Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
BSD Operating Systems

FreeBSDCon '99 Speaker Schedule Announced 48

Posted by Nik from the first-post-from-new-author-be-gentle! dept.
Bill Swingle writes "The final speaker schedule for the upcoming FreeBSDCon has been announced. Highlights include, Kirk McKusick's BSD Internals tutorial, and keynotes from both Brian Behlendorf of the Apache Project and Jeremey Allison from the Samba Project. There are all kinds of fun events planned for the conference, including a free (for attendees) beer bash. This should be one killer conference! " Read on for more. CT : This is the first article in our new BSD Section maintained by Nik. Enjoy.

There are also speakers from Apple, talking about FreeBSD's contribution to Darwin, Jonathan Bresler talking about his experiences with spam fighting as the FreeBSD Postmaster, and Jun-ichiro itojun Hagino of the KAME group, talking about IPv6 and IPSec, to name just a few more (modesty forbids me mentioning my own presentation at the conference, obviously).
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

FreeBSDCon '99 Speaker Schedule Announced More

FreeBSDCon '99 Speaker Schedule Announced

Comments Filter:
  • Actually, there is a separate section for Linux. See the penguin icon at the top? Well, there usually is one up there, at least :)
  • FreeBSDCon is a brand new thing, and it would seem to be the only "BSD-specific" national convention. However, OpenBSDers, NetBSDer, Linuxers, or what have you are all welcome. If you look at the speakers, you'll note that while there are FreeBSD-specific topics, most of them are pretty agnostic across the BSDs. Even if you don't run FreeBSD in particular, you'll find a lot to be interested in. Hey, the FreeBSD-specific ones should be especially interesting then, eh? :)

    I really wish I could go this year, but I didn't plan for it, so it's a near impossibility. FreeBSDCon promises to be a lot like USENIX, and I would expect a diverse turnout. I'd love to have the opportunity to actually meet the people I work with all the time.
  • Actually, we are talking about topics. CT just munged his SlashDot terminology :)
  • I don't know about some of those, but BeOS, MacOS, Amiga, and Windows are covered along with *BSD and Linux over at http://osonline.org/ [osonline.org]

    (:

    --

  • I agree, but for an opposite reason. This seems more like an attempt to shove the BSD articles to a separate, little-read page (except by those very interested in BSD). While this wouldn't bother me, Linux articles are on the main page. If both Linux and BSD articles were put in separate sections, that'd be fine, but putting all Linux articles on the main page, and only a small percentage of the BSD articles, seems biased. This isn't, after all, a Linux news site (or isn't supposed to be anyway, according to the FAQ).

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by Dom2 ( 838 )
    Grow up. There's plenty of room for both. As I think you'll agree by looking at Microsoft, a one-pony show is in nobody's interest.

    -Dom

  • BSD (Score:1)

    by Suydam ( 881 )
    Are there similar BSD-specific conferences for the other flavors of BSD? (specificailly Net and Open)

    just wondering.

  • Conference Should Be Interesting (Score:3)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) on Monday October 11, 1999 @06:12AM (#1623726) Homepage
    With all the fuss at the recent Linux* conferences, it's good to see FreeBSD pulling into its own.

    I've mentioned this before, but I've become a definite admirer of the various BSD's. The fact that many of the critical network analysis tools I use on a regular basis(and continually have to add to my fresh Linux boxen) are packaged into the installer of FreeBSD.

    I'm very interested in stopping by the BSD convention for a day or two, to learn more about who's doing what and so on. Can one attend the exhibits for free, like most(read: almost all) computer conventions? I understand the need for the organizers to make their money back, and respect it, but I would like to make a showing(which would already cost me time off work) to see what the exhibitors have to offer, but don't want to make the drive up there only to be turned away.

    So what's the scoop?

    Yours Truly,

    Dan Kaminsky
    DoxPara Research
    http://www.doxpara.com
  • Well, there were a lot fewer BSD-related articles than got submitted. I personally submitted at least a dozen different articles this year. Total that made it to /.: 0. Zip. Nil. Yeah, the BSD articles were *really* getting through.

    If you really want to learn what's going on in the BSD world, go have a look at Dæmon News Daily [daemonnews.org], where they print all the BSD news, not just what gets past the /. censor corps.

  • ...I've gained much respect for the BSD's by reading the various sites around the net. I'm glad they are getting more publicity and recognition. It's great they're getting a section on Slashdot. There's no reason we all can't coexist peacefully.

