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Looking at FreeBSD 6 and Beyond
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Jun 23, 2005 08:31 PM
from the coming-attractions dept.
from the coming-attractions dept.
Provataki writes "OSNews published an interview with core FreeBSD developers John Baldwin, Robert Watson and Scott Long. They discuss about the upcoming FreeBSD 6 and its new features, the competition, TrustedBSD, Darwin and much more."
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Not much info on Darwin (Score:3, Informative)
The TrustedBSD Audit support originated in large part from Mac OS X, and we really appreciate Apple's work with us to develop audit support, and their support in getting it out into open source. One of the outcomes of this will be our (TrustedBSD's) continuing maintainership of OpenBSM, a bundling of the libraries, documentation, and command line tools, which will be portable across a host of operating systems including FreeBSD, Darwin, and Linux. This sort of arrangement can be a strong motivator for companies like Apple to release software under open source -- we're already preparing bundles of documentation and feature enhancements that we hope they will be able to adopt back into Mac OS X.
I'm glad Apple is helping out, but I was hoping they would go more into the BSD kernel api that's appearing in Tiger.
Re:Not much info on Darwin (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not much info on Darwin (Score:5, Informative)
When Apple aquired NeXT, NeXTSTEP for Mach was Mach+4.2 BSD. Apple used their experience with mkLinux (which was also a Mach kernel combined with a *nix userland) to modernize the kernel.
Part of this effort involved bringing 4.2 BSD up to date with more modern developments from all of the BSD projects, but primarily FreeBSD. Apple continues to incorporate technologies from *BSD projects, despite Darwin being separately maintained.
Clearly, FreeBSD has a lot more in common with OS X / Darwin than Windows NT does, even if some parts (the kernel obviously, and Darwin's driver IO Kit) are significantly different.
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Re:Why should apple give a damn? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because mac os x shares code with freebsd, and helping freebsd will help themselves?
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FreeBSD is going strong. Linux OTOH is dead (Score:4, Funny)
Fact: Linux has balkanized yet again. There are now no less than 140 separate, competing Linux distros, each of which has introduced fundamental incompatibilities with the other distros, and frequently with Unix standards. Average number of developers in each project (except for Redhat and Novell/Suse): fewer than five. Average number of users per project: there are no definitive numbers, but reports show that all projects are on the decline.
Fact: The trivial issue os what to call Linux continues to hound Linux. At a recent Linux conference in San Francisco, a fight broke out between RMS (Richard M. Stallman) who says Linux should be called GNU/Linux and Linus Torvalds who created Linux and says that Linux should be called Linux. This led to a massive barroom style brawl involving at least 150 Linux geeks. The SFPD was called out to break up the melee, and arrested 150 people. It was estimated that at least 2 to 3 times that many were involved in the brawl, but there wasn't enough police on hand to arrest or count all of them. Sixty one people were hospitalized as a result of this brawl, and one person is still in a coma. Another three people had to get their jaws wired shut.
Fact: Linux is plagued by a lack of professionalism. The stereotype of Linux users being fat unwashed dateless geeks who still live in their parents' basements and refuse to shower more than once a month is all too true. The best example of this is RMS who claims to have a "water phobia" and thus rarely bathes. RMS also looks like he has been living in a cave for the last 5 years. In fact, RMS has been arrested twice because he has been mistaken for Osama Bin Laden. While RMS has always been found to not be Osama Bin Laden, it has created a perception of that Linux is the "terrorist operating system". Linus Torvalds has been forced to spend a great deal of time correcting this perception instead of working on the Linux kernel. Alan Cox quit Linux kernel development since he got tired of everyone saying that he was a terrorist.
Fact: There are almost no Connectiva developers left, and its use, according to Netcraft, is down to a sadly crippled
Fact: X.org will not include support for Redhat's Fedora project. The newly formed group believes that Fedora has strayed too far from Unix standards and have become too difficult to support along with other Linux distros and Solaris x86. "It's too much trouble," said one anonymous developer. "If they want to make their own standards, let them doing the porting for us."
Fact: Ubuntu Linux, yet another offshoot of the beleaguered Debian "distro", is already collapsing under the weight of internal power struggles and in-fighting. "They haven't done a single decent release," notes Mark Baron, an industry watcher and columnist. "Their mailing lists read like an online version of a Jerry Springer episode, complete with food fights, swearing, name-calling, and chair-throwing. It also doesn't help that most people think the word, "Ubuntu", is an obscure term for a homosexual orgy." Netcraft reports that Ubuntu Linux is run on exactly 0% of internet servers. An attempt to save Ubuntu by creating a derivative distro called Kubuntu has also failed.
