Other then playing 1.2 mods is there any good reason to keep the 1.2 install?

[Zero Angel]

My bad. I mean to say "UNIX-like" not "*nix based".

Anyways. Ready to be bored?

UNIX is an operating system which the computing principles of the modern *nix/BSD's are derived from, most of the major concepts of the nixes and BSDs are borrowed from UNIX (ie: /home/ -- users and documents, /dev/ -- not a real folder, but a virtual one used to access system devices like sound cards (/dev/snd/), /boot/ for kernels and stuff), as well as the concepts of monolithic kernels and other really technical things.

GNU/Linux is a free/opensource engine which is marked by several competing standards. Standards which 'win' (in areas of popular adoption, usability, efficiency, etc) gain popular adoption, some even in parallel. Look at desktops for example, taskbars and file managers and thngs like that --GNOME and KDE are both very different desktop interfaces but have gained widespread adoption, because of their workflow, aesthetics, and user friendliness, even lots of uncommon window managers likeXFCE (a lightweight, less fancy, GNOME-like desktop environment) and Fluxbox (an ultra light weight window manager) see use because each one has a different advantage to using it, not to mention the myriad other window managers out there. But the idea here is that the user always has choice, and anyone is free to extend the GNU/Linux platform. -- Problems crop up when these choices conflict with each other, an example of this is how linux handles sound, theres 2 major sound daemons competing for the spotlight, and that can cause problem when things dont talk to each other well (ie: firefox is designed to talk to the OSS sound system, whereas KDE apps are designed by default to talk to the ALSA sound system).

This is what the difference is between linux and BSD. BSD is another UNIX-like operating system which was also based off of UNIX, and developed in parallel with GNU/Linux. As an OS it offers less choice, however everything is more coherent, and there are less problems of API's and system components which do not play well with each other. Instead of everyone doing their own thing, BSD developers work on developing one standard way of having everything operate. This offers both advantages and disadvantages, ones which i'm sure linux and BSD junkies can argue endlessly about, but I will not go into them.

Mac is a derivative of BSD, much like how BSD was a derivative of UNIX. It inherits BSD's 'one ring' approach, but has been heavily modified, especially in the department of user interface. Because to the way that BSD is licenced (non-restrictively), companies such as Apple may fork (modify) BSD code and make it proprietary and copywritten, which is exactly what they've done. GNU/Linux is different, in that companies which wish to distribute products which use GNU/Linux code which is under the open-source GPL1 licence, must also redistribute that code freely and without additional restrictions.

Companies such as NVIDIA, however, can still write proprietary code (such as drivers) that interface with GNU/Linux code, and may keep it closed source, since they are not ie: redistributing something which was previously open source, but rather something they wrote from scratch. Closed source/binary applications (ie: proprietary drivers, flash, MPEG decoders) are not installed on many linux distributions by default, because a change in their licences could mean that the companies which have intellectual ownership of that code can legally sue, threaten, or demand royalties from linux distributions (like Ubuntu) who distribute their code entirely for free.

[bigbadbogie]

bloody hell - just use windows already

[Zero Angel]

piss off 

[bigbadbogie]

just coz u spent 7 hours writing out all that rubbish 

[Zero Angel]

I probably type faster than you think (and by that I dont mean think, as in 'your opinion', i mean think as in 'the actual speed in which thoughts pass through your head')

(which is obviously empty and vacuous)

(and is probably even comprised entirely of anti-neurons which cancel out actual brain matter)

(and probably by being near you, people feel a steady drop in IQ)

(and also I imagine that the average IQ of the entire world is severely reduced because you exist in it)

(sorry i couldnt help myself)

[bigbadbogie]

yeah thats true - it takes 2 min for me to think up a single letter

(on one of my happy days)

[OvermindDL1]

Wrong, Unix is based off of BSD, not the other way around.

Wrong about a few other things too, BSD is a full system, including a kernal; Linux is a kernal, does not include a system, there are no competing standards, there is only one.  BSD is original, UNIX and something else comes from BSD, Linux comes from Minix, Minix was a teaching kernal designed by school to help teach kernal design, it has also since become a full fledge kernal with the power of Linux, but still really only used in the teaching style.

