*looks at Eadon and laughs*
They've chosen open source (as Eadon keeps banging on about) yet it's not his beloved Linux.
Sigh - how will he react?
As Sony's PlayStation 4 pre-orders take off (perhaps at the expense of the already-unloved Xbox One), speculation has emerged that the console's underlying operating system is based on the FreeBSD operating system. The apparent identification of the OS comes not from anything so exotic as a leaked console, but from someone …
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Unfortunately the more liberal license is the reason we're all bickering here about Linux almost forgetting the BDSs
No, the licence had nothing to with it. AT&T took UC Berkeley to court at the same time as Torvalds was cloning Minix. Until the court case finished, and this being America it took a few years, BSD was considered tainted so there was an incentive to use something else, Linux was around and the rest is history.
> Who even cares? BSD is way better anyways.
Depends on what you do with it. I (a Linux and - sadly - also a Windows user, hence the icon) occasionally take a look at some new BSD release and always find it like a time-machine trip 20 years in the past with respect to user interface and - what is worse - device support. And that was compared to modern Linux! But it certainly is a stable solution for servers (provided you can arrange compatible hardware), and for embedded systems for the GPL-phobics.
It wasn't that long ago that on SCO Unix you needed to build a new kernel to change the IP address?
You never needed to do that. You could well need to do a kernel relink after adding a new interface but the IP itself could be freely changed while still multiuser. Even the relink process wasn't a big issue although obviously it meant a reboot since the entire process was automated - in practice even the relinking tended to be invoked automatically rather than you needing to trigger it manually. In that respect SCO of twenty years ago was actually more advanced than a Linux system is now, although the motivation for that has largely fallen away: shaving a couple of megabytes off the kernel isn't as big an issue as it was when 16MB was a shed load of RAM.
Rebuild to change the IP address?
I think you're getting confused with the nightmares of Windows NT4 service packs. Arrrrgghhh! They're sending shivers back just thinking about the farcical things we had to do to NT4 just to make some otherwise what should have been simple changes.
As for Linux vs BSD - they share a lot of code and features and there's a lot of movement going both ways. This makes a lot of sense and saves reinventing the wheel code wise.
As for Linux vs BSD - they share a lot of code and features and there's a lot of movement going both ways. This makes a lot of sense and saves reinventing the wheel code wise.
Between BSD and Linux itself (i.e. the kernel) traffic is comparatively rare these days and is only ever one way, BSD→Linux. The BSDs try to avoid GPL'ed code wherever practical even in the userland but this is absolute within the kernels themselves - if it's GPL it won't be accepted into the kernels. There aren't the same kind of issues using two- or three-clause BSD stuff in GPL code.
I occasionally take a look at some new BSD release and always find it like a time-machine trip 20 years in the past with respect to user interface and - what is worse - device support.
Seeing as the BSD's run the same interfaces as Linux (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, etc.) that comes as a surprise. As for device drivers, in fifteen years of running a mix of Linux, FreeBSD and NetBSD the only thing device I've owned that wasn't supported by the BSD's was an obscure USB FM radio receiver.
> Seeing as the BSD's run the same interfaces as Linux (GNOME, KDE, Xfce, etc.) that comes as a surprise. [...
I was thinking of installation and administration tools. You can set up a mainstream Linux distribution without touching the command line or editing text files, but not BSD, last time I looked. I emphasize that is perfectly fine for many users, but makes it rather specialized these days, Also, does hot-plugging USB devices work in any BSD yet? I mean like putting in a USB memory stick or disk drive and getting it automatically mounted without further incantations.
Just went looking for him via an old thread I remember him enjoying and found all traces of him have been expunged from the fossil record. Seems his little tantrum at TP yesterday finally got him dispatched to the great server room in the sky.
Poor Eadon. ????-2013
RIP
Your Google Fu is weak, but your surmise seems to be correct:
Indeed.... Must say my mouse wheel is thankful for not having to skip over so many MS FAIL posts but would have been nice to keep the existing comments going.... in particular the referenced "tantrum".
El Reg - any chance of an article of recognition. Quite a change that's happened with him gone!
The tantrum wasn't all that epic unfortunately. A few of the of the usual ranting posts amounting to Trevor being an "MS SUCK-UP WINDOWS SNAKE OIL SALESMAN FAIL" and the like. I have most of it handy if you're really that interested. Nearly re-posted it here, then thought better of it. ;-)
Finally, may I add that Eadon was not a good commentard. His incessant impetuous rantings made many of us want to scratch out eyes out and wish him dead. Well now he is.
EPIC EULOGY FAIL
yep, hotplug does work on *BSD although in some cases it's not out of the box.
BSD tends to be a lot more predictable and better documented than Linux, and the install programs are pretty solid (I've had a lot of grief with Linux distros trying to be too clever then failing badly when installing on something vaguely unusual)
driver support in Linux is better especially for brand new graphics cards. application support depends on the BSD variety - NetBSD is very portable but IIRC you're restricted to older versions of Skype and Firefox rather than Chromium. OpenBSD focuses on openness and security, so you won't be seeing ZFS any time soon.
