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FreeBSD, up to now, has had two different firewalling methods. First off, there is the natively developed ipfw tool, which recently got a renovation and is now ipfw2 in -CURRENT. The alternative to ipfw is Darren Reed's ipfilter, also known as just ipf. Both ipfw and ipfilter share similar capabilities, and it is generally user preference as to which one is used in FreeBSD.

Now, it seems somebody has made the effort to port yet another firewalling mechanism to FreeBSD, this time pf. The features it claims to have over ipfw are:

• built-in variable expansion
• built-in NAT and preventing NAT detection
• table (a kind of very large blocks of address) support
• packet normalization
• state modulation
• powerful state tracking
• automatic rule optimization
• queueing with ALTQ
• load balancing with multiple routes

Presumably, some of these are rather desirable features. However, it is beyond me why FreeBSD needs yet another way to do firewalling when the interfaces and systems we have now already work well. It is my opinion that instead of porting something proprietary to OpenBSD like pf, time should have been spent either patching these features into ipfilter or ipfw to add functionality to an already accepted and loved firewalling mechanism. There is no reason FreeBSD needs to dig a deeper firewalling grave for itself like OpenBSD has done.

...open source software would be more popular if it were advocated by girls like this instead of old guys with beards? What we need are more free software babes like her. This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. If we do have to have the old guys with beards, we could at least make sure they are plenty of hot chicks too. I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

Bow down and worship the goddess of BSD!

You Linux-using fags cannot possibly comprehend the beauty of the one true goddess!

See how a true believer honors her. Take another look at the proper way to show your devotion to the divine babe of BSD!

There is truly no hope for Linux as long as the lovely Ceren smiles upon us!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

How can BSD be dying when it has a mascot like this?! Linux needs to get its act together if it's going to compete with the kind of hot chicks and gorgeous babes that BSD has to offer!

You just can't take Linux seriously when its fronted by losers like these. You Linux groupies need to find some sexy girls like her! I mean just look at this girl! Doesn't she make you hard? I know this little hottie floats my boat! This guy looks like he is about to cream his pants standing next to such a fox. As you can see, no man can resist this sexy little cock teaser. Even this old bearded Unix guru is apparently unable to take his eyes off her!

Join the campaign for more cute open source babes today!

and i thought when updating and rebuilding the *world* i receive a shiny new internet with it each time?! what a ripoff..

Q: Jason, why do you insist on simply dressing up the corpse of a long-dead OS? Wouldn't your time and money be better spent working towards polishing an already-complete OS that 95% of the world uses?

Thankfully, FreeBSD has extensive documentation to refer to if you are told to RTFM. Otherwise, there are many people who would be happy to help. There are also many mailing lists to turn to when you find a bug or just have a problem or question.

Thankfully, FreeBSD has extensive documentation to refer to if you are told to RTFM. Otherwise, there are many people who would be happy to help. There are also many mailing lists to turn to when you find a bug or just have a problem or question.

Bologna. Its not beta and its considered stable.
Gee, ss the release manager for 5.0 and the author of the 5-STABLE roadmap doc, I kinda have to beg to differ. 5.0 is not what we consider 'stable' in the same sense of the 4-STABLE label that the 4.x series has. You have to account for the two definitions of 'stable'. One means 'runtime stability' where you likely to have good uptimes under heavy loads. The other is 'API stability' where you can expect programming interfaces and algorithms within the system to remain consistent. 5.0 really doesn't meet the first definition well, though it is fine as a desktop OS. It fails miserably at the second definition, as there is a significant amount of change going on in the kernel to satisfy the first definition and support some new features.

5.0 was released because we wanted to get all of the new features that were in the tree out to the audience that had been waiting 3 years for them. We tried to be careful to emphasize that while 5.0 should make a fine desktop OS, it really isn't appropiate for a production server yet. The upcoming 5.1 release is looking to be a significant improvement on the runtime stability front, though that api stability is still going to be in flux for a bit. Most likely 5.2 will be branded as '5-STABLE' and hence satisfy both definitions of 'stable', and that should happen this fall.

