Exploring the CBSD virtual environment management framework – part 0: Virtualization overview

[New to Gemini? Have a look at my Gemini FAQ.] This article was bi-posted to Gemini and the Web; Gemini version is here: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/kraileth/neunix/2022/cbsd_pt0.gmi One of the more revolutionary developments in computing history is virtualization. I've wanted to write a series of posts about CBSD for quite a while now. This post however is another …

Cross-platform package building: Pkgsrc vs. Ravenports (2/2)

[New to Gemini? Have a look at my Gemini FAQ.] This article was bi-posted to Gemini and the Web; Gemini version is here: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/kraileth/neunix/2021/cross-platform_package_building_pt2.gmi The previous article (part 1) on cross-platform package management / package building covered the basics by taking a look at what some of the many difficulties are. It briefly described some …

Cross-platform package building: Pkgsrc vs. Ravenports (1/2)

[New to Gemini? Have a look at my Gemini FAQ.] This article was bi-posted to Gemini and the Web; Gemini version is here: gemini://gemini.circumlunar.space/users/kraileth/neunix/2021/cross-platform_package_building_pt1.gmi This is the first of a two articles on cross-platform package management / package building. It covers the basics by discussing why it is actually surprisingly (to many people) difficult to …

Illumos (v9os) on SPARC64 SunFire v100

Over the last month or so I've written a couple of articles on an old SunFire v100 machine that I own for a while now. First I took a look at the hardware of the machine and the LOM (Lights Out Management). Then I installed OpenBSD 6.0 from CD and updated all the way to …

A SPARC in the night – SunFire v100 exploration

While we see a total dominance of x86_64 CPUs today, there are at least some alternatives like ARM and in the long run hopefully RISC-V. But there are other interesting architectures as well - one of them is SPARC (the Scalable Processor ARChitecture). This article is purely historic, I'm not reviewing new hardware here. It's …

Rusted ravens: Ravenports march 2019 status update

It's been a couple of months since I last wrote about Ravenports, the universal *nix application building framework. Not exactly being a slowly moving project, a lot has happened since then. Platform support Raven currently supports DragonFly BSD, FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris/Illumos, the latter being only in the form of binary packages (except for when …

Ravenports explained: Why not just join XYZ?

As the year comes to an end, I've seen quite some interest in my previous post. There has been a question on Reddit what the benefit(s) of Raven over Pkgsrc might be and why the developers don't simply join an existing effort instead of building something new. I've touched on this topic about half a …

One year of flying with the Raven: Ready for the Desktop?

It has been a little over one year now that I'm with the Ravenports project. Time to reflect my involvement, my expectations and hopes. Ravenports Ravenports is a universal packaging framework for *nix operating systems. For the user it provides easy access to binary packages of common software for multiple platforms. It has been the …

Ravenports: A modern, cross-platform package solution

This post is about Ravenports, a universal package system und building framework for *nix systems (DragonflyBSD, FreeBSD, Linux and Solaris at the time of this writing). It's a relatively young project that begun in late February 2017 after a longer period of careful planning. The idea is to provide a unified, convenient experience in a …