Slashdot Moving To FreeBSD 228
CmdrTaco seems to be excited about the move, knowing there are several BSD experts on the network staff now.
"Linux's disorganization, and the fact it seems like a a bunch of unconnected developers tried to write an OS with no prior planning or agreements has been hard for us at Slashdot who have to work with the Operating System. To the users, there will be no difference, the upgrade will be seamless. Trish and Jim will be happy and they will stop their complaining about Linux," he said.
John Baldwin, a kernel hacker working on SMPng at BSDI's Open Source Division, said that "it should be able to handle Slashdot just fine, Are we done yet? I have things to code."
This also reflects a shift in focus for OSDN, as we are starting to move away from the politically charged Linux in favor of more reasonable, stable OSes.
You're sure to hear more about this transition in the coming weeks, along with some other important announcements.
Funnier Yet (Score:1)
What's funnier yet is this statement is ever so true.
Tasty Natalie portman. (Score:1)
Re:Tomorrow's news: (Score:1)
In related news, kernel.org [kernel.org], the on-line headquarters of the Linux Kernel was defaced. The normal notes about progress of the Linux kernel were replaced with the cryptic message:
The identity of the hackers responsible is yet unkown.
Re:Odor (Score:1)
A young, attractive actress seen in Mars Attacks, Anywhere but Here, The Phantom Menace, and some other stuff. Look her up in the IMDB [imdb.com].
Some relation of The Prisoner actor Eric Portman?
Probably not. Portman isn't her real last name.
What exactly are 'grits'?
A barely edible breakfast food made from little pellets of corn and found mostly in the southern U.S. Standard diner fare. Look them up at dict.org [dict.org].
I suspect you're not talking about the stuff you put on the roads in cold weather?
No, though I'd argue (as a U.S. southerner, even) that our grits are barely more edible than the grits you suggest.
What's all this "are belong to us"?
"All your base are belong to us" is from a bad translation of some old video game. "Somebody set up us the bomb," "What you say!!" and "Take off every 'ZiG'" are from the same place. See screenshots of the game, as well as some varyingly amusing parodies here [gamespy.com].
Re:enough with the april fools humor! (Score:1)
--
The biggest April Fools joke of them all... (Score:1)
Is all of the poor stupid people who wasted their moderator points to moderate posts today.
Of course it could be no worse than what I'm doing right now however.
serpens`
When I was a kid, April Fools Day ended at noon.
Heh (Score:1)
--
Joe Hamelin
Re:Humorous aspect (Score:1)
things seem to be getting tighter and tighter, as the 'bad distributions' get weeded out
and
kernel 2.4 was (somewhat) recently released, bringing it quite near to par with the BSD kernel
And they said there wasn't anything funny in this feature. See, nerds can be funny when they don't try.
Great! (Score:1)
Re:64 way SGI Origin2000 (Score:1)
SGI booted linux on a 64
Re:64 way SGI Origin2000 (Score:1)
SMP describes processing architecture, NUMA describes memory architecture. (both in the abstract sense).
As for memory locality, linux has supported this for quite a while. SGI did the work precisely for this reason.
--paulj
64 way SGI Origin2000 (Score:2)
--paulj
Re:Odor (Score:1)
It's an ad-hoc Perl/CGI implementation. This screams "bad performance"
no matter what OS you put it on. Logically if they wanted a faster
response time they'd code in mod_perl, php, or SOMETHING other than
this archaic architecture."
Umm... was that supposed to be an AFJ as well?
HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 06:45:51 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) mod_perl/1.24
Re:editorial: (Score:1)
This is already a Slashdot Feature - go into the User Preferences page, then Customize Homepage, and make sure you have the "CmdrTaco" tickbox cleared. I found that ticking this box improved the coherency of Slashdot a great deal, at least as far as the stories were concerned.
Re:Have you all forgotten already? (Score:1)
Re:Odor (Score:1)
grits: ground up corn as far as I can tell/know. Most popular in southeastern US. A popular side dish like mashed potatoes.
All your base are belong to us: net humor/fad. Based on a poor english translation of a japanese video game called "Zerowing". It is mentioned on the lycos 50 [lycos.com].
It us understandable to be surly sometimes.
