Tim O'Reilly Confirms BSD Publications 112
InfoMonk writes: "I attended a library conference over the weekend. Tim O'Reilly spoke at a presentation on Open Source Software for libraries. After the conference I asked him about the long running interest in O'Reilly putting out BSD publications. He confirmed that two projects are currently in development, the expected BSD in a Nutshell and another book whose subject is not yet clear. This is very good news of course, to BSD hackers who are slightly tired of the press coverage that Linux has been given in the past year."
Re:A little bit of knowledge.... (Score:1)
---------///----------
Take that Tux (Score:2)
Re:??? (Score:2)
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:5)
Yes, TCP/IP. Back when ARPANet was being developed, DARPA needed an OS implementation of TCP/IP to work with. Thus, they funded Berkeley CSRG during the mid-late Eighties, and BSD is intricately tied to the roots of the Internet.
TCP/IP made its way back to AT&T, along with a lot else. Even with the commercial proprietary OS boom of the Eighties, there was much code sharing, and so the many Unices never got too far apart. Obviously the major reason for this is they all had to license it from AT&T. ;-)
System V, Revision 4 (SVR4) brought together the best of the Unix world, and while based largely on AT&T's UNIX, also includes a lot of BSDish stuff. Other companies' work was used as well, including pieces of Xenix. SVR4 is POSIX, what your beloved GNU/Linux is based upon.
SRV4 is the "modern" UNIX base, used in all commercial UNIX OSes. (Solaris, AIX, Irix, HP-UX, et cetera.) A note on Solaris: SunOS (as it was originally known) was formerly BSD based; not surprising, considering that Bill Joy is its father. But Sun switched to SVR4 in the late Eighties/early Nineties, and it has been known since as Solaris. Solaris 8 is really Solaris 2.8, which is SunOS 5.8. (Look at your Solaris bootlog...)
In the early Nineties, the original Berkeley CSRG was ready to call it quits. Before they did, they wanted to release their complete modern OS codebase to the community, as 4.4BSD. But there were still lingering pieces of UNIX code in BSD, which were removed after a series of messy lawsuits. The commercial code was rewritten, and the OS, now completely free, was released as 4.4BSD-Lite.
This codebase, whose history goes back to the very beginnings of UNIX itself, was adopted by several groups of developers who wanted to revive BSD Unix. The two most successful were FreeBSD, who concentrate on being the most advanced BSD Unix for the x86 arhictecture, and NetBSD, whose goal seems to be to run BSD on every processor ever designed. :) Not long ago, a disgruntled BSD developer forked the NetBSD code and created OpenBSD, an OS with tons of cool integrated cryto-nrrd stuff, which is famous as being perhaps the most secure network OS currently in use.
So, to the point, all *BSD OSes are based on the 4.4BSD-lite code which was the Berkeley CSRG's final work.
The BSD which you forgot to ask about is BSDi. BSDi is a commercial BSD company, whose board of directors includes a few original CSRG members (I believe). BSDi recently purchased FreeBSD's distributor and will be merging the codebases. The best news to come so far of this is that FreeBSD will finally have a native Java2 development kit.
---------///----------
Re:an honest opinion (Score:2)
Good to hear it (Score:2)
Re:an honest opinion (Score:1)
That's the important part.
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:3)
POSIX is the official standard which defines UNIX (as in the trademarked, licensed kind). A POSIX OS is essentially the same thing as SVR4. Close enough for this discussion, anyway.
Read my other response in this thread for more info.
---------///----------
Re:abusing moderation (Score:1)
It already happened anyway, long ago.. it is called Windows Nt or something like that.
So what he says is not really unprovable...
Re:an honest opinion (Score:1)
Linux runs on Alpha, PPC, Amiga, and god knows what else. Name a single plat that BSD runs on but Linux does not, and I could probably send you a link to the linux distro that does work on that platform.
Re:BSD ruining open source and innovation!! (Score:1)
Re:A little bit of knowledge.... (Score:1)
So now you have to sink to racism that isn't even accurate?
BSD Coverage on Slashdot (Score:2)
Thanks Rob for the more agressive BSD coverage on Slashdot.
It amazes me how many people can't just co-exist peacefully. I use Linux at work, I prefer BSD. I've spent countless hours working with BSD.
BSD runs the pr0n industry too! =)
Anyway, my point is, can't we all just get along? At USENIX this year, Nik Clayton and I hung out with many Linux oriented people (including Stephen Tweedie and Theodore T'so) and had interesting coversations with them, ranging from SMP to filesystems, etc.
If the people at the forefront of these communities can get along, share information, even socialize with each other, what's so wrong with Slashdot readers getting along?
We use FreeBSD for firewalling at Andover, it works EXTREMELY well, slashdot's been fast, survived several DoS attacks (of which people barely noticed)
We also run the back end on Linux, we've got some plans in the works for some OpenBSD too....
Use what's best for the situation, this isn't some religious argument.
This coming from the Devil's Advocate.....
-Pat
MacOS X = lots more BSD dev (Score:1)
MacOS X will mean a lot of Mac developpers/IT people needing to get BSD books. That's quite a market.
