BSDForums Interviews Scott Long 121
Dan writes that BSDForums is featuring and interview with FreeBSD's Scott Long. Scott fills us in on some of the new things in FreeBSD 6.0 including Apple G4 PowerMac, AMD64, and wireless compatibility. In addition to specifics Scott also abstracts on the overall snapshot of BSD development with respect to OpenBSD, NetBSD and the ongoing debate between BSD vs. Linux.
What debate? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What debate? (Score:5, Insightful)
FreeBSD vs Linux (Score:1, Interesting)
4. Some critics claim that FreeBSD has not been as popular among corporations as Linux, not even close. Microsoft acknowledges Linux as a viable threat but FreeBSD is not even on their radar screen.
Wasn't FreeBSD the only other operating system Microsoft ported C# to? Didn't Hotmail run for a LONG time on FreeBSD? Doesn't Microsoft use BSD code in their operating system?
There's your debate.
Re:FreeBSD vs Linux (Score:2)
because, for some odd reason, Microsoft incorrectly thinks Windows is better.
Re:FreeBSD vs Linux (Score:3, Insightful)
Wasn't FreeBSD the only other operating system Microsoft ported C# to?
they planned to are those plans still alive?
No the plans are not still alive because no one really cared. Mono on the other hand is pretty well supported.
Didn't Hotmail run for a LONG time on FreeBSD?
they no longer do. if FreeBSD is so great, why don't they still use it?
Yes hotmail before Microsoft was heavilly FreeBSD + Qmail. I'd expect Microft to
Re:FreeBSD vs Linux (Score:2)
Re:FreeBSD vs Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Well, running FreeBSD was sort of an embarassment to Microsoft after they acquired HotMail, what with "eating your own dogfood" and all of that.
It took them at least two cuts at it, as I recall. The first time went rather badly, with delays and even brief outages. The second time they made it.
There was an interesting white paper, [securityoffice.net] originally meant for internal consumption but later leaked (I have a vague recollection that it ended up in a public ftp directo
Obligatory statement (Score:1, Funny)
Speaking of which, whatever happened to all the "FreeBSD is Dying!" drumbeats in the last year or two? I haven't kept up with FreeBSD/NetBSD news, but it would seem some series of events has really turned people around, even though it doesn't seem BSD use is necessarily skyrocketing.
On the subject of computery deathliness (Score:2)
Hell, COBOL is still "alive" and "well"
Re:Obligatory statement (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Obligatory statement (Score:2)
Re:Obligatory statement (Score:1)
Re:Obligatory statement (Score:4, Funny)
No I'm not!!!
Re:Obligatory statement (Score:2, Funny)
Moving forward quickly (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Moving forward quickly (Score:2, Interesting)
Reminds me of one point (.) upgrade in Linux where it switched from one library to another and half my applications suddenly malfunctioned. I'm sure it was all for the good in the long run, but I was certainly in a panic while trying to decide if I should just go back.
Re:Moving forward quickly (Score:5, Informative)
The day to day tasks I use FreeBSD for include text editing, watching tv, encoding video, browsing the net, and occasionally playing some games (wesnoth!), in other words, the usual stuff. Let's take these one by one:
So I'm eagerly waiting for 6.0 - by all accounts it's gonna be great!
Re:Moving forward quickly (Score:2, Funny)
FreeBSD: The OS choice of text editors everywhere.
Re:Moving forward quickly (Score:2)
Seriously, I installed FreeBSD on my laptop to dual-boot with Windows and didn't have any serious problems. Had to go through some trouble to get the onboard sound working, but that mainly consisted of following a forum post. The newest games I can reasonably play under windows is quake so I'm not missing anything when I'm in the FreeBSD in that sense. I still use mainly Windows, but sometimes FreeBSD
Re:Moving forward quickly (Score:1)
Better 'out of the box' support (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, better 'out of the box' support, which would manifest mostly for folks installing 6.0 for a desktop, or someone who has some new(er) RAID or 1G NIC to support. I couldn't be happier, not using Linux for a server anymore, but it's still my Desktop of choice.
A n00bs look in (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:1)
"I've moved onto freeBSD because somewhere I saw a quip that went..."
You changed your OS due to a quip you read on a website?
If I were you, I'd stay away from sco.com
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course I can't say this is true for everyone, because I don't know everyone. I'm just saying this out of experience with my personal real life friends and coworkers. There's definitely exceptions to this - it can't be said that every Linux user uses it out of hatred for Microsoft and that every BSD user uses it for love of U
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:3, Insightful)
There are BSD fans like to "rile" Linux users with [friendly] jibes of "weenie" and "get a proper operating system". But it really goes without saying what some of them think of Microsoft products. Not so much hatred, as sheer, unbridled contempt: they barely acknowledge Windows as software. And for the record, I use Linux because I like Linux.
(I also read Playboy for the articles
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:1)
I think all of the OSes have their place. If I wanted a Unix type OS on my desktop I would use some form of Linux for that as i
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:2)
Yes, those "RTFM n00b" types are a real pain in the backside. Like those idiots who tailgate learner drivers. They don't help free software, especially when TFMs are sometimes quite complex. Some people need to be reminded of the help others gave freely to them.
