OpenBSD: man pages you can use ... plus FreeBSD wisdom from Dru Lavigne and Matt Olander

When users say the documentation is excellent in the BSD operating systems, they're not lying. Besides the excellent handbook/FAQs available for download or online browsing for NetBSD, FreeBSD and OpenBSD, the man pages are way more valuable than I ever though.

In OpenBSD, they're up to date -- and they have plenty of plain language throughout.

I've been looking for the file that enables me to modify the menus in the default fvwm window manager in OpenBSD, and I was having a little trouble. Here's where I went:

$ man fvwm

And besides an exhaustive explanation of every feature in fvwm, the man page told me the exact location of the file: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm. (The exact file name in that directory is system.fvwm2rc.) The man page also told me that fvwm looks first for .fvwmrc in the user's home directory and then looks for the systemwide file in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fvwm.

I met Dru Lavigne at SCALE 6x: I plan to write more about it in the near future, but I did meet author and BSD expert Dru Lavigne at the FreeBSD/PC-BSD booth at the Southern California Linux Expo on Saturday. We chatted for a good 10 minutes before I found out her name, and I really should've written down more of what we talked about. At any rate, she is a powerful advocate for running any of the BSD operating systems, especially FreeBSD. She has a new book out, "The Best of FreeBSD Basics." Given how smart and well-spoken she is, I have high hopes for the book.

Also at the FreeBSD/PC-BSD booth was Matt Olander, the CTO for iXsystems, the company behind PC-BSD. He also does PR for FreeBSD, the system behind PC-BSD (and DesktopBSD). Like Dru, he's enthusiastic -- and way smarter than I am. Among the things he told me was that the next version of PC-BSD will be a live CD/installer combo -- just like the latest version of the FreeBSD-based DesktopBSD.

Matt also said that while it's early in the process, the teams at PC-BSD and FreeBSD are working together to bring DesktopBSD's graphical ports interface to PC-BSD so users of the latter can make use of ports without using the command line. I don't know whether or not PC-BSD's PBI files -- applications that can be installed with one click -- is something that DesktopBSD will adopt in kind, but it's nice to see these two desktop BSD projects work together to benefit all of their users.

Among the things Matt and I talked about were the inclusion of Sun's ZFS filesystem in FreeBSD 7. And Wikipedia also says that ZFS is coming to NetBSD as well.

Dru, Matt and I talked about more than this. I'll write up the rest in the days ahead.

More BSD: I really like the new "toolbox" series of books by Christopher Negus. Looks like there's going to be one for the three BSD's soon: "BSD UNIX Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD." Release date is May 12, 2008.