Re:Linux v. BSD (Score:3)
Do you have any statistics at all that the number of BSD users is diminishing? If not then don't bring it up. This isn't television and the Nielson ratings. BSD won't get cancelled for being rated number two in the minds of newbies. Unix veterans do not abandon their favorite OS just because the Netwatch numbers are low.
Re:Beware the unwashed masses (Score:1)
And lest we forget, would you be so kind as to explain what is this pollution that you keep talking about? Final question: are you a programmer?
Re:an honest opinion (Score:1)
Re:Linux v. BSD (Score:3)
This "resentment" does not necessarily stem from ideological sources, or even disappointment that one's favorite OS is not number one. Rather, a lot of it arises from Linux bigotry. Hear me out!
It's extrememly frustrating when Linux is reported as being the only free OS. It's doubly frustrating when even those who know better say the same thing. For example, many applications written for X that use no OS system calls are advertised as "for Linux".
Walk into any given bookstore and the odds are high that you'll find open source related books under the heading of "Linux".
In terms of O'Reilly books, Tim said once upon a time that he would not publish a BSD book because it would be redundant. Yet there exists multiple redundant Linux books. How redundant is "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" coupled with "Learning Redhat Linux". For really eye-opening redundancy, check out the content of "Linux in a Nutshell" and "Unix in a Nutshell".
Re:an honest opinion (Score:2)
What is restrictive is that I have to give back in *exactly* the way that you demand. I am not allowed to make the license more free. I am not allowed to make the license more bullet-proof. Hell, I can't even write a program that links to a 100% free library like Qt without putting in a disclaimer.
There is a large difference between charity and taxation, between donations and fees, and between sharing and surrendering.
BSD vs Linux (Score:1)
Originally it was supposed to be a head to head comparison of Linux vs (Free?)BSD -- winner take all, or so I was gathering.
What happened was that it came out that both OSes have their strengths, both have their weaknesses. Both sides often argue the 'point' with old information. Yes linux has better 'newbie support' and more hardware support, and *BSD degrades more gracefully under load and has nifty better things in the kernel. What ended up coming out was more of a sense of cooperation, than a bloody war..why this should be such a surprise I don't know.
In other words, use the right tool for the job.
Anyone who was there want to add their comments? I'll grant my memory might be fuzzy, it was a bit back.
In any case, I think that Linux popularity has been a good thing for Unixes in general and Freenixes in particular (how many Unix [of any flavor] users under the age of, say, 25, at least in the U.S., got their start on a Linux system?) and I do think that it's been a shame that *BSD has sort of been the neglected child. One would think there would be enough room for both.
ReiserFS makes a final break inevitable? (Score:2)
The instrument of this in my opinion will be the inclusion of ReiserFS as part of an official stable Linux kernel. From what I have read from various mailing lists such as those at http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=reiserfs&r=1&w=2 [theaimsgroup.com] and Debian, ReiserFS will only be licensed for free operating systems under the GPL. In my opinion this means that ReiserFS will never be part of the base distributions of the free source BSDs.
I believe that in five years ReiserFS will be the default file system for most Linux distributions. Of course ordinarily with Unix associated filesystems the particular one does not matter all that much for data interchangeability, but ReiserFS is but a small part of Hans Reiser's rather persuasive and exciting vision http://devlinux.com/projects/reiserfs/whitepaper.
And that's when the total break will occur. ReiserFS is getting support right now from some of the heavyweights such as SuSE, which means that there will be a high degree of integration between ReiserFS and the distributions. Conversely if ReiserFS isn't part of the base free source BSD distributions, it will not enjoy those communities' professional quality integration efforts.
In my opinion the free source community would have been better off a while ago adopting a common stance for open implementable standards regardless of GPL, BSD, or MIT X licensing, but that window of opportunity of probably past.
abusing moderation (Score:2)
for the greater good (Score:2)
I hope that the BSD book does the same.
free 31337 translation onthis link [geocities.com]
{shhhhh... the froggies are asleep.}
spam-proofing?
Re:an honest opinion (Score:1)
"Please show me a Linux distribution (yes distribution, no gross kernel hacks) with a unified, clean source tree complete with all the platforms in the tree."
The emphasis is on all.
And I doubt that Debian/arm is as complete as Debian/i386...
Re:Beware the unwashed masses (Score:2)
Re:More information. (Score:2)
On Growth of the BSD Community (Score:4)
Well, I'd be willing to bet that most BSD people would welcome additional growth to the community. After all, BSD thereby gets more users, attracts more developers, and gains more/better software. With the increasing popularity of Linux -- or if I may, free UNIX -- I can only see growth as inevitable as *BSD gets swept up in the whole thing.
However, there's something to be said when you've got such a small, tight community as the BSD communities. Take the FreeBSD community, for instance. It's decidedly the largest group of *BSD afficionados out there, but it's still tiny compared to the Linux community. You can still get in touch with all of the main hackers. Greg Lehey, who wrote the book on FreeBSD (that is, literally the one printed book), still participates on several of the official mailing lists and answers when contacted by e-mail. I'm a complete nobody in the FreeBSD community, but I've talked (e-mail) with Greg many times.
