UbuntuBSD Is Looking To Become An Official Ubuntu Flavor (softpedia.com) 117
prisoninmate quotes a report from Softpedia: UbuntuBSD maintainer and lead developer Jon Boden is now looking for a way for his operating system to contribute to the Ubuntu community and, eventually, become an official Ubuntu flavor. Just two weeks ago, [Softpedia] introduced the ubuntuBSD project, whose main design goal is to bring users an operating system powered by the FreeBSD kernel while offering them the familiarity of the Ubuntu Linux OS. Right now, ubuntuBSD is in heavy development, with a fourth Beta build out the door, and it looks like the developer already seeks official status and wants to contribute all of his work to the main Ubuntu channels. [Canonical has yet to respond.]
Kernel not just plug and play (Score:2, Insightful)
I got into a debate with my former Linux users group on this when a fork of Debian hit a half decade ago with FreeBSD.
Everything from gnome to pulse audio to SystemD is integrated in Linux. People act as if you can swap the kernel out and still run or even compile anything. I am shocked anything works at all with gnome on non Linux platforms as things are so proprietary and tight. Yes it's gnu, but what I mean by proprietary is Linux and not Unix standard way it does things since 2006
FreeBSD is a server ori
Re:Kernel not just plug and play (Score:4, Insightful)
FreeBSD is a server oriented OS as far as I am concerned
Posting from FreeBSD 10.3 on my macbook... seems like a pretty good desktop to me, but it's a personal choice, so yes "as far as you are concerned". The only major barrier for any OS being an easy to use desktop is hardware support, anything which isn't super popular will have this issue especially where open source drivers aren't available for porting.
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Posting from FreeBSD 10.3 on my macbook... seems like a pretty good desktop to me
Define desktop. Being able to post online using a browser is not something that makes a good desktop. Being able to seamlessly as possible handle the stupendously uncountable possible user cases that make up "desktop computing" is what makes a desktop.
Yeah we could all run Windows 2008 Server and call it a desktop, but quite frankly the design decisions made in the OS are what define it to be a desktop or a server OS and that has a direct impact to using it as either. e.g. the scheduler for a desktop OS and
Re: Kernel not just plug and play (Score:1)
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Browsing the web is good enough for the vast majority of users.
Google thought that too and then was absolutely decimated in reviews as phones were considered "unresponsive and not smooth as Apples". Still are quite regularly too and ensuring that the UI was drawn in smooth way became a major feature of Android 4.0
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Being able to post online using a browser is not something that makes a good desktop.
Embedded Arduino development. Python development.
I've pulled a hard drive from my desktop and tossed it in my laptop and FreeBSD didn't know the difference. (Windows can't get past a BSOD).
ZFS on Root means if one of my hard drives goes it doesn't take down my entire desktop.
FreeBSD on my Wife's 6 year old Dell feels faster than Windows 7 or 10 on any new laptop I've tried in the last year.
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Embedded Arduino development. Python development.
I've pulled a hard drive from my desktop and tossed it in my laptop and FreeBSD didn't know the difference. (Windows can't get past a BSOD).
I did the same with Linux kernel. That is how I upgrade my hardware; just put the old HD into the new laptop. Some automatic configuration is then performed. Maybe I have to configure the graphic card with the GUI, but I do not remember. As easy as it can be.
Form fail. Form fail. Form fail. (Score:2)
I don't know what happened there. It appeared that my browser deletee what I had typed, so I typed it again. Somehow it ended up posting both copies. I'll blame it on many mobile OS.
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Yeah let's go through that list shall we:
Windows IS a desktop OS, not a network OS.
Define Network OS. By many standard none of the common "server" OSes are Network OSes.
Notice it's not usable except by clicking desktop icons?
No I didn't notice at all. Especially Windows 2008 Server Core doesn't have a GUI at all, just a command interface. No desktop icons either. Just a very feature rich shell.
You can certainly argue that it's a poor desktop because not many applications are been installed by default , but the operating system is desktop through and through.
Saying something doesn't make it so. But I agree it's a poor desktop.
A server OS doesn't require rebooting every week or every month.
Neither does a Windows server so not sure what your point is.
Average uptime for my servers is probably about three years, because I physically moved them a few years ago.
