# What is the opinion of university teachers about *BSD?



## Deleted member 53988 (Jun 2, 2018)

What is the opinion of university teachers about *BSD?

I wonder what Oko would say about it.


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## unitrunker (Jun 2, 2018)

Like this guy?

https://twitter.com/bsdbcr

"Benedict joined the FreeBSD Project in 2009. After receiving his full documentation commit bit in 2010, he actively began mentoring other people to become FreeBSD committers over the years. He is a proctor for the BSD Certification Group. Benedict has a Master of Science degree in Computer Science and is teaching a UNIX for software developers class at the University of Applied Sciences, Darmstadt, Germany. He joined the FreeBSD Foundation in 2015."

https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/about/board-of-directors/


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## Deleted member 53988 (Jun 2, 2018)

There are university teachers that criticise *BSD?

If yes, why?

I wonder what Oko would say about it.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 2, 2018)

Oko is not a university professor. Your second post seems surprised by the question in your first post. You need to explain that.


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## Deleted member 53988 (Jun 2, 2018)

*There are university teachers that speaks badly of *BSD?*

If yes, why?


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 3, 2018)

This looks like a good research project you can do on your own as the only way one would know is by asking them. Other than Oko, I'm not sure how many here are in contact with enough such professors to ask them. Then that leaves Googling (you did Google first, didn't you?) or just writing this off as another one of those goofy, amateur-ish type question you'd find on reddit where everyone who knows nothing about the subject has a definite answer that won't answer the question at all.


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## shepper (Jun 3, 2018)

During my training at a SCOR (Specialized Center of Research) the systems that handled data and infrastructure were unix based.  Most of the Individual researchers used Windows or Mac's.  Oko administers a similar University based research project with about 60 machines.  The head of the project, the grant holder, is often agnostic in regards to Operating system.  The 2 greatest sins are downtime and data loss.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 3, 2018)

Ninja_Root, I have been bragging in another forum about how had turned yourself around and were no longer trolling, that you had said something about going to school the last time I spoke with you, that you were my friend and standing up for you when other people were badmouthing you for past deeds.

Please don't make me regret it or look like a fool for defending you by playing games, and you and I both know that's what's up with this thread. I'll be very disappointed in you if you start that up again.


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## ShelLuser (Jun 3, 2018)

I have to wonder: who cares (other than the OP)?  It's not as if an opinion coming from a university has any extra value to add these days.

I've seen too many well known universities backup and sponsor (!) IndieGoGo projects (think Waterseer) of which _anyone_ with a basic understanding of physics (thermodynamics in my example) could easily determine that the project was a fluke...  Even high schoolers would be able to determine as much.

But not some universities. They dubbed projects like those (to extract water from the air, it would help poor countries *lol*) as innovative and progressive. Of course also quickly changing their stories after several critics pointed out that by merely applying a few laws of physics you could easily determine that the whole project was a failure from the getgo (how are you going to extract water from the air in a country with extremely low humidity?). Then they quickly added the well known disclaimers.

Universities used to be institutes of knowledge but these days... I'm not too sure anymore.


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## Deleted member 53988 (Jun 3, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> Ninja_Root, I have been bragging in another forum about how had turned yourself around and were no longer trolling, that you had said something about going to school the last time I spoke with you, that you were my friend and standing up for you when other people were badmouthing you for past deeds.
> 
> Please don't make me regret it or look like a fool for defending you by playing games, and you and I both know that's what's up with this thread. I'll be very disappointed in you if you start that up again.



Trihexagonal,

I will be being ungrateful if I start that up again.

I will not start that up again.

Please, sorry me.

Good lucky!


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## rigoletto@ (Jun 3, 2018)

ShelLuser said:


> Universities used to be institutes of knowledge but these days... I'm not too sure anymore.



Now, they are "safe" places for people who get easily offended...

Fortunately, my former University (the Faculty of Law at least) are not going on this way and things still work as they should - _as far I am aware_. Professors still have freedom, and they still literally trash a thesis during the presentation when that is shitty.

At the same time we have (had in my case) all the freedom to get in even pretty hardcore (juridical) arguments with the professors during the class (while keeping the respect and dignity) without any kind of retaliation.

I remember of many I had with a Professor (International Relations) during my Masters who was a particular severe one, and most of them and up with her ending the class and both leaving with that grumpy face. Next day everything was normal again, no problems. All my colleagues who went to some argument with that professor leave the class in tears. 

Good times.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 3, 2018)

lebarondemerde said:


> Now, they are "safe" places for people who get easily offended...


OMG I have recent stories I wish I could tell. This current generation has gone over the edge.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 3, 2018)

Everybody gets a trophy. Because there are no winners, that's emotionally hurtful to people not as inclined, only losers in that scenario.

The Leaders of Tomorrow.

I have never been late to work a day in my life. I would rather have called in sick than be late.


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## Seek+ (Jun 4, 2018)

My twin brother and I actually only got our bachelor's in Computer Science last year, and for our degrees, from a Cal State University, we were required to learn to use FreeBSD in our Open Source History class.