Let us savor these things, us BSD people, because like it or not, the times they are a-changin'. I hope we can be as good big as we have been small
Old news, no news. (Score:1)
The next BSD disaster at O'Reilly was the death of the 4.4 BSD series manuals. I was at a flea market a couple years ago and some guy had a pile about a cubic yard in size of these manuals. They were going for a dollar each and he couldn't give them away. They did have their front covers ripped off but these books were originally over 120 dollars for the set. There they were in this crummy Sebastopol flea market for sale--a dollar each and no takers.
Does anyone think that O'Reilly will make any money off another failed attempt to publish BSD material? There isn't a market for it. After the first hundred zealots buy it, wait a few months a pick it up at Midgley's Flea Market in Sebastopol.
Re:Even closer! (Score:1)
He made a valid point. Between the Walnut Creek boot and UNIX in a nutshell, I have all I need to maintain my FreeBSD server.
I once made a joke with my co-authors, we could right FreeBSD in a Nutshell with an OCR'ed copy of UNIX in a Nutshell and sed.
George
Re:??? (Score:2)
Japan has never been held under Wintel's iron grip. There's even a competing format over there, called PC98. Consequently, "alternative" OSes such as FreeBSD have done quite well there. Proof is that FreeBSD comes with PC98 support and lots of Japanese language software.
I recently watched a translated "mainstream" Japanese movie, and I started laughing out loud when I heard someone in the movie say, "He's so dumb! He can't even use Windows!" LOL!!! Man, I really gotta learn Japanese and get the hell over there. I can put up with xenophobia and beatings if there are half as many clueless lusers...
Otaku might remember the episode of Magical Girl Sasami with the scary Bill Gates guy. Well, they didn't say he was Gates, but he was an American software mogul who tried to push his crappy OS onto everyone, and he was a scrawny white guy with short reddish-brown hair and glasses. Close enough for me.
---------///----------
Re:Beware the unwashed masses (Score:1)
But it's true. ^_^
---------///----------
Re:printed BSD manual (Score:1)
---------///----------
Re:Good to hear it (Score:1)
---------///----------
Re:printed BSD manual (Score:1)
(Score:1)
wha?
Then, having achieved a beachhead, BSD can start to push deeper into Linux territory.
guh?
i don't know man. maybe DEBIAN should put everybody's favourite MICROSOFT kernel into their os and call it DEBIAN WINDOWS. or wait, take QNX kernel, put it in DR-DOS and port MS OFFICE to it eh? we'd sweep through the Windows territory like Rommel through North Africa! how poetic.
Re:Linux v. BSD (Score:1)
Redundant? (Score:2)
Re:an honest opinion (Score:1)
Re:Redundant? (Score:1)
Any guesses what animal it'll have on the front?
Re:Old news, no news. (Score:2)
How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:1)
Do they have things in common between them (but different to commercial Unix and Linux)?
In other words would this book contain all the things that people can find in any Unix/Linux, or are there features present in the 3 BSDs that are not present elsewhere?
Re:A little bit of knowledge.... (Score:1)
Re:printed BSD manual (Score:1)
Beware the unwashed masses (Score:1)
As linux became more mainstream, many moaned about various changes that took place within both the system, and the community that surrounds it. Do people really want this to happen to BSD as well?
just wondering...
O'Reilly published the original 4.4BSD docs (Score:2)
Oh wait, it isn't GPLed, it must not be any good...
Re:about time (Score:2)
But just what do you mean by "no native apps". Do you mean apps that are available *only* for FreeBSD? If so, then even Linux has an extreme dearth of applications. I don't know what FreeBSD you've used, but mine currently has Gimp, XEmacs, gcc, KDE, xmms, ssh, and hundreds more applications installed. And and I have several thousand more packages and ports available to run under FreeBSD natively. If I remember correctly, the precompiled packages that come with FreeBSD 4.0 number around 1500 or so. The ports collection contains many, many more.
But if you're talking about native closed-source or proprietary commercial software, then there's only about a dozen or so. So I guess you're right. When it comes to what RMS calls subjugating and dominating software that takes away your rights, then Linux has BSD beat hands down!
p.s. You are right about Acrobat though, my goof...
Re:about time (Score:2)
As for the number of native FreeBSD apps, the numbers are in the thousands. KDE, GNOME, Enlightenment, Netscape, Acrobat, gcc, emacs, sendmail, bind, xmms, and the list goes on and on. Maybe you don't realize it but any open source unix application that doesn't use kernel-specific system calls and otherwise follows common standards will compile under FreeBSD. For a closed source app, the manufacturer needs only recompile.
Spend a few minutes browsing through the ports collection to understand how utterly stupid your post really is. FreeBSD has a linux emulation mode but I've never had to use it yet.
??? (Score:5)
My question is, "Why hasn't O'Reilly already published BSD books?" There's certainly enough potential interest to make it worth their while if they can put out books on Lego, f'Chrissakes.
Re:Linux v. BSD (Score:3)
Of course they're not stupid. They use the OS best suited for the job. In some cases that will be Linux. In others it will be Solaris or AIX. Still others use BSD.
