Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

itwire.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 77 posts

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#41

Post by emaste »

ejdyksen wrote: post #28

The one place I'd like to see FreeBSD run better is on Amazon EC2. Last I looked at the effort, it was subverting the VM mode used for Windows EC2 instances to boot FreeBSD. Unfortunately, this means paying the Windows price for instances.

Yes - the Foundation is interested in ensuring FreeBSD works well in both virtualization guest and host capacities.

Newer EC2 instance types don't tie the Windows license fee to HVM mode and FreeBSD can be run on those, for no additional cost: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00AA25MLK. The Foundation would like to see FreeBSD available on the other EC2 tiers without additional fees and is investigating alternate approaches there.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#42

Post by emaste »

trippy_biscuits wrote: post #39

I absolutely adore FreeBSD. I work in linux these days because it's easier to bundle and distribute an upgradeable (binary distribution) linux appliance. I will run back to FreeBSD as soon as possible.

Once pkgng is available in a release pkgng will really improve the binary upgrade case, and the multiple repository support will also be of interest to anyone deploying an appliance using a number of stock packages and a few custom ones.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#43

Post by pjmlp »

derleth wrote: post #29
pjmlp wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The complaint was about UNIX alternatives. Linux distributions are not even UNIX, just UNIX compatible.

> Linux distributions are not even UNIX, just UNIX compatible. Depends on how you define "UNIX". If you define it as "Derived from the V6 codebase", then I'm pretty sure a number of the OSes you mentioned don't qualify. If you define it as "Legally able to use the trademark", then you miss a lot of OSes that work just fine with POSIX-compatible software, such as FreeBSD, and include z/OS, which is just perverse.

I was referring to the trademark.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#44

Post by profquail »

kostya-kow wrote: post #38
joshbaptiste wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two reasons I recently switched to FreeBSD on my home servers, Dtrace and ZFS. In GNU/Linux I would need sort combination of strace,mpstat,ltrace,vmstat,iostat etc.. to find out the the things that a simple Dtrace script can tell me and also without dramatically affecting a running daemon process as the ptrace* system calls do.

Linux will soon have btrfs, which is as good as (if not better than) ZFS. Also Dtrace & ZFS originally come from Solaries, so they are not FreeBSD projects. The only reason they do not work on Linux is because of license problems which Sun created.

"license problems" ∈ "problems"

One thing I like about FreeBSD, and the BSDs in general, is that they don't suffer from such problems.

It's odd that Oracle (who now own Sun's IP) paid to develop a whole new filesystem (btrfs) for Linux instead of just changing the licensing terms for ZFS. It would be nice to have a really good, Apache-licensed filesystem that could run across Linux, OS X, BSD, and Solaris.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#45

Post by profquail »

emaste wrote: post #41
ejdyksen wrote: post #28

The one place I'd like to see FreeBSD run better is on Amazon EC2. Last I looked at the effort, it was subverting the VM mode used for Windows EC2 instances to boot FreeBSD. Unfortunately, this means paying the Windows price for instances.

Yes - the Foundation is interested in ensuring FreeBSD works well in both virtualization guest and host capacities. Newer EC2 instance types don't tie the Windows license fee to HVM mode and FreeBSD can be run on those, for no additional cost: https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B00AA25MLK . The Foundation would like to see FreeBSD available on the other EC2 tiers without additional fees and is investigating altern…

I wasn't aware that Amazon had uncoupled the Windows license fee from HVM mode! If this is true, The FreeBSD Foundation should make sure EVERYONE knows about it -- getting FreeBSD to be a first-class citizen on EC2 is absolutely crucial if they want to increase their marketshare.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#46

Post by nosequel »

kostya-kow wrote: post #38
joshbaptiste wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two reasons I recently switched to FreeBSD on my home servers, Dtrace and ZFS. In GNU/Linux I would need sort combination of strace,mpstat,ltrace,vmstat,iostat etc.. to find out the the things that a simple Dtrace script can tell me and also without dramatically affecting a running daemon process as the ptrace* system calls do.

Linux will soon have btrfs, which is as good as (if not better than) ZFS. Also Dtrace & ZFS originally come from Solaries, so they are not FreeBSD projects. The only reason they do not work on Linux is because of license problems which Sun created.

> Linux will soon have btrfs, which is as good as (if not better than) ZFS.

ZFS is stable and released. Pretty sure that makes it instantly "better" than btrfs right now.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#47

Post by 286c8cb04bda »

kostya-kow wrote: post #38
joshbaptiste wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two reasons I recently switched to FreeBSD on my home servers, Dtrace and ZFS. In GNU/Linux I would need sort combination of strace,mpstat,ltrace,vmstat,iostat etc.. to find out the the things that a simple Dtrace script can tell me and also without dramatically affecting a running daemon process as the ptrace* system calls do.