Fact: Debian Linux, which claims to focus on "being free" (whatever that is supposed to mean), is slow, and cannot take advantage of multiple CPUs. "That about drove the last nail in the coffin for Linux use here," said Michael Curry, CTO of Amazon.com. "We took our Debian boxes ou
You just hope it can happen one day (Score:3, Interesting)
Cool (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Cool (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Cool (Score:5, Interesting)
Hebrew does superlatives by repeating the adjective three times. (E.g., "Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus" is Latin words with Hebrew grammar. A full translation to Latin would have been "Sanctissimus.") The number 7 was the ideal/perfect number and one less than 7 (i.e., 6) was the worst/imperfect number. So, just as 7, 7, 7 would be "the best," 6, 6, 6 would be "the worst." True, the Greek text says "six hundred sixty-six," but the idea behind it is three sixes grouped together.
In other words, it's not 616.
Come one, I'm sure there's a slashdotter out there that can add up "Microsoft" such that it equals "666."
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That's an easy challange! (Score:4, Funny)
http://www.zejn.si/~natan/666.html [www.zejn.si] 'Bill Gates 666' in Google gives me 129,000 matches. Of course it's using Ascii, not Hebrew letters as it should be. Another great Gates/Anti-Christ page is (even has that old Excel '95 easter egg:
http://egomania.nu/gates.html [egomania.nu]
What Slashdotter doesn't know this by heart?
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Re:That's an easy challange! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yawn.
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FreeBSD on the laptop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:FreeBSD on the laptop (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:FreeBSD on the laptop (Score:2, Informative)
Re:FreeBSD on the laptop (Score:3, Interesting)
FreeBSD (Score:5, Interesting)
Having said that, there are a few areas where FreeBSD sadly lacks behind Linux. For example, support for USB 2.0 is flakey, devices often don't work or behave oddly, and if you have atapicam compiled into the kernel, good luck with your iPod (firewire works flawlessly, though).
Another thing is WPA, there's no support for it in the stable branches, only in -CURRENT. I find support for USB 2.0 and WPA to be very important for an OS 2005, and frankly, support for both should be taken for granted, I think.
Other than that, it's a great OS and I am looking forward to 6.0. And I encourage everyone who is unfamiliar with FreeBSD to try it out - you might love it.
Re:FreeBSD (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:FreeBSD (Score:4, Insightful)
OTOH, Linux pushes things in as soon as possible, without extensive testing. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a different attitude.
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Re:FreeBSD (Score:3, Insightful)
I wasn't complaining about the fact that it hasn't been MFC'ed yet, I was expressing my worries about the fact that overall support for things I consider essential (like USB 2.0, WPA, and even the possibility of a higher console resolution) has been started rather late compared to other OS's.
Re:FreeBSD (Score:3, Insightful)
hawk
FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:3, Funny)
Are there any other major BSD distros, or is it just these guys? And what non-linux, non-BSD OSes are around now? (I hear OS X is due to be leaked for x86 any day now).
Are Linux and Free/OpenBSD the only real options now?
Re:FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know if you left it out on purpose or merely forgot to add it to your list, and I hardly ever use it, but NetBSD [netbsd.org] is a damn fine BSD variant too. It just doesn't get the press it deserves, focus seems to be on Linux and Free/OpenBSD mainly.
Well, then there's The Hurd, but it's barely usable. So, yes, I guess those are the only real options now.
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Re:FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:4, Informative)
As another poster noted, there's also NetBSD. I'm a former/current NetBSD user, although I'm moving away from it to FreeBSD.
NetBSD is great it you have obscure systems - I ran it on my VAX collection, and it worked great. However, it doesn't seem to stand up as far as new hardware support goes next to FreeBSD.
One thing to note - when you hear of people breaking transfer records, it's almost always NetBSD - they have a great network stack. I currently use FreeBSD for my file servers (nss_ldap/pam_ldap support is lacking from NetBSD), and use NetBSD for my VPN/IPSec routers. I'm probably going to switch over to FreeBSD just to keep things consistant, though.
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Re:FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:3, Interesting)
There's Plan 9 [bell-labs.com] and Inferno [vitanuova.com]. I haven't had much opportunity to experiment with either one, but they both look really interesting. There's also Hurd, but as far as I can tell (which admittedly isn't very far) it's currently about where it was in the nineties in terms of actually working.
Darwin? (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe someone else can tell us ups and downs of using Darwin?
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Re:FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, there's always Windows. You did say non-Linux, non-BSD, right?
Other than that, for the x86, there is Solaris, Plan 9, Hurd, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS, BeOS, Darwin x86, NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP, Apple Rhapsody (there's a beta floating around somewhere for the x86, closest thing we're going to get to Mac OS for Dells other than NeXTSTEP/OPENSTEP), and Minix.
If you have access to emulation, you have eve
Re:FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:3, Insightful)
(Like all UNIXes it has BSD code, but the *BSD revival movement was primarily spurred by Sun/Bill Joy's decision switch to the more modern and performant and more complex System V.)
Solaris is also THE real option other than Linux/BSD, so learning it can't hurt. Unlike BSD, it might get you a job.
Re:FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:3, Funny)
Re:FreeBSD and its place in the . . . field (Score:2)
Why Should... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why Should... (Score:3, Funny)
Thaaaanks.