I really don't understand the point of this. What difference does it make to BSD if somebody is using Linux instead? Is this some sort of all or nothing warfare where there can only be one winner? BSD never set a goal for world domination. Such an idea is abhorrent to it. That eleetist attitude belongs to Linux and Windows.
What Linux lacked from the beginning is the eleetist attitude that some in BSD land are trying to get rid of.
You are right when you accuse BSD of having elitist subgroups. But you are equally wrong when you say that the Linux community does not have the same. Every operating system has its elitist and self righteous advocates. Some of the most elitist and arrogant OS folks I have met are Linux users. Just go to any Slashdot story about the release of any Linux distribution and you'll see it. Debian users have the only moral operating system, Slackware users have the one true distribution, Redhat users possess the real Linux standard, ad nauseum. They won't say it in so many words, but the elitist attitude is there and very visible.
Linux v. BSD (Score:5)
I can see how a little resentment can creep into the most level-headed individual when things like political, religious or operating system choice are at play. Nevertheless, I see the mindshare gains acquired by Linux and Open Source over the past two years as a patently good thing for other- some, I'm sure, will argue, better- free Unices. A lot of organizations have, it seems, warmed to the idea that commercial software might not be only available option, and as they discover that viable alternatives exist to their, say, Windows-centric perspective, Linux will not be the only OS that will gain popularity simply because once shown the possibility of choice, one's point of view usually becomes quite a bit more flexible.
That said, the fact that a great number of closed-source ISVs only support Linux or even, commonly, one particular distribution, does irritate me immensely, as does the growing disregard for portability in Open Source software written by Linux users for Linux users.
--
Violence is necessary, it is as American as cherry pie.
H. Rap Brown
Re:More information. (Score:1)
Re:an honest opinion (Score:1)
> 7:1. The sudden decline in NetBSD is awesome.
Because Usenet is dead. It's only used by spammers and perverts these days.
Everybody uses mailinglists now. Check out the mailinglist archives of OpenBSD and NetBSD. The ratio is more like 1:7.
Re:??? (Score:2)
My 4.4 BSD manual set is from O'Reilly, it was bought in 1995ish. The first O'Reilly book I saw was "BSD in a Nutshell", possabbly as far back as the 80s.
Most of the other O'Reilly books have been about generic-ish Unix applications (News, Sendmail, Lex n' Yacc), and are as applicable to BSD as to Linux, or SysV and HP/UX. Many predate the current Linux mania.
So they surely are not anti-BSD. Surely it was obviouse they wern't anti-BSD before they announced they would be doing another BSD book.
Re:??? (Score:1)
About a 2 years ago, I wrote a letter to Tim O'Reilly (from the O'Reilly Website Ask Tim section).
I inquired as to why there were no books devoted to FreeBSD (or any other BSD), and asked if there were any plans for some of those?
The reply I received (not from Tim), was there are already too many books devoted to FreeBSD, go find one somewhere else. (Just a little rude).
Anyway, the only book devoted entirely to FreeBSD that I have ever found is the FreeBSD Handbook (2nd edition was just released I think)...
But it would be nice to see some O'Reilly books devoted to FreeBSD.
BSD and Gun nuts in a Nutshell (Score:1)
Typical Elitist troll garbage.
Re:More information. (Score:1)
So is the spelling of humour.
Re:ReiserFS makes a final break inevitable? (Score:1)
What makes you think that the BSD camp is even thinking about ReiserFS right now? We have our hands full with Soft Updates, and possibly LFFS in the future. Reiser is nice and all, but its creator can't even decide on a "release" version. Linux and BSD will always share information, they will also almost always do things in completely different manners. The other thing you neglect to realize is that the BSD distributions include GPL'd code, etc. Someone will probably port a GPL'd filesystem to *BSD and well, it'll go under
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:1)
GNU/Linux does things its own way, but you can definitely see that the kernel and much of the low-level system stuff takes its hints from SVR4. The BSD influence is there, but much weaker. I will stand by my statement that if Linux had to choose a side of the fence, it'd be SVR4.
And while AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, et cetera all have their eccentricities and quirks, the important thing is that they're certified with the modern UNIX standards, so there's a great deal that they're guaranteed to have in common.
I love my FreeBSD boxen, but I believe that SVR4 and POSIX managed to integrate the best of BSD, and that any groundbreaking BSD development these days won't mean much. Of course, I hope I'm proven wrong. In the meantime, I'll try to straddle the fence as best I can, as I always have.
---------///----------
the RedHot BSD distro (Score:2)
The slashdot audience is filled with geeks, and geeks don't quite get it when it comes to understanding why and how other people decide what to buy or install. I don't want to go into gory detail about this, but a good example is a guy a few months back who basically said he was waiting for strongarm chips in the Palm [Pilot] because they are better than the chips in there now. Hello? Is there any device that hides the chips more thoroughly than a Palm? It's sort of a twisted version of the Turing test: can you tell what kind of chip is in there? No? Good!
The reason I bring that example up is that kernels are the same way. If you think some *BSD kernel is great, then give me a "RedHat" distribution that has substituted the kernel you love for the linux kernel (call it "RedHot"). Wouldn't that be cool? I'll believe you that it's better, I'll install it, and it'll run better, and you and I will both be happier. Then, having achieved a beachhead, BSD can start to push deeper into Linux territory.