Re:ahhh.. a perfect end to a perfect day (Score:2)
Seriously, though, I'd trust BSD code a hell of a lot more than Linux. Rumor has it that RedHat won't even compile from source anymore. They have to rebuild each rpm individually and what-not.
BSD rules.
Re:Have you all forgotten already? (Score:2)
Generaly, I've only had to use BSD in some situations where i needed a pretty robust networking setup with a small base supporting system of programs. I don't mind it being used because of its time tested firewalling (compared to netfilter, which really does kick a bit of ass, but is brand-spanking-new but who cares otherwise?
Also, nothing stops a few hundred megabit smurfs. You can protect the load on your heavenly precious applications servers, but the poor, poor upstream and firewall taht have to deal with it. Too bad theres no good traceback yet on ICMP to deal with this. Yes, traceback on ICMP. Be afraid, you too might lose your privacy to ping.
Re:Packet Filtering (Score:2)
hilarious.
Re:looking forward to (Score:1)
Slashdot.org | Posted by AilleCat on Mon 02 Apr 04:00PM
I always thought if you pulled an April Fool after midday, you were the fool. But this fella is still amping with the funnies at 4am the next day! Or maybe it's really true (and I don't see a punchline in there, do you?)
Re:wait a second... (Score:1)
Hate to break it to you, bub, but Michigan is very much in the Eastern time zone. You have to get on the other side of Lake Michigan to be in the Central time zone.
--
Re:wait a second... (Score:1)
--
Re:Because the would've been obvious (Score:1)
/Janne
looking forward to (Score:1)
Re:wait a second... (Score:1)
maybe if they're cruising their slashdot yacht in the bermuda triangle.
Re:Finally?!?! NOT (Score:1)
Proud of my 8xxx uid, and not bothering to hide it, although I'm not so sure they're really sequential.
Re:wait a second... (Score:1)
The slashdot crew lives in Michigan, which is in central time. The physical servers are in California, which is in Pacific time. If you see times in Easter time, it's because you set them that way in your preferences.
Re:Odor (Score:2)
2) Apache/mod_perl code is very portable between Unix systems; unless you go out of your way to use odd non-portable things like syscall(), the odds are that your Linux code will run on FreeBSD without a single change
3) the source code of
Re:FreeBSD? shyyaahhhtuuuupppp! (Score:2)
Is this another April 1st Joke ? (Score:1)
Re:Odor (Score:1)
Cheers,
Tomas
===========
Re:unsuspectedly ... (Score:1)
Re:looking forward to (Score:1)
Re:International readership = problem? (Score:1)
Start the jokes when the first timezone goes onto April 1 and keep going until the last timezone is done with it.
There ! Nearly forty-eight hours of side-splitting hilarity.
April Fool's sucks this year (Score:1)
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Re:enough with the april fools humor! (Score:1)
enough with the april fools humor! (Score:2)
I, for one, was really depressed by the lackluster April 1 RFC this year. I much prefer IP over Avian Carriers.
*sigh*
In the new millennium, there will be no good humor...
April fools? NOT! (Score:1)
I'm sitting here typing this comment and I really don't think this makes a good april fools joke.
Actually, moving to FreeBSD wouldn't be a bad idea. While FreeBSD continues to improve SMP support this can actually become a reality.
Re:unsuspectedly ... (Score:2)
Re:Finally?!?! NOT (Score:2)
Still political (Score:1)
(but *BSD is so more 31337!
haha... another lame april fools joke... (Score:1)
Re:International readership = problem? (Score:2)
Dave
editorial: (Score:5)
And if you're going to make jokes, make them funny, at least!
It would have actually been funny had they said... (Score:1)
that they were switching to Windows 2000 instead of FreeBSD.
Brian
http://www.assortedinternet.com [assortedinternet.com]
Re:International readership = problem? (Score:1)
You're only allowed to fool until midday. Some of these weren't posted by midday in ANY timezone.
Really. Even if they're going to crack bad jokes they could at least try to get the rules right...
IP over Avian Carriers (Score:1)
http://www.blug.linux.no/rfc1149/ [linux.no]
Re:unsuspectedly ... (Score:1)
eww. why smp? (Score:1)
Does this mean other things might change? (Score:1)
Re:editorial: (Score:2)
If April Fools day were simply 24 hours of pranks (which is what it seems like on
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Re:Tomorrow's news: (Score:2)
Re:Real life examples? (Score:2)
The
Oh, he asked about Operating Systems? Never mind.
