Talk:FreeBSD/Archive 2

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Archive 1 Archive 2

Merge Sysinstall into FreeBSD#Installers?

I believe that Sysinstall is redundant with FreeBSD#Installers, and should be merged with into this page. sysinstall is inly used on FreeBSD, correct? Gigglesworth (talk) 23:58, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Added "proposed merge" markup to both pages. Further discussion should be here only, per Help:Merging#Proposing_a_merger. The Crab Who Played With The Sea (talk) 13:50, 24 February 2013 (UTC)
  • Suport Sysinstall includes a lot of discussion about the other installers so does not stand alone. -—Kvng 14:42, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

"regarded as reliable and robust"

I went to Google Books and search the source for "reliable", and then "robust". I wasn't able to verify the information "regarded as reliable and robust". -- Jorge Peixoto (talk) 15:34, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

I searched for it but couldn't find any sources so I've removed it. --Kondi (talk) 14:22, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

TrustedBSD

The TrustedBSD reference to DARPA claimed a citation was needed. I added "Under DARPA/SPAWAR contract N66001-01-C-8035 ("CBOSS")", and removed the "Citation Needed" bit. I assume that the contract number is adequate citation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.127.182.235 (talk) 19:54, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

Kernel type

Shouldn't this be Monolithic instead of Modular? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.108.42.112 (talk) 23:55, 28 May 2013 (UTC)

8.4 is not an 'unstable release'

The template 'latest preview software release' mistakenly lists FreeBSD 8.4 as unstable release. This clearly is wrong; 8.4-RELEASE is not 'unstable'. If we are to apply FreeBSD terminology, it is a release of the 'legacy' branch 8.x. Some people claim even that 8.x is (currently) more stable than 9.x. Please correct this. 84.50.246.19 (talk) 09:46, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

favourite amongst ISPs during dot com bubble

Hotmail was originally hosted on a mix of FreeBSD and Solaris: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotmail#Launch_of_Hotmail

Microsoft has made use of FreeBSD internally: http://betanews.com/2001/06/18/microsoft-we-use-freebsd/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.39.99.163 (talk) 04:05, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

it's a victory! Microsoft had a look on bsd when removing it from hotmail about 12 years ago... Ok, suppose you're the best fan of freebsd, and you acquire hotmail, running by that time on AngriestCoMostProprietaryAndTheWorstThingNotUnixOS. So, question is, do you realize that that system would run now your service long time after you purchased the service in any case, despite your fan level? If you do, then what your comment for? This is just ridiculous. When migrating they still used to run bsd. Amazingly! Who could even imagine that such a thing may happen! ... For every maker of the OS no matter corporate or comunity driven it is the very important principle - use what is made by himself. This is a prestige and reputation! I think freebsd project is hosted on the freebsd servers. And all fansites too. Why the same approach has to be wrong in the case of microsoft? Of course they have migrated to Windows and it is a normal thing. And of course this took some time. There is no any not ridiculous reason so actively point to this fact and moreover - include this in the article. This says nothing valuable about bsd, just about fans complexes.

77.52.154.34 (talk) 01:00, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Timeline not rendering

I'm seeing this error: 

Timeline error. Command line was: '/usr/bin/perl' '/usr/local/apache/common-local/php-1.22wmf16/extensions/timeline/EasyTimeline.pl' -i '/tmp/timeline_59bf9bba7aca-1' -m -P '/usr/bin/ploticus' -T '/tmp' -A '/wiki/$1' -f 'FreeSans'

Teslacuted (talk) 00:07, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Timeline not showing FreeBSD 9.2

FreeBSD 9.2 has been in development for almost one month now, and release candidates are being built. Is it time already for the timeline graph to show it? src: FreeBSD 9.2 Release Process FChurca (talk) 20:16, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

FreeBSD 9.2 hasn't been released yet, cf. WP:CRYSTALBALL. I added a commented-out entry in preparation for the impending release. DES (talk) 09:25, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

FreeBSD 8.4 not in timeline

FreeBSD 8.4 was released on June 7, 2013 [1], and will be supported until June 30, 2015 [2].

