Re: xdm-options - non-bsd user needs bsd rc.d advice
On Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:01:10 -0500 John D. Hendrickson and Sara Darnell johnandsa...@cox.net wrote: Hi. I'm a BSD idiot I use [Debian] linux. rc.d question I'm trying to release a project (just below) to the widest possible unix audience. I need a line in /etc/inittab and to have a start/stop in /etc/rc.d, nothing unusual I think. I read many freeBSD rc.d materials and it only convinced me as much as I'd learned: if I'm not running BSD I don't know enough to talk about it :) Usually FreeBSD rc.d scripts are maintained by the port maintainer rather than the upstream project. If you are unclear about it, I would suggest you don't bother. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: xdm-options - non-bsd user needs bsd rc.d advice
On Thu, 03 Mar 2011 17:01:10 -0500 John D. Hendrickson and Sara Darnell johnandsa...@cox.net wrote: [snip] If anyone would like to quickly comment I'd love to hear why bsd would be a better choice than ubantu (for what audience it is better). Thanks all, John ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org Hi John, same with me as with Chad Perrin. Sadly, I cannot put my issue right and brief at the same time, so please excuse me being verbose. I started with Linux when being in high-school out of frustration of Windows forcing me to do things their way. After switching my entire environment to Suse Linux and after that to a version of RedHat, I quickly found out that I just switched to a different flavour of being forced to do things a certain way. When at university, I tried Gentoo Linux, learned a lot and solved problems my way. Having bought a notebook later on, I decided trying the then very much in vogue Ubuntu with a Xubuntu installation. Although satisfied with the very usable defaults, I was quickly unnerved by not being able to control things. Later, I tried OpenSolaris and FreeBSD and am now using FreeBSD due to the same reasons as Chad Perrin stated: Being a power-user, wanting to control things and (now diverting from Chad's reasons) wanting to use technology (most importantly ZFS) without being impeded for ideological reasons of viral GPLishness. So, same reasons here as with Chad Perrin, safe for an additionally and lately aquired GPL-allergy. @ Chad: Perhaps you might be happier being coerced to use a Linux with a GNU/Linux flavour like Gentoo or ArchLinux. I have never tried the latter, however, with Gentoo you are very much in control. Gentoo effectively forces you to do your own compiling via portage, so be prepared for a very long install. ArchLinux is to my knowledge binary based and might be quicker to install. Both Gentoo and ArchLinux have a reputation to put the user in charge. What drove me away from Gentoo apart from that GPL-flu was deteriorating quality of system tools. You install what is world in FreeBSD from portage in Gentoo, so when updating your portage, necessary system tools sometimes break. I was driven over the edge when some network-etc syntax changed without telling me and I lost my network connection as a result. I had something different in mind for the weekend and was just furious - so treat Gentoo with care. Cheers, -- Christopher J. Ruwe TZ GMT + 1 signature.asc Description: PGP signature
Re: xdm-options - non-bsd user needs bsd rc.d advice
On Fri, Mar 04, 2011 at 03:28:10PM +0100, Christopher J. Ruwe wrote: Later, I tried OpenSolaris and FreeBSD and am now using FreeBSD due to the same reasons as Chad Perrin stated: Being a power-user, wanting to control things and (now diverting from Chad's reasons) wanting to use technology (most importantly ZFS) without being impeded for ideological reasons of viral GPLishness. I'd say you diverted from what I satated -- though not from my reasons overall. That is actually among the reasons I prefer FreeBSD, even if I didn't mention it. So, same reasons here as with Chad Perrin, safe for an additionally and lately aquired GPL-allergy. My GPL-allergy has been around since late 2003, but has been growing in strength. 2006 was when it finally got to the point where I stopped using Linux-based systems for my own purposes until some video issues forced me back to it last month. @ Chad: Perhaps you might be happier being coerced to use a Linux with a GNU/Linux flavour like Gentoo or ArchLinux. I have never tried the latter, however, with Gentoo you are very much in control. Gentoo effectively forces you to do your own compiling via portage, so be prepared for a very long install. ArchLinux is to my knowledge binary based and might be quicker to install. Both Gentoo and ArchLinux have a reputation to put the user in charge. I'm considering ArchLinux. I've played with Gentoo in the past (2004ish), and did not much find it to my liking -- mostly because of software stability issues and a community overrun with ricers. What drove me away from Gentoo apart from that GPL-flu was deteriorating quality of system tools. You install what is world in FreeBSD from portage in Gentoo, so when updating your portage, necessary system tools sometimes break. I was driven over the edge when some network-etc syntax changed without telling me and I