BSD & Darwin Archive

BSD: The Other Free UNIX Family

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-22 BSD & Darwin 42 Comments

There are a lot of options in the Free UNIX market at the moment. Everyone's favorite buzzword is Linux, and Sun is in the process of releasing Solaris under a Free Software license. One family, however, receives less attention than it is due. Berkley Software Distribution (BSD) has grown into almost a complete replacement for UNIX, with numerous enhancements. David Chisnall explains why the BSD family has found its way into a large number of systems and what these systems can do for you.

Interview: Dru Lavigne, BSD Certification Group

Submitted by Tyr. 2006-01-21 BSD & Darwin 4 Comments

"The BSD Certification Group is a non-profit organization established to create and maintain a global certification standard for system administration on BSD-based operating systems. After a year of work, the group behind the BSD Certification project plans to complete the process for the first certification (BSD Associate) in the first half of this year, with the first exam to be available by the second quarter. We interviewed Dru Lavigne, BSD advocate and creator of the initiative."

A Quick Review of DragonFly BSD 1.4

Guest post by Trent Townsend 2006-01-18 BSD & Darwin 29 Comments

DragonFly BSD 1.4 is the third major release of Matthew Dillon's fork of the FreeBSD operating system, and significant progress has been made towards reaching many of the project's numerous goals. New in this release include a more up to date version of the GNU Compiler Collection (required due to the incread use of thread local storage in DragonFly), an import of NetBSD's Citrus code (Comprehensive I18N Framework Towards Respectable Unix Systems), major reworking of all core subsystems in preparation for removing the MP lock, rewrites of various VFS related code and many updated drivers, frameworks and contributed programs.

Open Source Darwin for Intel a No Go?

Eugenia Loli 2006-01-13 BSD & Darwin 34 Comments

Possibly in fear that hackers will be able to find backdoors in the Intel Darwin version and allow OSX to run on PCs other than Macs, Apple has only posted the sources of Darwin for PPC for the latest version.

DragonFly BSD 1.4 Released

Submitted by Lazarus 2006-01-08 BSD & Darwin 8 Comments

DragonFly BSD 1.4 has been released. "The two biggest user-visible changes in this release are a major revamping of libc, ctype, and wchar support, as well as changes made in the kernel which require us to bump the major rev for all of our shared libraries, and the introduction of PKGSRC to manage third party applications. DragonFly no longer supports the FreeBSD PORTS system." Get it here.

Highlights: EuroBSDCon 2005

Thom Holwerda 2006-01-06 BSD & Darwin 1 Comment

"The EuroBSDCon Conference is the largest BSD event in Europe, attracting more than 220 attendees from 27 different countries. November's 2005 conference, the fourth EuroBSDCon, took place in the University of Basel, Switzerland. Here are some highlights."

MirOS BSD #8 Released

Submitted by Thorsten Glaser 2005-12-29 BSD & Darwin 31 Comments

"The MirOS Project is proud to announce the immediate release of MirOS XP, consisting of MirOS BSD #8 and the MirPorts Framework. This release is the first in the MIRBSD_8 branch and still highly experimental in some parts, especially ports, but has been throughoutly tested and deemed stable." You can download this Net/OpenBSD-based operating system here. Note: Don't mention the war!

DragonFlyBSD 1.4 To Be Released After Christmas

Submitted by Lazarus 2005-12-17 BSD & Darwin 69 Comments

Fans of DragonFly BSD will be getting their Christmas present late this year, and plans for 1.5 have been announced. MP safe networking code, the long awaited cache coherency management system, and a port of Sun's ZFS. Read here for more. Update: Refresh, empty cache, whatever, and check the shiny new beastie icon! And there was much rejoicing. Can we now please discuss DragonFly BSD?

DarwinPorts 1.2 Released

Submitted by Andrew Vogel 2005-12-15 BSD & Darwin 13 Comments

DarwinPorts 1.2 has been released. "The DarwinPorts Project's main goal is to provide an easy way to install various open-source software products on the Darwin OS family (OpenDarwin, Mac OS X and Darwin). There are currently about 3038 completed and usable ports, with more being added on a regular basis."