Linux will soon have btrfs, which is as good as (if not better than) ZFS. Also Dtrace & ZFS originally come from Solaries, so they are not FreeBSD projects. The only reason they do not work on Linux is because of license problems which Sun created.

> Linux will soon have btrfs, which is as good as (if not better than) ZFS.

It may be awesome, but I'd say "soon" is a pretty optimistic timeline.

Our testing pretty conclusively demonstrated that btrfs was still a long way from production-ready; We've seen numerous problems with deadlocks; Filling up a filesystem pretty much ruins it forever -- And these are not new problems.

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#48

Post by kbenson »

deno wrote: post #40
kbenson wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time I really had to use a BSD (OpenBSD) system for more than some simple tasks, I was blown away. There's a definite feel of design , as opposed to a large set of features and interfaces that happen to work together to varying degrees as in Linux. And the man pages. Oh, how wondrous they were. This first thing I had to do was learn to NOT google for how to accomplish something, but just read the man page.…

> Note: One the reasons the OpenBSD ifconfig man page is so big is because on OpenBSD ifconfig does the job of multiple Linux utils, because it makes sense to have ifconfig control all the interface state. https://linux.die.net/man/8/ip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iproute2

I was aware of iproute2, but wasn't aware the coverage ip had for features. That is indeed much better than ifconfig (feature wise), but I'm not sure if how indicative that man page is of the man pages on Linux in general, so it may just point out a poor example on my part.

Do you know if iproute2 if it supports STP configuration? I used brctl in the past to configure that, and it's something I would expect in an interface configuration tool (although maybe not a command named "ip"). I don't imagine that would be hard for them to add in if not though.

I think a better example of my point regarding man pages would be CARP[1]. In my experience where Linux has really lacked in man pages is concepts. The BSDs will offer refer you to man pages that aren't for any one command or file, but for a system or feature to explain it in general.

See also ipsec[2] for a description of the protocol, and aac[3] for a description of their driver implementation for Adaptec "FSA" family of RAID cards, and documentation on how to work with bluetooth[4] at the kernel level on their platform. Really, most of section 4[5].

[1]: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=carp

[2]: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=ipsec

[3]: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=aac

[4]: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=bluetooth

[5]: http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/man.cgi?query=(4)&apropos...

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#49

Post by Nux »

emaste wrote: post #33
Nux wrote: post #31

Wishlist: really looking forward for a proper binary package management (à la yum/apt) and long term releases!

A much improved binary package management system, known as "pkgng," is on the horizon. More information is available at https://wiki.freebsd.org/pkgng . Pkgng will feel very natural to anyone familiar with apt. If you'd like an introduction to pkgng there's a video from BSDCan 2012 at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Hxq7AHZ27I , or see the README at https://github.com/pkgng/pkgng/blob/master/README.md .

I'm looking forward to it!

Re: FreeBSD expands activities as funds flow in

#50

Post by wfn »

kbenson wrote: post #11
deelowe wrote: post #3

This is great to hear. I'm a huge fan of the BSD OS's, but it's been concerning that lately FBSD seemed to be falling out of favor. Unfortunately, many 'unix' people these days have only ever worked with Linux distros. While the distro model does provide a novel approach to packaging an OS that has it's strengths, there are some downsides. I love Linux for the suppor, the rapid release cycles, and the many different…

The first time I really had to use a BSD (OpenBSD) system for more than some simple tasks, I was blown away. There's a definite feel of design , as opposed to a large set of features and interfaces that happen to work together to varying degrees as in Linux. And the man pages. Oh, how wondrous they were. This first thing I had to do was learn to NOT google for how to accomplish something, but just read the man page.…

   And the man pages. [...] This first thing I had to do was learn to NOT google for how to accomplish something, but just read the man page.
I'm only learning, but I've had a very similar experience setting up and hardening a FreeBSD box using the FreeBSD Handbook (at least as my primary resource):

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/

You just pick the section of interest (or sit down and start from the beginning) and.. start reading. And when you're done, you understand the overall design of the system, its processes and system tools. With GNU/Linux, I quite often feel that when there's a problem, I'm looking for a quick fix. (Granted, it may simply be due to my limited experience / few years of exposure.)

In any case, I do thoroughly recommend everyone dabbling with fbsd not to underestimate the power of fbsd's documentation, and the uniformity (and the resulting empowerment of the system administrator because of this) of the overall system. As I understand it, OpenBSD is very much alike in that sense.

Post reply on HN