| DistroWatch Weekly |
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| Reader Comments |
1 • DistroWatch donation (by Sunshine at 2010-02-08 11:39:53 GMT from China)
What is the mechanism on deciding which open source projects to be awarded? How is that done? Votes or what?
Any transparency? Please advise.
2 • Mediaplayer (by Rastafari on 2010-02-08 11:40:01 GMT from Netherlands)
And another great issue of DW! Thanks!
I have a question: I would like to build my own mediaplayer like the Eminent EM7080, http://www.eminent-online.com/producten_stap2.php?dt=1&ps=00907080&pg=14&sg=23
I should be able to listen to music (direct using the soundcard and streaming), download torrents and watch movies. It should be an DLNA server as wel. Is there a distro that does this, or can anyone point me to a good howto on this subject?
Regards!
3 • DistroWatch donation (by Johannes on 2010-02-08 12:45:08 GMT from Germany)
@Sunshine: Good question. Probably one can suggest any project to be awarded the donation.
But remember: it's really a great thing that Distrowatch makes this donation! Nothing forces them to do it. So kudos to DW, for everything, and for the donation project :-)
4 • Donation (by Dave on 2010-02-08 12:45:54 GMT from United States)
I would like to personally congratulate quimo for kids and thank ladislav for the wonderful donation.You made a great choice(as always!)
My 6 year old has been using quimo for quite a while now since I learned about it here almost two years ago.She loves it and has no problem navigating playing games and web browsing.
5 • Kongoni (by ltjmax at 2010-02-08 13:11:43 GMT from Canada)
It's a sad thing for Kongoni... The idea to easily install binary or source packages was interesting. Kongoni only got 1 or 2 official release I think. The leader should have continue his work to release the most bug free possible release. Than, people would have test it with more patience. Well, this is my point of view. Sorry for my english
6 • #2 (by Notorik on 2010-02-08 13:15:29 GMT from United States)
I just set one up with Ubuntu Karmic and Sonos. It streams music from the internet, hard drive, and radio to different "zones" in your house. Really quite cool.
7 • backup tools (by Forlux at 2010-02-08 13:22:16 GMT from Portugal)
Well, it's really nice to know that every once a week we'll find for sure something interesting to read about Linux and Open Source. Thanks to DWW for that.
Important as it is, the backup recommends at this week's "Q&A" was a good peek.
As there are many backup tools, some of them quite complex to use, witch one would you suggest for the less experimented home users?
8 • #7 backup tool (by anticapitalista on 2010-02-08 13:45:29 GMT from Greece)
I suggest luckybackup.
http://luckybackup.sourceforge.net/
9 • Backup tool (by Jesse on 2010-02-08 13:58:00 GMT from Canada)
@7: It varies depending on how much data you have. If it's a fairly small about of data (under 4GB), a typical home user is probably best off just burning the information to a DVD. If you have more than that, the most simple solution would be to get an external USB drive and copy your files to that. With those solutions there's no scheduling, no scripting. It's all just drag-n-drop. For my home clients who have a lot of data to deal with, I recommend they get two external hard drives. They keep one drive at home and another at a remote location. It's safe and very easy for them.
10 • backup tools (by Tony Brijeski on 2010-02-08 14:03:28 GMT from United States)
If you are running debian or ubuntu you can use remastersys which allows you to make a live backup of your system.
I originally wrote it over 2 years ago but it keeps evolving with the newer versions of debian and ubuntu.
I'm about to put out an update for ubuntu lucid(10.04) and debian squeeze.
Just read the website very carefully as there are different versions depending on whether you are using debian or ubuntu and also separate versions for the different versions of ubuntu and debian.
11 • Backup Tools (by Bananna Republican on 2010-02-08 14:11:11 GMT from United States)
real men just upload their harddrives to the internet and let the world back it up
12 • Backup Confession (by Gene Venable on 2010-02-08 14:11:12 GMT from United States)
I just don't have that much important information to back up, so I don't do formal backups. Important information goes into Yahoo Mail notes or into Evernote. I have copies of programs so I can always reinstall them. Since I use Yahoo Mail for messages, a crash doesn't wipe out my email.