So, I know you hate the idea, but you can't say I'm not trying. Otherwise, BSD will be the world's best OS to languish in obscurity.
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:1)
We trolled Sun's Java RFE page for months trying to get something like this. The FreeBSD/Java 2 RFE was number one, by over 300%, for half a year, and I never heard one peep of response from Sun. Recently we started in on IBM Alphaworks, and at least they were honest enough to tell us that they had no plans to do Java work for FreeBSD.
I think that with BSDi's backing, the current work done by the FreeBSD team, and the available Blackdown code, December isn't too soon to hope for. Alas, I was forced to stop Java development in FreeBSD in March. A year behind the current technology is just too much. I now do Java work from Linux and NT.
---------///----------
Re:an honest opinion (Score:2)
about time (Score:1)
Re:??? (Score:2)
I suspect BSD's market share will significantly grow [apple.com] beginning possibly as soon as next week [macworldexpo.com].
Re:On Growth of the BSD Community (Score:1)
This would certainly change if the number of users increased.
Re:??? (Score:1)
WRT the PC98 "standard" - (A) it's dead (NEC killed it in favour of a normal AT architecture) and (B) it ran Windows on Intel chips (although there were some using NEC-made Intel-compatible CPUs a long time ago), so I'm not quite sure how that proves that Japan isn't in Wintel's grip, but yes, Windows isn't as universally accepted as the "default" as it is in some other countries.
Re:printed BSD manual (Score:1)
Re:printed BSD manual (Score:1)
---------///----------
Re:??? (Score:1)
BTW, hate to tell you, but 4.4BSD is gone. It's like someone trying to sell a Linux book about the 1.3 kernel series; it's dead in the water before it even ships to the bookstores. It might give you some insights into ancient history, but it won't sell to people who just want to try installing OpenBSD because they've heard that it's secure.
Re:Old news, no news. (Score:1)
Such books are not "sold", as in no money has been given to the publisher or author.
Anyone "selling" such a book is selling something which they have illegally obtained and which they are not entitled to sell.
Re:Prove it! (Score:1)
---------///----------
Re:??? (Score:1)
Re:Good to hear it (Score:1)
If MacOS X is not a disaster, it will be the first credible, no excuses Unix-based OS for mortals. If it is, you will be vindicated and can reveal how smart you are.
Re:??? (Score:1)
Re:An honest opinion (Score:2)
This is Free Software, and that means freedom! And freedom is much too precious a thing to remain unregulated. Therefore all developers will get in line and do exactly what I say. In order to ensure the continuance of Free Software and Freedom, we must now eliminate the subversive notions of free will and free choice.
Remember, Arbeit Macht Frei!
Re:an honest opinion (Score:1)
here is a list of architectures debian is available for:
Contents-hurd-i386.gz --> x86 debian with hurd as kernel
Contents-sparc.gz@ --> sparc debian with linux as kernel
Contents-i386.gz@ --> x86 debian with linux as kernel
Contents-alpha.gz@ --> alpha debian with linux as kernel
Contents-m68k.gz@ --> m68k debian with linux as kernel
Contents-arm.gz --> arm debian with linux as kernel
Contents-powerpc.gz@ --> powerpc debian with linux as kernel
Re: Markets in a Nutshell (tm) (Score:3)
Then this information is pretty much useless then, isn't it? Stop citing statistics that you won't release.
But even if you did release them they wouldn't draw the conclusions you do. Because you don't have the faintest clue what "marketshare" even means.
Is BSD losing?
Marketshare has nothing whatsoever to do with winning or losing. This is not some Mayan game where the winners get to execute the losers. It ain't a game at all, especially not one of those zero-sum games beloved by the economically illiterate.
Let's look at a non-OS market like beverages Coca Cola and Pepsi have huge market shares while Royal Crown has very little. Does this mean that Royal Crown is a loser? Hardly. People who like Royal Crown cola will continue to buy it. And no statistics that could possibly cite about marketshare will ever convince them that Coke and Pepsi taste better.
But the OS market is not the beverage market. The marketplace for beverages is saturated. The only thing that can increase the total number of beverage consumsers is an increase in the total population. But the OS market is still growing. It is near to pointless to cite BSD's marketshare as an indicator of its death, when the total OS market is doubling every year or two.
Think about it. If the BSD market share lost 5% last year, they must be doing awesome! Because the total number of new OS consumers was much much more than 5%. BSD has more users today than they did last year. That's successful in my book.
In addition, lumping all operating systems together is erroneous. Just as Windows is targeting a different audience than Unix is, so Linux is targeting a different audience than BSD. Other than Debian and Slackware, the Linux distros seem to be targeting unix newbies and corporate users. The BSDs on the other hand are targeting unix veterans. They have never claimed to be the one OS for everyone.
The fact is this: as long as BSD continues to gain in total number of users, then BSD continues to gain in total number of users.
Re:A little bit of knowledge.... (Score:1)
"Right, I'm your temporary replacement demonstrator and today we're going to put our assignments aside for half an hour to learn about the REMARK function, or, as it's known to the computer literate world, rm..."