    I'm getting DSL soon with a static IP and I'm going to use OpenBSD for the main server because of the outstanding security. I'll keep using Linux for most stuff however.

    ----------------

    "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein


  • "CT: This is the first article in our new BSD Section maintained by Nik. Enjoy."




    What's this mean?


    ----------------

    "Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds." - Albert Einstein
  • I am very pleased to see (if I understood this correctly) a BSD-specific Slashdot author and a section devoted to *BSD. We're all in this together, folks. Looking forward to future BSD-related articles.

    Not that there weren't BSD-related articles before, but now the BSD community maybe won't be so inclined to look down on Slashdot for Linux-centricity, if you will.

    I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles.

  • ditto (Score:1)

    by Pierre ( 6251 )
    I just installed FreeBSD 3.2 on Saturday. After a few hours of toying around I've got a set up I'm quite happy with. The ports collection is quite nice. I may have to break down and buy a box set of 3.3. I like the ports collection way of installing just what you need. After moving from the RH rpms where I keep having to go going and getting all of the supporting rpms and fighting with dependencies to the point where I just give up and compile everything myself. Then to debian deselect - better but kind of like being at cafe and choosing lunch from a list of every dish available on earth. Ports is a nice middle ground between organization and automagic installation. Not clearing my debian partition or anything yet though :)
  • Pretender wrote: I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles. That's pretty much it. In response to someone else's "What does this mean?" comment -- /. gets a fair number of BSD submissions, but (just like the large number of Linux submissions) most of them weren't deemed 'newsworthy' enough to justify the front page. Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works. I'm expecting not to have to write too many articles myself -- the number of submissions of BSD articles to /. should feed this section quite nicely. And to forestall comments from NetBSD or OpenBSD folk (and, indeed, Apple folk or BSDi folk) this section is emphatically not FreeBSD only -- I'd love to see submissions that relate to all things BSD. I'll tell you the worst thing about this though -- like most other /. readers I used to check /. every day to see what new stories had been posted overnight. Now that I can see the incoming submission queue I can see them before they hit the main page any time I want, which takes a lot of the fun out of it :-( If anyone's going to be around the Bay Area next week (whether or not you're going to the conference or not) drop me a line -- it'd be great to get together for a few beers and puts names to faces (I'm a Brit, and have been told that some of the beer at the conference will have been warmed especially). N nik@slashdot.org / [mailto]nik@FreeBSD.org [mailto]

  • NovaX wrote:

    When Nik told FreeBSD advocacy a few weeks ago about /.'s new section, even then there was a tone of 'sorry for all your work on Daemon News, FreeBSD advocacy, etc.. but your dead. We're covering it now.'

    There was? That must have been in private e-mail that never made it to me. I've never intimated that, and quite frankly, it's not true.

    IMHO, the BSD 'market' is large enough to support multiple 'sources' for news like this. What may well distinguish the sites from one another is not the news that's posted so much as the quality of the discussion that's generated from it. Of course, that's something that's completely out of my hands.

    Andover, when Nik told advocacy, was the one who requested the BSD section because they saw the market. This was not Rob, etc. Andover sees the market, which means money.

    I'm not at my home computer at the moment, which means I can't check the original e-mail from Robin (which I wouldn't quote directly in public anyway). However, that's not the impression I've had. It was much more the case that /. has been thinking about running a BSD section for some time, but didn't have the manpower to do it internally.

    I was contacted about this completely out of the blue and asked if I wanted to do it. This (presumably) means that Rob and Jeff (and behind them Robin, and the rest of Andover) didn't want to just throw money at the first person who came along and volunteered, but wanted to get the 'right' person. Time will tell if I'm the 'right' person or not, but it's nice to get the chance :-)

    So just understand thi: many BSD users don't see the increased number of articles as a great thing, its nice. The way slashdot has treated them in the past, none are rejoicing. I think many will continue to support Daemon News, some OS Online, and other sites with pride.. and support /. BSD because for publicity.. we may have to.

    It's interesting that no one in this thread has mentioned FreeBSD Rocks [freebsdrocks.com] yet. This has been running for a year or so, and is very /. like in terms of interface and what gets posted. Yet it's also been very quiet in terms of the number of articles posted.

    As I say, I'd support all of them with pride. The eventual differentiator will be the quality of the discussion, and that's firmly in your hands.