You can install FreeBSD on a headless PC quite easily.

One of the major features of FreeBSD 5.1 will be further refinement of the re-worked SMP support introduced in FreeBSD 5.0. For specific information about the progress towards 5.1-RELEASE in this area, please see the SMP Project page.

One of the major features of FreeBSD 5.1 will be further refinement of the re-worked SMP support introduced in FreeBSD 5.0. For specific information about the progress towards 5.1-RELEASE in this area, please see the SMP Project page.

FreeBSD supports Hyperthreading in 5.0-CURRENT. There is a sysctl variable called "machdep.hlt_cpus". You can use this variable to control which logical CPUs should be taken out of the idle loop and used by the kernel. This, of course, requires a kernel built with the APIC_IO and SMP kernel options. Lacking a SMP system, I haven't tested this. This is just what I see on the mailing lists and in CVSWeb

At some point after the release of FreeBSD 5.0, a ``5-STABLE'' branch will be created in the FreeBSD CVS repository with the branch tag RELENG_5. The past two stable branches (3-STABLE and 4-STABLE) were created immediately after their respective ``dot-oh'' releases (3.0 and 4.0, respectively). In hindsight, this practice did not give sufficient time for either CURRENT or the new STABLE branches to stabilize after the new branches were created.

Therefore, the release engineering team will only create the 5-STABLE branch in the CVS repository after they have found a relatively stable state to use as its basis. It is likely that there will be multiple releases in the 5.X series before this happens; we estimate that the 5-STABLE branch will be created sometime after 5.1-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE.

In your comment, you say:

Current = beta, and Release = stable. Stable= superstable or enterprise class stability.

SMPng is in 5.0, but there's still some work to be done. Work is in progress to free major parts of the kernel from needing the Giant kernel lock. You can see that much needs to be done on that link - the only driver listed as "SMPng locked" is the aac SCSI driver. Incidentally, that driver saw a speedup of up to 20% when it was freed from Giant. Once this work is finished, FBSD will really fly. Could be a long time waiting, though.

Bologna. Its not beta and its considered stable.

Current != Release. I looked at there ftp site and only found -current or -Release versions. The only one mentioned as stable I found reading the docs are 4.0.

Current = beta, and Release = stable. Stable= superstable or enterprise class stability.

FreeBSD 5 is ready for %95 of user and server use. Its just as stable as FreeBSD 4.6 or 4.7 since they are also Release versions. Only 4.0 is considered STABLE at this point.

However I would not bet my job on it with a server that needs to stay up 24x7 but FreeBSD 5 is as stable if not more out of the box as Redhat8 or Mandrake. FreeBSD hackers obsess about stability more then most linux hackers with the exception of Debian users. I would be cautious of course but to be release quality it needs to be %99.9 stable as opposed to %99.999 stable as 4.0 stable.

SMP support has been largely reworked, incorporating code from BSD/OS 5.0. One of the main features of SMPng (``SMP Next Generation'') is to allow more processes to run in kernel, without the need for spin locks that can dramatically reduce the efficiency of multiple processors. Interrupt handlers now have contexts associated with them that allow them to be blocked, which reduces the need to lock out interrupts.

• Read this (early adopter guide)
• Read this (hardware support)
• Read this (installation guide)
• Get the 5.0-RELEASE Installation ISOs
• Install it
• Read the FreeBSD Handbook on how to CVSup to the latest HEAD sources

For those who are curious about what is new in -CURRENT compared to 4-STABLE, you can read the 5.0-RELEASE release notes for the bits that were new at the time of 5.0-RELEASE. More has come since.

