The Fate of Yahoo
Yahoo is a major FreeBSD user with a long history. Will that change if they’re bought out by Microsoft or sold off in pieces to likes of Google or AOL-Time Warner? Would a merger in any way materially impact The FreeBSD Project?
Why move?
Yahoo’s corporate usage of FreeBSD has proudly represented the stability, power and security of the open source operating system. Unfortunately all of the potential companies that are interested in Yahoo aren’t avid FreeBSD users. The technology would be incompatible and the buyer’s implementation would likely be favored for all of Yahoo’s services. It’s worth noting that there have also been murmurs of Yahoo moving away from FreeBSD in the past.
Who’s bidding?
Microsoft seems to be at the top of the list in a wave of seemingly manic gyrations between anticipatory buyout talks and slamming Yahoo’s valuation.
Google has been offering to “partner” with Yahoo. Partnering really means Google would be handling the advertising and potentially search engine functionality for Yahoo.
AOL’s former executive and AOL-Time Warner have made noise about a potential merger or partnership. This is probably the least feasible of the bids, but it is another example of a large corporate entity that would shift Yahoo’s determination away from FreeBSD.
What’s next?
Expect the deal to start taking shape soon. If it is approved by the DoJ it will take place over the course of several years. Massive layoffs at Yahoo would be forced and a lot of their technology would be moved over to whoever ends up owning Yahoo. I for one hope this isn’t the case because diversity in searching and Internet information aggregation should be increased, not reduced. Obviously there could be a detrimental impact on FreeBSD’s visibility as well.
The big picture
No matter what happens with Yahoo, FreeBSD’s future remains bright. Just recently I have been successful in finding receptive clients through my consulting endeavors with Envescent. They are willing and even excited to run FreeBSD for their back office operations. We are seeing first hand that the private sector is growing more amenable to open source solutions and Microsoft’s dominance in small business IT is fading.
How to setup a MySQL server on FreeBSD
We’re always searching the ‘net for good howtos to share with the FreeBSD community. We found DruidSys.com’s MySQL server installation howto for FreeBSD 7.0 to be a good resource:
In this guide we will work with FreeBSD 7.0 and it is assumed that FreeBSD is already running on your machine.
First you need to login as root or run su in order to get the required permissions.
Then navigate to the ports folder for MySQL:
cd /usr/ports/databases/mysql50-server
Now run:
make install clean
in order to download and install MySQL.
Once the install is finished we install the databases by running:
mysql_install_db –user=mysql
Source: http://www.druidsys.com/?q=node/8
FreeBSD 6.4 released
FreeBSD 6.4 is officially available. I’m excited as this release promises better security, improved functionality and more. I’ll be installing it on my remaining FreeBSD 6.3 systems this weekend. The FreeBSD.org announcement is below:
“The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE. At this time 6.4-RELEASE is expected to be the last of the 6-STABLE releases. Some of the highlights:
- New and much-improved NFS Lock Manager (NLM) client
- Support for the Camellia cipher
- boot loader changes allow, among other things, booting from USB devices and booting from GPT-labeled devices with GPT-enabled BIOSes
- DVD install ISO images for amd64/i386
- KDE updated to 3.5.10, GNOME updated to 2.22.3
- Updates for BIND, sendmail, OpenPAM, and others
For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list, available at:
For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/
The FreeBSD Security Team intends to support 6.4-RELEASE until November 30th, 2010.”
Source: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.4R/announce.html
FreeBSD YouTube channel announced
A new YouTube channel for FreeBSD technical lectures is now available at www.youtube.com/bsdconferences. The channel will be used to post lectures from conferences. The first four videos that Julian Elisher recorded at MeetBSD have been posted, and more are on the way.
Source: http://www.freebsd.org/news/newsflash.html
Embracing open source for business
Businesses can save money by embracing open source operating systems and applications. Many businesses use Windows or other commercial servers when a FreeBSD server could easily replace the same functionality with little or no licensing costs, less hardware, lower energy consumption and minimal administration.
Web, database and e-mail servers can be migrated to FreeBSD by utilizing the Samba port for file sharing, Apache and PHP for web, MySQL for database as well as Sendmail and Dovecot for e-mail.
FreeBSD’s Samba port is an excellent way to leverage FreeBSD’s superior speed (vs Windows on nearly any hardware) to create a secure, stable and fast office file server. Samba is compatible with Windows, Apple’s OS X and Linux clients so it should be universally acceptable to all users.
Apache and PHP make for the groundwork of a flexible and powerful web server with a minimal memory footprint when compared to many commercial alternatives. Apache is the web server, providing the capability for clients to connect over HTTP to download and interact with web pages. PHP is a scripting language that enables quick development and installation of web-based applications.
Database servers are essential for compiling, accessing and editing high volumes of information. MySQL is the best database server and it’s easy to use. It works well with Apache and PHP or as a standalone database.
Sendmail and Dovecot provide e-mail sending and receiving capabilities for the server and its clients. There are other configurations possible, but for the sake of simplicity and ease of use I recommend this one for most users.