    N

  • NovaX wrote

    Well, that was the tone, IMO. That doesn't mean my interpritation was correct, of course. I'm refering to the email in which you announced Slashdot would have a BSD section, which came as advocacy was chatting about the loss of the FreeBSD advocacy pages, the new 3rd party advocacy page, the start of Daemon Daily News, and OS Online's BSD section. I don't have your message anymore, but that was how I precieved it.

    You probably mean this message:

    http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=5722 +10037+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/free bsd-advocacy/19990926.freebsd-advocacy

    (Not a link, because I think the posting code will truncate it, use cut-n-paste as necessary).

    Rereading it, I can see how you got that impression. I was caught between a bit of a rock and a hard place. Robin Miller (Roblimo) had contacted me at the end of August, which was the first I knew that /. was going to cover BSD in more detail. I equated that as contact from Andover, rather than /., although with hindsight there's not much difference where /. is concerned (certainly, Robin's doesn't come across as a 'suit' trying to exploit the community).

    About a week after we started talking about this, the thread in -advocacy started up bemoaning the lack of news sites, the loss of the advocacy.freebsd.org site, how /. was tossing all the BSD stories that were being submitted, and so on. I had to bite my tongue at this point, because I knew that, while many of these comments may have been valid (I know I've submitted stories to /. in the past which haven't been posted) there was going to be this new BSD section that was going to address the concerns that people were raising.

    We just couldn't say anything about it yet -- we didn't have a definite date for it to start, for one thing. This is my fault, the past month or so has been somewhat hectic for me (moving house, preparing for FreeBSDCon, co-authoring a book) which meant that I couldn't give a definite start date.

    In the end we decided that rather than run with a new 'article' to start the BSD section we'd begin with a good news article. Bill's FreeBSD Con one seemed to be the best to use, so we did.

    Had I had an extra week between now and the Con we'd probably have started by posting an article to solicit contributions especially, and then I'd be picking and choosing from those. But sometimes things don't work out quite the way we'd like :-(

    I'll have my laptop at the Con, and assuming I can get hold of some IP connectivity (I refuse to call it IP 'tone') I'm more than happy to do a guided tour of BackSlash (the Slashdot administration system) for people that want to see the sort of stories that get submitted, what happens to them, and so on.

    N

  • Pretender wrote:

    I suspect that the Linux/BSD ratio here is more related to the popularity of the OS than any inherent bias on Slashdot's part, but I'm still happy to see this happen. Congratulations to - Nik, is it? - and looking forward to seeing your articles.

    That's pretty much it. In response to someone else's "What does this mean?" comment -- /. gets a fair number of BSD submissions, but (just like the large number of Linux submissions) most of them weren't deemed 'newsworthy' enough to justify the front page.

    Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works.

    I'm expecting not to have to write too many articles myself -- the number of submissions of BSD articles to /. should feed this section quite nicely. And to forestall comments from NetBSD or OpenBSD folk (and, indeed, Apple folk or BSDi folk) this section is emphatically not FreeBSD only -- I'd love to see submissions that relate to all things BSD.

    I'll tell you the worst thing about this though -- like most other /. readers I used to check /. every day to see what new stories had been posted overnight. Now that I can see the incoming submission queue I can see them before they hit the main page any time I want, which takes a lot of the fun out of it :-(

    If anyone's going to be around the Bay Area next week (whether or not you're going to the conference or not) drop me a line -- it'd be great to get together for a few beers and puts names to faces (I'm a Brit, and have been told that some of the beer at the conference will have been warmed especially).

    N
    nik@slashdot.org [mailto] / nik@FreeBSD.org [mailto]

  • phypor wrote:

    Nikc, could you please explain the rationalization in having a completely seperate section for BSD related articles?

    Sure. Rob or Robin can probably give you more of the inside scoop than I can though -- the first I knew about this was roughly a month ago, when they contacted me and asked if I wanted to 'edit' the section.

    Basically, /. gets lots of submissions a day. The current queue of submissions to evaluate is 300 or so, and there are stories queued up for posting to keep /. going for the next couple of days to boot.

    If we posted 3 BSD stories, 3 Redhat stories, 3 news stories, 3 YRO stories, 3 Debian stories, 3 "misc" stories, . . . the front page would rapidly get overwhelmed, and stories would cycle off the front page too quickly. 15 stories on the front page is a reasonable number.

    Also, you get stories about things which aren't really 'news' in the sense of things breaking now. For example, I expect to be posting reminders when things like DaemonNews are out. But they will be kept to the BSD section (which you will be able to click to from the front page) rather than being on the front page itself.