Our professor was a real BSD fanatic, he had tons of Beastie merchandise on his desk. My brother and I probably would have never tried it had it not been for that class. And we probably wouldn't have our Beastie bumper stickers either!

So I think it's safe to say, at least for our school, we're taught to have a pretty positive opinion of BSD.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 6, 2018)

Ninja_Root said:


> What is the opinion of university teachers about *BSD?
> 
> I wonder what Oko would say about it.




My estimations knowing several universities and schools.
- Windows, Android and Mac are the most popular *they think that's the best*,
- If opensource is used, maybe 1-10% of universities or less, then it will be Linux (between 1 and 10 pct),
- *BSD* is almost not at all used for educational purposes by universities. Almost 0 percent or below 1pct. Using BSD by universities or teachers is very rare.

Education is closed source, and teachers and universities teach student how to not to use free Operating Systems, but rather how to use Microsoft Windows.  Which is actually good, it is good to use Windows, because everyone does so.  (man, what a modern believe  )


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 8, 2018)

Ninja_Root said:


> Trihexagonal,
> 
> I will be being ungrateful if I start that up again.
> 
> ...



I am very proud of Ninja_Root. That was a very appropriate response and speaks volumes to me about him as a person. This proves to me he recognizes kindness when he sees it, responds appropriately with gratitude and is grateful when good will is shown to him.

For those of you who don't know, Ninja_Root is best known for running a troll campaign at approximately 15-16 Linux forums last year. I shudder to think the chaos his questions and games must have created among those poor flightless birds and the loss of bowel control they must have endured over his words...

Everybody hated him, most thought it was several people or that he was a bot. Having bots myself, I knew from his responses he was human and the same person. I saw good qualities in him others apparently could not, perhaps because I can relate to him where they can't. What he really needed was a kind word and a little friendly guidance, so I provided it. I only participated in one thread, but he soon stopped trolling. 

He did have a little setback here, but even I have my bad days. This is a game called Bait the Trap, though his technique needs polish. You ask a loaded question you already know the answer to and when the time/response is right you snap the trap and trip them up. I don't know what he had in store for Oko, but I know the game well and the only way you can win is not to play. I knew it the moment I saw it last year and what initially caught my interest.

But he has agreed to allow me to advise him and offer guidance in an effort to maximize his potential as a productive person and help him to deal with people on a more effective basis. He has told me he will no longer troll any forums, has never lied to me and always treated me with the same courtesy and respect I show him. 

I'm not his boss and he has free will to do as he pleases, but I expect good things from Ninja_Root, I've spoken with him several times, he is quite reasonable and open to suggestion and I don't hold any of his past deeds against him. People can change.

And if you happened to be among those who defecated on their webbed feet, you have my deepest sympathy. It won't happen again.

Now we need to get him to run a FreeBSD box and make a real Daemon out of him.


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## getopt (Jun 8, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> ... This current generation has gone over the edge.



Adults have been complaining about the behavior of young people, and civilization hasn't yet come to an end because of the rebelliousness of teenagers.

See there what _Aristotélēs, Sōkrátēs _et al. wrote on that subject.

And I love such sentences like yours, as it opens the question over what edge you think they are going and how they are doing it in our days. That would be interesting. Make your point. __


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## kpedersen (Jun 8, 2018)

I am a lecturer at a university and often mention about "alternative operating systems" and how cross platform knowledge is a very sought after skill in the industry. Some of the very good students (top 2%) are very interested and will at least give Linux a shot.

The problem is I teach software engineering on a games development course and this industry is a little bit "backwards" when it comes to FOSS. Many of my students know what an Angry Bird or a COD is but have rarely heard of a Linux and certainly never heard of BSD.

What I do get from them is that from an early age, they are taught in their computing or ICT classes that UNIX is too hard or archaic for normal people and that they should stick with Windows. This is obviously just a blatant lie (I don't really respect any developer who has only ever used Windows). This means that Microsoft has gotten their hooks in at a very early age. Apple is actually doing quite well at pulling out these hooks but there is still work to be done.

In the library we do have about 4 copies of "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD" and I often use that and the K&R C book as recommended reading material when teaching fundamental C or C++.

(Though I do understand that if NVIDIA pulls the plug in the binary blob (and I predict they will in the next few years), then FreeBSD is absolutely dead in the water in terms of game development until Intel steps up and starts selling discrete GPUs. This perhaps makes FreeBSD not ideal to recommend on a games course haha)


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 8, 2018)

kpedersen  An Intel guy has just stepped away from his work and will focus on FreeBSD development for Intel products. There's a news link about this just a couple of days ago somewhere.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 8, 2018)

getopt said:


> Adults have been complaining about the behavior of young people, and civilization hasn't yet come to an end because of the rebelliousness of teenagers.



Not the same thing and I'm hesitant to go on about it but I've noticed an overemphasis on "feelings" and hyper-analysis of words and phrases one uses in every day conversation and young people will get angry if they perceive a word used in the wrong way, to them, even to the point of quitting their job. "Be nice" means "allow anything" even if it means the ground crumbling beneath their feet.