Tomorrow's news: (Score:5)
The White House has had tens of thousands of angry "Slashdotters" started to protest in DC, while 500 police and National Guard officers patroled the area. Angry comments to the police such as "You won't understand what Slashdot meant to me!" and "L33T HAXORS OWNZ J00!" were exchanged, resulting in a fiery clash that left hundreds dead. The remaining crowd set fires, destroyed property, and put all the W's back on the keyboards in the White House. Mysteriously, about 50 pairs of pants with what appears to be hot grits in them were left behind.
Even Natalie Portman tried to appease the crowd by unveiling a carved petrified-wood model of herself.
Riots in Redmond, Washington have also broken out, as thousands of pro-Microsofter's started tailgate parties and drunken orgies in the Microsoft parking lot. Bill Gates was quoted as saying "I'm too old for this [sexual activity]."
The global economy has plummeted, the moon has decided to start moving back towards earth, and Linus Torvalds is traveling by armored plane to Rob Malda to propose a Linux unification standard. Whether it will work out remains to be seen.
Re:VA Linux PREFERS Linux (Score:1)
not to mention Hotmail's
Re:Sorry you think this is a joke... (Score:1)
Probably would, although there are user options for getting lighter HTML (indispensible under Netscape. but Konqueror's progressive rendering is sufficiently awesome i've gone back to the fancier pages, partly because they have links the plain pages dont *cough*). As for images... i dunno, expand your cache or something (assuming /. doesn't set something that hoses caches). or turn off image loading.
Re:For Future Reference... (Score:1)
For that reason, I can't rid my mind of the idea.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Re:Real life examples? (Score:2)
But in all honesty, the best argument is a straightforward upgrade path. I tried to upgrade a RedHat box, and after the fourth RPM that needed another RPM or was missing files or didn't compile correctly, I wiped the disc, mounted a couple dirs, and installed a fresh, current system with a few commands. If upgrading is hard, people do it less. That's why boxes get hacked, often.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Humorous aspect (Score:4)
-------
CAIMLAS
Re:64 way SGI Origin2000 (Score:1)
See the k42 project [ibm.com].
--
Patrick Doyle
Actual Details of SMP in openBSD/linux please? (Score:1)
I realise that many experts believe linux2.4 is a better SMP system than openBSD but can someone please send a link to a document explaing the differences of the two OSes, with pro and cons in both designs.
Some us are interesed (for personal learning) but don't get to play (and hence learn) with expensive hardware.
Thanks
Elivs
PS- I don't want a flame war, just a technical piece.
Re:unsuspectedly ... (Score:1)
Re:Real life examples? (Score:1)
Admittedly lacks range, but up close its alota fun!
International readership = problem? (Score:3)
Gotta hate it when your April Fools joke bites you due to differences in time zones....
wait a second... (Score:2)
Well that does it (Score:2)
Good try, anyway!
--------
Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
Re:wait a second... (Score:2)
Ohh, really funny! (Score:2)
Well... (Score:3)
I'm gonna go cybersquat on vabsd.com right now.
Re:Odor (Score:2)
Doing mod_perl, I can't imagine that one would be using material that's non portable. The caveat is C-compiled extensions, such as DBD::Mysql. I believe the windows client is freely available, but it might not be trivial to get everything going.
As for coding to "/tmp", what's wrong with making a temp-directory? I thought the slashes were adaptable in perl.
Not saying there might not be problems - Hell the CPAN module issue became a nightmare when we moved from Linux to Solaris - but most pure perl code should be inherently portable. Even the UNIX fork now works in windows (thanks to interpreter multi-threading).
-Michael
unsuspectedly ... (Score:2)
See Java run
See Java run fast
See Java run fast on Mac OS X.
Mad props to Apple Inc. for that one.
idiots (Score:2)
VA Linux PREFERS Linux (Score:2)
So I don't think that the possibility of
For anyone that will go to the grave exclaiming that Linux rules and *BSD sucks, look at the cold hard facts - ftp.cdrom.com/ftp.freesoftware.com's and OpenBSD's track records. I work on Linux and use FreeBSD at home because I prefer it. Maybe the BSDs are not as "bleeding-edge" but they work, plain and simple. No fragmented distributions and code-bases, just cohesive functiong product.