    By the same token, you wouldn't expect /. to post each week when a new issue of LWN is out.

    How does having a BSD Section have an advantage over simply having more posted articles?

    Stories stay on the front page longer, and it allows more BSD-geek-only stories to be posted to /.

    How do you resolve the apparent inequality that results in a BSD section as compared with other Open Source Operating Systems (ie Linux, eCos)?

    There's nothing that says that these won't get their own sections as well. For example, if there's been sufficient BeOS interest I'd be surprised if someone who's made themselves prominent in the BeOS community wasn't contacted to help out with this.

    Note: This is not an invitation for hordes of BeOS supporters (or Amiga supporters, or Debian supporters, or whatever) to deluge Roblimo with applications for the mythical post of section editor. I've only been on board a short time, and don't yet have a firm handle on exactly how many of these kind of submissions /. gets. The BSD (and also the new Apache section) are experiments. Ones that we all hope are successful, of course, but experiments nonetheless.

    If demand is the primary motivation for establishing a seperate BSD section, would you initiate a push with CmdrTaco and Hemos about a policy change to enact a more open submissions record, so that the Slashdot community as a whole had access to see the real numbers on types of articles submitted?

    That's the first time I've seen that request on /.. As far as I know the numbers aren't secret, but as I say, I haven't been around on the 'team' long enough to know. Doubtless Rob or Robin will let me know in due course. But as I say there are ~ 300 submissions in the queue now -- perhaps 15% of those are duplicates, or have already been posted here. Some of them just aren't 'appropriate' for /., and the rest of them get looked at and scheduled for posting.

    Questions that need a longer response are probably best e-mailed to me. If there's a lot of demand I'll either send out a standard reply to everyone who asks, or (if my prose is interesting enough) it'll get posted here.

    N

  • phypor wrote:

    Nikc, could you please explain the rationalization in having a completely seperate section for BSD related articles?

    Just to be absolutely clear about this. BSD articles will still appear on the front page of /.

    This new section is just to allow posting of more stories that, by themselves, wouldn't make it on to the front page, or, if they did, would have occured as quickies.

    It's also one of the first to be split off (along with YRO and Apache), this does not mean it will be the last. KDE, Gnome, BeOS, Amiga, even Linux could all end up with their own sections.

    Or not.

    It's really far too early to tell. The success of the BSD section (and the Apache section, and others) will determine what happens in the future.

    OK?

    N

  • Cool (Score:1)

    by mattc ( 12417 )
    Looking forward to seeing some more BSD articles on Slashdot.
  • While *BSD is great, and (to placate any that thing I'm trying to flame) is better than Linux in certain areas, the first coming to mind OpenBSD's security,

    I do not feel it neccessary or prudent to have a completely seperate section for BSD. We do not have a seperate section for Linux or BeOS with dedicated authors for it, and trying to create a need for another section when there are other alternatives is overkill, redundant, etc.

    If Those In Charge feel more BSD coverage is neccessary, then cover more articles, but I for one feel things are unbalanced to have a whole dedicated section simply for BSD.


  • This is not about Topics, of which there are over 60, (http://slashdot.org/topics.shtml)

    This is about Sections....
    so far the only sections are:
    askslashdot
    books
    features
    interviews
    radio
    yro


    Having a BSD Section doesn't fit well, nor is it balanced considering other Open Source OS's.
  • Nikc, could you please explain the rationalization in having a completely seperate section for BSD related articles?

    Specfically,
    How does having a BSD Section have an advantage over simply having more posted articles?

    How do you resolve the apparent inequality that results in a BSD section as compared with other Open Source Operating Systems (ie Linux, eCos)?

    If demand is the primary motivation for establishing a seperate BSD section, would you initiate a push with CmdrTaco and Hemos about
    a policy change to enact a more open submissions record, so that the Slashdot community as a whole had access to see the real numbers on types of articles submitted?


    Thanks in advance fot taking the time to address these issues.
  • No, this is about Sections, Not Topics,


    to quote nikc in post #18:

    Now there's a new BSD section (looks like the boxes on the left hand side haven't been updated
    yet, but they will be) in which more of the BSD specific material can be posted, in exactly the
    same way that the "Your Rights Online" section works.


  • Well you can see a somewhat old one at the David Sarnoff Research Center [sarnoff.com] and I'm working on putting together a fairly large tightly coupled system with Quad Xeons connected with Myrinet. Hopefully I can get the $250K I'd need for 16 nodes (64 procs) and 100GB of shared disk.
  • His point was that the "some people" you mentioned happen to be .