• Read this (early adopter guide)
• Read this (hardware support)
• Read this (installation guide)
• Get the 5.0-RELEASE Installation ISOs
• Install it
• Read the FreeBSD Handbook on how to CVSup to the latest HEAD sources

For those who are curious about what is new in -CURRENT compared to 4-STABLE, you can read the 5.0-RELEASE release notes for the bits that were new at the time of 5.0-RELEASE. More has come since.

• Read this (early adopter guide)
• Read this (hardware support)
• Read this (installation guide)
• Get the 5.0-RELEASE Installation ISOs
• Install it
• Read the FreeBSD Handbook on how to CVSup to the latest HEAD sources

For those who are curious about what is new in -CURRENT compared to 4-STABLE, you can read the 5.0-RELEASE release notes for the bits that were new at the time of 5.0-RELEASE. More has come since.

• Read this (early adopter guide)
• Read this (hardware support)
• Read this (installation guide)
• Get the 5.0-RELEASE Installation ISOs
• Install it
• Read the FreeBSD Handbook on how to CVSup to the latest HEAD sources

For those who are curious about what is new in -CURRENT compared to 4-STABLE, you can read the 5.0-RELEASE release notes for the bits that were new at the time of 5.0-RELEASE. More has come since.

• Read this (early adopter guide)
• Read this (hardware support)
• Read this (installation guide)
• Get the 5.0-RELEASE Installation ISOs
• Install it
• Read the FreeBSD Handbook on how to CVSup to the latest HEAD sources

For those who are curious about what is new in -CURRENT compared to 4-STABLE, you can read the 5.0-RELEASE release notes for the bits that were new at the time of 5.0-RELEASE. More has come since.

• Read this (early adopter guide)
• Read this (hardware support)
• Read this (installation guide)
• Get the 5.0-RELEASE Installation ISOs
• Install it
• Read the FreeBSD Handbook on how to CVSup to the latest HEAD sources

For those who are curious about what is new in -CURRENT compared to 4-STABLE, you can read the 5.0-RELEASE release notes for the bits that were new at the time of 5.0-RELEASE. More has come since.

First thing is that all E7505-based boards are basically the same on the surface due to the basic features of the chipset. They all have dual processor support, support for dual channel DDR, and support for PCI-X up to 133MHz (to name a few). Once a manufacturer gets their hands on the board though, features can be added or it can simply be left as is.

The PCI-X controller used in almost all of the E750x workstation/server boards is really expensive and adds to the complexity of the board layout and design. It seems that Tyan decided to forgo that chip in order to keep the cost of the board down while making up for it by adding Serial ATA (but no FireWire like it's larger Thunder i7505 brother).

One board that I would like to have seen reviewed is the Supermicro X5DAL (with or without Serial ATA RAID) as it does include PCI-X slots, but it is also a standard ATX-sized motherboard. It only has four memory slots, so that may have changed some of the memory timings and possibly have improved some of the scores by a small amount.

One a side note, FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE users will also benefit from the newly added support for HyperThreading found in all P4-based Xeons and the 3.06GHz P4. More info can be had here. I'm not sure if that feature is also available in 5.0-CURRENT (I would think it would be MFC).

First thing is that all E7505-based boards are basically the same on the surface due to the basic features of the chipset. They all have dual processor support, support for dual channel DDR, and support for PCI-X up to 133MHz (to name a few). Once a manufacturer gets their hands on the board though, features can be added or it can simply be left as is.

The PCI-X controller used in almost all of the E750x workstation/server boards is really expensive and adds to the complexity of the board layout and design. It seems that Tyan decided to forgo that chip in order to keep the cost of the board down while making up for it by adding Serial ATA (but no FireWire like it's larger Thunder i7505 brother).

One board that I would like to have seen reviewed is the Supermicro X5DAL (with or without Serial ATA RAID) as it does include PCI-X slots, but it is also a standard ATX-sized motherboard. It only has four memory slots, so that may have changed some of the memory timings and possibly have improved some of the scores by a small amount.

