Fun with FreeBSD Advocacy

Help to crack keys (for money!). Found in ports at "misc/dnetc", this program will run at low priority and, if your machine happens to be the one to find the key first, you (or your team) can win $10,000. Not as easy as it sounds, of course. Patience required. :) In the meanwhile, though, your processing power will be making a positive impression for FreeBSD. See here: stats.distributed.net

Stand up and be counted. The mission of the "The *BSDstats Project" is to compile numbers for advocacy and marketing with a specific focus on demonstrating to hardware and software vendors that the BSD's are serious operating systems and need serious support. This is found in ports at "sysutils/bsdstats". It's also one of the smallest ports ever, consisting of a single shell script that is run monthly by "periodic". This port is small and easy and should be run by every *BSD user on every machine possible. See here for the latest count: *BSD Usage Statistics

Sign the "Flash Player for FreeBSD" petition. Everyone should sign this as soon as possible. If you're going to leave a comment with your signature, I recommend something that mentions the benefits to Adobe of officially supporting FreeBSD/*BSD. Lots of comments there are angry and demanding. I certainly understand that attitude! >:-| I'm just not sure if it's the best way to persuade Adobe. And, in the long run, I really do think they hurt themselves by neglecting FreeBSD.

Recommend PC-BSD to your less technical friends. I think it's a lot of fun to build a FreeBSD desktop (or server). But, let's be honest, some people just don't get it. :) PC-BSD is a FreeBSD-based and user friendly operating system. (Note, it's not a fork. It continues to track FreeBSD as its own core.) I haven't used it myself, but there are many positive reviews out there. I think their idea of creating all-inclusive, binary packages (that is, NO dependencies) is brilliant -- and key to success in the non-technical, desktop market. According to both the *BSDstats Project (above) and the page hit count at DistroWatch.com, PC-BSD is already the second most popular BSD! Find out more here.

Seed a FreeBSD torrent. More seeders equals better downloads for everyone and shows an active, helpful community. I used to do this at the official FreeBSD torrent site, which has been disabled. Now, there is another FreeBSD oriented, torrent site called got BSD?