I haven't had a hard drive go out since something like the 1980s. Viruses stay away from me even in Windows.
I figure that setting up a system from scratch is just another learning experience, a chance to set things up differently than I did last time.
13 • Backups (by ZBREAKER at 2010-02-08 14:12:20 GMT from United States)
My ultimate backup strategy?
Clonezilla and an external harddrive. Never let me down yet.
14 • Re: #1 Donations (by Leo at 2010-02-08 14:52:40 GMT from United States)
Transparency? Did yo usay transparency? Ladislav donates money from his pocket. You question transpires quite a bit of self entitlement and ungratefulness.
Sure, let's time I donate _my_ money to a charity, I'll try to contact you and make sure _you_ are happy.
What a world!
And FWIW, you can contact DWW and propose Open Source projects to receive Ladislav's donation. He is _that_ nice of a guy.
15 • ref#7, backup or clone (by Redondo at 2010-02-08 14:56:06 GMT from United States)
Clonezilla, partclone, or FSArchiver. Three great cloning devices.
For backup are you referring to syncing or full backup. For full backup use one of the avobe programs.
16 • yeah right (by meh at 2010-02-08 14:57:31 GMT from United States)
Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it. (Linus Torvalds)
Real men don't break existing hardware support nearly every major version of their software.
17 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-08 14:59:16 GMT from United Kingdom)
Ref the back up issue.
In addition to the hard drive back ups, mention was made of optical discs. It is recognised mechanical devices do not last indefinitely, but, due consideration should be given to the aging of DVD/CDs too.
Should anyone elect to go down the back-up DVD route, it is worth considering how long this media will last, as in the physical aspect, aka shelf life.
I had read some technical paper a while back that posited the " service life" of optical media might be only be 5 years; consequently it is a useful exercise to re burn a back-up disc on a regular basis.
I could not find that article, but got this instead:
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/dvd-authoring/57995-shelf-life-burned-pressed-dvds.html
The comments seem to extend this estimate by a large margin. However one commentator found that some of his discs did not work totally satis after only 4/5 years.
The only caveat with "accelerated" testing is that by definition this exercise is atypical of real life situations...and the burning is performed on "fresh" media.
It might be different trying to burn stuff to aging media, dunno (?)
It "may" be worth buying very expensive media or just generic stuff...no firm conclusions had been reached.
So, when planning your long term back-ups a prudent person would make multiple back-ups and store them in different locations and consider re burning optical discs every so many years.
(Obviously, in time other storage mediums will evolve, so it will probably be a case of storing what amounts to a collection of ones and zeros on whatever media that presents itself.)
Some may have read that google discovered total secrecy in the "cloud" cannot be guaranteed (references to China for those arsed to look). So, whilst your data may be preserved intact for centuries, lol, it may not be "private".
18 • WARNING: BSD disk partitioning (by zygmunt on 2010-02-08 15:13:18 GMT from United Kingdom)
To warn all users of UNIX style partitioning and save many DESTRUCTIVE INSTALLS. BSDs require a (msdos) PRIMARY disk partition to slice up. FURTHER, any following (msdos) EXTENDED partitions on the disk are effectively obliterated because of the incompatible partitioning schemes. MAXIMUM FOUR PRIMARY PARTITIONS will work on such schemes. I believe this still to be true from bitter experience requiring (successful) partition recovery using gpart along with a fdisk -[ul] listing. I, of course, stand to be humbly corrected in the light of superior/later knowledge.
19 • #14 (by Albert Hall at 2010-02-08 15:13:33 GMT from United States)
I agree with you but what is all_the_underscoring_about? _? _? _?
20 • No subject (by forest at 2010-02-08 15:21:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
Re back ups using optical media.
A further thought is that if you are on good terms with your local library, at uni or in town, you might pick their brains on how they manage their optical digital storage media.
I imagine a popular lending library is one of the harshest environments in existence for discs. There can be few folk who have not rented a DVD only to discover the previous borrower used the disc as a frisbee, for scraping paint off the woodwork or a beermat.