I would make the change myself, but I was not able to figure out how to edit the timeline.

tjameson 16:14, 16 September 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tjameson (talk • contribs)

Fixed. DES (talk) 09:26, 19 September 2013 (UTC)
  1. ^ http://www.freebsd.org/news/newsflash.html
  2. ^ http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.4R/announce.html

Reliable sources

Most of the references that used in this article are self-published and according to Wikipedia guidelines, self-published references are not reliable. I know FreeBSD documents are excellent, but they are not suitable for an encyclopedia. We need third-party resources. With the current references, the article can't be nominated as good or featured article. If someone knows any reliable, third-party reference, please suggest that. Replacing self-published references with third-party references can greatly increase the quality of the article. Bkouhi (talk) 16:07, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the article needs secondary sources. AadaamS (talk) 16:13, 1 October 2013 (UTC)
A large number of reliable/third-party resources can be found here: FreeBSD in the Press, please help by adding them. Bkouhi (talk) 06:46, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

"Unix-compatible" in the intro

The intro contains the following line: Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called "Unix",[5] as a direct descendant of BSD (many of whose original developers became FreeBSD developers), FreeBSD's internals and system APIs are largely Unix-compatible. A few problems here: (1) This is previously unpublished synthesis, (2) claiming "Unix compatibility" is vague and meaningless, and (3) FreeBSD is descended from BSD, but all code from AT&T had to be stripped out. This means that the basic heritage of FreeBSD comes from BSD-specific code, along with code that was rewritten following the lawsuits (e.g. nvi replacing traditional vi). Huihermit (talk) 12:47, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I've rewritten this part of the intro. Huihermit (talk) 16:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Windows TCP/IP v4 stack and internet command line tools from BSD

Microsoft Windows incorporate TCP/IP v4 stack and all internet command line tools from BSD
@User:DagErlingSmørgrav you say that my sentence is "unreferenced and trivially demonstrated to be untrue", but the reference is the Wikipedia crosslink BSD I put, and the stack v4 is really from BSD. This is trivially demonstrated by the same command line options and syntax, the same packets network behavior, the same old ARP bug, and strings that you can find in binaries. All is well explained in BSD descendants and BSD Technology--Efa (talk) 11:48, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, but your edit went way beyond what can be demonstrated and documented. Firstly, I don't think there is any BSD network code in Vista or newer. Secondly, even in XP / 2000 Server, only a very small subset of BSD command-line tools was available; I believe nslookup was the only tool that was available in near-original shape, and even that probably came from ISC BIND, not directly from any BSD. I'm not sure where they got rsh, but it was not included in the base system; it was part of Services for Unix or its predecessor. In any case, none of this belongs in an article about FreeBSD unless you can document that Microsoft took code specifically from FreeBSD and not from 4.4BSD or one of its other descendants. DES (talk) 13:33, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
A Wikipedia link is not a valid reference for other Wikipedia page, as WP:WPNOTRS clearly states, so "the reference is the Wikipedia crosslink BSD" does not suffice. "The same packets network behavior, the same old ARP bug" does not ipso facto demonstrate that the networking stack is BSD-derived; in this Kuro5hin article, somebody who claims that "[they] worked at Microsoft for ten years, most of it on the core Windows NT/2000 (hereafter referred to as NT) networking code" says that the original NT TCP/IP stack was from Spider Systems, who had a BSD-based stack implemented atop STREAMS, and that it was replaced by a new stack, rewritten from scratch, in NT 3.5. Guy Harris (talk) 20:41, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I know, was Win9x, NT3.5, NT4 and Win2000 that included the code from BSD. From WinXP and ongoing they gradually replaced the code. Command line commands like 'arp', 'route', 'nslookup', 'ping' was exactly the same. Also Services for Unix is build in the same manner. The link kuro5hin.org is right, to me seems a valid reference, I cannot understand why you do not added the version of Win instead or removing the complete sentence.--Efa (talk) 07:34, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

The Kuro5hin post says that the rewrite was done for 3.5, not XP (5.1). It also says that the rewritten stack was used in Windows 95, hence probably in all Win9x releases. They might have done more work to it between 3.5 and XP, and there was a "next generation" stack (whatever that means) in Vista.
Some of the commands might be BSD-based, but there's a huge difference between some BSD commands having been ported to Winsock and the in-kernel stack up to the transport layer being BSD-based.
And, even if the NT 3.1 stack was ultimately BSD-based, unless the code in question came from FreeBSD rather than from other another BSD source (unlikely, given that NT 3.1 came out in 1993, the same year in which FreeBSD came out), a claim to that effect isn't particularly relevant to FreeBSD, and is better placed on the Berkeley Software Distribution page. (I also need to go take a look at the XNU source to see which of it is specifically FreeBSD-based; the VFS layer, for example, is somewhat changed from that of FreeBSD.) Guy Harris (talk) 08:39, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure the 9x and NT4/2000 stack was not rewritten (maybe only partially), contrary to what said the former employer, but I admit I have no valid (external) documentation link to point for this, was my personal experience with wireshark and protocol packets confirmed in BSD article. Most of the rewriting happened between XP and Vista, so NT5.1, anyway post 2000 (XP sometimes still show an old ARP bug). About command line tools, why you remove the sentence and not modified accordingly? Anyway I understood your point about BSD vs FreeBSD--Efa (talk) 21:02, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