  • Nice, theres always some little prick like you, that gets on here, posts something insulting for no good reason, usually (and in your case) as a anonymous coward, for the sole purpose of starting another flame war between Linux and *BSD. i hope you feel happy, because once again instead of the *NIX people coming to gether, you've seperated them back to the positions of Linux vs.*BSD.
  • Hey, don't forget Daily Daemon News! OS Online is pretty good, though a bit slow on news (across the board). Always good to check every few days, though.

    I just hope people don't rely on Slashdot for BSD news (considering it took weeks of multiple posting requests, from numerous people, just getting them to put the schedual up). I'd much rather have 3-4 good places for news (including /.) rather than Andover trying to monopolize...
  • Hey Nick,

    Well, that was the tone, IMO. That doesn't mean my interpritation was correct, of course. I'm refering to the email in which you announced Slashdot would have a BSD section, which came as advocacy was chatting about the loss of the FreeBSD advocacy pages, the new 3rd party advocacy page, the start of Daemon Daily News, and OS Online's BSD section. I don't have your message anymore, but that was how I precieved it.

    It was much more the case that /. has been thinking about running a BSD section for some time, but didn't have the manpower to do it internally.

    Alright. Again, your the one who knows... I'm just trying to scrape little bits of knowledge together to figure things out. I refer you to the infamous message, where you said Andover requested the page (which would mean the /. crew agreed, but did not request it from Andover). On the case of you running the section.. I'm sure your the right person. I don't think very many people would have trusted anyone else (in both being committed, and fair).

    In any case, good luck on BSD Slashdot.
  • From the way many BSD users have been treated by both the slashdot posters (and the FUD you see now is a shadow of what it was before), and the way the maintainers openly neglected them, I'm not surprised many BSD readers don't feel much joy in this. When Nik told FreeBSD advocacy a few weeks ago about /.'s new section, even then there was a tone of 'sorry for all your work on Daemon News, FreeBSD advocacy, etc.. but your dead. We're covering it now.'

    Andover, when Nik told advocacy, was the one who requested the BSD section because they saw the market. This was not Rob, etc. Andover sees the market, which means money. While I'm quite happy that Slashdot is claiming to support BSD better, I wouldn't them as my *only* news source, not even my main one on BSD. I don't trust the maintainers (except Nik, of course), I don't think they take responcibility for their actions, etc.

    So just understand thi: many BSD users don't see the increased number of articles as a great thing, its nice. The way slashdot has treated them in the past, none are rejoicing. I think many will continue to support Daemon News, some OS Online, and other sites with pride.. and support /. BSD because for publicity.. we may have to.
  • I wonder how do they pronounce FreeBSDCon?

    Definitely, they should've called it FreeCon (Read: Freak-on). IMHO, that's much cooler. (Yet, you won't be able to guess what's it all about)
  • It's disappointing to see that most people chose to focus on whether a BSD section is needed or not instead of discussing the topic at hand: the coming convention.

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by cmc ( 44956 )
    FreeBSD is the branch whose primary aim is robust 'popular' support for lots of hardware on the i386 processors. For some reason a number of people are also porting FreeBSD to Alpha and other architectures (I've never understood why they don't just use NetBSD, but to each his/her own, I guess)
    This group of people porting FreeBSD to the DEC Alpha architecture is known as the FreeBSD Project [freebsd.org]. :)

  • Re:Why? (Score:1)

    by cmc ( 44956 )
    When you said "a group of people", I assumed you meant some outside group.

    We're doing it to run on more hardware. Why port Linux to Alpha when OSF (or DEC UNIX or whatever) runs on it? Same reasoning, right?
  • I'm pretty sure Ask Slashdot would accept and post interesting questions. Or you could email the questions mailing list for the BSD operating system you're using.
  • It cost me $0 to get in to the Linux Conference recently held in San Jose, and I got free beer. (Thanks Slashdot!) I don't even like Linux!

    I love FreeBSD, but not enough to shell out $395 just to get in the door! :( As a consolation though, I get an old cow-orker flown in from Chicago on my old employer's dime so he can attend the conference and snarf me up some goodies.

    But you think they could try and give my poor pocketbook a break ...
  • I've posted this before in a previous slashdot article -- but in case anyone missed it. This site [uswest.net] has some slides on Barry Caplins FreeBSD@USWest talk at FreeBSDCon.