21 • optical discs (by Jesse on 2010-02-08 15:25:54 GMT from Canada)
I'm not sure about the typical shelf life of a CD/DVD, but I do have some pressed discs lying around that are at least twelve years or more old and they still work fine. I've found back-up CDs which are six or seven years old and they also work without problems. So maybe optical media wears out, but so far I haven't found any that have expired due to age.
22 • Re #21 etc (by Glenn on 2010-02-08 15:47:38 GMT from Canada)
Hi Gang.
I have the same experience as Jesse. I have CDs going back to 1999 that are still useable.
For backups I maintain copies of my data on my internal network, I use CloneZilla periodically and dump my systm to an external HDD.
Came in handy once/ I'm one of those who forever experiments and blows up his system, network, etc. from time to time.
I'm a bit paranoid about using the Cloud for the reasons that Forest alludes to. If it is on the net, it is there for the world to view.
I look on the Cloud as a Cumulo-Nimbus type and when flying one avoids them.
I like Anticapitalistas suggestion and will give it a try.
Glenn
Flames go here (______________________________). I roast coffee with them :-)
23 • Duct tape (by Barnabyh at 2010-02-08 15:57:37 GMT from United Kingdom)
I have 30 year old vinyl records and they still work fine :) Ages ago, I think around 1999, one company offered an adapter that let you use your VCR for tape backup.
I eventually forgot about and never bought it 'cos money was tight then, but it sounded like a nifty idea. What is the expected shelf-life of tape backups? Anybody know if that gadget is still around or if it got consigned to history together with said VCR's?
24 • Backups (by Patrick on 2010-02-08 16:25:29 GMT from United States)
Maybe I have always used cheap media, but I've never had much luck with the longevity of CD's I have burned. Most of them seem to be unreadable after 5 years of so. In my experience, backups to hard drives have seemed the most reliable.
For the files I value the most (my family pictures), I use an off-site backup system with automatic backup reminder. It is called my mom. :) She will mercilessly prod me if I haven's sent her any new pictures of her grandchild I might have taken. Hence, I am forced to do regular off-site backups to her computer. :)
25 • VCR backup (by gord-s at 2010-02-08 16:28:56 GMT from United Kingdom)
Backer, was the VCR-tape backup system, an ISA card modem (on the modulator/demodulator sense, not the more common telecom sense of the word) blew a modulated signal to the SCART input of the VCR. There was even a independent linux `driver` for it, IIRC. All now unuseable due to ISA obsolecence.
Re:- optical backup media - having managed a backup of over 20000 disks, our DVDs had a 4% failure rate at burntime, with MD5-ing. A further 6 or 7% failed in the first 12 months after burn. This was using "pro" media and "archival quality" (simplified:non-greasy/gritty/sticky) storage cases/trays/boxes. Run-of-the-mill media and storage slips/trays gave a little more failure rate, 10% over time ISTR. We all wore gloves ;) My advice - don't use DVD or CD for any important data as part of a "system" but it's fine for occasional use.
ZFS is our preferred "method" nowadays, replacing tape completely.
26 • @26 (by Jesse at 2010-02-08 16:37:51 GMT from Canada)
Leo, why were you irritated by the initial post? All he asked was how the donating system worked. He didn't complain or criticise it at all.
And, to answer that first question, I think Ladislav takes suggestions from anyone who wants to nominate a project for donation. If the project accepts donations and seems to serve a useful purpose, then chances are, it'll get a donation.
27 • RE: #19 (by badger51 on 2010-02-08 16:44:54 GMT from United States)
Those of us who have used text-based systems for a long time (aka "oldtimers"), where there is no bold, italic, or underline, tend to use an underscore before and after a word to "underline" it, providing emphasis.
28 • Re:26 (by Leo at 2010-02-08 17:19:33 GMT from United States)
Jesse. In the context of raising money for donations, lack of transparency usually means wrongdoing.
Oh well, the important thing is that Ladislav (and hence DW) is a very healthy community member: no anti Linux ads on the site, and a fraction of the revenue back to the community.
Thank you for that!