I'm not saying that you would. (I have also seen a lot of Linux users st
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:2)
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:2)
think about it, solaris has the potential to be the desktop unix (other than os x) that we want. it can have binary driver support, something linux doesn't want (video, wireless networking, etc), since it has a stable abi. plus it's rock solid.
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:2)
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:2)
I don't care about Microsoft, and I use Linux in addition to BSD. What does that say about me?
Re:A n00bs look in (Score:2)
Interesting, my first home computer was also a TI-99/4A. When you're 10 years old and you have the Speech Synthesizer Module saying curse words on command for all of your friends, you rule!
Parsec!!! and Hunt the Wumpus! (Score:1)
Boy we have a lot in common... I too was in the Navy, got started with BSD in the mid 90's after I got out, and live in/near Denver as wel
Re:Parsec!!! and Hunt the Wumpus! (Score:2)
Re:Irony anyone? (Score:2)
While FreeBSD doesn't have the "sexiness" of Linux right now (although I'd argue that is starting to wane a good bit) it is rock solid and dead simple to admin.
Re:Irony anyone? (Score:2)
The point is, and this is not specific to FreeBSD, that there are some really innovative experiments going in one bsd flavor or another. Dragonfly comes to mind - some [wikipedia.org] new concepts [wikipedia.org] in computer science comes from its development.
Another example (now from FreeBSD) is their support for multiple threading libraries, like libthr (1:1 - like in linux) and libkse (kernel scheduling entities), which implements M:N threading, that on paper is supposed to be a superior impemen
Re:Irony anyone? (Score:2)
Someone should let Andy Tanenbaum know - he has a chapter about Sun's N:M threading model...
NetBSD also has an interesting framework for Scheduler Activations which allows N:M threading.
Re:Irony anyone? (Score:2)
Linux Versus BSD (Score:2)
First 3 answers did.
muahahahahhahaha
Anyways my take on the debate: Multiple times I've written some simple software without even CONSIDERING portability, written on my (Linux/BSD/OS-X) box, and when the time came to make it run on a new platform (Linux/BSD/OS-X), it did, with barely any modifications. So who cares, target any UNIX, they all rock, and you probably wont end up permanently stuck to one of them.
Re:Linux Versus BSD (Score:2)
Re:Linux Versus BSD (Score:2)
Re:Linux Versus BSD (Score:2)
Point is, I've written some rather large software and ported it no problem. If you want to be a geek and talk about how you shouldnt assume "bash is in
But you are right, por
Re:Linux Versus BSD (Score:2)
Many people write #!/bin/bash at the top of shell scripts (I've even seen this suggested in books), and then wonder why it doesn't work on anything other than a GNU system.
Just because you don't us
FreeBSD on my Powerbook.... Cool (Score:2, Interesting)
Why Darwin? (Score:2)
``There is no denying that Linux is gaining popularity, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the BSD family is not. A great example is Mac OSX. Under the hood it is very much a BSD operating system. That means that BSD is now the second most popular desktop OS, far more popular and widespread than Linux.''
That's utter crap. First of all, the question was about FreeBSD vs. Linux, not *BSD vs. Linux. Secondly, Darwin isn
Re:Why Darwin? (Score:2)
Maybe it's not that stupid. At least from my perspective, FreeBSD and Linux are very much in the same niche.
``many linux fans will say, "but linux runs on the servers for a lot of websites you use!" That's also deceptive.''
Perhaps, but not in the same way. Linux is Linux, whereas Mac OS X is not FreeBSD. So saying that Linux runs on lots of servers does say something about the popularity of Linux, whereas saying that OS X runs on lots of deskt
Re:Why Darwin? (Score:3, Informative)
You don't always have to brag about your kids, sometimes you can brag about your nephews and nieces.
Re:Why Darwin? (Score:5, Interesting)
Mach itself is a direct descendent of BSD - the original Mach implementation ran a BSD kernel as a service on top of the Mach microkernel, and userland was all BSD. The NeXTStep kernel put the BSD portion in kernel space for performance reasons, making it a BSD system running on a Mach hardware abstraction layer. The Rhapsody kernel threw away some of the old BSD code and replaced it with more modern code from NetBSD. More recent versions of Darwin have done the same with FreeBSD.
I moved to OS X from FreeBSD, and found the system very familiar. I also play with a NeXT machine on occasion, and that machine is also clearly a BSD family member.
FreeBSD is not out to take over the world. The point of the BSD license is to allow people to take your code and do whatever they want with it. Apple took a lot of BSD (and, specifically, FreeBSD) code, and made the second most popular OS on the planet. This means that the second most popular OS on the planet contains FreeBSD code. NetBSD and OpenBSD also periodically take code from FreeBSD, as does Linux. FreeBSD, in turn, gets code from Net and OpenBSD, along with contributions from Apple. Examining FreeBSD makes no sense out of the context of the BSD ecosystem.