Seriously though (considering the parent post is a troll) WTF should you give the root password to these clueless newbies ? That is one of the biggest problems for MS shops, so if you want to avoid trouble keep the root/administrator passwords away from lusers. Or let them fix the mess..
Re:O'Reilly published the original 4.4BSD docs (Score:1)
The reason the books were so great at the time were that they had papers that were (a) timely and (b) useful. Many of them were from Usenix conferences as 4.3, 4.4 was being developed.
Remember, it was Usenix that first put out those manual sets, not O'Reilly, and made them available to members, not all of whom would have access to conference procedings. A newer printing of the texts would, I would hope, have more recent papers on various File Systems and administration tools from more recent USENIX/LISA/Whatever conferences. That's really interesting stuff going on!!
True, those papers are on the web, and all members can read them, but sometimes, one needs hard copies of those things to bring a system up. I don't need the manpages in the FreeBSD book when my computer is working, I need them when my computer is down.
And there's one thing I really, really miss from the original, Usenix manual set, believe it or not-- The permuted index! The 4.3 BSD manual set was the first Unix documentation I ever ever used- and the permuted index was one of the most wonderful things about it. Instead of having the index sorted on the first word in a string, it was sorted on a select middle word of a phrase, and had a blank column down the middle where the sorting took place. I found it incredibly useful to find things, and also found many interesting new things just browsing down that stripe.
--
Re:A little bit of knowledge.... (Score:1)
A true admin would never experience this, as he would never trust such a luser with root.
Also, he would have a system in place for a painless unattended reinstall of fsck'ed workstations.
Re:abusing moderation (Score:1)
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
Looking forward to the Release (Score:1)
Re:Redundant? (Score:2)
Re:an honest opinion (Score:2)
As for freedome. It is also restrictive to those who do not mind others wishing to take and not give back.
Re:an honest opinion (Score:2)
You see, I get this weird hardware from time to time and It's nice that there's an OS that supports them. Besides, when you're doing embedded programming it helps that there's a portable OS. The sheer number of platforms is a side effect of portable code.
printed BSD manual (Score:4)
But where will they get the manual from? CSRG is gone, and there are now three major BSD4.4lite-based OSes. My guess is they would go with FreeBSD's manual, since FreeBSD is the most successful, well known, and, some would argue, the most advanced of the three. But, truth be told, OpenBSD has an excellent manual, and I'll sometimes even consult it when I work with FreeBSD boxen.
Speaking of manuals, an excellent resource is the FreeBSD Project's manual webpage [freebsd.org], actually a CGI script which allows to you to consult manuals from CSRG BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, several Linux distributions, SunOS (pre- and post-BSD-Exodus), as well as less common Unices such as Minix (har har), Plan 9, Ultrix, and Seventh Edition.
While we're ontopic, Sun Microsystems publishes a Solaris reference which is essentially the printed manual, but I would not recommend this book. All of Sun's Solaris books are absolutely horrid. (Which I've never understood; their Java books are wonderful.) Complete wastes of money. The only remotely useful things are the discussions of the mail system and network filesystems in the "Advanced System Administration" book.
Hands down, the best single Unix command reference book you can buy at the moment is O'Reilly's Unix in a Nutshell, but that is straight SVR4, with some Solaris-specific commands thrown in for good measure. You'll get what amounts to an abbreviated manual, along with stuff on shells, editors, and maybe a few system calls. If you would like to do system-level programming, Stevens' Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment will counter-balance the Nutshell book nicely. Can never have too many reference books. :)
Forgive me, I love computer books, and tend to talk about them a lot
But that still does nothing for BSD users. Face it, guys, BSD is seen by much (dare I say most?) of the business IT world as "old" UNIX. Which it is, of course, but I don't find anything particularly wrong with that. But, it's a stumbling block which caused me to stop pushing it. (That, and the fact that my company is large enough to need the two dozen Sun and IBM boxen. I don't see many companies switching from Big Iron to clusters of x86 Free Unix boxen, but the high value and TOC of cheap x86 Unix are going to keep the current wave of IT startups going for another ten years.)
I honestly don't think I would buy BSD in a Nutshell. I'd rather have a printed manual, to complement Unix in a Nutshell, rather than replace it. Isn't that all I'd need? The vi and emacs syntax will be the same. So will awk, sed, and grep (for the most part). I'll be carrying two books around either way, so that stuff is just redundant.
Some say, "why have a printed manual at all, when everything is available on the system or online?" But you may be doing work at a location with both old and new SunOS boxes, and you're working on new SunOS, and you want to be make sure your shell scripts are portable between boxes. Having a printed BSD manual might come in handy then. Or you're on the subway going home from work, and you get in an argument with your geek buddies about proper BSD shutdown syntax. Or if you're like me, you just love computer books. So I'd buy the manual. But not the Nutshell book.
Okay, I'm ranting again.
"InfoMonk" mentions a mysterious BSD book in the works? I'm excited. I think a book on mid-level kernel work would do well. (Something to fill the void between The Complete FreeBSD and Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD-lite OS.) Or a book on BSD-specific networking and TCP/IP. Hey, Roblimo, get us an interview with TOR so I can bug him about this. ;)
---------///----------
Re:Redundant? (Score:1)
Alan Cox!!