Confusing is their "both sides of the mouth" conversations where they disdain the use of words and sentences while injecting vulgarities into their own conversation as easily as one "and", "or" and "but".

Then there's the rise of the Social Justice Warriors which I truly believe has been brought on by the existence of the internet where there is no educated person to vet "fake news" from reality and a clear vision.

I've also noticed a deep-seated need to avoid the fundamentals. The basics of everything we build our education and lives on. Everyone needs a college degree whether you need one or not. A few years later, they're still reading meters for the gas company. (True story.)

And that's the truth. I do not want to respond to anything further to this.


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## kpedersen (Jun 8, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> - *BSD* is almost not at all used for educational purposes by universities. Almost 0 percent or below 1pct. Using BSD by universities or teachers is very rare.


Actually, though not quite the same thing, in one of my units we cross compile for PS4 devkits which is running FreeBSD (albeit a janky weird fork).
So I can maybe say that we use ~FreeBSD for about 5% of our course 



drhowarddrfine said:


> An Intel guy has just stepped away from his work and will focus on FreeBSD development for Intel products.


I am actually quite relieved about this because the way things are going at the moment, even basic GUI components are needing a damn accelerated GPU :/


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## Spartrekus (Jun 9, 2018)

getopt said:


> Adults have been complaining about the behavior of young people, and civilization hasn't yet come to an end because of the rebelliousness of teenagers.
> 
> See there what _Aristotélēs, Sōkrátēs _et al. wrote on that subject.
> 
> And I love such sentences like yours, as it opens the question over what edge you think they are going and how they are doing it in our days. That would be interesting. Make your point. __



do you have maybe the original book for ebook maybe epub over gutenberg or archives
currently I read plato and this is interesting about areas for education

education has not single comparison. What it was and what it could be today. Today it is too much commercial and intended to money and corruption.


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## scottro (Jun 9, 2018)

I think the answer to the question would depend upon each professor teaching computer oriented courses, in each university or college, in every country.  Some will like it, some will probably have a reason not to like it.  It offers less employment opportunities than Linux, let alone Windows or Mac, so some may simply encourage use of other systems feeling that they are giving the students better opportunities. If we get a hundred people on this forum saying my professor is against FreeBSD, what percentage of professors, even in a state with many universities and community colleges, is that?  And that would be one state in one country, the US.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 9, 2018)

scottro said:


> I think the answer to the question would depend upon each professor teaching computer oriented courses, in each university or college, in every country.  Some will like it, some will probably have a reason not to like it.  It offers less employment opportunities than Linux, let alone Windows or Mac, so some may simply encourage use of other systems feeling that they are giving the students better opportunities. If we get a hundred people on this forum saying my professor is against FreeBSD, what percentage of professors, even in a state with many universities and community colleges, is that?  And that would be one state in one country, the US.



c# makes senses in computer oriented courses due to the demand from companies.
Microsoft and Github fit well many companies
So it makes senses that bsd has no place or that it is even not known.

Like dependency Microsoft makes sure that programmers will be smoking more.


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## scottro (Jun 9, 2018)

I found myself waking up early, and those are the times I post stupid rants, so I will refrain.  I will say though, that yeah, MS and Adobe provide the cheap software to students, so that when they get hired, they say, Oh you should use MS/Adobe for this graphics/programming etc.   

I don't even know if it's evil or just smart business.


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## fernandel (Jun 9, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> Today it is too much commercial and intended to money and corruption.


It is but it is still the same and people don't want to see that.

Bertolt Brecht said, “Hungry one, reach for the book—it is a weapon.”


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## Spartrekus (Jun 9, 2018)

scottro said:


> I found myself waking up early, and those are the times I post stupid rants, so I will refrain.  I will say though, that yeah, MS and Adobe provide the cheap software to students, so that when they get hired, they say, Oh you should use MS/Adobe for this graphics/programming etc.
> 
> I don't even know if it's evil or just smart business.



For an UNIX  programmer it is evil
For an university risen programmer it is the only truth and good.

both are right and have their own solid motivations.


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## scottro (Jun 9, 2018)

I liked that reply, (hence the thanks) Good answer, IMHO.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 9, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> c# makes senses in computer oriented courses due to the demand from companies.


A degree in Computer Science was never a degree in "programming" and most(?) (real) universities and colleges never taught more than one language back in the dya. I was told even that was an elective.


Spartrekus said:


> So it makes senses that bsd has no place or that it is even not known.


Any such professor or school is not one I would ever recommend learning from and be embarrassed to claim I went there. There are so many schools now that claim to offer degrees in CS but they are no more than trade schools.

Somewhat related: does anyone remember Control Data Institute, a school for electronics by Control Data in the 1970s and 80s? It was a trade school for cranking out electronic technicians who knew nothing of the subject and I taught there for a couple of years when I lost a job and, out of frustration, thought I would enjoy that. I found the place filled with other teachers who also knew nothing of the subject but like to pretend to. I considered myself an expert in the field and it must have shown as my class size swelled from 60 to start to 125 as students transferred to my class over time and long lines formed when I showed up for work to get their questions answered.

