be the best operating system for portability, and the 2 branch is making admirable progress into modern standards and functionality while retaining amazing stability and cleanliness.

      Although the Linux kernel has more supported CPU architectures than NetBSD's. I grant that NetBSD exceeds all Linux distros that I know of, with only Debian coming close. I have heard that some NetBSD ports are pretty low quality though.

      OpenBSD had some scalability issues which are resolved, and now is making way into modern SMP and other useful applications.

      OpenBSD is still squarely at the the bottom of the performance heap, and if you think a completely serialised kernel is "modern SMP"... well... please don't bother replying.

      DragonFlyBSD is making astonishing progress given its currently small (but talented and enthusiasatic) developer base, and is already very close to being a viable alternative to FreeBSD for those who want something different.

      No it isn't. Even the core developers acknowledge it is nowhere near close at this stage. The recent developer release trashed your hard drive, for example. No big deal of course, because it is a development release.

      Also, have a look at this [theaimsgroup.com]. DFBSD is 20% slower than FreeBSD 4.10 on this MySQL test. Trust me, they have a long way to go.

      None of the BSDs are 'dead'. Their developer bases are largely comprised of people who focus on their Operating System (yes, technical note, all BSDs are entire Operating Systems, unlike Linux which is a toy kernel often accompanied by a user space tool chain you can run anywhere, and some hackish utilities for interfacing with the kernel

      I'll interrupt you in this parenthesis... but you are wrong, Linux is a kernel, nothing more, nothing less. Its developer base is comprised of kernel developers. Sun, SGI, IBM, Intel, Dell, HP, Veritas, Toshiba, Sony, NEC, Google come to mind as they all have staff on Linux kernel development.

      ), not on how many file systems they can add barely-working support for, how many undocumented kernel options they can hack on without anyone's understanding, and how many tshirts they can sell for market saturation. Linux developers lost their goal as well, what began as a valiant and successful (even if more via media coverage than technical merit, as benchmarks of even 2.4 will show) development effort of a kernel from scratch, has become an orgy of random features,

      What makes you think that? It is as much an orgy of random features as the Fr
  • It's a shame, really. I mean, the last build was pretty much a "me too" distro of OpenBSD, but if you are going to be a "me too" distro, OpenBSD is really not a bad place to start. I mean, Knoppix is one of several "me too" distros of Debian, for instance.

    I did a review of EkkoBSD [livejournal.com] right after its latest release, and was a bit disappointed because their main project goal, "to make it easy to install," was completly not met... but I forgave it a little because it was a beta. But now that's moot.

    Oh well

  • Did any of Ekko make its way back to OpenBSD?
  • They should have named it GeekoBSD, then it would have gotten some attention. Right now it looks just like a useless fork that some guy Ekko did just to boost his ego.
  • So every time a linux distro is discontinued can we claim linux is dying?
  • I never got to try ekkoBSD, but I liked the idea of what they were doing.. trying to make BSD a bit more user friendly. It does seem to be a bit of a drive to get free hardware and donations, and when that didn't turn out they gave up, but I have no idea.

    I did find this on one of the developer's, Dave Steinberg, website [redterror.net]:

    I was involved in the ekkoBSD project, which has ceased to exist. There I did a bit of coding, cvs management, and a lot of planning. Ultimately we suffered from a lack of real developer r

  • I did get a copy of it at one point and tried the installer, but I didn't see anything that looked different then the old installers..

    What happened to the 'nice gui' they were striving for? Did it ever materialize and could it be updated to the main *BSD projects?

    For the newbie the installers of the BSD's can be rather intimidating. Providing an 'pretty/easy' option for them might help grow the community.

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