- SysV init must die (via) Someone mentioned runit in IRC the other day, I think...
- V7 Unix for x86 (also via) Put on the bellbottoms.
- This blog has been running various sed and awk one-liner demonstrations, among other things; very useful tricks to remember. Go through the history; there’s fun and useful stuff.
OnlineDirect has a new DragonFly mirror up in Bulgaria; it’s hosting the official ISOs at this point.
- This Coding Horror article talks about garbage collection and happens to mention an entertaining common BSD function in shutdown.c: die_you_gravy_sucking_pig_dog()
- The DCBSDCon Blog has some notes on the facilities – there will be wireless, and Jason Dixon will be giving his “BSD Is Dying” talk, too.
- An hour of Marshall Kirk McKusick’s FreeBSD kernel class (based on his book) is available now on Youtube. (via) Plus, more videos on other open source topics at the FOSSLC. (via)
- This new column on GameSetWatch, The Amateur, titled “Why You Should Pay for Free“, gets into free software (like BSD) from a giveaway gaming point of view (not like BSD). It’s an interesting take.
- ZangbandTK: Confessions of a Dungeon Hack is a new Rock, Paper, Shotgun article about playing a tiled roguelike, and quite enjoyable to read. Check the comments for some interesting links.
For those of you thinking of installing DragonFly on a EeePC 901, Christopher Rawnsley tried, with some booting problems. Simon ‘corecode’ Schubert has an easy fix, however.
For those going to DCBSDCon but not yet having rooms to sleep in, a cheaper Days Inn has been found a few metro stops away from the convention.
(Hotel costs kept me from making it to NYCBSDCon, for instance.)
Some extra reading: Hasso Tepper posted a link to an article talking about non-uniform memory access (NUMA). Any article that can have diagrams labeled ‘hypercubes’ must be worthwhile.
Google’s planning a Summer of Code again for 2009, according to the still-running mailing lists from last year’s SoC event. More will be announced at FOSDEM.
DragonFly may or may not be participating; it’s dependent on the application process same as every year. If you’re a student, start thinking about what to do, now.
The DCBSDCon Blog announces the last 3 speakers at DCBSDCon:George Neville-Neil, one of the authors of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System, Ken Caruso of SchmooCon Labs, and our very own Robert Luciani, talking about DragonFly and threading.
The January issue of the Open Source Business Resource is out. (via) Dru Lavigne posted a list of the contents, earlier.
The hotel discount for DCBSDCon 2009 expires this Friday, so now is a good time to register. Registrations for the convention itself closes at the end of this month.
Also, Kurt Miller will be talking at DCBSDCon about his work in OpenBSD on Position Independent Executables.
Michael Neumann brought up the idea of using C++ in kernel programming, which has been suggested before. Reactions were generally negative, but there would be some possibilities.
pcc appears to have had some significant updates due to funding; has anyone tried it on DragonFly recently?
The newest @Play column talks about yet another roguelike I’ve never heard of: Incursion. (Too much Zangband on my part.) Apparently it follows 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragons rules quite carefully, which is different than the usual vague Tolkienish/D&Dish look that most roguelikes keep. Check the supplement at the bottom for some literary history.
You get to hear me blather on for 22 minutes about this Digest and how important/easy it is to contribute to BSD projects, in BSDTalk 169.
Vincent Stemen posted a note about his homemade tool, called ‘partition’. It has some interesting features, though it would require some documentation and cleanup to use in DragonFly, where it could serve as a replacement for fdisk. If anyone’s interested in making that happen, contact Vincent.
Two UNIX-centric items for end-of-week reading: “The History of Unix *dump programs” and “Roll your own toy UNIX-clone OS“. (via)
The Winter version of the BSDA courseware DVD is now available. Everything on there is available (in parts) for free over the Internet, but paying the USD$40 for the DVD gets you convenience and a way to support bsdcertification.org. (via)
I need to note these faster; they’re piling up: the DCBSDCon blog has announced two more speakers for the convention: Richard Bejtlich (of Tao of Security), who will talking about network security monitoring with FreeBSD, and Marco Peereboom, of OpenBSD, who will be talking about epitome.
The most recent item on the DCBSDCon blog announces Kristaps Džonsons as a speaker; he will talk about his process isolation work on mult.
P.S. Who else thinks that it would be good to have man pages look as pretty as the web page for mult?
This recent Coding Horror column by Jeff Atwood expands on a Joel Spolsky discussion, where it’s pointed out good programmers program cause they love it, not because of the pay or anything else. I’d take that discussion a step farther and use open source programming as an example; people do it because they want to; because they don’t want to stop thinking about solving problems even when they aren’t at work.
There’s a parallel here that I’ll make between programming and ‘normal’ art; artists and designers do the same thing when they get home too.