From owner-freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Apr 4 13:32:21 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 392AD16A402 for ; Wed, 4 Apr 2007 13:32:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from cyrus.watson.org (cyrus.watson.org [209.31.154.42]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0EF6213C458 for ; Wed, 4 Apr 2007 13:32:21 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rwatson@FreeBSD.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [209.31.154.41]) by cyrus.watson.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id D453446E5A; Wed, 4 Apr 2007 09:11:09 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2007 14:11:09 +0100 (BST) From: Robert Watson X-X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: Christian Weisgerber In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20070404140323.C18288@fledge.watson.org> References: <4603D9FF.4070100@xk7.net> <4603E522.2090901@praxisvermittlung24.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Lack of FreeBSD coverage in the UK media X-BeenThere: freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: FreeBSD Evangelism List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:32:21 -0000 On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, Christian Weisgerber wrote: > Daniel Seuffert wrote: > >> I don't know much about the specific situation in the UK, but I can confirm >> BSD is not well represented in the media. > > "We'd like to print more BSD articles but nobody is submitting any." > (Standard reply at German LinuxTag when you ask the press people about > this.) Some things that might be neat to see articles about in the next six months as 7.0 approaches: - The FreeBSD ZFS port, especially in a week's time or so once it's committed. Introduction to ZFS highlighting its features, some tutorial content on using it with FreeBSD, etc. I've had countless people approach me over the last month at various UNIX and BSD conferences, and they're very excited about ZFS on FreeBSD. In fact, it's frequently cited as a reason to try FreeBSD instead of Linux. - Using the pf firewall and its associated features (pfsync, carp, etc) with FreeBSD. OpenBSD successfully makes a lot of noise about the availability of these features on their platform, and for good reason: they're great features. We should be making more noise about them being available on our platform -- especially given our SMP network stack support. This might be best backed up by a bit of measurement and optimization. - FreeBSD audit support -- we've had some articles on this already, but it's worth a few more. Integrated audit with portable APIs and file format set us apart from Linux, and there are some nice opportunities to bring in new volunteers to develop audit tracking and management tools. Support in 6.2 is considered experimental, but we'd like it to be production-quality in 6.3. - FreeBSD SCTP support -- SCTP has some really great protocol features, and FreeBSD 7.x will ship with it. This is a chance to highlight some exciting new technology, and the fact that FreeBSD has a reference implementation of it. - FreeBSD support for sun4v and sun4v technology generally -- again, a chance to highlight FreeBSD as being involved in a cutting edge technology platform. - FreeBSD and high SMP scalability -- now that many of the patches used to accomplish very high database scalability on FreeBSD are going into the base CVS tree for inclusion in 7.x, it would be really interesting to see an article on the process by which the FreeBSD team measured and optimized FreeBSD performance for 8+ core systems, from new thread libraries to changes in kernel synchronization, time management, scheduler, etc. Robert N M Watson Computer Laboratory University of Cambridge