"I'm sure the 9x and NT4/2000 stack was not rewritten (maybe only partially), contrary to what said the former employer, but I admit I have no valid (external) documentation link to point for this, was my personal experience with wireshark and protocol packets" That's insufficient to make me sure that the stack was not rewritten; it's not impossible for two separate network stacks to implement the same behavior, especially if the people writing one stack had seen the code for the other stack and used similar algorithms (which is not the same as using the code). It's also original research in any case.
As for the command-line tools, I shall leave that to Dag-Erling Smørgrav to address, as he's the one who removed the sentence. As per his comment "In any case, none of this belongs in an article about FreeBSD unless you can document that Microsoft took code specifically from FreeBSD and not from 4.4BSD or one of its other descendants.", at least part of the reason is probably that "XXX came from some BSD" doesn't make XXX specifically relevant to FreeBSD. It's also worth noting that the ipconfig command-line tool doesn't look particularly like any BSD tool, and is arguably a command-line tool for the Internet protocol stack, and thus might be a counterexample to a claim that "Microsoft Windows incorporate [ ... all internet command line tools from BSD." Guy Harris (talk) 21:21, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

"it's not impossible for two separate network stacks to implement the same behavior" simply not, lan timing and bugs are clear fingerprints. Instead your point about all command line tools counterexample is valid, but the remaining of tools sentence removal to me is a bad service--Efa (talk) 07:04, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

" simply not, lan timing and bugs are clear fingerprints". Or so you claim. I think your claim is false. Give me one good reason to believe it is not false. Guy Harris (talk) 07:27, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

The Windows XP FTP utility still includes a BSD copyright notice: 

$ strings ftp.exe | grep Regents
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Yes, Microsoft apparently believe that if it's not broken, you shouldn't fix it, and continue to offer a BSD-derived FTP command.
That doesn't say anything about the IP or TCP code being BSD-derived, however. Guy Harris (talk) 17:50, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Neutrality

I feel that overall the article has a pro-FreeBSD tone about it. For example, "Characterised in 2005 as "the unknown giant among free operating systems"" - although it states it was in 2005, a single reference from one article 10 years ago with such hyperbolic language is not really suited to the introduction. "FreeBSD has several unique features related to storage." Unique? How? This isn't backed up. "No noticeable performance penalty over native FreeBSD programs has been noted when running Linux binaries, and, in some cases, these may even perform more smoothly than on Linux." Again, this relies on one (unverified) reference from nearly 10 years ago, which has no direct relevance to performance or compatibility since then. I think that it reads like an article to promote FreeBSD, which has been toned down here and there with additions. Teppic74 (talk) 15:26, 23 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Teppic74, of course the article can be improved and you are welcome to do so. AadaamS (talk) 06:51, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Hacked FreeBSD servers

Hi, is it worth to mention about hacked FreeBSD servers in 2012? [1], [2], [3]. It has gained enough media attention, I think -- Bkouhi (talk) 22:24, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

nomination for GA

Hi, is this still a "C-class" article? Or does it meet the good article criteria? What're the problems and drawbacks? Can someone please tell me what parts of the article needs more work? -- Bkouhi (talk) 00:23, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, just saw this message. I think the biggest drawback is that the article is not consistent. E.g. some minor aspects are written in all broad technical details while other important things are missing. Over the last 10 years from time to time some feature has been added as the new hot thing, but later it was forgotten to adapt the paragraph when the feature became standard or even obsolete. For someone without BSD-Background it is quite difficult to read. Arved (talk) 08:02, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Does this article really need a "Version history" section?

I think the "Version history" section is more suitable for the History of FreeBSD than this article. I suggest removing this section from this article and merging it into the History of FreeBSD article. I think only a table with brief description (like this) is enough for this article. What do you think? -- Bkouhi (talk) 14:09, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I think a merge over to the History of FreeBSD is a good idea. AadaamS (talk) 15:55, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
I think this section should be a prose summary of the history of FreeBSD. Specifically, it should mention the first version, important releases and branches, the latest supported releases, and expected major releases. It should also mention important technology introductions. I think the version summary similar to that of the Dragonfly BSD article is excessive for this article. Mindmatrix 16:04, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
BTW: I agree that the bulk of this section should be merged to History of FreeBSD. Mindmatrix 16:06, 11 August 2014 (UTC)
  • How about a table like this? It is not a "prose summary", but I think a brief table like this with all major changes to the system is good enough for this article. This table is only an example and it may not contain all significant changes, but, it's a good starting point.