lost my network connection as a result. I had something different in mind for the weekend and was just furious - so treat Gentoo with care. That kind of breakage is among the reasons I didn't like Gentoo. Around that time, Debian was much more stable in practice (even Debian Testing), but things have changed in the Debian world since I last used it for my own purposes five years ago; now, it's prone to breakage as well, evidently. From your description, it sounds like Gentoo wouldn't solve the kinds of problems I'm having with Debian; it would just rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. I've heard Arch is a tolerable substitute for FreeBSD when you must use Linux-based systems for some reason. I'm probably going to wipe the system and reinstall this weekend to try to solve my networking issue, and Arch looks like the option I'll try -- though I'll probably check into whether OpenBSD has support for the graphics chipset in this laptop, too (I really doubt it). . . . and then, as soon as the graphics support gets sorted out in FreeBSD, I'll probably wipe again and install FreeBSD. I had FreeBSD installed on it briefly already, and everything about it worked exactly as expected except the graphics, after all. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgptAieZrb8Kp.pgp Description: PGP signature
Re: xdm-options - non-bsd user needs bsd rc.d advice
Readers will surely see more and more people having similar reasons why those who happily use FreeBSD do not want to go back to Linux, or even worse, Windows. I may include myself here, with the special case that I've never been a Windows user, so my mind is clean and healthy and unspoiled of MICROS~1's strange ideas of how things work. :-) On Fri, 4 Mar 2011 15:28:10 +0100, Christopher J. Ruwe c...@cruwe.de wrote: I started with Linux when being in high-school out of frustration of Windows forcing me to do things their way. In my case, it happened in school, simply because of the reason that I needed a versatile typesetting system (text, formulas, graphs) to print to a laser printer. As LaTeX was already available on Linux, I started with Slackware which was a very UNIX-like system (a positive opinion!) at that time. Later on, I did use PTS-Linux (derived from DLD, a german Linux distribution, if I remember correctly), as well as S.u.S.E.-Linux (its formal name at that time). While I found that generic UNIX knowledge was applicable everywhere, Linux knowledge was not, as you could see from file names and locations, procedures, and configuration statements which could not be transferred 1:1 between the systems. When at university, I tried Gentoo Linux, learned a lot and solved problems my way. Having bought a notebook later on, I decided trying the then very much in vogue Ubuntu with a Xubuntu installation. Although satisfied with the very usable defaults, I was quickly unnerved by not being able to control things. University was the time when I found out about FreeBSD. Having generic UNIX knowledge already (Linux, Solaris, IRIX) I could predict (!) where things are on a FreeBSD system, how they act, and what they do. This was my main reason to keep using this system, exlusively as a home desktop since version 4.0, without any disadvantages so far. I doubt that Linux would have delivered the quality I'm looking for: The quality of not being forced to abandon fully functional hardware simply because new defaults tell me I need a plentycore CPU and tenmelonhundred GB of RAM, just to keep doing the same things. As a developer, targetting Linux (as a family of operating systems) is not very easy, as they all do differ in some way. At least there is source code to consult if problems arise, but sometimes you're searching through header files to find out what *foo() is today. :-) What drove me away from Gentoo apart from that GPL-flu was deteriorating quality of system tools. You install what is world in FreeBSD from portage in Gentoo, so when updating your portage, necessary system tools sometimes break. Linux does not differentiate between the system and everything else; even the kernel can be seen as a package on the system. Along with different packaging systems, distributions differ in what packages they use to make their base system (default amount of installation). For developers, FreeBSD is an EXCELLENT operating system as it offers consistency, compatibility and interoperatbility at a good speed ratio (won't run slower after upgrading). The code quality and the availability of good documentation (man pages, handbook, FAQ), even accessible LOCALLY with no Internet connection at hand, makes it a strong partner for DURABLE solutions in software development. A friendly and intelligent community adds to the sum. The sum is SUPERIOR to what I could experience in my career. I know this is a quite general statement and doesn't help the OP in particular, but I thought it would be worth sharing it. I hope it was. :-) -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: xdm-options - non-bsd user needs bsd rc.d advice