Impressions on DesktopBSD; DragonFly BSD News

Submitted by Anon_Poster 2005-11-25 BSD & Darwin 33 Comments

A batch of BSD news today. Firstly, here are a few impressions on DesktopBSD 1.0 RC3. "DesktopBSD is a breeze to install. Desktop uses a crisp and clean KDE desktop with an attractive theme with a standard selection of applications." Secondly, DragonFly BSD asks its users to test some drivers for wireless networking. And lastly, also concerning DragonFly BSD: "Recently spent some time getting the Mach lite kernel up and running for research on the idea can the system be made to run in production."

Beyond the Big Three BSDs, BSD Alternatives

Submitted by jaboua 2005-11-20 BSD & Darwin 30 Comments

"Although Linux gets much of the attention in the Free and open source operating system world, the BSD operating system is also very popular. BSD has a longer history, and its roots go right back to one of the original Unix implementations that spawned commercial Unix variants like Solaris and Mac OS X. BSD is actually a popular source for server-focused operating systems and, due to an open license, it is sometimes more attractive to developers as the base for their projects. With some BSD variants, security and high-performance networking are key drivers."

DragonFly BSD Updates

Submitted by Lazarus 2005-10-13 BSD & Darwin 13 Comments

The DragonFly project has been making progress of late adding features desired for their upcoming release. In addition to the ongoing work to prepare the system to run free of the MP lock, a number of smaller, but important subprojects are nearing completion.

A First Look at DesktopBSD 1.0 RC2

Submitted by dadexter 2005-10-11 BSD & Darwin 36 Comments

"Overall - DesktopBSD is a pleasure to run and a breeze to install. It is an excellent choice for a new BSD user, a not terribly sophisticated computer user, or an old salt who just wants a good, solid, reliable desktop that won't take days to install and weeks to configure and just wants to get on with it."

What Is Darwin (and How it Powers Mac OS X)

Thom Holwerda 2005-09-29 BSD & Darwin 28 Comments

"Darwin is the Unix-derived core that provides the underlying foundation for Mac OS X. At Darwin's heart is the XNU kernel; a Mach 3.0-based microkernel that has been modified to include portions of FreeBSD for performance reasons. Let's take a trip down into the core of OS X to learn more about the foundation that gives us one of the best user experiences in computing."

Out SMART Your Hard Drive

Submitted by Matty 2005-09-29 BSD & Darwin 7 Comments

"If you have used disk drives during your career, I am sure you are well aware of the issues that arise when a device unexpectedly dies. This short article describes how to use smartmontools to view S.M.A.R.T status information, which can be used to predict if and when a device may fail."

BSD Usage Survey

Submitted by Dave B 2005-09-17 BSD & Darwin 17 Comments

The BSD Certification Group are running a new survey: the BSD Usage Survey. This survey aims to collect detailed statistics on how and where BSD systems are used around the world. The survey is short - only 19 questions - and should only take a few minutes to complete.

Introduction to Kernel Extension Concepts

Eugenia Loli 2005-09-17 BSD & Darwin 11 Comments

Mac OS X provides a kernel extension mechanism as a means of allowing dynamic loading of pieces of code into the kernel, without the need to recompile. These pieces of code are known generically as plug-ins or, in the Darwin kernel, as kernel extensions or KEXTs.

Petition To Bring Crossover Office to BSD

Andrew Youll 2005-08-29 BSD & Darwin 30 Comments

A petition has been started to present to Codeweavers to show that BSD is a viable platform for which to release Crossover Office. Update: For those who aren't keen on posting their email address this note posted by the petition organiser will hopefully put your minds at ease.

DesktopBSD: Following PC-BSD’s Footsteps?

Submitted by anonymous 2005-08-02 BSD & Darwin 91 Comments

It seems that PC-BSD has set a trend. "DesktopBSD aims at being a stable and powerful operating system for desktop users. DesktopBSD combines the stability of FreeBSD, the usability and functionality of KDE and the simplicity of specially developed software to provide a system that's easy to use and install." How this new BSD distribution stacks up against PC-BSD remains to be seen.

DragonFly BSD Journaling Progress

Submitted by Trent 2005-07-05 BSD & Darwin 19 Comments

Matthew Dillon has made significant progress on DragonFly's journaling code, which can now mirror partitions. Essentially all that remains now is for the "reverse journaling" work to be completed (allowing for filesystem rollback), and for stability to be increased. More information here and here