Legend: Old version, not maintained Older version, still maintained Current stable version Latest preview version Future release
Version Release date Supported until Significant changes
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.0 November 1993
  • The first official release.
  • The Ports Collection
Old version, no longer maintained: 1.1 May 1994
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.0 22 November 1994
  • replace code base with BSD-Lite 4.4 (to satisfy terms of the USL v. BSDi lawsuit settlement)
  • new installer and new boot manager
  • loadable filesystems support for more filesystems (MS-DOS, unionfs, kernfs)
  • imported loadable kernel modules from NetBSD
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2 March 1997
Old version, no longer maintained: 2.2.8 29 November 1998
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.0 October 1998
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.1 15 February 1999
Old version, no longer maintained: 3.4 20 December 1999
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.0 14 March 2000
  • IPv6 support and IPsec with KAME (applications were also updated to support IPv6)
  • OpenSSH integrated into the base system
  • emulator for SVR4 binary files
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.1 27 July 2000
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.8 3 April 2003 31 March 2004
Old version, no longer maintained: 4.10 27 May 2004 May 2006
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.0 14 January 2003 30 June 2003
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.1 9 June 2003 February 2004
  • experimental support for AMD64
  • experimental 1:1 and M:N thread libraries for multithreaded processing
  • experimental ULE scheduler
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.3 6 November 2004 31 October 2006
  • ALTQ
  • addition of new debugging framework KDB
  • import pf from OpenBSD
  • binary compatibility interface for native execution of NDIS drivers
  • replace XFree86 with X.org 6.7
  • cryptography enabled by default in base
Old version, no longer maintained: 5.4 9 May 2005 31 October 2006 import Common Address Redundancy Protocol from OpenBSD
Old version, no longer maintained: 6.2 15 January 2007 31 May 2008
  • support for Xbox architecture
  • OpenBSM
  • freebsd-update (binary updates for security fixes and errata patches)
Old version, no longer maintained: 7.0 27 February 2008 30 April 2009
Old version, no longer maintained: 7.1 4 January 2009 28 February 2011
Old version, no longer maintained: 8.1 23 July 2010 31 July 2012
  • High Availability Storage
Old version, no longer maintained: 9.0 12 January 2012 31 March 2013
  • substitute GCC with Clang and LLVM for base system
  • USB 3.0 support
  • UFS SoftUpdates+Journal
  • update ZFS to version 28
  • replaced sysinstall with bsdinstall
Current stable version: 10.0 20 January 2014 31 January 2015
  • Virtualization improvements (bhyve, virtio)
  • use clang and LLVM by default
  • capsicum
  • pkgng
  • BIND replaced with LDNS and Unbound in base system
  • add support for Raspberry Pi
Version Release date Supported until Significant changes

-- Bkouhi (talk) 19:32, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

The table is nice but has serious holes. e.g. from the current supported releases according to FreeBSD.org 8.4 and 9.3 are missing. Also mayor releases like 6.0 and 8.0 are missing Arved (talk) 07:52, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
What exactly constitutes the difference between a "Current version" (green background) and an "Older version, still supported" (yellow background)? It makes sense to me that release 10.1 is definitely a "current version". Release 10.0 is currently yellow (older reelase still supported) but the end-of-life date suggests that it isn't actually supported anymore. The status of releases 9.3 and 8.4 are much less obvious to me. Clearly they are still supported, but the FreeBSD project classifies them (according to http://www.freebsd.org/releases/ ) as "Legacy".24.222.2.222 (talk) 11:36, 30 March 2015 (UTC)
I've updated the table to match the table at History of FreeBSD. Mindmatrix 13:17, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

GA Review

GA toolbox
Reviewing
This review is transcluded from Talk:FreeBSD/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

Reviewer: Protonk (talk · contribs) 17:11, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


Overview

In general the article is pretty good. It covers an evolving, technical topic in a relatively straightforward manner. The lede summarizes the article fairly well and there are no major problems with images, sources or claims in the content. As an aside, I'm now very happy I've discovered How does one patch KDE2 under FreeBSD?.

I have a few concerns which I'd like to see addressed before I promote this article.

First, the sourcing in certain sections (e.g. History and Security, but others as well) is relatively thin, either relying on a single source, using broad "about me" sort of pages as a source for specific claims which are probably true but otherwise uncited or otherwise leaving it unclear to the reader where statements are supported by sources. I've listed some specific issues with sourcing below, but that assessment isn't exhaustive.