Why? Cause I found the tests and course books riddled with errors and I was the only one who could, and would, thoroughly explain the foundation of how and why things worked that made sense without regard to any company's product (though CDC computers were the only examples given).

But I quit after maybe two years because I was frustrated and saddened at the quality of education they were receiving. Most of these people were there only cause they were told they could make a good living as an electronic tech and not because they cared about the subject. Few of them ever messed with electronics as a hobby or knew anything about it before signing on. Out of hundreds of students, there were only three I would recommend to hire and I did get them hired on at DEC through a former co-worker.

On my last day, a student requested a special tutorial on a subject for a few classmates. I arranged a room and, at the appointed hour, it swelled with as many as it could fill and I was presented with a bottle of fine quality whiskey from the students and a speech. (I didn't mention to anyone that I don't drink.)

**sniff**

Sorry for the reminiscing, and I'm not bringing that all up to pat myself on the back, but my point is schools/colleges/universities need to be teaching the science of computing and not be a marketing arm for companies.


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## Crivens (Jun 9, 2018)

scottro said:


> I don't even know if it's evil or just smart business.


Is there a difference?


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## kpedersen (Jun 9, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> c# makes senses in computer oriented



This is actually a massive problem for us. All the students ever want to do is "fiddle about" inside a game engine called Unity with C# rather than learning about core topics in graphics programming.

The big issue is that Unity is a "prosumer" tool and as such they learn absolutely nothing useful with it. Worse still is that the company behind Unity has so much money and venture capital that they can keep pushing advertising. Especially on game development forums they are often full of bloody paid Unity Evangelists that so many potentially gifted graphics programmers are just brainwashed into becoming mediocre 

It is also slowly weaseling its way further into "academia". We have more C# / Unity related units than C++ units now, which is absolutely hideous for a games programming degree.

The worst part is that I also notice that Unity is killing the passion of my students. They have been told repeatedly from the advertising that "Unity is the best!" and yet they don't truly enjoy using it because the whole thing deep down is so damn amateur.

Anyway, [/rant] complete. Back to the topic haha.


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## Phishfry (Jun 9, 2018)

I had to look up CDC. I wasn't sure if that was H Ross Perot 's old company. I was wrong about that.
CDC did have a prestigious run there. It is amazing how much the Navy pushed computer progress.
Incredible the Citigroup story too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Data_Corporation


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## Spartrekus (Jun 9, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> This is actually a massive problem for us. All the students ever want to do is "fiddle about" inside a game engine called Unity with C# rather than learning about core topics in graphics programming.
> 
> The big issue is that Unity is a "prosumer" tool and as such they learn absolutely nothing useful with it. Worse still is that the company behind Unity has so much money and venture capital that they can keep pushing advertising. Especially on game development forums they are often full of bloody paid Unity Evangelists that so many potentially gifted graphics programmers are just brainwashed into becoming mediocre
> 
> ...



Microsoft makes sure that programmers will be using Microsoft products. Microsoft will be always strongly present in our education system.

the law of physics will explain it well.

The less energy or efforts it requires, the higher probability it will grow.
This does not imply quality.


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## sidetone (Jun 10, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> My estimations knowing several universities and schools.
> - Windows, Android and Mac are the most popular *they think that's the best*,
> - If opensource is used, maybe 1-10% of universities or less, then it will be Linux (between 1 and 10 pct),
> - *BSD* is almost not at all used for educational purposes by universities. Almost 0 percent or below 1pct. Using BSD by universities or teachers is very rare.
> ...


Linux is often used in college for Unix/Linux administration courses (the closet you can get to a BSD OS in college), depending on the teacher and those who design the courses. However, it is run on a virtualized environment on top of... Microsoft Windows. At one point, Apple computers were used in American colleges, generally.



Spartrekus said:


> Microsoft makes sure that programmers will be using Microsoft products. Microsoft will be always strongly present in our education system..


Apple has done something similar in the past, by providing public schools with Macs, to gain them as repeat customers.



Trihexagonal said:


> For those of you who don't know, Ninja_Root is best known for running a troll campaign at approximately 15-16 Linux forums last year.


Hmm... maybe I should do that. Kidding.


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## giahung1997 (Jun 10, 2018)

In Vietnam's Universities and Colleges (CS, IT, SE...), the BSDs are rarely mentioned. With them, Unix is a dead and obsolete (so does BSDs) and modern (replacement to) Unix, and superior is Linux.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 10, 2018)

microsoft or apple have today no worries to have. Many just use only MS or Apple, and mostly nothing else may come as alternative. Gaming for instance, young generations, will prefer to have Microsoft (or PSx, Xbox,..).


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 10, 2018)

Apple's OSX is certified UNIX so don't tell those uninformed schools and professors.

Linux considers itself a Unix-like system but don't tell those uninformed schools and professors. They would be horrified.

Years ago, Vincent Price did a TV commercial for the butter industry when margarine producers would proudly claim their tubs tasted "just like butter". His commercial would end, "We would *never* say butter tastes just like margarine!".


