Features Coming For FreeBSD 10

[dhewg]

<insert GPL license fanatic response here>

While GPL is a nice license, there's this argument that forcing 3rd parties to release source modifications isn't equal to a quality contribution.

[dhewg]

Please don't compare bleeding edge workstation/hacker/tester distros to enterprise linux servers. Your example of multi-year stability with security patches is nothing unique to BSD. I have production servers running uptimes of multiple-years as well, and not just dinky private office fileservers, rather high volume web and database servers that have all of russia and china pounding on my ports thousands of times daily.

I didn't claim that maintaining stability branches and security updates didn't exist in other places. The point was that there's a single upstream vendor which maintains kernel and userland on all branches. Linux distros try to archive the same, but they're more like a middleman and stuff can easily fall through the cracks with the amount of patches going on in the Linux word.

Note that I didn't post this to bash Linux, this was directed at the BSD bashers

[johnc]

Please don't compare bleeding edge workstation/hacker/tester distros to enterprise linux servers. Your example of multi-year stability with security patches is nothing unique to BSD. I have production servers running uptimes of multiple-years as well, and not just dinky private office fileservers, rather high volume web and database servers that have all of russia and china pounding on my ports thousands of times daily.

So were your servers not affected by the recent leap second or did your enterprise distro push out the fix in time?

[droidhacker]

No, you are obligated to provide the source code to anyone who you give the binaries to. You have no obligation to contribute to the project. Of course obligations don't necessarily get honoured. Want to take a guess at how many companies use GPL software or libraries in proprietary products and services?

You rephrased and claimed contradiction.
There is NO DIFFERENCE between obligated to provide source and contribute back. I never suggested that you need to participate directly in the project in order to contribute. VERY narrow minded you need to be to make that association.

As for "honoring" the GPL.. of course some companies will rip off GPL code. The point though, is that when they're big enough that it matters, they can't afford to do that and get called out for it.

[droidhacker]

Dude, you've got issues.
And that's actually one of my reasons for using FreeBSD on my server: Linux is huge and the amount of patches from one version to the next is overwhelming. More changes, more chances of bugs.

It's not just a kernel and you have to pick a distro and rely on that distro to get security updates. It a full system including userland.
Upstream supports multiple stable branches, security fixes go to all of them and security advisories get announced on freebsd-announce.
For Linux, there's the inofficial linux-stable, where patch submitters/reviewers have to take care of cc:stable. Linux distros use that as a base and throw their own (sometimes crappy) patches on top of it.

I find that alone way more compelling. Let alone all the neat features of FreeBSD.
It's is less bloated and I've been running it with an uptime of multiple years. Rock stable.

Sure, for most users its probably less useful as a desktop system compared to Linux. And I do use Linux on my desktop box, but for servers is find FreeBSD far more usable.

It's far from pathetic, and calling it that for not seeing *your* personal advantages makes you narrow minded.

Please don't compare bleeding edge workstation/hacker/tester distros to enterprise linux servers. Your example of multi-year stability with security patches is nothing unique to BSD. I have production servers running uptimes of multiple-years as well, and not just dinky private office fileservers, rather high volume web and database servers that have all of russia and china pounding on my ports thousands of times daily.

[randomizer]

With GPL, you are OBLIGATED to contribute back

No, you are obligated to provide the source code to anyone who you give the binaries to. You have no obligation to contribute to the project. Of course obligations don't necessarily get honoured. Want to take a guess at how many companies use GPL software or libraries in proprietary products and services?

[droidhacker]

Nice flameware going on here.

Of course, its irrelevant.

Fact is that Linux has a FAR greater reach than BSD, and it continues to advance at a breakneck pace while BSD isn't apparently going anyware very fast.

Yes, there are some nice features of BSD that Linux lacks. I think there are more nice features in Linux that aren't in BSD, but that's my opinion so fuck off if you feel like countering this point.

The facts are laid out above.
The reason for this is that there isn't much INCENTIVE to contribute to BSD.
That is caused by their license.

The unfortunate problem with the BSD license, is that for it to be successful, everybody who works on it or uses it HAS to VOLUNTARILY contribute back to it. It depends on the HONOR system, and we all know that MOST people and organizations LACK HONOR.