29 • re #18 BSD disk partitioning (by PCBASuser at 2010-02-08 17:21:55 GMT from Canada)
BSD requires one of the primary disk partitions to boot from. After that, you can place other files on any other primary or extended partition. You are not restricted to slicing up the primary partition. The existing extended partitions are not automatically destroyed.
If you are in that situation where you are sharing BSD with some other existing OS, just be sure you know what you are doing first, as with any multi-install set-up. Otherwise, you can blow up existing partitions. Of course, the safest is to dedicate a drive and/or machine.
30 • Source Forge (by Jesse at 2010-02-08 17:32:27 GMT from Canada)
A few weeks ago there was some talk on here about Source Forge blocking access to certain countries in compliance with USA law. Source Forge has recently announced that they have made changes which will allow project admins to decided whether their projects should be made available to those countries. Source Forge no longer has a blanket ban preventing people from accessing the site.
http://ow.ly/14U1k
31 • Q&A - mis-typed URL (by Pearson at 2010-02-08 17:39:29 GMT from United States)
The link to the "good article" is to "ttp:" not "http".
32 • #29 BSD (by zygmunt on 2010-02-08 17:44:27 GMT from United Kingdom)
OK That's very interesting. I don't suppose that you could point me to documentation relating to a multi-install set-up. I must withdraw the exact context of my warning but note that a default install to a primary partition with existing extended partitions lead me into the position referred to, fortunately recoverable. (RTFM in more detail I think) Thank you that's very useful.
33 • BSD partitioning (by Scott on 2010-02-08 18:41:24 GMT from United States)
For what it's worth---on a netbook, where I have several systems, I have one large extended partition which can be divided up for various Linux installs. At the end, I have a primary partition.
When installing BSD, I use that partition. The BSD partitioner (and, I assume, PCBSD's as well) should show some logical and primary partitions. Just be sure to use the primary one, in the first partitioning screen, and you should be good. (After that is a second screen, where you can set your various slices, i.e, BSD partitions--however, all slices will be in the primary partition that you chose in the earlier screen.)
Note that the FreeBSD handbook has information on it, including screenshots.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install-steps.html
(@sygmunt, though this is FreeBSD, rather than PCBSD, that page and the pages before it should be useful. Haven't looked at the PCBSD docs in a couple of years, so can't help with that one.)
34 • @#32 BSD partitioning (by PCBSDuser at 2010-02-08 19:08:43 GMT from Canada)
Scott's advice is very good. For myself, I have a two drive system. One drive has Windows XP, the second drive has two versions of PC-BSD and Debian in three primary partitions, and a bunch of extended partitions containing Ubuntu (formerly Zenwalk, and before that Linux from Scratch), Linux swap, BSD data filesystem, and FAT32 for exchange.
I prefer to avoid any OS's partitioning step on install. Instead, I preset things with a live CD like SystemRescueCD to get it the way I want. Then just tell the OS's installer where to put the new OS. That way I can usually avoid the OS installer's limitations or assumptions. I find it safer.
35 • #33 extended gratitude. (by zygmunt on 2010-02-08 19:12:26 GMT from United Kingdom)
OK That solves the problem of partitions after the BSD partitions being misinterpreted. My "Linux" extended partitions were placed after the primaries and the Linux kernel was without UFS support. How does the "SCSI" partition limit interpret the maximum partition limit in that case? fdisk is going to see up to 8 divisions in the final primary. I appreciate your pragmatic solution; it would not have occurred to me to place the extended partition before the final primary. Thanks.
36 • backup (by trumpcouptimmy on 2010-02-08 19:13:30 GMT from United States)
What I'd really like to see is a live cd distro that backs up a file system (Windos or Linux) and provides for selective restore and a user selected compression amount (the more compression, the higher the run time). I think it is important to run a backup of a system when it isn't running. If there is something out there that eludes me, please enlighten me.
37 • bsd disklabel (by hab on 2010-02-08 19:22:01 GMT from Canada)
For info see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BSD_disklabel
Pretty basic really.
cheers
38 • BSD Partitioning (by Scott on 2010-02-08 19:27:34 GMT from United States)
Note that I have *no* idea if that makes a difference (putting the primary partition at the end.) I strongly suspect it would work just as well at the beginning or between two extended partitions. My main point agrees with PCBASuser, that you just have to have the primary partition. Putting it at the end, however, does make it less likely that you'll confuse it with anything else.