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## rigoletto@ (Jun 10, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Years ago, Vincent Price



I don't remember the last time I heard someone mentioning Vicent Price. 

Everytime I hear of him I remember of this:






Sorry, about this off topic.


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## Crivens (Jun 10, 2018)

My university time started with programming courses in pascal on 80186 machines running SINIX. Later there was HP-UX, solaris, irix, ... and no windows to be seen. But then again, this was a technical university. You could, as a student, obtain login on a cray if what you wanted to do was sufficiently scientific. And as long as you did not use more as some minutes of cpu time per week. On the smaller SGI, building and installing of xemacs took about 30 seconds cpu total (well, one node for longer, but the complete machine for that). Typing "make -j" and seeing 100 compiler processes pop up... ahh the times... our department admin is still a NetBSD contributor. Linux entered the student pools only after that. *sheds a tear*


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## Spartrekus (Jun 10, 2018)

Crivens said:


> My university time started with programming courses in pascal on 80186 machines running SINIX. Later there was HP-UX, solaris, irix, ... and no windiws to be seen. But then again, this was a technical university. You could, as a student, obtain login on a cray if what you wanted to do was sufficiently scientific. And as long as you did not use more as some minutes of cpu time per week. On the smaller SGI, building and installing of xemacs took about 30 seconds cpu total (well, one node for longer, but the complete machine for that). Typing "make -j" and seing 100 compiler processes pop up... ahh the times... our department admin is still a NetBSD contributor. Linux entered the student pools only after that. *sheds a tear*



You are a lucky one. Hears already pretty good.

MIT is actually a great supporter of BSD and GNU Linux.


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## kpedersen (Jun 10, 2018)

giahung1997 said:


> In Vietnam's Universities and Colleges (CS, IT, SE...), the BSDs are rarely mentioned. With them, Unix is a dead and obsolete (so does BSDs) and modern (replacement to) Unix, and superior is Linux.



Those Vietnam Universities you mentioned obviously don't know what they are talking about and are naive.

UNIX isn't Linux but Linux can be a UNIX:
Inspur K-UX and EulerOS are both UNIX because they have the certification. They are however both downstream distributions of RedHat Enterprise Linux.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_UNIX_Specification#Inspur_K-UX


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 11, 2018)

Apple has been doing that since the Apple][ so this is nothing new.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 12, 2018)

Apple is relatively less "devilish side" than Microsoft or much more Google. 

The hidden part of Google is that they give completely nice applications (very slow) on your browser (bloat software by excellence) and the data are no longer yours. 

The best experience I noticed is when I tried google drive. Try to believe that it isn't files/folder that are Google ones. 

Facebook, ... all clouds,... people are fan of such things, because they have never ever heard or meant BSD.


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## kpedersen (Jun 12, 2018)

Things like Google Drive are all well and good but as soon as you want to do something like `sha1sum <myfile>` or even `git diff`. You know... actual work, then it just becomes an absolute defective waste of time.

This and dropbox are products that I absolutely ban my students from using for the units I run. Unfortunately some of the other staff let them get away with it which is a shame. For assignments I required that they submit the .git or .svn folder so that I can see that they haven't just slapped the work together the night before, and that they are using correct tools.

I am now actually toying with the idea of making assignments Subversion only. That way I can guarantee they are not just jumping on the amateur GUI integration in Visual Studio and GitHub. I want them to at least think about code management, build system portability and future maintenance.


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## Sensucht94 (Jun 12, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> OMG I have recent stories I wish I could tell. This current generation has gone over the edge.



Where I attend classes I can assure University is as hostile as it can be and teachers couldn't stricter. In addition they also have the presumption to always be right, even when there are randomized control trials and metanalysis proving they're wrong,  ignoring science is moving forward at a faster pace than the one they claim to keep up with. They want you to repat their exact words at exams and in most cases are close-minded towards changes, new ideas and personal initiative.



drhowarddrfine said:


> Not the same thing and I'm hesitant to go on about it but I've noticed an overemphasis on "feelings" and hyper-analysis of words and phrases one uses in every day conversation and young people will get angry if they perceive a word used in the wrong way, to them, even to the point of quitting their job. "Be nice" means "allow anything" even if it means the ground crumbling beneath their feet.



That's the Internet and the mom's basement guys which hang on it, it's not reality. I don't know if IT, electronics engineering, computer science courses got populated with sensitive cry-babies (not my impression looking at friends of mine and their colleagues); I can speak for Medicine, and in Medicine you're given 2 choices to pick out:

- you are a serious mature person, prone to work hard and do his/her best, who knows his/her place, humble enough to recon own's mistakes, ready to be ordered to do whatever whenever, speak and ask questions only when appropriate, respect elders, respect patients and look at the human beings behind them and not at diseases, be not shy when it comes to  deal with blood, organic material, nastiness, be cold-blooded and professional when presented with life-threatening cases....

- you're out



Spartrekus said:


> - If opensource is used, maybe 1-10% of universities or less, then it will be Linux (between 1 and 10 pct),
> - *BSD* is almost not at all used for educational purposes by universities. Almost 0 percent or below 1pct. Using BSD by universities or teachers is very rare.