Second, there are a number of copyediting errors throughout the article. This stuff is hard to catch (I didn't even list them all), but issues with subject/verb agreement, pluralization and some others all exist. Most of these should be easy to fix and I don't expect that all of them be fixed before the article is promoted, just that a proponderance get some attention.

Third (and this is relatively minor), a number of the sections and paragraphs are somewhat awkwardly worded, probably from editors working to insert or improve specific sentences within sections without re-evaluating how the section reads after the change. I didn't dig through the history to prove this, but that's usually the case with very old wikipedia articles (and this article predates our current version history! It's more than 13 years old).

I think if we fix the bulk of the above problems I can promote this article without too much trouble. I've detailed some specific comments below. Feel free to reply to them inline or strike them as you go along, whichever works best for your flow. I've also suggested (but will by no means require) reorganizing the article to better reflect the relative importance of certain facets of FreeBSD. If doing so helps you fix some of the other problems (I think it might) feel free to reorganize it as the review goes along. I'm happy to follow along. If you think it'll get in the way then just take it as a suggestion from an outside editor and either ignore it or implement it on your own time. Protonk (talk) 19:37, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Caveat: I'll use the term BSD to refer to FreeBSD because it is less typing. :)
Hi Protonk. Thank you very much for this very useful and detailed review. Still working on the article, but until now, these changes were applied to the article. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
@Bkouhi: I've added some follow-up comments including some suggested sources for places where I feel the article can still be improved before it is passed as a GA. I think once some of those comments have been addressed and I make another pass for copyediting I can conclude the review. Protonk (talk) 16:26, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Style/layout

  • This is a matter of opinion, but an article this big should have a less flat hierarchy for sections. The features section has 11 subsections. This is perhaps too many.
  • Uses should be folded into another section or expanded (more on this elsewhere)
  • Could you please suggest a suitable section for merging this? -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:46, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure. I've moved it down a bit. I think it's something worth thinking about for you and the other editors of the article but not something I'll hold the review up over. Protonk (talk) 13:09, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Some terms are wikilinked too much, e.g. Walnut Creek CDROM (three times in the history section)
  •  Done Reading the article now, this seems to be fixed. Felixphew (Ar! Ar! Ar!) 23:04, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Images are tough for articles like this, but I suspect there's a better place for (at least) the KDE SC image than merely at the top of Features
  •  Done The image moved into the ports section, which I think is a better place for that image. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Don't use inline links in the article (e.g. the link to Frenzy in the list of derivatives)
  •  Done The link to Frenzy homepage moved into the External Links section.-- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Might the Version history section be better suited as a child of the history section?
  • I agree that it is better to have only one History section but IMHO, putting that large Version history at top of the article is not a good idea, on the other hand, I think the "History" section should be placed before the "Features" section. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "Also, FreeBSD supports IPX and AppleTalk protocols, but they are considered old and it is planned to drop support of them as of FreeBSD 11.0." this is awkwardly worded
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • the paragraph beginning with "The project has also ported the NSA's FLASK/TE implementation from SELinux to FreeBSD." seems like it would be better placed after the paragraph on how TrustedBSD components are folded in to other OSs
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:46, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • There are two hatnote links to FreeBSD Ports in successive sections. Perhaps we only need one?
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Sentences like "FreeBSD's development model is further described in an article by Niklas Saers." should be avoided. Imagine a reader looking at a PDF version of this article or reading it via Wikipedia Zero. They won't be able to read that article so the sentence itself will have little meaning to them.
  • I removed that sentence. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Should Unauthorized access to FreeBSD's servers be moved to a subsection in History?
  • IMHO, it may be too soon to mention this in the History section. I think the reader must have a clear background of FreeBSD project first. Aside from that, mentioning this in the History may imply that this is a very important event in the History of FreeBSD, which IMHO it is not, however it has widely covered by press. -- Bkouhi (talk) 22:22, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
  • That works for me. Protonk (talk) 22:33, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "...by Stealing SSH keys from FreeBSD's developers" aside from the capitalization problem, SSH links to SSH key. If this is intended you can just type [[SSH key]]s to get SSH keys.
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Copyediting problems such as "The user can load and unload this modules at any time." appear throughout the article. Pluralization seems to be a recurring problem, see also "Among the most popular mailing list[s]" and "official documentation" vs. "official documentations".
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "FreeBSD's official documentation consists of its handbooks, manual pages, mailing list archives, FAQs and a variety of articles, mainly maintained by The FreeBSD Documentation Project; they are available at FreeBSD's homepage." This is sort of a clunky sentence. Also are the mailing lists among the "official documentation"?
  • I removed the word official, but since I'm a language learner, not a native speaker, I may unknowingly make grammatical errors and particularly, this sentence looks OK to me, could you please provide an alternative? -- Bkouhi (talk) 22:22, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I'll take another look. Protonk (talk) 22:34, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "Moreover" is used twice within 3 sentences in the Logo section
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "Only support 64-bit (V9) architecture" "support" isn't needed here
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "It was written in C by Jordan Hubbard, is curses based and first appeared in FreeBSD 2.0." I'd move this line up (and perhaps reword some sentences around it) and move the following lines on the deprecation of sysinstall and the adoption of bsdinstall to a new paragraph.
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "annually-held conferences" just "annual"
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • The Version history section contains a hatnote to History of FreeBSD but the History section does not.
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Content