So what reason causes you to take down a Windows server? They don't just magically
Desktop PCs good too. Network required (CUPS & (Score:2)
It's funny to me that some people delight in pointing out that Linux isn't a wonderful desktop personal computer operating system, but then get all uncomfortable with the idea that Windows IS a desktop PC OS . Personal computers revolutionized the world, and PC desktop operating systems are hugely important.
> Define Network OS
It's part definition and part heritage. I'll try to cover both, but first I'll go for a short-form, example. Unixes won't boot without their network stack. The graphical windows
typos killed my definition paragraph (paragraph 4) (Score:2)
Paragraph four, which basically defines network operating systems (as I'm using the term), was murdered by a few typos. It should read:
Network operating systems are designed with network access being a basic assumption. They don't have network software added on in some version. They start with the assumption that most users will be accessing the system over the network. The local console may be extremely limited, because most users won't be using the local keyboard and monitor. That's because the whole poi
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It's funny to me that some people delight in pointing out that Linux isn't a wonderful desktop personal computer operating system, but then get all uncomfortable with the idea that Windows IS a desktop PC OS .
Define "wonderful desktop personal computer operating system", and then tell me the scope of what you're talking about. Right now the discussion started at the kernel. The Linux kernel is indeed a wonderful desktop personal computer OS. It's smooth, fast, polished, has features that if tweaked correctly provide a fantastic desktop user oriented connection to the underlying hardware. What the entire package that people call "Linux" is missing is a Desktop environment with polish that is free of bugs and frus
You still seems to be confusing "network" & "g (Score:2)
>>> Define "network operating system"
[six paragraphs explaining network operating systems to you.]
> To make that claim you first need to show why the entire OS built on a network stack improves the environment for a server.
> Accessing a local printer via a network socket? Who gives a shit.
> Instead why not compare the CUPS performance for locally attached networks when exported over a network.
Because we're not talking "performance operating system", we're defining "network operating syste
Re:ROTFL @ server OS == Windows (Score:5, Informative)
Not true. Sure Powershell sucks but it is available.
Seriously? This isn't 1999. I have Windows Servers up for much longer than that.
The only thing most people need to hotswap in a server are disks and that is easily done in Windows
Windows has this.
You really are working off of pre-2000 Windows knowledge. Current Windows implementations are not at all based on DOS despite their similarity to earlier Windows systems. What bothers me the most is that I'm a Linux guy and you're making me defend Windows because you can't just say things that are not true.
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>I have Windows Servers up for much longer than that.
Two words: patch Tuesday. Server systems aren't systems designed to need rebooting two or three times just because it's Tuesday.
>> server OS can handle hotswap hardware. I swap drives regularly, and we've even hotswapped a CPU
> The only thing most people need to hotswap in a server are disks
As long as nothing ever goes wrong, no hardware ever fails, the system won't crash. That's typical desktop. Systems built for server use stay up as you hot
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Windows has had MAC since Windows NT debuted. That no one uses it doesn't change facts.
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You obviously don't know what MAC is. Look it up. Windows doesn't have it. Microsoft even says so. The closest they get is MIC - https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-... [microsoft.com] . There is a big difference. That's why Linux with SELinux is used on Navy ships. It works as Windows never will.
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You are naive if you think that you can avoid rebooting for all Linux updates. Obviously a kernel update is going to require a reboot but a lot of other updates should also include a reboot but just because the OS doesn't force you to doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. If you avoid rebooting you can achieve long uptimes in either case. Also not all Windows updates require reboo
Your "obvious" is mistaken, false (Score:2)
Let's start with your first two sentences:
> you are naive if you think that you can avoid rebooting for all Linux updates. Obviously a kernel update is going to require a reboot
You are mistaken. What is "obvious" to you is not in fact true. Since the beginning, we've been able to upgrade the majority of the kernel with nothing more than "rmmod foo && insmod foo". I've been doing that for twenty years. Seventeen years ago, we gained the ability to upgrade the kernel core live. That's now a de
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Re: Kernel not just plug and play (Score:2)
How about doing audio work with OSS with no ALSA or PulseAudio.
What about games that link to these APIs? What about apps where the makefile doesn't use BSD specific things to compile right?