Re:Odor (Score:2)
For good FreeBSD SMP you're going to have to wait for 5.0.. But that probably wont be out until 2004.
Odor (Score:4)
-=-=-=-=-
True or not :-) (Score:2)
--
From: Aaron "PooF" Matthews
Packet Filtering (Score:5)
hmmm... (Score:2)
-----
Finally?!?! NOT (Score:5)
Re:unsuspectedly ... (Score:3)
Yes, it uses interpreted bytecode, and is therefore slower than native machine code. But to be honest, on the kind of hardware that most of my clients use, you'll never get close to hitting the machine's limitations. I'm currently implementing an online exchange system on a cluster of RS/6000 M80s, for God's sake.
Most of you have obtained your "knowledge" of Java from watching an applet crash your browser. Big fucking surprise -- applets are the weakest part of the language, and Netscape sucks fucking goat balls. Everyone on this site has used at least one Microsoft product, so I try to forgive the senseless MS-bashing, but I guarantee that less than 1% of you Java-bashers have hacked any Java, and only 1% of that 1% got farther than "Hello, world!" before screaming, "Ew, it's so different than PERL! Back to scripting languages for my dumb ass!"
People like that are such fucking hypocrites. They think they're UNIX people, but resist Java in the same way that the ASM nuts laughed at UNIX. "You can't write an OS in C, it'll be too slow!" The joke was on them, and it'll be on you too.
True, some languages are fads, but Java has proven years ago that it's here to stay. Working enterprise application developers -- even those using NT -- know this. Why are UNIX people so resistant? Java brings the power of COM and DCOM to UNIX, who wouldn't want that? (Yeah, CORBA does the same thing, and Java has CORBA support in case it ever catches on outside of Borland. :-) Personally, I happen to like the fact that I could, if necessary, port all of my software on my current project from UNIX to NT in a few hours:
And there will also come a time, not today, not tomorrow, but soon, when Java's GUI limitations will fall behind. Anyone who has used JBuilder 4 (yeah, I still use EMACS, but it was installed on my new box so I tried it out. Not too shabby!) or TogetherJ (very cool UML design tool, and much less expensive than Rose) knows what I'm talking about.
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Re:Odor (Score:2)
Slash is written with mod_perl. It's not CGI.
ahhh.. a perfect end to a perfect day (Score:4)
WHAT???? FREEBSD 5.0 SUCKS! Why not move to OS X for godsake?! If yer gonna dump Linux, move to something worthwhile.. hell, Windows ME running Personal Web Server would be a step up!
-gerbik
Re:Odor (Score:5)
Actually, slashcode is written in Gibberish. It's not mod_perl. (Well, ok, maybe it's Gibberish that plays mod_perl on TeeVee.)
--
News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
Re:Odor (Score:4)
A) Slashdot isn't coded for performance, never has been it seems like. It's an ad-hoc Perl/CGI implementation. This screams "bad performance" no matter what OS you put it on. Logically if they wanted a faster response time they'd code in mod_perl, php, or SOMETHING other than this archaic architecture.
B) Tracking down any nuance in the Linux -> FreeBSD transisition wouldn't be transparent. It should be, and I've never looked at the Slash code but I'm really _really_ doubting it was built with portability in mind.
C) With all the pro-Linux stuff I see on here I'd consider it more likely to see Natalie Portman waring a pants full of hot grits screaming "All your base are belong to us!" in the middle of Times Square than see Slahdot switch to a BSD.
The above was ment to be moderately humorous... sue me if I didn't hit my target.
Justin Buist
¹Taken. (Score:2)
Registrant:
ByteCode (VABSD-DOM)
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Domain Name: VABSD.COM
Administrative Contact, Billing Contact:
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ByteCode
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Technical Contact:
Operations Center, NetGate Network (NNO) noc@NETGATE.NET
NetGate Communications
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Santa Clara, CA 95054-2427
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NS3.NETGATE.NET 205.214.170.254
(OT)Spambots (Score:2)
I'm really sure he loves you for posting his email address on a public archived site for all of the spam-bots to feast upon.