There are plenty of people and organizations who would happily contribute to it, IF they could trust that the OTHER people and organizations who take that code would behave as honorably as they did. I.e., contribute back their enhancements in order to build a strong open source codebase.

However, everybody knows that there are plenty of ASSHOLES who will take other people's HARD WORK, and keep it to themselves without sharing back their enhancements.

As a result, you have those who WOULD contribute, but don't in fear that others would steal their work, and you have those who don't contribute back because they're ASSHOLES.

That's what makes Linux much stronger with the GPL license.
With GPL, you are OBLIGATED to contribute back (hence solve the ASSHOLE problem),
with GPL, you don't have to be AFRAID of the ASSHOLE problem (because it is solved),

For this reason, Linux will always be more successful than BSD.

Yes, the BSD license is obviously more "free", but is, unfortunately, TOO free. It is SO free that it can be UNFREED. GPL is a license that FORCES freedom on you, even if you don't want it. I would classify GPL as a "balanced" license. It is not too free that it can be unfreed, and it is not unfree.

[dhewg]

Are you a kid? Why are you complaining to me about bugs? There's gazillions of bugs in any big project why should I bother about the one that bothers you?

Dude, you've got issues.
And that's actually one of my reasons for using FreeBSD on my server: Linux is huge and the amount of patches from one version to the next is overwhelming. More changes, more chances of bugs.

It's not just a kernel and you have to pick a distro and rely on that distro to get security updates. It a full system including userland.
Upstream supports multiple stable branches, security fixes go to all of them and security advisories get announced on freebsd-announce.
For Linux, there's the inofficial linux-stable, where patch submitters/reviewers have to take care of cc:stable. Linux distros use that as a base and throw their own (sometimes crappy) patches on top of it.

I find that alone way more compelling. Let alone all the neat features of FreeBSD.
It's is less bloated and I've been running it with an uptime of multiple years. Rock stable.

Sure, for most users its probably less useful as a desktop system compared to Linux. And I do use Linux on my desktop box, but for servers is find FreeBSD far more usable.

It's far from pathetic, and calling it that for not seeing *your* personal advantages makes you narrow minded.

[RahulSundaram]

Interestingly, Lennart Poettering has stated that systemd is incapable of starting X and needs Wayland to do it. It is a bit odd to me that 2 million lines of code (when including dependencies) could not include code for launching X, but somehow, Gentoo has managed to do it with an init system that only has 10,000 lines of code. That is not systemd's only issue, but it is food for thought.

I am not sure about the line count but since we are not talking about comparable feature set it is not a very useful comparison. Several distributions are using systemd and starting X just fine including http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Systemd#startx, it is not clear what you are talking about. systemd certainly doesn't need Wayland. In fact, Wayland could use some changes for systemd to work better with it including for instance, making it more compartamentalized so that cgroups support is effective. If you provide a reference to systemd and X, that would help.

[kraftman]

Go to netcraft.com and take a look at the most reliable hosting companies since january 2011. In 10 out of the last 18 months, there is a company using FreeBSD that is better ranked (more reliable) than the companies using Linux; 8 times Linux is a winner. This is just how pathetic FreeBSD is...
This undoubtly proves that FreeBSD is at least as stable as Linux. Considering the manpower behind Linux which FreeBSD lacks, I would say FreeBSD is anything but pathetic.

Linux usually owns netcraft:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2012/06/06/most-reliable-hosting-company-sites-in-may-2012.html

However, by saying FreeBSD is pathetic I don't think he was talking about stability. Linux and Unix like systems are the most stable. The problem with BSD is it's always behind, because of the lack of manpower. The features that are comming to FreeBSD 10 are already present in Linux.

Uber-audio daemon.

Will this shut up people who complain about PA and say it's a layer? What's more funny Windows and OS X are also using something like this, so if everyone is using such layer now, people should shut up, right?

- Support for 64-bit Linux binaries (see Linux binary benchmarks on FreeBSD for gaming).

What for? To take a look at meaningless and unfair comparison (KDE vs Unity)?