I prefer FreeBSD. I am just saying if you ask any BSD maintainer they can vouch for doing lots of coding to get something like gnome to compile. Apache maybe mute but SDL games is another matter.
FreeBSD project does more than write a kernel. Linux despite all it's faults and worts with things like SystemD and it's more wi
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How about doing audio work with OSS with no ALSA or PulseAudio.
What about games that link to these APIs? What about apps where the makefile doesn't use BSD specific things to compile right?
I prefer FreeBSD. I am just saying if you ask any BSD maintainer they can vouch for doing lots of coding to get something like gnome to compile. Apache maybe mute but SDL games is another matter.
FreeBSD project does more than write a kernel
The horrible complex layer that is PulseAudio exists because of the multiple ways sound works on different linux distros including OSS, i'm not an audio expert but I'd geuss that would mean using OSS instead of ALSA would be fine unless a game is attempting to use ALSA directly. For things that there are no existing layers for i guess there are two options... make it work natively with the FreeBSD kernel or make a translation layer.
I've read about how much effort is involved porting very linux orientated so
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I don't mind Ubuntu. More accurately, I prefer Lubuntu. The reasons I prefer it are LXDE and access to the Ubuntu ecosystem - it's rather quick to just be able to grab something and almost everything is ready for it. Less time futzing about is more time accomplishing my goals. So, for my needs, Lubuntu is a perfect fit. (Yes, I prefer the simplicity that is LXDE. That it is screaming fast on new hardware is a bonus.)
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Well, we aren't talking about FreeBSD. The system under discussion is UbuntuBSD.
If you are debating about BSD's pedigree on the desktop in general, I refer you to Darwin / OS X.
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If you are debating about BSD's pedigree on the desktop in general, I refer you to Darwin / OS X.
This misinformation is too damn common: Darwin is BSD as much as UNIX is BSD as much as Solaris is BSD, although "Darwin"/NEXTStep/OSX took various old bits of BSD userland at various points in time they also took various bits of GNU userland and Mach which became the XNU kernel... Not to mention all of their own extended development of their kernel and all the other technologies on top of that system 20+ years ago before it even became the basis of OS X today.
Sitation: https://www.levenez.com/unix/ [levenez.com] (huge u
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as much as Solaris is BSD
FUCKING IDIOT
SunOS was BSD based, they RIPPED IT OUT, and dropped in System V when they re-branded as Solaris
Windows has more BSD code in it than Solaris
Looool! wow... Calm down, not only have you missed my point and angrily agreed with me... You're also not as "right" as you think you are, because AT&T integrated parts of BSD into UNIX before Sun rebased their system on unix, so yeah... they swapped BSD for some UNIX and BSD, not that it makes much difference... like i said there are bits of BSD everywhere, but much of the other distinct OSs are still vastly different.
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To claim that Darwin does not have BSD roots is foolish.
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To claim that Darwin does not have BSD roots is foolish.
Foolish is a strange choice of words but "wrong" i would agree, it is however definitely annoying to argue with straw men... I never claimed Darwin does not have FreeBSD roots, try to actually read my last paragraph.
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UNIX is not BSD. Unix from AT&T predates BSD, with UCB licensing the software to create BSD. However, these days Unix is a specification and only implementations can be certified. The only BSD derived implementation is from Apple, the rest are derived from AT&T SysV.
Solaris is based on SysV. The original SunOS (which is still used internally to enumerate the Solaris releases) was based on AT&T V7, but up to v4 it was based on 4.1BSD. There was never a Solaris 1, although it was implied when Sola
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FreeBSD is a server oriented OS as far as I am concerned
I've run FreeBSD as my 'desktop' OS (on my laptop) for ~6 months now. I can't see any reason to go back.
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This is only partially true. Gnome is only tied to Linux out of laziness on the part of the gnome developers. Non systemd stuff is all still there but is bit rotting. Architecturally there's no reason gnome cannot run on other kernels and operating systems. Also subsystems of systemd like udev can be implemented on other systems. There's even a project to bring some parts of systemd to BSD to support Gnome development.
Re: Yip (Score:2)
Debugging a proprietary plug-in (Score:2)
How should kernel developers go about debugging a crash caused by a proprietary kernel module?
Re: Debugging a proprietary plug-in (Score:2)
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Uninstalling a buggy driver is not debugging. Which is what you are reduced to when you do not have the source code.