BSD was not developed in 'parallel' with Linux, it was developed well before, it has only been kept up-to-date since.
And there are not two competing sound systems, there are four, ALSA is no doubt the most powerful, but the most difficult to program for (any high-end sound app requires it though).  However, there is also one that combines all of them and allows all apps to work with each other (it will be included with KDE4, they are helping to develop it, it is a full stand-alone soundsystem though with no gui requirements, compatable with all other sound systems both for front-end linking and back-end outputting, along with many other features).

BSD is just as open as Linux, just about any Linux app (and generally more) is available in its Ports system, however the default install is controlled by a tiny group of people (9 I think?) so it has a unified sight of how it should work, as such, everything in the Ports will work the same way (meaning everything will be installed the same way, to the same place, with the configuration files in the proper place, etc..., you *know* how a BSD system will work and act, and they do not put something in Ports unless it is known to be stable at the time and have been stable for quite some time).  You can still install anything the Linux way as well, just will not follow the design principles, but would not hurt anything.  And as stated, UNIX comes from BSD, not the other way.

One very nice thing about having a unified controller like with FreeBSD, is there is a very detailed 'book' that explains just about anything you would ever want to do with FreeBSD, which you can also buy in paper form (which I have one of the older version as such, Version 4, gull I feel old now, they are about to release version 8... so many *nice* changes ).

The big difference is the license, BSD was initially made by a college, and was distributed between tech college's to be worked on, as such its licenses demanded freedom, in every sense, which is what the BSD license is, and can be accurately summed up as:

• Do not claim that you wrote this.
• Do not sue us if it breaks.

Linux on the other hand uses the GPL pretty heavily, the GPL is like the above, but adds in a whole ton of crap about always distributing the source, as such the GPL is considered infectious (which is why I do not use anything that is infected with it, if you notice I make plenty of apps, but do not distribute source code, I will give it if someone asks, but I do not want to be forced to do so), hence it is far more restrictive, it is hard to become more free than the BSD license is.  FreeBSD does use some GPL apps, but anything that is needed that is GPL they try to rewrite in a BSD manner rather quickly to get rid of it.

BSD also runs on more devices than any other OS, including Linux.

If you cannot tell, I vastly prefer BSD over Linux, I could list another dozen or more reasons why BSD is better.
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[Zero Angel]

Ahhh, I see. I read somewhere that BSD borrowed UNIX code, but it looks like UNIX borrowed BSD code first.

Historically, BSD has been considered as a branch of UNIX — "BSD UNIX", because it shared the initial codebase and design with the original AT&T UNIX operating system. In the 1980s, BSD was widely adopted by vendors of workstation-class systems in the form of proprietary UNIX variants such as DEC ULTRIX and Sun Microsystems SunOS. This can be attributed to the ease with which it could be licensed, and the familiarity it found among the founders of many technology companies of this era.

Also, regarding Linux only being a kernel. You will see that I have mentioned several times GNU/Linux, which is a full fledged system. I just didnt want to write GNU in front of every Linux every time since I assumed that it would be IMPLIED. 

BSD was not developed in 'parallel' with Linux, it was developed well before, it has only been kept up-to-date since.
And there are not two competing sound systems, there are four, ALSA is no doubt the most powerful, but the most difficult to program for (any high-end sound app requires it though).  However, there is also one that combines all of them and allows all apps to work with each other (it will be included with KDE4, they are helping to develop it, it is a full stand-alone soundsystem though with no gui requirements, compatable with all other sound systems both for front-end linking and back-end outputting, along with many other features).

Yeah, when you count JACK and ESD. I just always assumed that ALSA and OSS were the two biggest ones though, so I used them as an example.

BSD was not developed in 'parallel' with Linux, it was developed well before, it has only been kept up-to-date since.

No, but it is NOW. Since it is effectively a fork. Which can thus be called 'parallel' since they're both being developed simultaneously and independently (parallel lines never cross).

Oh, and you forgot to call it GNU/Linux, because remember Linux is just the kernel. Mister nit picker.