...no, wait. Bill Joy in a clown costume.
Okay, okay, seriously... well a tasmanian devil sounds likely, but a devilfish is another possibility.
---------///----------
Re:A little bit of knowledge.... (Score:1)
---------///----------
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:1)
When I came to Linux when it was one, or nearly 1.0 anyway, via the SLR distrib I stumbled upon Slack. The second Slack cought.
What I liked about Slack was that its resource configuration system was so very much akin to what I was used to!
Now as already has been described, back in the olden days things were a bleedin' mess. We went to UNIX because in those days UNIX was hyped as the new OS that would kill all other OS's. Something we've since seen when NT came along as well as when Linux broke through. (Let's face it, 10 percent of the Fortune-500 is a big deal).
From that mess two streams emerged. System V on the one hand and BSD on the other. BSD's rc system, like Slack's I still grock, SysV's OTOH can not capture my imagination.
In that sense Slack's BSD feel is anything but an illusion. That's it's not BSD is a given, but qua feel it's much more BSDish then SVish!
Please note that I come from the UNIX corner, not the BSD one
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:2)
"Takes its hints" in what sense?
The implementation looks nothing like SVR4 (at least as of when I saw SVR4 code back at Sun and at Auspex).
And if you mean the interface, which interfaces are you referring to?
(Note that "signals" may be the wrong answer, given that the core signal interface on both Linux and current BSDs and just about every other UNIX on the planet is, err, umm, sigaction().
"tty driver" is probably the wrong answer, too, as, at least if you use the termios stuff rather than the ioctls atop which they're built, Linux, current BSDs, and, I think, just about every other UNIX on the planet look similar - the termios structure and the flag bits and control characters in it are pretty much those of SunOS 4.0 (which, in turn, I based on a POSIX draft when I implemented the SunOS 4.0 tty subsystem).
open(), close(), read(), and write() are pretty much the same everywhere, and the same applies to the socket calls.)
Oh, and just in case your claim that
wasn't just a troll on the order of "BSD is a code fork from Solaris", that simply ain't the case. You're thinking of the Single UNIX Specification [opengroup.org], which is based on POSIX but has rather a lot of stuff in it beyond what's in POSIX 1003.1, and beyond what's in other POSIX standards as well.
SVR4 has stuff beyond what's in the SUS, much less what's in POSIX, so claiming that
is hardly "close enough for this discussion" - were a BSD release to make itself POSIX-compliant (assuming it isn't already so), it would not necessarily be "essentially the same thing as SVR4".
Re:printed BSD manual (Score:1)
With that off my chest... We all say stupid shit, especially when we're drunk, and RMS shouldn't be any exception. I wouldn't be surprised if he did say that. Drinking is an important part of the hacker/geek culture -- RMS is not a particularly friendly guy when he's sober, and from the experience of others and myself, code is better and comes faster with a few beers in your belly.
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:2)
On a side note: According to Sun, Solaris is simply SunOS bundled with Openwindows. Solaris 1.x is SunOS 4.x, and Solaris 2.x is SunOS 5.x. As you mention, 4.x is BSD, and 5.x is SVR4.
Re:Old news, no news. (Score:3)
I think this is largely due to the kind of people who tend to run BSD, compared to those who tend to run linux. While linux is admittedly installed in a wider variety of locations than BSD (IE, it is installed in the mission-critical spaces but is commonly used as "UNIX with training wheels) BSD tends to be run primarily by hardcore geeks and people who have work to get done.
What I'm saying here isn't that linux isn't suited to doing work, but I am saying that the sort of people who run BSD tend to be those who don't need or want a book. If you get on #linux you'll see a trillion clueless newbies hopping on and asking things like "How do I start a program at runtime" without ever poking their nose through /etc. By contrast, those who don't have a good handle on init scripts and the like are probably going to have so much trouble with *BSD that they are going to give up and go to linux.
I don't see this as a deficiency in BSD. It's a feature. BSD has been left fast and light. If that alienates some people, so be it. I didn't drag my way up from Xenix-286, through Slack and RedHat just to find that BSD had become bloatware. I know what I'm doing, and when I don't I know how to find out, by combing through manpages and poking about in /etc. I don't need documentation in twenty languages. Sometimes I need a book (Mastering Algorithms in Perl owns you) but at this point, I don't feel I need one to perform systems administration tasks. If need be, I'll poke through source and read comments and see what the variables look like throughout their lives. I can get it done.
I suspect many of you are the same.
How many people who commonly read the BSD news on /. are going to buy a nutshell book?
Re:A little bit of knowledge.... (Score:2)
If the workstation's been fsck'd, shouldn't it be working fine now?
Re:??? (Score:2)
We were discussing this recently on the freebsd-newbies list, and someone pointed out a quote by Tim saying that a BSD related book would be redundant. How redundant is "Linux in a Nutshell" + "Running Linux" + "Learning Debian GNU/Linux" + "Learning Redhat Linux"? We also noted that "Linux in a Nutshell" is 80% to 90% identical to the SysV-centric "Unix in a Nutshell" (subtitled for System V and Solaris 2.0).