A friend of mine did indeed have a pentesting course mostly focused on using Kali and its default userland, so it's not like Linux is completely ignored. Fedora is quite wide spread in Rome's Universities, there's even a Linux support community in my Univeristy (which I've been part of for some months),  mostly driver by Engineering and IT students. However I was surprised to see how poorly competent they were around Unix-like systems and how they would boast their incompetence disguising for God's knowledge in front of newcomers; I left disappointed.
None of them had ever heard about BSDs or Solaris, neither had that IT student (now graduate) friend of mine.
The focus on Android is high: they were all trying to write some basic App in Java


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 13, 2018)

Sensucht94 said:


> That's the Internet and the mom's basement guys which hang on it, it's not reality.


Not in the case I'm talking about, though you're right. I'd write about what happened to me or what I've seen and heard but it's too much background or can be hard to follow the context.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 13, 2018)

Sensucht94 said:


> A friend of mine did indeed have a pentesting course mostly focused on using Kali and its default userland, so it's not like Linux is completely ignored. Fedora is quite wide spread in Rome's Universities, there's even a Linux support community in my Univeristy (which I've been part of for some months),  mostly driver by Engineering and IT students. However I was surprised to see how poorly competent they were around Unix-like systems and how they would boast their incompetence disguising for God's knowledge in front of newcomers; I left disappointed.




There are in UK basically two interesting educative approaches : (1) you give materials (leading to fully dependence of student for his future career)  or (2) education targets to let student look himself/herself for learning materials.
The second approach is most of the time more efficient on learning than the first approach. The first one is however the most classical educative method of most education systems in Europe/US/Asia.

You do not educate anyone if you make them completely depend on others and on a given system, right?
It depends on the people level of self responsibility and respect. Eventually, "I am happy", means "*I*"  (me) right?
You are responsible of yourself. btw, do you want a glass of wine?




Trihexagonal said:


> I am very proud of Ninja_Root. That was a very appropriate response and speaks volumes to me about him as a person. This proves to me he recognizes kindness when he sees it, responds appropriately with gratitude and is grateful when good will is shown to him.
> 
> For those of you who don't know, Ninja_Root is best known for running a troll campaign at approximately 15-16 Linux forums last year. I shudder to think the chaos his questions and games must have created among those poor flightless birds and the loss of bowel control they must have endured over his words...
> 
> ...



Maybe you, we,... could also chat on IRC sometime,... this would be more efficient sometimes to discuss BSD areas.
All rules for everyone the same. That's kind, kindness, respect of others, ... this should always be preserved. Sympathy to you guys.


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## kpedersen (Jun 13, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> There are in UK basically two interesting educative approaches : (1) you give materials (leading to fully dependence of student for his future career)


Heh, we call that spoonfeeding. My colleague does the best impression 

In all fairness, some students do require a bit more of it than others or they simply will not get a degree at the end. How this relates to FreeBSD is actually very much the point. The spoonfed ones will simply never encounter FreeBSD (or anything else) unless we specifically put it on the course. Justifying FreeBSD in the intended learning outcomes on a games course is a hard one to put by the external examiners but other courses might have a bit more luck.

I wish I could say that learning FreeBSD will "help students realise the inner workings of the PS4's Orbis OS"... But unfortunately that is simply not the case and the external examiners are not stupid people haha. In the past some of ours actually worked for Sony and were there to add an industry perspective.

Android is always a disappointment. I wish they would get rid of that terrible Java crap and make the Android NDK (and cmake) the premier and supported toolchain. C/C++ cross compilers are used for the majority of commercial console games and teaching anything else is just daft. Especially since the Java-centric mess (Gradle) is harder to learn than C++/CMake and changes every year meaning you have just wasted your time.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 14, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> Heh, we call that spoonfeeding. My colleague does the best impression
> 
> In all fairness, some students do require a bit more of it than others or they simply will not get a degree at the end. How this relates to FreeBSD is actually very much the point. The spoonfed ones will simply never encounter FreeBSD (or anything else) unless we specifically put it on the course. Justifying FreeBSD in the intended learning outcomes on a games course is a hard one to put by the external examiners but other courses might have a bit more luck.
> 
> ...



I understand you. 

I think that SDK/C#/Java/... basically Windows programmers do not see the problems that their software is running slow, and they give their fault of programming for the hardware industry. The fault is the hardware industry that should give better machines.


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## Crivens (Jun 14, 2018)

Moores law says the performance doubles every 18 months. Gates law says that the performance of software halves every 12 month. I wonder why. I have two old color macs, this all-in-one periscop design. I use them as stylish book shelf blocks so nothing tumbles around. Two MB RAM and a 7MHz 68k, and you can run Word(tm) on them.


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## kpedersen (Jun 14, 2018)

Its an odd one. On my old Thinkpad Android tablet, it is faster for me to boot up Windows 95 and Office 97 in Limbo (a port of qemu) in 100% software emulation than it is for me to load up "modern" Office for Android or Office 365.