One a side note, FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE users will also benefit from the newly added support for HyperThreading found in all P4-based Xeons and the 3.06GHz P4. More info can be had here. I'm not sure if that feature is also available in 5.0-CURRENT (I would think it would be MFC).

Check out how the FreeBSD ports tree does it for clues on how to compile it. All you have to do is 'cd /usr/ports/multimedia/mplayer; make install' and it'll work. Perhaps you can figure out how things work from inspecting the Makefiles.

You can find the information here.

I think it's you guys who misunderstand what Theo does... which is threatening to spam the FreeBSD and NetBSD mailing lists through an anonymous remailer when he doesn't get his way. Quit supporting the little crybaby.

Maybe they should have started with this manual.

Hail Satan!

Those kooky Christians. I would be tempted to think this is an elaborate joke, but the person went to great pains to write this which would lead me to believe he's genuinely retarded, I mean, screwed up. Believe what you will, but read this if you want an explanation where the Daemon thing came from. It's funny to see to what lengths Christians (and other Religious fanatics) will go to in order to justify their paranoid delusions. Hell, billions of people have died in various Holy Wars over Religion (most of them over Christianity). I think that speaks volumes for Christianity/Religion right there.

Remember, it's okay to break the ten commandments/"Thou Shall Not Kill" if it's for your God.

Hell, we could just port vigor to it! (Screenshots)

And a FreeBSD Port Exists as well. So I'm sure you could apt-get it, rpm it, or emerge it also.

Better tell these people, then.

Actually, the errata section says this flaw was corrected before the release.

FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE Errata

FreeBSd is not designed to be a desktop OS. What server needs firewire?

Using that logic, what server needs Gnome 2.2, or KDE 3.1, or XFree86 4.3.0 ? Where on freebsd.org does it say that FreeBSD is not designed to be a desktop OS ?

In fact, the FreeBSD FAQ has this to say:

The goal of the FreeBSD Project is to provide software that may be used for any purpose...

Oh, and this:

FreeBSD is designed to provide a robust and full-featured environment for applications. It supports a wide variety of web browsers, office suites, email readers, graphics programs, programming environments, network servers, and just about everything else you might want.

I'm curious, where on the freebsd.org site did you see that FreeBSD was not designed to be a desktop OS ?

FreeBSd is not designed to be a desktop OS. What server needs firewire?

Using that logic, what server needs Gnome 2.2, or KDE 3.1, or XFree86 4.3.0 ? Where on freebsd.org does it say that FreeBSD is not designed to be a desktop OS ?

In fact, the FreeBSD FAQ has this to say:

The goal of the FreeBSD Project is to provide software that may be used for any purpose...

Oh, and this:

FreeBSD is designed to provide a robust and full-featured environment for applications. It supports a wide variety of web browsers, office suites, email readers, graphics programs, programming environments, network servers, and just about everything else you might want.

I'm curious, where on the freebsd.org site did you see that FreeBSD was not designed to be a desktop OS ?

Check out the traffic graph for ftp2. Now slashdot that!

Then, you get told that you should use the latest mainstream release, which happens to be 5.0

and on a offtopic note. FreeBSD 4.8 is out RELEASE document. Go get it.

Try them, you'll be amazed.

Well, what were you expecting...

Make democracy work. Let your feelings be known!

Click Here to protest the war

Click Here to support the war

The various CD's you buy are generally identical to the ISOs you download. If you want to support the project, it is recommended you buy from one of the vendors who supports the project. I have subscriptions with both FreeBSD Mall and BSD Mall (Part of Daemonnews).

Other options are listed in the Handbook.

I definatly recommend downloading rather then buying from people like cheapbytes.

-- Brooks

BSD is getting closer to a 5.0 release!

Yes, if by closer you mean relased two and a half months ago.

But does it run Linux?


nope, doesn't "run Linux"... but it DOES runLinux applications.

Why yes, it does. =)

It is also reported that in some situations, Linux binaries perform better on FreeBSD than they do under Linux.

hmm