  • The "Commercial" paragraph in Uses is a bit out of place with the remainder. Surely commercial uses of BSD would fall into servers, desktop or embedded systems. If we're looking at other use cases (e.g. using a particular component of BSD in a piece of software) then they should be noted and cited.
  • I've removed this paragraph. -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:46, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Nearly half of the lede is devoted to summarizing a single thought: that BSD contains the entire OS in a single repo.
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • The second paragraph in History is a bit hard to follow. Was 4.4BSD-Lite an unbootable operating system because it lacked AT&T code? Were the versions of FreeBSD between 1.1 and 2.0 unbootable because they relied on 4.4BSD-Lite?
  • With the new version of History section, I think this is now fixed. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • We mention twice that BSD powered Walnut Creek's servers. Perhaps we're better off leaving that mention in the last paragraph and removing it from the list with Yahoo and Hotmail.
  •  Done I think this one is now considered to be done. -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:46, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Surely Apple's adoption of BSD for OS X merits a mention in the history section. More generally, there's nothing in there post 2000.
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "Much of this work was sponsored by DARPA under DARPA/SPAWAR contract N66001-01-C-8035 ("CBOSS")." Much of what work? TrustedBSD? OpenPAM?
  •  Done I have removed the sentence. -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:46, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Is there a reason why Tier 4 archs are listed on the portability tables? The cited source basically just says that anything not listed as tier 1-3 is tier 4 and unsopported. I see xbox here but I'm not convinced we need to include it in the table (I'm willing to be convinced, however!).
  •  Done Agree with you, I also think that there is no reason to mention some platforms as Tier 4. -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:46, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "This compatibility layer is not an emulation..." this sentence should be higher in the paragraph, probably before noting the caveats to the compatibility layer
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • What is an M:N threading model? Why is it the best in theory? How long was it in use in BSD before switching to another one?
  • I made a wikilink to the corresponding article and fixed the date. This is exactly what Michael Lucas said in his book, should we really mention why this model is the best? -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • It seems odd to say it is best in theory without providing a cite or a reason. I've dug around and found this conference paper on the switch and this very old paper on the scheduler in general. There are a few others but most of them which are specific to M:N -> 1:1 are student papers hosted on the web. Protonk (talk) 13:33, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • @Bkouhi: I've passed the article but I would like your input on the suitability of the above sources for the article. I think the threading issue is kinda interesting because BSD switched around the same time that other kernels switched and it seems like a lot of operating systems are moving toward the 1:1 model. Protonk (talk) 14:34, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Hello and thank you very much for the review and passing the article. Interesting papers, but unfortunately there is little or no mention of FreeBSD. Scheduler.pdf does not talk about FreeBSD at all (although it is hosted by FreeBSD's website), while paper_79.pdf only says "FreeBSD uses 1:1 threading model". Wouldn't it be WP:OR to use these papers? I always thought that references must explicitly talk about the subject (FreeBSD), otherwise it would be OR to use such a reference. Is this right? -- Bkouhi (talk) 22:21, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
  • @Bkouhi: Not mentioning FreeBSD was a big stumbling block on most of the papers I found, unfortunately. :( If we're trying to support the claim that M:N threading works best in theory (which does need a source) then the theory can be independent of BSD. I'd prefer a solid paper on why BSD made the switch, but I don't think it is too far out of bounds when making a claim like that to cite a general source. There are only some cases where this works and sometimes it comes down to your judgment. If you're not comfortable citing it then I'd recommend simply noting that BSD used to have a M:N threading model and switch to a 1:1 threading model without making claims in the article as to why one is preferred to the other. Does that make sense? Protonk (talk) 22:38, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "ClangBSD became self-hosting on 16 April 2010, an important landmark for further independent development." Why is it important? Who says?
  •  Done I removed the sentence. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Is there a reason we don't also embed the new logo in the logo section?
  • The new logo was already used in the Infobox, is it OK to use a non-free image twice in an article? -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Wait, the logo is isn't released under a copyleft license? I assumed that a project like FreeBSD would have a free content logo but trademark it like the foundation does. I see that it is trademarked here, but it's a bit surprising it's copyright encumbered. If that's the case then ignore this comment. Protonk (talk) 13:08, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I've asked on twitter about this. Let me know if there's someone who knows the answer and I'll ping them. Protonk (talk) 16:29, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I think it is not a good idea to use a free license for logos, they can be misused easily, even Wikipedia's logos are not free, AFAIK. -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:46, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  •  Done Ok. Not holding up the review either way. Protonk (talk) 13:06, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "FreeBSD's slogan is "The Power to serve" which is a registered trademark for The FreeBSD Foundation." how about "FreeBSD's slogan, "The Power to serve", is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation."?
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • The list of derivatives could probable be cut considerably (retaining the pointer to List of products based on FreeBSD), noting only the most significant or important derivatives.
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:46, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "As of 2013, there are plans for supporting them in FreeBSD 10." It's 2014 and BSD 10 is out. What happened to those plans?
  •  Done It is still not implemented. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "For a long time, FreeBSD used the sysinstall program as its main installer." How long?
  •  Done -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Sourcing & such