So, the important point here isn't that it goes at the end, just that you have it, and that you're sure it won't overlap anything else. I do something similar to what others have mentioned, pre partition before installation. Or, with whatever I install first, I only give it X amount of space, on a logical partition, then, once it's installed, use its fdisk or cfdisk to take care of the rest of the disk.
39 • @36: Backup a file system (by Jesse at 2010-02-08 19:56:35 GMT from Canada)
Trumpcouptimmy, I think the tool you're looking for is Clonezilla Live. It's a live CD which will backup either partitions or the entire drive. It allows for various levels of compression and will backup to another disk or send the data over the network via SSH or samba shares.
http://www.clonezilla.org/
It has worked really well for me in the past.
40 • #38 2 x extended? (by zygmunt on 2010-02-08 20:25:05 GMT from United Kingdom)
Forgive me but I don't understand what you mean by 2 extended partitions. Of the 4 possible primary petitions only ONE partition can be extended and can contain many so called "logical volumes".. Nor do I see your point about overlap. It was clear that the partitions occupied their own unique space since I also pre-partitioned prior to installation. Formatting each partition (slice) used each distribution's native formatter. You do not state the order of your disk partitions but I suspect the scheme I first used was similar to the one you advocate, but with which I was unlucky to have a problem. I can't be sure now. My point really was that I had a problem with the extended partitions even though BSD was installed to a primary.
41 • Backups (by Digital Vampire at 2010-02-08 20:45:19 GMT from United States)
The link to the "Good Article" is broken in the article. I believe it's just missing an 'h' before the link name in http://blah blah...heres the link.
http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT2280165098.html
42 • partitioning (by Scott on 2010-02-08 20:45:51 GMT from United States)
Sorry, my bad for not being clear. Hrrm, I have no idea if you could have two extended partitions, though I don't see why it wouldn't work. As for overlapping, that was more or less hyperbole.
I understand your point--again, sorry if it wasn't clear. (Although I wasn't positive from your first post, but it's clear now.)
Soooo, I guess my point is that in *my* experience, at least, I haven't run into the issue you faced.
Sorry for any confusion. At any rate, as mentioned above, the handbook does what seems to be a pretty good guide about BSDs partitioning and sharing drives.
43 • #36: use Ghost for Linux (by Niki Kovacs on 2010-02-08 20:48:02 GMT from France)
"What I'd really like to see is a live cd distro that backs up a file system (Windos or Linux) and provides for selective restore and a user selected compression amount (the more compression, the higher the run time)."
#36: Ghost for Linux does exactly that. I'm an IT professional (100% GNU/Linux), and I use it all the time.
44 • BSD (by Anonymous at 2010-02-08 21:49:58 GMT from Canada)
Interesting read. Does BSD have any advantages over Linux? Let say for web browsing, email, picture editing, music listening, the regular stuff.
45 • No subject (by Gene Venable on 2010-02-08 22:11:42 GMT from United States)
I like comment #44 -- good question! I suggest that any distro review have a "claim to fame" area, in which the reviewer summarizes the APPEAL of a given distro. Like for Ubuntu it would be user friendly, many users. For Mint it would be preinstalled codexes. For Puppy it would be small size, compatibility with old computers, enthusiastic community. For Debian it would be speed and large number of applications. Etc.
46 • Backup to VCR (by Barnabyh at 2010-02-08 22:29:36 GMT from United Kingdom)
Thanks gord-s, that was insightful.
47 • Backups. A simple tool : Draksnapshot (by glyj at 2010-02-08 22:53:53 GMT from France)
There is one article in the french mandriva wiki:
(use Google to translate):
http://wiki.mandriva.com/fr/Draksnapshot
regards,
glyj
48 • Kongoni (by Notorik on 2010-02-08 22:58:36 GMT from United States)
This is very sad. Kongoni was actually bringing something different to the Linux community. In a world of endless Ubuntu re-spins and "vanity" distros(?) it is a real shame to see this happen. You will be missed Kongoni.