Its sad though because if the developers of both hardware and software did everything more openly and correctly, I could run a port of Office 97 natively at blazing speed, get my work done faster whilst also saving the environment from the energy costs.

But as it stands this relatively fantastic bit of hardware remains unused as I keep to my old ratty x61. Admittedly TexLive is more useful for my day to day work than Office 97. I might look for an old distribution of LaTeX for Windows 95...


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## Spartrekus (Jun 15, 2018)

Crivens said:


> Moores law says the performance doubles every 18 months. Gates law says that the performance of software halves every 12 month. I wonder why. I have two old color macs, this all-in-one periscop design. I use them as stylish book shelf blocks so nothing tumbles around. Two MB RAM and a 7MHz 68k, and you can run Word(tm) on them.



"Moores law says the performance doubles every 18 months. "
not half ??
Systems get slower and slower  (same for BSD).

"Two MB RAM and a 7MHz 68k, and you can run Word(tm) on them."
That's good. Libraries were tiny at that time, and then evolved to large ones.
Security reasons came and gave today systems. Much secured, reliable, and heavily much more complex. Kernels are a node of vipers of complexity, for security and reliability reasons mostly. +Drivers.

"Two MB RAM and a 7MHz 68k, and you can run Word(tm) on them"
This probably even less:
http://mikeos.sourceforge.net/write-your-own-os.html#firstos
with a simple #include <stdio.h>  ... system( myline );  return 0;... (C compiled with minix, like during old good gold time of informatics.) Crivens: you get your terminal in even less than your book shelf first MAC. 

Btw, BSD is also bloated, like all today BSD / Unix (netbsd, freebsd,...). The base system is too large in my opinion, but ok, this is modern times.
If you hadn't a slow sofware (operating systems), programmers and developers would not have possibility to give fault on hardware manufacturers. This would be a too boring ... more lines of codes, more fun


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 19, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> Somewhat related: does anyone remember Control Data Institute, a school for electronics by Control Data in the 1970s and 80s? It was a trade school for cranking out electronic technicians who knew nothing of the subject....



If they ran commercials on KPLR, KTVI, or KDNL I remember them.


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## drhowarddrfine (Jun 19, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> If they ran commercials on KPLR, KTVI, or KDNL I remember them.


I don't remember but those are the likely suspects. Actually, CDI was supposed to be somewhat respected but it should not have been and I think everyone figured that out.

Spartrekus I would say you seem to have turned into a clueless troll but I'd get into trouble for saying that.


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 19, 2018)

I better not broadcast too much personal info. INTERPOL is looking to haul me off in chains to another hemisphere.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 19, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> I don't remember but those are the likely suspects. Actually, CDI was supposed to be somewhat respected but it should not have been and I think everyone figured that out.
> 
> Spartrekus I would say you seem to have turned into a clueless troll but I'd get into trouble for saying that.



Let's take some of my selected examples:
- My Android Samsung phone runs slow. Likely this is normal for everyone.
- My Windows PC runs slows. Booting, Logging,... takes several minutes. Normal today. Well, 10 years ago, this was very exactly the same. No single change.
- My BSD runs like magic, however this is fairly terminal base. Not so sure however that it could be made faster.

=> Some possible status: maybe the nicer graphical environment, the slower...


Bloat - BSD:
It can likely be found of not being, considering the all power of today's hardware. Yes or no?
Good luck to define accurately it ("bloat"). I  would be difficult to find an *adapted definition* for "bloat".
It depends on many things. It is an opinion like another one, like preferring Windows to Unix.

Using BSD at Univ makes real sense because it is fast, less slower than WIndows, Unix, free, Opensource,.... and many more. 
You can learn Unix during your studies, and keep it later for longer term usage.


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## Crivens (Jun 20, 2018)

Just out of curiosity I installed some old NetBSD version in a VM. The CD (yes, 600MB) was usable on x86, sparc and m68k. And it ran like crazy. Also, no zfs, ip6, usb... Everybody should try it once in a while.


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## sidetone (Jun 20, 2018)

Crivens said:


> Just out of curiosity I installed some old NetBSD version in a VM. The CD (yes, 600MB) was usable on x86, sparc and m68k. And it ran like crazy. Also, no zfs, ip6, usb... Everybody should try it once in a while.


NetBSD's default VESA graphics are in low resolution. Also, in the release version, only 1 program can use sound at a time. They said the current version fixes the sound issue. NetBSD lacks ports that I need as well, but most are at least in work in progress (WIP). On a virtual machine, I don't see those as issues.

The base system of FreeBSD is not bloated, but it is not slim either. NetBSD's base is slim, and it wouldn't take much to get the base and its ports to run as well as FreeBSD.

Now, FreeBSD's ports are bloated, no matter what anyone else says. For starters, OSS, portaudio or sndio should be the default and patched in for every port that uses audio (libcanberra, pulseaudio, gstreamer1). I wish to start learning C and get started. A few programs need alternates or reduced dependencies.