  • The citation needed tags on FreeBSD contributions to other operating systems need to be cleared up.
  •  Done I think this one is also considered to be done, I've removed those entries from the list. -- Bkouhi (talk) 08:46, 13 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Most of the History section is cited to a single source, the handbook. That's not necessarily hugely bad but it's something of a red flag for me. I'd like to see more sources included.
  • I have wrote the entire History section from scratch, with reliable, third-party sources. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • I copyedited the history section a bit and added {{cn}} tags for specific claims. They should be relatively trivial to source but I wanted to leave that part to you. Protonk (talk) 17:49, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • The security section is largely unsourced or dependent on a single source (basically the about page for the TrustedBSD project). At the very least I'm unclear where claims are cited to specific sources.
  • This is the hardest part, I added a source for ACLs, but I'm unable to find any reliable, third-party source for this section, however, I'm still working on this. Isn't that "about me" source enough? Please don't take this into account if I couldn't find any source. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • It's probably enough for a shorter section, but I think relying on that source causes two problems. First, it makes it hard for us to contextualize claims without OR. How important is TrustedBSD to FreeBSD? How important are any of the individual elements to the trusted BSD project? It also makes it hard for us to choose between different claims on the page when editing. Is "Much of this work was sponsored by DARPA under DARPA/SPAWAR contract N66001-01-C-8035 ("CBOSS")." an important claim to have in the encyclopedia? I don't know (I suspect not) and it's hard to tell definitively without another source on the matter. Is there a conference paper on Trusted BSD or any of the components in it available? A talk at one of the bsdcons about implementing it? Etc. Protonk (talk) 13:43, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • So I've found this paper (citation info here), this talk (It's paywalled but I've asked around to see if anyone has a copy), also this talk from eurobsdcon, which doesn't appear to be published anywhere but Robert Watson (computer scientist) is probably an SPS on the subject. Protonk (talk) 15:11, 11 September 2014 (UTC)
  • So that usenix talk is here (html version). It was paywalled until 2004 but I misread the page. Protonk (talk) 17:14, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the links, I've added a few other sources as well, but I still don't know if it is fully verifiable, could you please check this section once again? -- Bkouhi (talk) 22:29, 12 September 2014 (UTC)
  • "Through the years Beastie became both beloved and criticized as perhaps inappropriate for corporate and mass market exposure." Says who? I don't doubt that it's true, but we should find a source for that claim.
  • "The FreeBSD Project is unusual among open source projects in having developers who have worked with its source base for over 10 years before its release in 1993..." is there a source for this claim? The whole section is cited to the project admin page which appears (to me) to be just a directory of team members w/ roles noted.
  • I found no source for these claims, but I think removing these two unsourced claims does not hurt the article. -- Bkouhi (talk) 04:30, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

Security - irrelevant information and HardenedBSD promotion

Under FreeBSD#Security, there is a section filled with HardenedBSD ASLR promotion with only primary references. Furthermore, the ASLR upstreaming to FreeBSD by HardenedBSD has been abandoned by it's developers. https://reviews.freebsd.org/D3565#97806

There is a new ASLR project in place, sponsored by the FreeBSD foundation, which should be upstreamed to FreeBSD. However, until it is complete, it's really not relevant nor ASLR needs to be mentioned on the Security section of the page. https://reviews.freebsd.org/D5603

