I trust you got a FreeBSD LiveCD to try that out?
sysctl is mostly a *BSD tool. Linux has it, but its very limited.
Linux relies mostly on /proc for getting system information.
The big difference between sysctl and /proc is that most /proc nodes are read-only and it isn't common to see someone setting system features by doing 'echo "some" > /proc/thing'. Sysctl is designed for not only retrieving system settings, but also setting them ... hence, why you don't need to reboot your system to set the min C# state.
From a programmer's perspective sysctl() is awesome while /proc is awful...nobody should ever have to fopen(), fread(), and do string parsing to get system information.
And to re-iterate for anyone who missed the implications of this post: BSD is not Linux, Linux is not BSD...they aren't related in any way, except they both feel like UNIX.
Nope! I'm probably going to have to send in my laptop to Dell to get it fixed, so I don't think I'll be doing much with it until then.
