Date: Wed, 30 Aug 1995 13:46:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Jake Hamby <jehamby@lightside.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Suggestions for 2.1.0 Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.950830133537.278A-100000@localhost>
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Here are the most useful suggestions/comments I could think of for FreeBSD 2.1.0. Use them (or ignore them) as you see fit: 1) One of the great things about FreeBSD is that it combines aspects of System V or GNU when they are clearly better than what comes with BSD. For example, FreeBSD uses vixie-cron (System V style) rather than BSD cron. I've found that Cornell's tcsh is a FAR better interactive shell than /bin/csh and only about 30k larger. Because of its many powerful features (filename completion, Emacs-style editing, cursor-key history) it deserves to be the default shell for FreeBSD. On the other hand, although bash is about as good as tcsh, it's 100k larger than /bin/sh and is mostly used for shell scripts anyway, so I would recommend tcsh over bash (even though Linux uses bash by default). 2) For similar reasons, I believe ncurses is a far superior replacement to BSD curses. The version of ncurses included with FreeBSD is missing a lot of commands compared to the latest version (1.9.4) which can be D/Led from ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/zm/zmbenhal/ncurses. This version also includes an excellent free terminfo database which is used by default instead of /etc/termcap. Also, Keith Bostic, the maintainer of nvi, has declared BSD curses officially dead, and is recommending NCurses 1.9.x now. I also have a few questions about FreeBSD in general: 3) When I built my kernel I compiled in SYSVSHM, SYSVSEM, and SYSVMSG, because I figured public domain software (especially POSIX or Linux-style programs) would use them. Also I assumed XFree86 would use System V shared memory for the MIT-SHM extension. Are either of these assumptions correct, and for what programs is it desirable to have System V support in the kernel? 4) How is CD audio handled in FreeBSD? It appears to be totally different from both Linux and SunOS. I have an IDE CD-ROM and so this doesn't concern me until IDE CD-ROM support is solid enough for me to use (see my other post about my trouble with FreeBSD-current), but I'm curious as to how best to port a CD audio player from Linux. Thanks in advance! Keep up the good work... ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jake Hamby | E-Mail: jehamby@lightside.com Student, Cal Poly University, Pomona | System Administrator, JPL -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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