There is simply no need for mentioning HardenedBSD or ASLR on FreeBSD page. I am intentionally starting a talk about it, because I believe consensus is necessary prior to removing this section. Specifically, consensus is needed because I suspect edit war will start otherwise. For example, under Address_space_layout_randomization#FreeBSD you can see unverified and primary source explanation that HardenedBSD ASLR project was not upstreamed to FreeBSD "because of unwillingness of FreeBSD developers to include the proposed ASLR implementation" which is complete falsehood if you see the link above (about project being abandoned by HardenedBSD) Mr.hmm (talk) 01:22, 19 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree. I've rewritten the ASLR:FreeBSD section to be more neutral (before I saw this Talk section). KMeyer (talk) 19:31, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Derivatives — Embedded device operating systems list

Not sure this list of commercial products is noteworthy. I think instead perhaps we should just link to List of products based on FreeBSD. KMeyer (talk) 18:10, 12 December 2016 (UTC)

Reliability

This operating system looks much more reliable than competitors. Typical uptime of production machine should be listed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.41.41.56 (talk) 16:41, 2 March 2017 (UTC) version 5 : 2222 days — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.87.32.16 (talk) 11:51, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Prominent patriostistic flags should be avoided world-wide

The screenshot with the big flag is inappropriately out of topic. I do assume that it was put there *on purpose* or the guy who did the screenshot has been living for so long in an exaggerated patriotic community that he doesn't *think* anymore. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.236.187.110 (talk) 11:32, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Really? The screenshot includes a photograph of one of the contributors of FreeBSD and a FreeBSD foundation board member on a FreeBSD desktop and it took me 5 minutes to even figure out what flag you were even talking about. 50.77.48.113 (talk) 06:26, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

The “patriotistic” flag, whatever that is supposed to mean, is actually an Xfce tray widget that indicates the current keyboard layout. I know because I created the port in 2004. It looks huge because nobody in the Xfce project has a single clue about graphic design. DES (talk) 18:48, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Violation of the Unix trademark?

The text of the article currently states:

FreeBSD is a direct descendant of BSD, which was historically called "BSD Unix" or "Berkeley Unix" (in violation of the UNIX trademark).

This sounds wrong to me. BSD Unix was Unix. It shared the code base. It wasn't until the AT&T stuff was excised in the early 1990s that BSD lost the right to be called Unix. Does anybody disagree? I plan to remove this claim of violation. Groogle (talk) 07:13, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

As the saying went, "Unix is a trademark of Bell Laboratories", later "...a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories" and, still later, one of the "registered trademarks of AT&T" listed.
So Bell Labs, later AT&T, got to decide to whom to license the trademark. There was a time when they only allowed the trademark to be used for systems with few differences from the code they sold; "shared the code base" wasn't sufficient. (When I was at Sun, in the late 1980's, we changed the name printed in the OS banner from "Sun UNIX 4.2BSD" to "SunOS", at AT&T's request, when we started working with AT&T on what ultimately became SVR4, due to the trademark issue.)
So BSD UNIX "was Unix" in the sense of being derived from the AT&T code base, but that didn't grant the University of California, Berkeley, or any vendor who based their OS on BSD UNIX, a right to use the Bell Labs/AT&T trademark.
However, AT&T then sold the code, and the trademark rights, to Novell; Novell later sold the code to SCO and the trademark rights to X/Open. Later X/Open merged with The Open Group; The Open Group now own the trademark. They license it for use with any system that passes their validation suite for the Single Unix Specification, regardless of how much AT&T code, if any, was used in that system. (NetBSD explicitly say they're not UNIX - not because they have little AT&T code left, but because they haven't been licensed for the trademark.)
So if somebody were to take FreeBSD (or NetBSD, or OpenBSD, or DragonFly BSD, or pick-your-favorite-Linux-distribution, or...) try to run it through the Single Unix Specification validation suite, fix the problems that appeared, try to run it again, lather, rinse, repeat..., they could eventually produce something for which the "UNIX" trademark would be licensed, making it a "UNIX(R)", regardless of how much AT&T code remained. In fact, an organization did take an OS with a kernel based on a combination of Mach and BSD kernel code, and a lot of BSD userland code, and go through that very cycle, and produced something that can have the UNIX trademark applied to it (and have continue to do so for all releases since the first one for which that was done).
And AT&T did, in fact, sue the Regents of the University of California and Berkeley Software Design, Inc. for, among other things, trademark issues. At least as I read the court's opinion (usual disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer), they didn't completely dismiss the trademark complaints of AT&T, so I'm not sure whether AT&T's claim to a right to decide what's a "UNIX(R)" was rejected. Guy Harris (talk) 09:12, 15 January 2019 (UTC)
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