Re: Debugging a proprietary plug-in (Score:2, Informative)
An ABI like every other OS on the planet has. rMS hates them for theological reasons as they encourage closed hardware.
My argument is patent agreements and contracts forbid this! A company cannot.
If Linux did this it would be more successful
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An ABI like every other OS on the planet has.
Linux has an ABI, just not a stable one. There are also vastly more OSs out there than just Windows and OSX. There's a whole embedded world you apparently know nothing about.
rMS hates them for theological reasons as they encourage closed hardware.
Ah, making up shit about RMS again? Your username has taken on a rather large degree of irony of late. RMS has repeatedly and clearly spelled out the reasons for his views in a great amount of detail.
If Linux did this it
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You test the binary blob against the requirements of the ABI. If the kernel crashes harden and protect the interface further. Sheesh. Establish well defined boundaries. It's no different from any other non-kernel layer object.
Then run all drivers in userspace? (Score:2)
You test the binary blob against the requirements of the ABI. If the kernel crashes harden and protect the interface further.
At some point, you end up having to build all the overhead of a microkernel in order to "harden and protect the interface" against popular yet defective binary drivers that violate "the requirements of the ABI".
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Go back to Redmond. Seriously, that suggestion is not worthy of consideration in an open system.
Re: Yip (Score:3)
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If all you want is to "do things" (in this case play a game), then I suggest you... this is crazy... buy a game.
The Linux device driver model is what it is. If various video card vendors and gaming companies decide there isn't a business case to support it as is - well, such is life. Don't go about warping the system itself to low-tow to your needs.
Besides, nothing is stopping you for writing such an ABI layer yourself, and getting vendors to adopt it. Just don't expect the FOSS community to be enamored
Re: Yip (Score:2)
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I have written tons of CUDA code for Linux. Not sure what you are going on about here. The only bad part is dealing with Nvidia's drivers.
Re: Yip (Score:2)
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The last time I checked (which was yesterday to peek at how kextload works) Darwin was open source.
Bloody fool.
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Here you go: http://opensource.apple.com//r... [apple.com]
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Systemd is the worst thing to have happened to Linux, and the best thing to have happened to the BSDs!
That'll be true so long as hardware makers play nice with the FreeBSD hardware support team.
I've posted maybe once or twice in the last 12 hours, if not longer, yet I kept get the fucking "You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later." error message.
That's because Anonymous Coward has made a lot more posts than that in the past 12 hours. Have you considered making an account instead of posting as Anonymous Coward? Other things to try: Are you sharing an IP address with co-workers? Is your ISP applying carrier-grade network address translation (CGNAT) to conserve scarce public IPv4 addresses?
In search of a problem? (Score:2)
Haven't ports of debian already been tried to alt OSes such as FreeBSD, HURD and OpenSolaris with a tiny number of users to support and develop the platform?
Re: In search of a problem? (Score:1)
Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Please stop trying to taint *BSD with the nasty ass disorganized chaos of GNU.
*BSD are nice, organized, predictable, maintainable OSes with good clean utilities that work in reliable and predictable ways.
GNU is a piss pot of everything doing everything THEY want and not giving one flying fuck about how anyone else might like it:
Examples:
Not using /usr/local ... except different so that nothing actually will work out of the box across them
systemd
4 trillion flavors of GNU/Linux that all work exactly the same
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Millions of iPad users dispute your claim.
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Well, I won't argue with your assessment of Apple.
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I get the impression that you think iOS (or OSX for that matter) has more BSD inside than it actually has.
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And Java is installed on billions of devices because Android. I wouldn't count Apple as BSD. Nor Android as Java. This is only a piece of their larger pie.
Re: Why? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
JUST TAKE THE KERNEL PARTS YOU WANT AND LEAVE *BSD ALONE. WE DON'T WANT YOUR CORRUPTION.
That's a great suggestion. You should give it to the people who are already doing exactly what you're shouting about. Now please go and play with your FreeBSD system and leave the people having a discussion about a different OS alone.
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Odd; I never found them so; anything but. I did find the community a bit OCD - look how they run the FreeBSD forum. I can only suspect t
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and they told me straight where I could go.
It's a shell with C like syntax!!