49 • No subject (by Anonymous at 2010-02-08 23:09:44 GMT from Canada)
Leaving aside the whole BSD/Linux comparison (that's too large a subject, and been hashed over ad infinitume elsewhere), and just looking at PCBSD vis-a-vis other distros, it's appeal to me is that it occupies the niche vacated by Xandros and similar distros. It's an exceptionally easy to install and use distro. A lot of thought has gone into the installation. And likewise the software packaging (PBI - pushbutton installer).
I know, the Xandros comparison does not make for a good feeling, considering where they went. But I think there is still a place for a distro that focuses on getting anyone up and running with full functionality and a minimum of technical knowledge beforehand.
And the thing is, once you are there, you can go as far as you want, because the complete FreeBSD system is there waiting to be explored - or not; it's your choice.
Since it is FreeBSD, you get as a bonus a coherent kernel/userland, the stability that comes from a well-managed release engineering process, and goodies that come with a less restrictive licence, such as ZFS.
50 • PCBSD and Awesome Gnome Icon Theme For Linux! (by Jacky at 2010-02-08 23:28:32 GMT from United States)
Great Distrowatch weekly, Kris Moore is awesome! I Just found this new gnome icon theme... and it totally beats any i've used so far! especially Ubuntu's !
http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?content=119776&vote=good&tan=58810267
51 • Comparison of BSDs (by RollMeAway at 2010-02-08 23:46:19 GMT from United States)
For those not fed up with the BSD talk:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_BSD_operating_systems
One thing I discovered, is openBSD does not allow binaries.
That means NO nvidia nor other proprietary drivers are available.
Unless you are interested in running servers, I see no reason to pursue BSDs.
Curiosity, as in my case, is an exception.
I'm also curious about the Debian project to use a FreeBSD kernel.
http://wiki.debian.org/Debian_GNU/kFreeBSD
I hope it fairs better than the HURD project did.
52 • BSDs (by Jesse at 2010-02-09 01:16:16 GMT from Canada)
I can't really speak for the BSDs in general, but I think PC-BSD is very comparable to the big name Linux distros. On the surface they have more in common than not. Further down, I found a few important differences. BSD doesn't seem to have as much hardware support as Linux does. On the other hand, FreeBSD and PC-BSD have great documentation compared to most Linux projects. I felt (and this is subjective) that FreeBSD and its family have a greater focus on stability compared to most Linux distros, which seem to be more focused on new features.
As someone else pointed out, it's a huge topic, and experiences will vary. But those are the things which jump out at me when I cross over into BSD territory.
53 • BSDs (by Scott on 2010-02-09 02:21:28 GMT from United States)
I have a rather superficial and of course, subjective little page on the differences--I wrote it at a time when there were several questions about BSD on the Fedora forums. If anyone's interested...
http://home.roadrunner.com/~computertaijutsu/rhbsd.html
Note that my own personal prejudice is towards the BSDs, so keep that in mind.
54 • FreeBSD (by merlin at 2010-02-09 02:51:07 GMT from Canada)
I tried FreeBSD a few years ago and if it wasn't for the fact that no good Flash alternative was available, I'd probably still be running a FreeBSD desktop. It was *very* fast, and extremely easy to configure too. Now I'm stuck on Debian though and that's where ay'm stayin'. :-)
Real men don't have any data to backup!
55 • BSD vs Linux (by Linux or BSD? at 2010-02-09 02:54:54 GMT from United States)
I have used both and conclude that some things are better in Linux, flash, java, and other minor things. But also conclude that FreeBSD which is the one I have used is very robust, and works great. I can compare it to Slackware since they are very similar in their approaches. The exception is the ports system vs. the tgz/txz packages that slackware uses. I have used Fedora, OpenSUSE and others too, they are easier to work with than Slackware and FreeBSD, but I have to confess that I really like FreeBSD I have to configure things in /etc/rc.? to add sound, to enable cd burning, also can use a command burncd, PCBSD does dumb down many of these things, configuring the Network, setting up X and configuring it. IT does many of the handholding for you. It is great in its approach, but the user does not know what goes on behind the scences :(, Slackware takes care of that for Linux and pristine FreeBSD take care of that for BSD.