    FreeBSD has been in use in the USWest.net core infrastructure for years. The stability, reliability, performance, and security of the Operating System are major factors for its use. There are additional regulatory requirements that make our ISP environment unique and FreeBSD fits these needs. This presentation will cover the regulatory and technical environment at U S WEST Internet Services. We will discuss how we got to where we are now, where we're going to go tomorrow, and how FreeBSD fits into our big picture.
    ----------
  • How do you resolve the apparent inequality that results in a BSD section as compared with other Open Source Operating Systems (ie Linux, eCos)?

    Sometimes, I feel we are overly concerned with "fairness" (in this case stated as "apparent inequality") at the expense of other things that we should value highly.

    In this case, the *BSD community seemed to feel, rightly or wrongly, that they were being slighted by the Slashdot editors. In an effort of welcome community building, the Slashdot editors have seen fit to take positive action to remove any appearance of bias, and to actively support discussion and education about an important player in the Open Source Operating System world.

    I don't see that these actions cost anyone anything. There's nothing that makes Slashdot hostile toward Linux, BeOS, etc. by Slashdot providing a space for *BSD. If you don't like the slashbox, turn it off. Otherwise, you won't see any difference, with the possible exception of increased *BSD coverage on the main pages and if you don't like that, you can also turn off presentation of that. See your configuration pages for details.

    Congrats Slashdot. Your "Open"ness is refreshing.

  • You suck. You probably say that because you installed RedHat 6.1 or Caldera 2.3 with their little GUI lame ass install program. Then you put your FreeBSD disk in and, holy shit, it's not pretty! There's no little mousy-thing to move around! omigod, what do I do?!?!? Then you just fucking freaked and turned your computer off, going back into your safe little world where you have Caldera set to boot straight into X. Of course, I could be totally off based and you could be a Linux Guru whose intelligence is far beyond that of mine. However I doubt it. Know why? If this was the case you'd be using FreeBSD =)

    - This is all satire. I don't mean half of it. The other half is the alcohol speaking. Remove the '666' in my email, and stamp it to your hand or forehead to email me. -

    ~~Deitheres

    --
    Child: Mommy, where do .sig files go when they die?
    Mother: HELL! Straight to hell!
    I've never been the same since.

  • The people in the road crew outside working on the road are called "the road crew outside working on the road." I didn't question what it was called, or why it was called that.

    I questioned why it was being done.

    This isn't flamebait. I am just curious.
  • Nope,

    I am afraid that the AC tried to do that, and has failed.

    I put OpenBSD on my first machine this past weekend. Now I have Slackware, NetBSD, OpenBSD, NT, Win95, and Win98 boxes all running on my home network (all on single machines- dual/multi boot systems drive me crazy). It all works together quite well. Slackware was good 'practice' for running a BSD system. A lot of the core infrastructure is the same on all the free unices, when you get right down to it. The O'Reilly "Essential System Administration" book and all of the "blue cover" O'Reilly books are valuable with any of the Freenixes.

    I'd hate to give any of them up.

    My interpretation of the "fracture" of the BSDs is as follows:

    NetBSD is the most 'research-oriented' branch, the aim with NetBSD is to port the OS to as many architectures as possible. As such, NetBSD is what new hardware vendors can latch onto to explore their architecture and develop infrastucture. The StrongARM port is an example of that. Now that NetBSD has plowed some ground people are starting to port Linux over to, say, the Chalice CATS motherboard.

    OpenBSD is the branch where Security and stabiltiy are the most important priority. These are the folks who set up the whole system to be tight as a drum. It's the only install I have done which forced me to establish a Root password VERY early in the install process. (as an aside- Slackware 3.6 never even reminds you to set up a Root password- a friend of mine browesed the Net with a wide open Slack 3.6 system for weeks before I discovered [by telnetting into her system!] that there was no root password at all on her system. This is 'fixed' on Slack 4.0)

    FreeBSD is the branch whose primary aim is robust 'popular' support for lots of hardware on the i386 processors. For some reason a number of people are also porting FreeBSD to Alpha and other architectures (I've never understood why they don't just use NetBSD, but to each his/her own, I guess)

    They are all closely related, as they all come from the same origins. And they complement each other, for the most part, IMHO.

    Of course, this is ALL my humble opinion, as I don't have direct contact with anybody in the core teams of these fine products. Kudos to them all, of course.

Slashdot Top Deals

Our OS who art in CPU, UNIX be thy name. Thy programs run, thy syscalls done, In kernel as it is in user!

Close