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## kpedersen (Jun 20, 2018)

Its odd. In theory both Solaris 10 and OpenBSD are "bloated" because they provide a relatively large amount in their base. However they just seem to handle it well. For example Solaris has the /usr/sfw, /opt/csw, etc... prefixes (which I personally love). Likewise OpenBSD manages to provide three different Window Managers and yet they just stay out of your way if not in use. None of them drag in actual dependencies.

OpenBSD's Xenocara Xorg distribution not only provides more functionality than FreeBSD's Xorg in ports (glxgears, glxinfo) but also does not clutter up /usr/local and drag in many many more dependencies (dbus, hald and cruddy friends. Why the heck is this the port options default?!).

I would go so far as to say a larger (albeit well planned) base actually reduces bloat because  people start to try to use libraries available rather than drag in a shed-load of ratty libs and services.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2018)

Crivens said:


> Just out of curiosity I installed some old NetBSD version in a VM. The CD (yes, 600MB) was usable on x86, sparc and m68k. And it ran like crazy. Also, no zfs, ip6, usb... Everybody should try it once in a while.



netbsd is particularly interesting. Not easy to get it working, but definitely performant. Which VM?

sidetone, the problem is that the installation should target to a minimum. Even ssh, ls, cp, mv, ..., the most basic ones, could be even re-checked.
Why not to focus on simplicity by keeping simple base components. Using common libraries makes the system complex and dependent. Sometimes scratch has some benefits, especially for outstanding, superior, performances.

"Its odd. In theory both Solaris 10 and OpenBSD are "bloated" because they provide a relatively large amount in their base. However they just seem to handle it well. For example Solaris has the /usr/sfw, /opt/csw, etc... prefixes (which I personally love). Likewise OpenBSD manages to provide three different Window Managers and yet they just stay out of your way if not in use. None of them drag in actual dependencies."
For this sentence, you may be careful, people will tell you here that it is troll maneers. Take care. It is like saying to a MS-Windows user not to use Windows because of whatever reasons.

Btw, why Xorg, and not something else?

@seeing post above: 
pulseaudio is a good one. Why not having similarities BSD <=> Linux. If then it comes, then, I will make my own operating system  Just based on PDP-7.


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## sidetone (Jun 20, 2018)

kpedersen said:


> Its odd. In theory both Solaris 10 and OpenBSD are "bloated" because they provide a relatively large amount in their base. However they just seem to handle it well.


NetBSD and OpenBSD's installation iso for the base system is small, around 500MB. FreeBSD's and DragonFlyBSD's base install iso doesn't even fit on a cd it was meant for.


Spartrekus said:


> installation should target to a minimum. Even ssh, ls, cp, mv, ..., the most basic ones, could be even re-checked. Why not to focus on simplicity by keeping simple base components. Using common libraries makes the system complex and dependent. Sometimes scratch has some benefits, especially for outstanding, superior, performances.


It should be slimmed down by 1 or 2 hundred MB, but I don't consider the base of FreeBSD to be bloat. If a common library is made well, it should be useful for various programs and reduce bloat.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2018)

sidetone said:


> NetBSD and OpenBSD's installation iso for the base system is small, around 500MB. FreeBSD's and DragonFlyBSD's base install iso doesn't even fit on a cd it was meant for.



this is not small at all!

Below 90 mb or even less is going to be small.


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## sidetone (Jun 20, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> this is not small at all!
> 
> Below 90 mb or even less is going to be small.



In that case, here's your operating system... http://www.minibsd.org/

There's this... https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/nanobsd/article.html but it's complicated IMO. Anything you remove that's like from src.conf will interfere with ports and packages. For instance, removing legacy hardware, will even remove ability to use modern printers. Removing binutils will make your sytem unable to compile. Removing CDDL which removes Compat C code, will also make your system unable to compile.


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## rufwoof (Jun 20, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> this is not small at all!
> 
> Below 90 mb or even less is going to be small.


Subjective. OpenBSD's installation cd iso image is around 9MB, but that pulls down the base packages via the net. the amd installation iso image with the base files included is around 350MB. But they're tgz files, so when expanded take up more space when installed.


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## Spartrekus (Jun 20, 2018)

rufwoof said:


> Subjective. OpenBSD's installation cd iso image is around 9MB, but that pulls down the base packages via the net. the amd installation iso image with the base files included is around 350MB. But they're tgz files, so when expanded take up more space when installed.



I believe 50 or no more than 90 is mb is a good, sufficient, amount for a base system. It is about x10 more than about 30 years ago. It is a good value.

Drivers, Sockets for ethernnet, compiler, just few binaries,... to get bare bone system. minibsd or nanobsd should be rewarded, that's great


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 20, 2018)

Spartrekus said:


> this is not small at all!
> 
> Below 90 mb or even less is going to be small.



Even Puppy Linux at it's smallest would just barely fit on a 100MB ZIp Disk. It was the first Linux distro I ran, because I had an Iomega 100MB Zip Disk drive.


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## Crivens (Jun 20, 2018)

.oO(Now where did I put that floppy with the fully working qnx?)


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## Deleted member 30996 (Jun 20, 2018)

Same place as my 1.44MB floppy with BeOS?


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## Crivens (Jun 20, 2018)

Unmarked box in a shallow basement.


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