This quote was old, and it's nice to know that Tim sees BSD as worthy material for yet another worthy O'Reilly book. At one time there were several BSD related books, including the original Unix in a Nutshell that covered BSD.
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:3)
Well, it's sort of the intersection between various flavors of UNIX, with some stuff added on; it antedates SVR4.
The signal mechanism is derived from that of 4.2BSD (and also happens to be the "main" signal mechanism in SVR4; other ones are supported as well). The terminal handling is more SV-flavored than BSD-flavored (where "BSD-flavored" really means "Research UNIX V7-flavored"; BSD added a bunch of additional stuff, most of which is also in SVR4, albeit with a more SV-ish flavor). Modern BSDs, and Linux, also have SVR4-flavored terminal handling (i.e, termios, with the UI extensions such as ECHOKE, ECHOCTL, word-erase and reprint and... characters).
SVR4 itself has a BSD-based file system (as well as, at least when it first came out, the V7-flavored System V file system - but, then again, 4.1BSD's file system was also V7-flavored).
Linux is Linux, just as HP-UX is HP-UX, IRIX is IRIX, AIX is AIX, Digital UNIX is Digital UNIX, etc.. Most of them implement POSIX, and a pile of other stuff, over and above POSIX, which is mainly the same on all UNIX-flavored OSes.
Linux isn't SVR4; most Linux distributions have a System V-ish init, although Slackware, I think, has a more BSDish init. Linux looks SVR4-like in a number of ways, but it's not SVR4.
At least on the RH 6.x (for some value of x) system here, there's a sigaction man page, which means it has POSIX signals; sigaction is derived from, and similar to, the BSD sigvec mechanism, but is not identical to sigvec.
There's also a sigvec man page on that Linux system, but it says
SVR4 and modern BSDs also have sigaction(); one should use sigaction wherever possible, and fall back on 4.2BSD-style sigvec() or "traditional UNIX"-style signal() (whose behavior differs between BSD and other systems; I'm not sure which behavior Linux gives, and I'm not sure how much I should care, as one should use sigaction() if one is writing portable code - yes, I know, there are probably signal() calls in Ethereal, I'll fix them) or 4.1BSD/SVR3-style sigset() only if one cannot use sigaction()
In other words, the correct answer to your question is "it has POSIX signals, just as SVR4 and modern BSDs do; those aren't exactly the same as BSD signals, but they're like BSD signals."
Re:Beware the unwashed masses (Score:2)
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:2)
Actually, the post to which you're referring looks inaccurate enough to be a troll rather than just ignorance; I wouldn't rely on it to clear up confusion.
Re:an honest opinion (Score:3)
Re:BSD ruining open source and innovation!! (Score:2)
BSD is a bunch of crooks and thieves who steal open source success and provide an inferior product to Linux.
How do you steal something that is free? Everything in the BSD source trees meticulously follow the licensing. Neither is anything exploited. All source code and modifications for anything is readily available.
As for being inferior, that is a purely subjective opinion. It has no basis in fact, and coming from an Anonymous Coward, can be ignored as tripe. Linux is better in some areas and BSD is better in others. Get used to it.
Linux was here first
BSD around before Linux. Hell, it was around before Minix! Sheez... Next thing you know you'll be claiming that Linus and not Algore invented the internet...
Linux is what is innovating the internet generation
Err, I spoke to soon, you are claiming it! Like it or not, the internet *is* BSD. TCP/IP is pure Berkeley. All of the big internet forces came from or were profoundly influenced by BSD. This includes bind, dns, sendmail, apache, mosaic, etc.
BSD steals almost all their code and ideas from Linux.
Again, how do you steal something that's free? And how can you steal in 1980 what won't be written until 1990 and beyond? What exactly did BSD steal from Linux? Page coloring? Softupdates? Vinum? Ports?
I would suggest you keep your mouth shut until such a time as you can produce a Linux distro containing absolutely no BSD derived code.
Open Source needs to be made Linux only and NOW!
Open Source needs to REMAIN free! Freedom means a choice between operating systems. Slavery and tyranny mean that everyone must only use what you tell them to. That you advocate Linux only for open source indicates that you have absolutely no clue as to the meanings of "free" or "open". You try to shove your choices down the throats of free men and you'll be in a world of excruciating hurt.
how long will we sit back and let them steal our inventions??
Nothing has been stolen. Let me spell it out clearly and succinctly: if you give source code to someone, they have not stolen from you. And don't talk about "inventions". What exactly has Linux done that no other operating system has? Name just one idea inherent to Linux that is new and innovative. There may be a lot of prior ideas that it does better, but Linux still didn't come up with those ideas first. (And I don't see Linus' or Richard's names on any software patents, nor do I expect to until Chuckie goes ice skating)
Linux the choice of a GNU generation
What a great sig for someone who doesn't know the first thing about freedom. You're so ignorant that you don't even know that your post is a slap in the face to Richard Stallman and everything he's been working for!
Re:How do the 3 BSDs relate to each other? (Score:2)