On Fri, Mar 4, 2011 at 9:34 AM, Polytropon free...@edvax.de wrote: While I found that generic UNIX knowledge was applicable everywhere, Linux knowledge was not, as you could see from file names and locations, procedures, and configuration statements which could not be transferred 1:1 between the systems. I find that's true even going between true UNIX systems, like FreeBSD and Solaris. Maybe it was different back in the SunOS days, but modern Solaris has a lot of very Solaris-specific tools that work in opaque ways; for example, you don't edit links to /etc/init.d anymore, you create an XML service description file and use svcadm to manipulate it in some hidden database. There are still BSD-ish tools in Solaris (and GNU tools, too), but Solaris purists will strongly discourage you from using them. ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
xdm-options - non-bsd user needs bsd rc.d advice
Hi. I'm a BSD idiot I use [Debian] linux. rc.d question I'm trying to release a project (just below) to the widest possible unix audience. I need a line in /etc/inittab and to have a start/stop in /etc/rc.d, nothing unusual I think. I read many freeBSD rc.d materials and it only convinced me as much as I'd learned: if I'm not running BSD I don't know enough to talk about it :) I'm not sure how a real BSD hacker would place a simple start stop. Not where or how, not even after reading the docs. Also I'm not sure the project is good enough to warrant further testing / if the casual user might save time / effort with it. Tell me what you think if you have time! Who doesn't want feedback? http://sourceforge.net/projects/xdm-options/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/xdm-options/ (second has httpS) (xdm sample scripts but complete / round trip. chooser, login, desktop chooser, xdm server: by menu with no hacking required on any unix, saving the casual xdm interested person time in use or setup, is my hope) ... it uses no libs at all If anyone would like to quickly comment I'd love to hear why bsd would be a better choice than ubantu (for what audience it is better). Thanks all, John ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: xdm-options - non-bsd user needs bsd rc.d advice
On Thu, Mar 03, 2011 at 05:01:10PM -0500, John D. Hendrickson and Sara Darnell wrote: Hi. I'm a BSD idiot I use [Debian] linux. [snip] If anyone would like to quickly comment I'd love to hear why bsd would be a better choice than ubantu (for what audience it is better). FreeBSD is definitely a better choice for *me* than Debian, or (worse yet) Ubuntu. I'm temporarily stuck in a hell of my own making, of sorts, because I installed Debian on a laptop I bought to make up for the fact that I managed to buy a laptop for which FreeBSD does not yet have complete graphics support (Intel HD video). The end result is significant annoyance. Debian, since I used it regularly about half a decade ago, has become increasingly complicated by attempts to guess what users want and provide it. This approach tends to result in making it very difficult to do things differently if you want to. Problems I'm encountering right now mostly center around networking issues -- for some asinine reason, it will connect to my WPA encrypted wireless network at home, but not to an open wireless network at a coffee shop. It makes no reasonable sense. With FreeBSD, it would be a trivial exercise to make it work. Worst-case scenario, I could just change a couple of lines in /etc/rc.d and enter the /etc/rc.d/netif restart command. On Debian, I've tried about half a dozen different approaches to getting it to connect to the coffee shop network, including more than one GUI with a seriously suboptimal interface, with no luck; it just keeps failing to get an IP address. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of automagical DWIMmery going on behind the scenes, trying to guess what I want it to do and doing it without my permission, and getting its guesses *wrong*. The upshot is this: FreeBSD is better for people who like essentially deterministic behavior out of their OSes, where the same input produces the same output, with (little or) no chance of it blowing up in your face or just stubbornly refusing to let you do what you want to do because some developer somewhere set up automagical default management based on what *he* thinks you *really* want to do. Debian to some extent, and Ubuntu to a far greater extent, is for people who don't want to know anything about what the system is doing under the hood, to the extent that if the system doesn't get it right automatically the person will refuse to actually spend any time learning enough about the system to fix the problem. Things are getting positively Microsoftish. In case you couldn't tell, I'm frustrated. I'm beginning to wonder whether having 4:3 resolution stretched out to a 16:9 aspect ratio display might be a lesser evil than using Debian, when it is even more annoying now (relative to FreeBSD) than it was five years ago. tl;dr summary: FreeBSD is power-user friendly. Linux-based systems are getting increasingly dumbed-down user obsequious, to the detriment of people who like being able to customize the system's behavior (or, y'know, actually troubleshoot it at all). -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] pgp9MT6EerY3q.pgp Description: PGP signature