Except registering a domain itself will post your address on a public whois database for all the spam-bots to query.
ONE day, fine, but this article was posted April 2 (Score:2)
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FreeBSD? (Score:5)
More appropriately... (Score:2)
In a somewhat surprising move, Slashdot administrators have chosen to move their primary web hosting servers to the Windows 2000 platform. While the audience of Slashdot is primarily unix-based and Microsoft-hating, CmdrTaco believes the move is justified.
"You get what you pay for, so we're paying Microsoft a lot of money for our clustered servers. We like the fact that we can blame Microsoft when Slashdot gets overloaded with requests. In addition, Windows 2000 can run MySQL just as well as Linux. I also like to browse with Internet Explorer on the web server and click the pretty little widgets to mess with server hardware." he said.
freeBSD? 'gave that up when I moved to Linux (Score:2)
MS Windows 95 was giving me a free BSD about every nth slashdot post. I couldn't handle the Blue flashing and resorted to using Blue-Blocker sunglasses for awhile. I still couldn't block out the free BSD and so I moved to Linux and X11. Now I only see the Almighty God's free BSD outside my Window, a cloud drifting by, no protection errors in mother nature...
Then those "people", those stinking relatives arived and they were pissed because they couldn't do anything on my newly protected computer system. Ever since that transitional day, I put a tux sticker on every computer I owned... Life is good... when the relatives get their stepin'...
Socialists and Communists have nothing to fear,
Re:unsuspectedly ... (Score:2)
If you think that's bad, you should try starting OS 9.1 Classic from within OS X. Be prepared to go get a cup of coffee.
Re:ahhh.. a perfect end to a perfect day (Score:2)
Re:wait a second... (Score:2)
Re:wait a second... (Score:2)
Think about time zones. Where I am, it is 11:23 PM April 1. This is the central time zone. Don't forget that many of the slashdot stories for parties are what not occur on the west coast-Pacific Time. They have enough time left on their April Fool's clocks.
Oh... (Score:2)
I agree though, I find the SMP as well as the RAID support on the Palm to be rather lacking, but I'll be happy to send you my modified kernel for it if you wanna give that a shot.
Teaching your girlfriend to play "Palm Pilot" >>> The Linux Pimp [thelinuxpimp.com]
Re:Finally?!?! NOT (Score:2)
And suddenly, a whooshing sound was heard as humor suddenly flew over someone's head....
Community reaction (Score:4)
--
Experiment over! (Score:2)
10:02PM OK, thats it the slashcode is now running on an eight way CMP machine under FreeBSD
10:23PM Started the synchronization process to sync the new system's disks to the old, this will take a while time for the copy to complete, time for dunkin doughnuts
11:13PM Got paged on the RIM halfway through a double chocholate Kruler, system problem. Left the doughnut shop so fast the assistant now thinks we are undercover cops.
11:45PM The console on the FreeBSD system is reading 'Kernel Panic', system is still up and running and the copy process is continuing
12:34PM Cmdr Taco just discovered that although the system is still running it now reports only six processors, what happened to the other two? Should we take the system down?
01:23AM This is wierd, according to the system console all eight processors are running, only two of them are now running OpenBSD.
02:30AM Two more processors have defected, one has joined the OpenBSD cluster, the other is running a variant called SafeBSD.
02:45AM Things are getting worse, the four renegade processors are demanding equal rights in the decision making process and an equal share of the X-Windows output server.
03:44AM Two more processors have defected, one from the FreeBSD camp to OpenBSD, this is partly compensated for by another processor leaving the OpenBSD camp and moving to an earlier FreeBSD release.
04:23AM Another defection, this time the CPU in question is demanding a byte-order change operation.
05:23AM Civil war has broken out. The rival O/S factions are placing locks on the various system resources
etc.
In a related move... (Score:4)
Newsweek says, "We like cheese"
Re:ahhh.. a perfect end to a perfect day (Score:2)
Things I don't like about the different BSD's
1)The Licence. (Expect for OpenBSD)
2)The driver support, god it is worse that Linux. How the hell am I ment to get my geforce 2 GTS working in 3D.
3)There are no real games. I can just about live with the amount of games for linux (just). But I would just have to crawl up and die if I could only chose between windows and BSD.
Anyway that is the end of my karma.
Mark Hillary