To put this in a Linux context, imagine if someone from Red Hat had been asked to talk about their OS and about, say, OS X. Would you expect them to just talk about Red Had Enterprise Linux, or would you expect them to talk about the entire Linux ecosystem?
Re:Why Darwin? (Score:2)
And isn't *that* question crap? How can you answer about a particular distribution of BSD vs. all Linux distributions combined? If you're going to compare apples to oranges, you might want to sync up the comparison. So that means either *BSD vs. *Linux, or FreeBSD vs. RedHat (or pick another distribution).
Enlighten Me (Score:2)
Re:Enlighten Me (Score:2)
Re:Enlighten Me (Score:2, Interesting)
Largly you are cross co
Re:Enlighten Me (Score:1)
BSD .vs. Linux (Score:5, Insightful)
1) BSD people who have no in-depth knowledge of linux, and therefore speak from a position of ignorance
2) Linux people who know very little about any particular BSD, and therefore speak from a position of ignorance
The people with truly deep knowledge of both systems always say "use the right tool for the right task" and typically have no time for OS religious wars.
Re:BSD .vs. Linux (Score:2)
Re:BSD .vs. Linux (Score:2)
Re:BSD .vs. Linux (Score:3, Informative)
Re:BSD .vs. Linux (Score:2)
But the people that are truly look at BSD vs. Linux as a holy war I find fall into this one category.
1) complete and total nerds
Switched from FreeBSD to SUSE/Novell (Score:3, Interesting)
That changed when Novell bought SUSE and started offering their certifications. I was asked to evauluate it by some people at work who had fond memories of Novell and wanted to see what they did with Linux and I was given the opportunity to sit for the Novell CLP (Certified Linux Professional) practicum exam if I wanted as a carrot for doing it. I decided that the only way to get comfortable enough with it for the test was to dive in and install it on my primary desktop OS and force myself to use it.
What I found was surprising. There, obviously, were some growing pains when it came to various BSD vs SYSV things and directory layout and ports vs RPM etc. What I was surprised by was that everything worked out of the box. I am used to, and almost looked forward to, having to roll up my sleeves and figure out the config files and recompile the kernel and go through newsgroups and mailing lists for fixes. This has been especially true since my primary machine is a laptop (Dell Inspiron 8600). What also surprised me was that Yast configures, with either a console or X-Win GUI, just about eveything that I wanted to configure and every setting that I wanted to change. I kept waiting to run into a gotcha so I could swear it off and convince myself I had to do it all by hand but it hasn't come yet. The whole magic-black-box aspect of it scares me a little but I am amazed how little I have had to get my hands dirty. It almost feels like Windows Server 2003 -- in a good way. Also, while I was put off by the 6 CD thing at first (I have always had a pretty streamlined and small FreeBSD install for my desktop) I find that having pretty much any piece of software that you might want in RPMs you can trust (and don't suffer from the dependency hell I remember) right on the CDs is actually pretty nice.
After I take my practicum in the next few weeks I am going to try Novell's desktop offering. If it is as slick as SLES then Novell, especially when you figure in NDS and ZenWorks, is going to make huge inroads versus the other distros and FreeBSD. And, strange as it sounds to me who missed the Novell hayday, there are alot of people in the industry who seem to remember their interaction with Novell fondly for whom their name and support seems to be a big plus.
Text editors (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Text editors (Score:1)
Here's some drivel for you (Score:1, Flamebait)
Linux has supported SMP for longer, and is thus more likely to be mature and stable on it. More hardware is supported by Linux than BSD. At numerous things it's faster than BSD, and at others, it's not much slower.
Linux has more mindshare - nobody talks about "Windows vs BSD", but "Win v. Lin"
Re:Here's some drivel for you (Score:1)
Oh God, I hate this! (Score:1, Funny)
"Scott, I thought you used Linux? Anyway, I never knew you were so important!"
DAMMIT, here we go again!
Re:Oh God, I hate this! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh God, I hate this! (Score:2)
Re:Oh God, I hate this! (Score:1)
Re:Oh God, I hate this! (Score:1)
Re:Will FreeBSD 6.0 become the STABLE branch? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:My Experiences with BSD... (Score:2)
Because I may want more than 4 partitions/slices. You know, for
"2. Lack
Re:My Experiences with BSD... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:My Experiences with BSD... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My Experiences with BSD... (Score:3, Insightful)
How useful is the partitioning scheme of Linux and Windows? First you have primary partitions, then extended partitions, and then logical partitions. Huh?
Here's the scoop, numbnut: way back in the beginning of harddisks on the PC, the idea was that every OS got its own p
Re:My Experiences with BSD... (Score:2)
More like the IBM/Microsoft/Novell/SCO/Sun way -- the partitioning was always seen as a feature of the hardware architecture and not some nefarious MS invention.
BSD slices exist due to VAX legacy or some reason, it's a totally uncommon design on PC hardware, and IMO a valid if not mostly unimportant complaint. If you go to Troll Point #2, a LVM would make the issue irrelevant.
Re:bsd (Score:1)
Re:Pathetic Fallacy (Score:3, Informative)