I have not tried OpenBSD/NetBSD they don't provide images with complete desktops and one has to do things through the network right? That is why GNOBSD looked fun, but again to dumb down an otherwise educational event?
Which one is better of the two? I like both. I can't give a straight answer :( sorry.
56 • FreeBSD & Linux (by ozonehole at 2010-02-09 03:49:55 GMT from Taiwan)
I'm currently an Ubuntu user. It's been a few years now since I ran FreeBSD, so the following may be out-of-date.
My impression of FreeBSD was that it was very fast and stable. I also was impressed by the helpful and friendly FreeBSD community (unlike the hostile OpenBSD community). The developers seemed very willing to listen to user feedback and make changes. Each new release of FBSD had many pleasant surprises. There were a few ugly bugs though, but hopefully these have been stamped out.
FreeBSD did suffer from a few weaknesses. Like other posters mentioned, hardware support was iffy - I especially had trouble getting it to run on my laptop. Setting up and configuring the system was a chore, though I gather PC-BSD has addressed many of those issues. Example: at the time I was using it, there was no GUI tool for configuring the PF firewall (Linux's iptables is a breeze to configure using tools like Guarddog or Firestarter). As a result, I found setting up a firewall to be a big chore on all the BSDs - does anyone know if that's changed?
One other issue: there was a long-standing bug with FreeBSD making invalid partition table entries unless it was the sole operating system on the hard disk. This was known as the "hard disk geometry bug." Does anyone know if that's been fixed? It was a real deterrent for people who wanted to install multiple operating systems on the same hard disk.
Overall though, I have very positive things to say about FreeBSD, and if I wasn't using Linux already, FBSD would be my next choice.
57 • RE: BSD (by Landor at 2010-02-09 04:29:44 GMT from Canada)
There's one key point mentioned here already but I have to say is why I will say Linux is inferior to BSD is the fact that BSD builds/controls the kernel and the userland. In my opinion this is exactly why a BSD system is far more robust and one of the minor failings of Linux.
I also think that's one of the reasons why we don't see the leaps and bounds in hardware adaptation in BSD that we see in Linux. It's the overall effort involved in maintaining the two that's a factor. That may not be accurate since it's pure personal speculation.
If a person can get beyond some of the small issues regarding hardware and a few applications, like flash for instance, more than likely they'll have a far more pleasant long term experience using FreeBSD over Linux.
Anyone know if there's any work going on to port gnash to BSD?
Keep your stick on the ice...
Landor
58 • penSUSE 11.3 Milestone (by sanjay on 2010-02-09 04:51:08 GMT from India)
The first openSUSE 11.3 Milestone is here. This is the first step toward the next openSUSE release. The most important goal of this first milestone is to test the build interactions
between newly added features in openSUSE Factory, also known as “get the snapshot to build”. It is in no way feature complete or ready for daily usage.
read the rest at
http://distrolove.blogspot.com/2010/02/opensuse-113-milestone-1-released.html
59 • Re:56 Guarddog? (by Mike at 2010-02-09 05:04:17 GMT from United States)
I thought Guarddog hadn't been updated since 2007, is it still maintained? I use Alien Bob's easy firewall generator myself but I seem to remember being uneasy about using a program that wasn't actively maintained.
60 • BSD firewalls/pf GUIs (by gord-s at 2010-02-09 06:41:15 GMT from United Kingdom)
I appreciate you're talking about host-based BSD firewalls, but:-
PFsense provides the perimeter firewall at a surprising amount sites, I know several that do 1Gbs routed to 3 or 4 ports 24/7 with no DDoS problems on PCI-X hardware. The GUI is excellent or complex configs, you can group netblocks into groups and use them with an alias.
61 • backups (by Reuben at 2010-02-09 10:00:46 GMT from United States)
The thing that really scares me about simply using rsync, is what if I overwrite a perfectly good backup with a corrupted original?
62 • FreeBSD and Linux (by Jesse at 2010-02-09 13:13:33 GMT from Canada)
Something take has come up here in several posts is that Flash doesn't work on FreeBSD/PC-BSD. This was true a while back, but is no longer the case. The current version of PC-BSD runs Flash without any problems.