Re:Why Should... (Score:5, Insightful)
Both OS's are certainly making progress, Solaris 10 in particular represents major progress over the previous versions, but neither is quite there yet and the weaknesses of one tend to be shared by the other.
The things I'm thinking of are related to the UI for both systems. Neither uses bash (or even tcsh) as the default shell. Neither uses gnu coreutils for things like ls, cp, rm, etc. These things may not matter to some, but they do matter to me. I'm sure the core OS of each is a very strong and capable system, but the same can be said of Linux and I don't have to fight with it to beat the UI into something usable.
Lee
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Re:Why Should... (Score:3, Informative)
Huh? csh is the default shell on FreeBSD. It also happens to be tcsh. Personally, I use zsh for my shell on all Unix systems I run.
Re:Why Should... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:It matters alright. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Why Should... (Score:3, Insightful)
But maybe I'm being harsh,
Re:Why Should... (Score:3, Informative)
Con FBSD: Support contracts may not be what your sun platinum has provided, supposedly the instant-workstation port is broken.
Pro S10: Sun JDS makes mass *nix workstation rollouts a breeze, kick ass tech support if you want to pay for it
Con S10: JDS costs lots of cash, per workstation, for some rollout and management interfaces for free software (OpenOffice, GNOME), HW support might no
BSD is about discipline (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux and the associated cloud of distros are like an English garden - mad experiments in all corners, and a mostly clear middle.
FreeBSD is like the lawn of the commanding officer at Camp Pendleton. Each blade the same distance from the blades around it, all the same height, and if one should slip out of place someone comes and corrects this quickly.
I love the flow of cool GPL stuff ending up in
"Late" (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't hate FreeBSD, but this is one proof of how bad has been the 5.x release. 5.x was suposed to be the SMP-friendly version, but a piece of code so important as the VFS is, is still under a single-lock kind of locking. I mean, I can imagine how BAD freebsd 5.x must be in filesystem-intesive workloads in SMP systems
I mean, what have they been doing all those years? Freebsd 5.x took a lot of time, this kind of optimization should have been done already.
The upcoming PC OS revolution. (Score:3, Interesting)
With the advent of multicored CPUs, the level of concurrent performance will explode. OSes like Linux, FreeBSD 6.0, Solaris 10 and 11, and Mac OS X will be prepared for that change. They will be able to effectively take advantage of the first generation of multicore PC CPUs. There are questions as to whether Longhorn will be able to cut it in the New Computing Order that will soon be upon us.
Re:The upcoming PC OS revolution. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The upcoming PC OS revolution. (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:The upcoming PC OS revolution. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Bye Eugenia (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Why does it keep going? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Why does it keep going? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, BSD has been along for a long time, since the late 1970s. In fact, here is the Berkeley copyright notice for FreeBSD:
Compare that history to Windows (first released in 1985, although to be fair, Windows development and the release of DOS was in 1981), and to GNU/Linux (GNU project started in 1984, Linux started in 1991). Now, BSD has been freely available for just about the same time as Linux, though. Read [wikipedia.org] your [oreilly.com] history before you start flaming.
Secondly, the BSDs have a nice level of integration between the kernel and the userland, since the developers work on both parts. For example, the BSD developers work on the kernel, the userland, the C library, the manual pages, etc. The only parts that aren't developed by the BSDs are the C compiler (from GNU) and a handful of other GNU utilities. This is different from Linux, in which the kernel is developed by Linus and contributors, while the userland is developed mainly by the GNU project.
Finally, the BSDs have proven themselves over the last 25+ years that they are very stable and capable operating systems, with a lot of merit. BSD was the first operating system to implement TCP/IP. BSD was a major commercial player back in the days of 4.3BSD and the VAX, and it does behind the scenes work in many of the non-BSD operating systems that people use (e.g., the core of Mac OS X and many Windows networking tools). BSD was one of the first pieces of software that went from closed-source to open-source (but not without a fight from AT&T, which explains why Linux, and not BSD, seems to be more popular).
BSD is a very nice operating system, and developers like working on it because it is well engineered and is proven. Read some BSD history and try a BSD before you start flaming.
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BSD works because not everyone is an asshole (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This is my first post . . . (Score:5, Informative)
Please refrain from using the played out jokes seen elsewhere on Slashdot, you would do particularly well not mentioning "in soviet russia...", "xyz is dying" and "imagine a beowulf cluster of these!" in the future
The reason I say this is simple: you will very quickly have a friend to foe ratio that simply does not work in your favour
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Re:I have a question for you BSD types (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you assume there is one best for all circumstances? Depending on what you are trying to do sometimes you need different underlying algorithms to get the same result.
NetBSD claims to be best because it runs on everything. That means that have to reject code that uses more memory than a VAX or sun3 system is likely to have. FreeBSD can get some extra speed because they can assume you have more memory.
Look closely at DragonFlyBSD. That project split from FreeBSD not long ago because there are