For a Linux user FreeBSD is probably more familiar and friendlier than the other BSDs - you might find NetBSD shockingly bare bones. On the other hand if you look closer OpenBSD is remarkably coherent and well thought through.
for all occasional hassle I've had with *BSD there are equivalent issues with Debian, Arch, Ubuntu etc especially when you want to tell them to stop being 'clever' and do exactly what you want (insisting on the use of the network notification stuff, for instance, rather than 'here is my nic, here is my bridge, do not mess with them - that's the user's job')
"Free BSD - so with built in NSA spying libraries then.....
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/15/openbsd_backdoor_claim/
House Rules "
open!=free !
also "Perry's allegations are being taken seriously even though they don't come alongside anything substantial by way of evidence"
It's Sony so in the eyes of many who post on here (no idea if this includes Eadon but probably) it's automatically the Devil's very work.
Given that Sony killed OtherOS I would have to say you're almost certainly right about Eadon. And to be fair though Sony has earned its lumps in that regard. They still build the best consoles on the market in my opinion, but some of us have gotten tired of them assuming that all their customers are thieves and being treated as such.
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AC 0410, Thats a sucker bet and you know it.
Especially as he's repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn't really know a damn thing about Operating Systems, as evidenced by the glaringly obvious fact that he has no idea that Linux is a kernel and has nothing to do with the GNU userland that "Linux" depends on, his insistence that there is no such thing as *nix malware and that you don't need AV on any Linux system, even those touching a Windows or Mac environment, his accusation against Trevor Pott claiming that he's an MS schill, etc.
I had an epiphany regarding Eadon a couple of days ago. I suspect he is actually The Evil one himself (or a senior shill), only posing as a Linux lover.
Think about it: he is so extreme that all sane people want to distance themselves from him as far as possible. What better way to promote Windows/MS as the OS of choice, than to come over as such an obnoxious person and spouting such patent nonsense so that even Linux fanbois will rethink their stance? I mean, if THAT is how Linux users/devs/whatever are like that, how horrible is the OS then?
And yes, his ignorance surfaces from time to time during his more rabid postings.
It is quite a revelation how one (if he is only one) person has managed to generate such strong negative feelings against himself in such a short period.
On the other hand, maybe the real Eadon's account has been hijacked, as his earlier posts were quite, shall I say, sane?
EPIC BALLMER^H^H^H^H^H EADON FAIL!!!!
It is not UNIX compliant because the only way is by getting the trademark from the open group. There is other things that it doesn't do for legacy reasons that would have to be done to get it the certification.
Linux isn't UNIX compliant for that reason. (It is not even POSIX compliant or certified doesn't support POSIX AIO - At one point Linux FT was going to be certified by POSIX and paid for but I don't think it ever was). It mixes too many things up as well. If you make any reasonably complicated application on Linux primarily and try and just do a simple make on other real UNIX systems chances are it will be a fair amount of effort to sort it out. (The other way is easier.). Funny Linux is copying the embrace extend extinguish thing from MS.
It sort of is. Mac OS X is proper "UNIX" so was BSD/OS. None of the rest are certified. The fact Mac OS X is a UNIX and doesn't even have focus follows mouse means the definition is not one worth worrying about.
Maybe this will mean AMD's Linux drivers actually get decent. (Or someone works out how to hack these ones to work with Freebsd that would be ideal for me I think if that was possible.)
Does nobody these days have even the most basic grasp of how these things work ?
HINT: It was some time before there was any development environment for creating Windows applications that actually ran ON Windows. I can sit here today with a Microsoft Windows based Development Kit that produces code that runs on OS X or even Android or iOS.
To really bake your noodle, I can use a Windows guest OS in a VM running on an OS X host, using a Windows based development kit to produce Android / iOS / Windows / OS X software.
For the dense of skull, just because the Development Kit is running a FreeBSD variant/derivative, that is no proof that the code produced from the back-end compilers in that SDK are targeting the same - or even similar - OS.
It isn't to say that it isn't either. But you might just as well speculate that the PS4 will be based on .. oh, I dunno... just make something up.
UK.
nb - if they are using BSD, then this should negate some of the perceived performance advantage of the PS4 hardware. Current Windows kernels plus Direct-X are significantly faster than Open BSD 9 + Open GL on the same hardware....
"They won't use Open GL they will use their own faster libs"
So Sony will manage to develop from scratch in a few months graphics libraries that are faster than and as functional as Open GL despite the many years of development that have gone into Open GL?
And Sony will expect developers to re-write from scratch all their existing models - versus just using an existing library?
lol - I don't think so.....
Yes, The years of development going into openGL were mostly comittees trying to balance the needs of CAD makers on existing Unix workstations with games makers.
It's quite easy to produce libs that are faster for a typical 2d shooter on your own custom hardware than a general purpose graphics library.
Most games engines will spit out whatever you want on the back end anyway.
"Yes"
It seems likely not. All the rumours say the PS4 is native OpenGL.
"Most games engines will spit out whatever you want on the back end anyway."
Erm - no - not without a tremendous amount of work porting them to a different API.