Not the resting place of spin-idling terrorists and CTs alike!
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Look, I have the utmost respect for BSD; I have used it for a long time and continue to use it every day. But let's face it, the Gnu tools and utilities are much richer and more versatile than BSD's.
Want to know how large your files are? 'ls -l' makes it way to
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P.S. - sorry, when I wrote "long live eval", I obviously meant "long live expr". For some reason I have a mental block against keeping the two tool names straight.
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What are these "good reasons?"
FreeBSD forked off of 386BSD when it died.
NetBSD forked off of 386BSD focused on multi-architecture support.
NetBSD forked first. [http://www.netbsd.org/about/history.html][https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/history.html]
NetBSD in November '93, FreeBSD in December '93.
DragonFlyBSD forked off FreeBSD due to threading implementation.
OpenBSD forked off NetBSD to focus on heavy security.
These "Big 4" are completely different OS's, they all have their own kernel, they all have their own userland. They do share a lot, but they're not the same OS's.
Then you have Open Source Commercial OS. All of these are based off FreeBSD. PC-BSD - iXsystems desktop OS. FreeNAS - iXsystems NAS OS. PFSense - Electric Sheep Fencing firewall OS.
And there are probably more that would go into that category.
Don't forget BSD/386 (later BSD/OS), the commercial offering from BSDi. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD/OS]
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> The post was meant to dissuade future devs attempts to turn BSD into Linux Distros.
Won't work. Not even close. There are many reasons but the largest one is that nobody really gives a shit what you tell them that they're allowed to do or not do. That's the thing about open source - and it is awesome.
Finally, you forgot BestBSD which is GhostBSD. GhostBSD is awesome.
rofl (Score:1)
no chance in hell.
Wow, just wow. Congratulations Slashdot. (Score:1, Flamebait)
I actually read many (not all) of the comments on this topic, and - unusual even for Slashdot - there was NOTHING of value. This topic will appear at Hacker News, and it will contain at least 50% intelligent and thoughtful remarks.
Dropping in on a technical Slashdot thread these days is like visiting a religious convention of snot-throwers being hosted by Youtube. As a result, I (and I'm sure many others) read very little of what all of you zealots have to say. If that's your desire, congratulations. Enjoy
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Tastes like SHIT!
The sad part is you apparently know what shit tastes like.
But to the topic at hand, FreeBSD, which is more of a server OS, is going to have to make the changes to "become" Ubuntu as opposed to Ubuntu becoming BSD. Most who install Ubuntu expect to have their devices ans peripherals running after install.
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FreeBSD, which is more of a server OS
FreeBSD officially supported platforms include XBox and embedded ARM systems.
you really could not be more wrong even if you actually tried
And you couldn't pay less attention to what peopel wrote if you tried.
There are peopel using FreeBSD for just about everything. That doesn't change it's core competency.
Re:You ever tasted Ubunti? (Score:5, Informative)
FreeBSD, which is more of a server OS
Servers like Sony's PS3 (Vita OS) and PS4 (Orbis OS), both of which are based on FreeBSD?
Most who install Ubuntu expect to have their devices ans [sic] peripherals running after install.
Citation Needed!
You know what? Linux isn't all rainbows and unicorns. A recent update to the Fedora kernel broke my dual monitor setup. Yes, the kernel. Reverting to an earlier kernel with no other changes restored my dual monitors. Gnome 3 Desktop has routine breakage. Yeah, don't tell me that Fedora isn't Ubuntu, I already know that.
Part of the difference might be that there are actual companies selling Linux. Companies with lawyers, who can approve NDAs, that allow kernel developers to get early access to new devices, so Linux tends to get support for new stuff earlier. *BSD's kernel developers may not always have that kind of luxury.
I've used FreeBSD since the beginning, and 386BSD before that. I've never had bleeding edge hardware and I've never had a problem with FreeBSD supporting my hardware.
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FreeBSD, which is more of a server OS
Servers like Sony's PS3 (Vita OS) and PS4 (Orbis OS), both of which are based on FreeBSD?
Most who install Ubuntu expect to have their devices ans [sic] peripherals running after install.
Citation Needed!
SO you ayr sAyn' that peepule d'unt expect they're nstuls to work? It's to mech! Gow fguure/