However, there is also one that combines all of them and allows all apps to work with each other (it will be included with KDE4, they are helping to develop it, it is a full stand-alone soundsystem though with no gui requirements, compatable with all other sound systems both for front-end linking and back-end outputting, along with many other features).

Oh right, this would be PulseAudio, right? That sound server is included in the latest Ubuntu.

[Red Devil]

Is Unix derived from eunuchs?

[GSH]

No, but there's a fairly (in)famous quote:

"There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to be a coincidence."

My fileserver at home runs FreeBSD. I much prefer the organization and planning that goes into FreeBSD vs the chaos of Linux. I used to have an OpenBSD firewall - another well thought-out OS. (And, I refuse to put the 'GNU/' in front of that name -- that's Richard Stallman going all pissy that his pet OS hasn't managed to jack in 20 years, and jealously renaming someone else's creation.)

-- GSH

[Red Devil]

    

[OvermindDL1]

And BSD can refer to either the full OS, or just the kernal, I was referring to the kernal at that one point.

And yes, what GSH said sums it up perfectly, BSD is well thought out, in Linux based OS's you will find all kinds of things in all kinds of places and good luck finding it all; whereas in BSD, if something is in Ports (just about everything is), then it will work and act correctly.  Ports is interesting in that it is just a large tree of directories of difference files, you can go into a directory, for example /ports/www/apache2, and type 'make install', and it will download the apache source code, apply the difference file to the source so that it works well with the system, compile it, test it, then install it into the system.  To delete an app it is 'make uninstall' or 'make remove' or something... I usually just use the upgrade command.   There is also a way to get precompiled apps, but compiling it directly in ports, the difference files will be customized for your system, your ram, your specs, etc... so it will run faster, that is one nice thing about ports.  Ports is kind of like all the package managers that the Linux world has, just more powerful, and much much older (and yes there are graphical interfaces for it for you people that like that ).

And for note, GNU/Linux still is not a usable system, GNU/Linux is just the kernal with a lot of little useful utilities, like ls, grep, gmake, g++, etc., but it is still not a usable OS, for that get something like debian or Ubuntu or Mandrake (Mandriva? what the heck are they calling themselves nowadays) or what-not.

PulseAudio sounds familiar, if that was it then oh heck that thing looks nice, even network audio built-in.

Also, OpenBSD is not a real fork of FreeBSD like how most Linux OS's fork, it is just a version of FreeBSD that has all of its defaults set to utterly maximum security, it is well known to be the most secure network-capable OS on the planet.  There is one more BSD called NetBSD, it is designed to be the most installable version of BSD, as such it can be installed on just about anything that has a microchip, it has been installed on everything from computers to microwave's to an electronic toaster once to routers to a gameboy to etc... designed to give you a full OS on just about anything you want.
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[Zero Angel]

Linux has these same advantages. In fact, it also sees widespread adoption into embedded devices. Even linux can be installed on devices not designed to fit it, especially when the kernel is pared down to only the essentials. You can do this with BSD and linux, but absolutely cannot with Windows.

As far as GNU/Linux not being usable, thats TECHNICALLY true, but in the big picture, no. Companies like Red Hat, Novell (Mandriva) and Canonical (Ubuntu) have created *very* usable linux systems out of the jumble of code, utilities, libraries and applications that GNU/Linux is, and made it coherent and usable.

[OvermindDL1]

Yes, Linux can be installed on many things, FreeBSD not quite on so many, but NetBSD dwarfs everything else, including Linux.

Yes, that is the point, to get Linux usable you have to add other stuff to it, like a shell (a gui if you so wish), libraries, sound managers, input control, etc... etc...  Hence the seemingly thousands of distributions, from Ubuntu to Red Hat, to Mandriva (why the heck did they change their name?) and so forth, so many different ways of integrating the same things, and they all do things just different enough so that one thing that works one way on one distro may not work the same way on any either (I have 4 different distro's installed, and yes they are all very different in how they act).
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[Zero Angel]

Mandrake was changed to Mandriva because another company had rights to that name.