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New FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE
When I got the new PC some time ago, I had a spare hard disk and I tried my hand with the -CURRENT branch of FreeBSD 5. Big mistake, cuz it didn't work. At all. X was broke. Sound was broke. Keymaps was broke. Etc. Etc. Debian -> SuSE 9 (quite nice, btw), Fedora Core 2 (also quite nice) -> Debian.

Recently, I resized my main Windows partition on the 200G main drive. From Linux. With ntfsresize. It worked, but is strictly for the brave. I freed up a chunk of disk that I intended to use as a shared FAT32 partition to dump my choonz on. Thing was, XP (and Linux) will only format a FAT32 partition up to 32GB, so I ended up with a bit left over.

Feeling bored, I downloaded the two floppy disk images for FreeBSD 4.10 current, and gave it a bash.

Now, I can't actually install Debian Woody on my computer because it has an Intel NIC that requires the new eepro100 driver that's only in kernels newer than whatever it is you get with bf24, so I thought that this would be the first stumbling block. Wrongo. FreeBSD found this card no problem.

The installer has been discussed before, and let me be clear: it's crap.

It's sorta like the Debian installer, but while it's free-form, it's still not as useful and doesn't guide you at all with "next steps" and "alternate next steps".

Suffice to say I got the base system on after about half an hour's downloading (like the new d-i, you can do the install right off the internet) on my 1MBit connection.

I twiddled the timezone, keyboard map, console screensaver, and font, and that's it.

I ran /stand/sysinstall and installed the ports distribution - "distributions" in FreeBSD parlance are collections of software, packaged up for you.

I've never seen the big deal with ports. You get a directory tree at /usr/ports/ which is broken out categorically. Each package has a directory with a makefile and maybe a few other bits. Searching is primitive "make search key=KEYWORD", and it's non-trivial to work out what depends on a particular package.

The bottom line is that ports ain't competition for apt.

It's source-based, it's not easy to remove things with their dependencies, it's not easy to see what you've got installed, etc etc etc.

Anyway.

cd /usr/ports/x11/gnomedesktop && make install.

from a fresh install of FreeBSD, which has the barest of bones. It's just about got GCC and Make.

This is a LOT of compiling.

It does eventually finish, and I startx. Error, can't access /var/log/XFree86.0.log.

You what?

Root can startx.

I uncomment the line in /etc/ttys that enables GDM, and we're away. Mortal users can log in to X now.

The FreeBSD GNOME is nice. It's slower than Debian's GNOME, but then here's a weird thing - FreeBSD is incredibly fast at compiling things, but sucks rocks for interactive use; Firebird takes at least twice as long to appear.

Sound looks like being a sticking point for now - there's instructions on the wibbly wobbly web to backport the 5.x emu10k1 driver to 4.x, but that looks like entirely too much work.

There's a number of things that niggle me about FreeBSD, but overall it IS a nice system. The filesystem isn't as fast as ext3, and its interactive performance is arse, but one gets that VMS feeling that it's a well-engineered system. The FreeBSD handbook is excellent, too. Suffers a bit from the Debian Too Many Words syndrome, but that's better than too few.

If I were presented with a FreeBSD box in a server role, I'd be quite happy to resist the urge to flatten it and run Debian. Diversity is good, and all that. A desktop box would get reformatted toot sweet.

[Aside: Please don't wave OSX at me as a good FreeBSD desktop OS; Darwin ain't FreeBSD, no matter what you might find in userland]


Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
New Darwin isnt, quite correct
but BSD is a nice server which is what unix or nix nowadays was built for, not desktops.
thanx,
bill
Anchorage AK: House for sale 3 bed 1 bath 1440 sq feet huge lot near Cheney Lake 175K FSBO 813.273.3518
I wondered what Darwinian moment had to effect itself before we devolved from children flying paper flags in the sky to half formed creatures thundering in a wall of horns down the road to Roncevaux. James Lee Burke
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
New Don't think that's quite correct either
The original BSD machines were set up as developer machines in that the highest priority went to the processes that used them least. Therefore an app that got 3 key strokes a second had higher priority than one that was moving a file. System V, ancestor of Solaris and more the model of linux in a lot of ways gives higher priority to the tasks that use the system more, so a file transfer would have a higher priority than somebody banging on emacs. It was more of a server model. The BSD was developed earlier and multitasked well enough that it was also a better server than most else around with equivilent hardware. Sys V was made for file serving.

'Tis the way I remember it, anyway...

