Geek Style

Colin Percival (The original author of freebsd-update and binary diff), spent a few hours to resurrect the dead Depenguinator from ashes.
Using Depenguinator 2.0, you can remotely upgrade a happily living Linux system to the latest version of FreeBSD. To me its extremely useful when upgrading a Linux box to FreeBSD in a hosting facility that does not offer any FreeBSD servers.

The project needs help from community to test and report issues back to the developer in order to improve the software. However it is worth giving a try on your Ubuntu box.

On a related note, I was thinking of porting this into the package repository of various Linux distributions.

You may have seen a lot of errors while hanging out in orkut. But I bet this one is very original:

Not enough storage is available to process this command

A quick search in google will take you to this page from microsoft.

A note to Google guys: Haven’t you been famous for being huge fan of Linux?

I am not a Mac enthusiast, but I love their innovations.
And the latest innovation from Apple is Airport Express.
It really took a while to find out what it really is. A tiny device that plugs directly into the power plug, which has an Ethernet (10/100Base-T) port, a USB port and, a Headphones jack, and built-in 802.11g transceiver. All for $129.

It supports OS X and WinXP natievly. So we should expect a new open source project (OpenAirPortExpress.SourceForge.Net maybe) with some crappy Linux drivers soon.

The famous Andrew S. Tanenbaum has a proof that Linus IS the real creator of Linux:

Linus didn’t sit down in a vacuum and suddenly type in the Linux source code. He had my book, was running MINIX, and undoubtedly knew the history (since it is in my book). But the code was his. The proof of this is that he messed the design up.

or this one:

The first version of Linux was like a time machine. It went back to a system worse than what he already had on his desk. Of course, he was just a kid and didn’t know better (although if he had paid better attention in class he should have), but producing a system that was fundamentally different from the base he started with seems pretty good proof that it was a redesign.

Read the complete article here (part one) and here (part two).

There has been a debate on MINIX vs. Linux back in 1992 between Linus Torvalds and Andy Tanenbaum as you may remember.

I received some good feedback from my “Linux SysAdmin Rant” entry.

Saeez Pazoki has some suggestions:

* Do not forget to mention that Windows is insecure wherever you can. (But never say that you “can not” make it secure).
* Write Micro$osft, instead of Microsoft

Masoud has warned users to check the disk partitioning setup before proceeding with installation. But I suggest leaving it as default and let Linux remove all your Windows partitions. You are a Linux SysAdmin, so you don’t want that Windows crap anymore. Don’t you?

More suggestions from me:

* Make sure you have read all open letters from Eric S. Raymond. You’ll love them. At least they are so funny.

Anyone else has more suggestions? Please post in comments.

It’s a bit old, but a worth reading:

Jonathan Schwartz, former VP of Software Group and current Chief Operation Officer at SUN Microsystems clears their linux strategy:

let me really clear about our Linux strategy. We don’t have one. We don’t at all. We do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period. If you want to buy it, we will sell it to you, but we believe that Solaris is a better alternative, that is safer, more robust, higher quality and dramatically less expensive in purchase price.

Full interview on eWeek

Someone has performed performance benchmark on Linux 2.6, Linux 2.4, NetBSD 1.6.1, OpenBSD 3.4 and FreeBSD 5.1. Benchmarks includes TCP/IP stack, filesystem and memory management stuff. The results are interesting.

FreeBSD 5.1 has very impressive performance and scalability. I foolishly assumed all BSDs to play in the same league performance-wise, because they all share a lot of code and can incorporate each other’s code freely. I was wrong. FreeBSD has by far the best performance of the BSDs and it comes close to Linux 2.6. If you run another BSD on x86, you should switch to FreeBSD!

FreeBSD 5.1 stands on second stage while Linux 2.6 caught the winner title.
Linux development team have done a very good job in this new release. I guess FreeBSD will catch them with 5.2-STABLE, hopefully.

OpenBSD was the last in the race. See their response here. They believe the benchmark was unfair!

eWeek article:

Why turn to a BSD base as the basis for a commercial open Unix? BSD has been around, it’s been proven, it’s stable and has a broad groundswell of development. BSD-based Unix systems have been around for multiple decades now. There’s sufficient documentation, standardization and educational resources to promote their development. BSD systems have been implemented on such a wide range of hardware platforms and operating environments that their value is accepted almost without question.

Read the whole article: eWeek: Why a SCO Win Could Be Good for Unix

The Globe and Mail reports:

Linux, not Microsoft Windows, remains the most-attacked operating system, a British security company reports.

During August, 67 per cent of all successful and verifiable digital attacks against on-line servers targeted Linux, followed by Microsoft Windows at 23.2 per cent. A total of 12,892 Linux on-line servers running e-business and information sites were successfully breached in that month, followed by 4,626 Windows servers, according to the report.

Just 360

You probably know the long story about SCO and IBM on Linux. So I am not going to tell you the whole story.
Everyone has an opinion. I am a Unix fan and I am on SCO side ( cat flames > /dev/null ). But Eric S. Raymond seems to be too much angry about this subject. And not everyone is agree with him.
Neither am I.

( I don’t know why “SCO vs. IBM” reminds me “Freddy vs. Jason” )

Update: Do you remember the old story about IP theft in Linux kernel?