Mark Shuttleworth is trying to entice OpenSUSE developers to join Ubuntu. "Novell's decision to go to great lengths to circumvent the patent framework clearly articulated in the GPL has sent shockwaves through the community. If you are an OpenSUSE developer who is concerned about the long term consequences of this pact, you may be interested in some of the events happening next week as part of the Ubuntu Open Week."
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Member since:2005-07-17
Your point is quite good, but FreeBSD still lacks something like UbuntuBSD. PC-BSD is on this but Ubuntu has a very good software base thanks to Debian (big repository of fairly recent version of apps) and there's still lots of software that is developed with Linux in mind and porting it to other operating systems takes time, HAL has only recently been ported to FreeBSD for example.
Member since:2006-04-21
On the contrary, despite the FBSD community's protestations to the contrary, Linux's hardware support is MUCH better (despite qualms over binary blobs which the FBSD folks claim not to worry about), and their communities tend to be much more helpful and more polite.
I realise that "politeness" is orthogonal to the question for many FBSD folks, but that's exactly the problem.
In fact OpenBSD claims to support more wireless chipsets than FBSD without using binary blobs.
Member since:2006-08-22
Linux hardware support is really better, but not that MUCH.
And openBSD, yes, support more wireless chipsets, if you only speak of free driver. FreeBSD has less free wireless driver.
But Project Evil can run so much more wireless drivers from Windows XP it makes openBSD looks like crap.
And with this wireless exception, openbsd doesn't support as much hardware as FreeBSD does. FreeBSD can run the proprietary NVidia driver, that's more important for 99% of the desktop folks than some obscure crypto card.
Member since:2005-09-10
and their communities tend to be much more helpful and more polite.
Not true. Came from mandrake to freebsd (mandrake at that time had a very helpful community) - and I found the FreeBSD folks very very helpful. In fact, the community is one of the asset that made me stay. I'm referring to bsdforums or @freebsd-questions. They expect you to do your homework (they really put a lot of effort to write good documentation) - but even if you fail, they RTFM you very politely 
I also found developers very helpful - I had problems with sound (with skype) and the multimedia@freebsd folks helped me, even though I was an obvious newbie at that time. So did the usb folks.
I don't know where this myth comes from - I still use linux occasionally (and visit support forums), but I can tell you without hesitation that the FreeBSD community is one of the friendliest I ever saw. (there will be exceptions of course, but if you really look at the general trend - by visiting bsdforums.org or browsing the mailing list archaives - you'll be surprised!).
Member since:2006-02-01
Member since:2006-08-22
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Member since:
2006-08-22
The world doesn't revolve around Linux. If you want proprietary drivers badly, you can use FreeBSD.
They have a license that does not prohibate the use of proprietary drivers. It's a "more free" license.
You know what ? FreeBSD supports most of the modern hardware, just like linux. And unlike the linux kernel, they are not against the existence of a "ndiswrapper-like". They distribute officialy a "ndiswrapper-like", called "Project Evil" that empower you by using the windows ndis drivers inside freebsd.
I don't understand why the people who doesn't like the GPL sticks with Linux. Linux is not THAT much better than FreeBSD. If you don't like the GPL, use FreeBSD, it's a fine system.
See this :
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html
Unlike the linux drivers, the FreeBSD drivers are perfectly legal. So, if you need them and FreeBSD supports your hardware, support the FreeBSD project and not a project like Linux that doesn't fit your goals.
Edited 2006-11-25 15:37