New the ancestor of Solaris was Interactive Unix
heavily Sys5 SunOS was heavily Unix, OpenStep was NeXTstep a BSD product that was integrated into Solaris. Sun Solaris is not that Sys5 based. BSD was network oriented,
thanx,
bill
Anchorage AK: House for sale 3 bed 1 bath 1440 sq feet huge lot near Cheney Lake 175K FSBO 813.273.3518
I wondered what Darwinian moment had to effect itself before we devolved from children flying paper flags in the sky to half formed creatures thundering in a wall of horns down the road to Roncevaux. James Lee Burke
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
New Interactive was System V
It was 5.3 which varied from 5.2 due to the 386ix extensions. I used it when it was owned by Kodak. It was indeed bought by Sun and it became the base for Solaris. The original Sun OS was BSD based and was the basis for their original servers. Both were true Unix, unless you want to argue that AT&T variants are more/less uxix than Berkley, which I would consider pointless.

The only reason I remember this is because my first real unix project was a protocol converter/terminal emulator for Honeywell DPS 6/7/8 mini's to run on 386ix Unix. We sub-contracted to Sun who was sub-contracted to Martin-Marrietta and we also sub-contracted to a bunch called C3. C3 specified a Zenith 386 box with Interactive unix, and Sun made a special 386ix box they called the Roadrunner which ran a version of their BSD based OS. The end user was Military Airlift Command. I got my stuff working well on both, but Honeywell Federal Systems also proposed a Mac with their own pc/te on it and threatened to have shortages of parts for DPS 6's if MAC didn't use their product. Two years later, Honey Federal Systems called up my boss and inquired if I could get communications running on their Macintosh. I declined, somewhat less politely than usual.
New it was also the introduction of bind
I was using interactive, trying to get the whole bind listener working when I hit a deadline and dropped a bunch of gettys instead. Nice product. Also got Lotus to run on it.. Lotus wouldnt support it and interactive swore it couldnt be done. I got it to run.
thanx,
bill
Anchorage AK: House for sale 3 bed 1 bath 1440 sq feet huge lot near Cheney Lake 175K FSBO 813.273.3518
I wondered what Darwinian moment had to effect itself before we devolved from children flying paper flags in the sky to half formed creatures thundering in a wall of horns down the road to Roncevaux. James Lee Burke
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
New So, you ever heard of the Test Candidates for Sarge?
They are coming along quite well.

[link|http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/|http://gluck.debian.org/cdimage/testing/]
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey

Heard near the SCOG employee entry/exit way:

  Security: We got another Mass Exodus Doorway Jam.
Expand Edited by folkert June 16, 2004, 08:38:36 PM EDT
New If that's the new d-i netinstaller...
...that's what I eventually used.


Peter
[link|http://www.debian.org|Shill For Hire]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Blog]
New Yar.
--
[link|mailto:greg@gregfolkert.net|greg],
[link|http://www.iwethey.org/ed_curry|REMEMBER ED CURRY!] @ iwethey

Heard near the SCOG employee entry/exit way:

  Security: We got another Mass Exodus Doorway Jam.
New More-or-less matches my FreeBSD experience.
* The base kernel somehow supports things that Linux distros can get stuck on.
I have seen one using a Promise RAID card whereas the Promise Linux driver was binary and for RH6.2 only.)

* The installer's crap. And the disk partitioning thing is ancient and wierd. There are advantages to using FreeBSD's slice mechanism but there are disadvantages, too. Configuring the things in the first place is one of them.

* The Ports system is not hard to use, but no challenge to apt. It also doesn't handle upgrades well, in that keeping several servers current is A Difficult Task.

That said, I'm glad I spent time working in FreeBSD. It means I can properly appreciate The Debian Way. :-) But I don't really want to support FreeBSD.

Wade.

Is it enough to love
Is it enough to breathe
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
 
Is it enough to die
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be Anything but Ordinary
Please

-- "Anything but Ordinary" by Avril Lavigne.

New Debian FreeBSD
It's coming :)

[link|http://www.debian.org/ports/freebsd/|http://www.debian.org/ports/freebsd/]
--
Steve
     FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE - (pwhysall) - (10)
         Darwin isnt, quite correct - (boxley) - (4)
             Don't think that's quite correct either - (hnick) - (3)
                 the ancestor of Solaris was Interactive Unix - (boxley) - (2)
                     Interactive was System V - (hnick) - (1)
                         it was also the introduction of bind - (boxley)
         So, you ever heard of the Test Candidates for Sarge? - (folkert) - (2)
             If that's the new d-i netinstaller... - (pwhysall) - (1)
                 Yar. -NT - (folkert)
         More-or-less matches my FreeBSD experience. - (static)
         Debian FreeBSD - (Steve Lowe)

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