63 • Re:61 (by Leo at 2010-02-09 13:19:33 GMT from United States)
Good point. The only way to avoid that is with a versioned solution:
http://www.backupcritic.com/software-buyer/versioning.html
There have been versioning systems forever in Linux, but mostly for source control (CVS, subversion, git, etc). These can be used. But I think there are specific backup solutions that use versioning in Linx (I remember a thread in kubuntuforums.net).
Maybe this will put you in track for your search?
64 • @62 PC-BSD and flash (by stuckinoregon on 2010-02-09 14:11:08 GMT from United States)
Jesse,
Are you sure that's not running in the linux compatibility layer? It has been working there for a while, but nothing truly native yet, that I know of.
65 • #62 (by Notorik at 2010-02-09 14:44:20 GMT from United States)
It is still a hassle to get Flash on DragonFly BSD.
"Unfortunately, a Flash plugin is not natively available for DragonFlyBSD. When you want to watch Flash sites, you must install Linux versions of Firefox and the Flash player to run under emulation."
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/howtos/HowToFirefoxandFlashplayer/
66 • @61 rsync backups (by Patrick on 2010-02-09 15:09:38 GMT from United States)
To avoid the problem you mention, I've been using the system described here with great success:
http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/
Based on how you set up your script, you can keep as many snapshots as you want and they will only take up the disk space of one full snapshot plus the difference between the snapshots. But at the same time, each snapshot can be read as a full backup image. So it can look like you're having much more data stuffed on the hard drive than the size of your hard drive. Links are an awesome feature of *nix style file systems. :)
67 • Linpais (by Fernando on 2010-02-09 15:16:18 GMT from United States)
I downloaded Linpais and have been using it for several days. It has a very nice interface and comes loaded with the necessary applications and script for games. The Linpais website has a very straightforward information regarding the software being use in Linpais and access to a varety of wallpaper for its distribution.
I have been using Linux for quite sometimes and I have to say that I am impressed with Linpais. I think Distrowatch needs to look at this distribution, speed up its process of review and approve it. I think Linux users are going to love Linpais.
68 • @64: Flash (by Jesse at 2010-02-09 17:26:57 GMT from Canada)
Actually I am sure Flash is using the Linux compatibility to run on FreeBSD. But the point is, if you install PC-BSD you have Flash running without any tweaking or hassle. The performance is just as good (or bad), in my experience, running Flash on BSD or on Linux.
69 • BSD's and stuff (by davemc on 2010-02-09 18:11:32 GMT from United States)
When Torvalds commented a while back about the BSD community security devs a bunch of monkeys, I think he was probably right on the mark, as he always is. You gotta love that guy, the father of our beloved Linux.
70 • New release announcement (by Forlux at 2010-02-09 18:51:14 GMT from Portugal)
Paldo a Swiss GNU/Linux distribution, announced today the release of their 1.21 version.
Congratulations to Paldo, a great Linux distribution.
http://www.paldo.org/index-section-news.html
71 • Backups @ 66 (by M on 2010-02-09 19:50:30 GMT from Australia)
Very close to my technique in concept.
I use a FreeNAS system with ZFS that takes snapshots hourly,daily, weekly and monthly.
It clones its current snapshot to a NAS box.
All my important files rsync hourly, static stuff daily.
Everything is on LVM so that I can snapshot before backup.
72 • Qimo 4 kids (by Samuel on 2010-02-09 21:18:53 GMT from Italy)
I have known of the existence of Qimo 4 kids after reading the above. Tested live CD and have liked it. I suspect some adults will use it as well, as it happens with other things made for kids.
73 • paldo (by subg at 2010-02-10 00:57:31 GMT from United States)
Still using it after more than a year - I find it fast, stable, with a very current rolling release. Gives a taste of the command line, but not too much.
74 • backup (by leenSS at 2010-02-10 03:18:32 GMT from United States)
rdiff-backup does incremental backup. I use it for all backup jobs.
http://rdiff-backup.nongnu.org/
Number of Comments: 74
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