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But I think when migrating to BSD most linux users don't realize that the GNU utils arn't there anymore.

Ahh, you mean like this tiny sampling of GNU applications?

This is a big thing, same with the bash shell.

Are you referring to, like, bash?? Perhaps you didn't know how to properly install it?

You say you've actually used FreeBSD???

But I think when migrating to BSD most linux users don't realize that the GNU utils arn't there anymore.

Ahh, you mean like this tiny sampling of GNU applications?

This is a big thing, same with the bash shell.

Are you referring to, like, bash?? Perhaps you didn't know how to properly install it?

You say you've actually used FreeBSD???

Package management is not a good argument. If that were the case I think windows installer is better.

When I go to windows.update does it upgrade all the 3rd party software I've installed ?

For instance, I cvsup on a daily cron and once a week run portupgrade. It upgrades ALL the software I install via the ports tree such as KDE, Opera, Mozilla. I'd be impressed if windows update upgraded my mozilla for me but as we know, it doesn't.

I tried Mandrake for a week or so and found the Mandrake RPM updater a pain to use, not least of which was the fact that I had to point and click things. I'm not really knocking Mandrake, Penguins for Courses n that but portupgrade is a vast improvement.

As for audio cards, well here's the list

I do realise that your critique is directed at the article & not FreeBSD :)

One of FBSD's advantages is it's centralised nature. You can contribute & use as you see fit but there is one definitive point of contact which does make a difference when it comes to finding answers to questions.

Linux is in the light and I like the GPL and the politics that goes with it. I don't think I would ever seriously tell anyone to migrate from Linux to FreeBSD but if you are a bit of a geek you'll try them all anyway!

If you want me to evangelise I'll reply plan9 :)

rofl, u assume someone is using ms just cos they dont like linux? thats kind of egocentric aint it?

Of course not! Everyone knows there are only two operating systems in existance, linux (may Allah bless it's name), and Windows.

Do you need to be sent to a re-education camp?

C-X C-S

I'll take a crack at helping... First thing you want to do is install cvsup, so su to root, then cd /usr/ports/net/cvsup, then make install clean

Next, here's my cvsup script (which I have run via cron every Thursday):

su-2.05# more `which cvsupLatest`
#!/bin/sh
sed -e 's/CHANGE_THIS/cvsup9/g' /usr/share/examples/cvsup/stable-supfile > /tmp/stable-supfile && /usr/local/bin/cvsup -g /tmp/stable-supfile
rm /tmp/stable-supfile
#rm -rf /usr/ports/www/jakarta-tomcat/
sed -e 's/CHANGE_THIS/cvsup9/g' /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile > /tmp/ports-supfile && /usr/local/bin/cvsup -g /tmp/ports-supfile
rm /tmp/ports-supfile

Running this will update the sources and ports in one go. Finally, I usually use the following to do the whole build world mess in one quick script (change REDRACER to the name of your kernel configuration file):

su-2.05# more `which makeworld`
#!/usr/local/bin/bash
(cd /usr/src/ && make -Bj 4 world && cd /usr/src/ && make -Bj 4 buildkernel KERNCONF=REDRACER && make -Bj 4 installkernel KERNCONF=REDRACER) >& /usr/src/makeworld.log &

Unfortunately, I've only given you a fish, not taught you how to fish, but it really just takes a little poking around to figure out what you need to do. Look at the handbook, especially chapter 9. Rebuilding world and kernel is less space-hungry than you might think, it seems to take more time than anything. Another good source of advice is the newsgroup comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc

... when FreeBSD 4.5 is out?!

Yes, that's exactly what you should do.

Just cvsup then:
cd /usr/ports/java/jdk && make all install clean

and then to get JFC (Swing):
cd /usr/ports/java/jfc && make all install clean

Source of these instructions.

More info on Java for FreeBSD.

Yes, that's exactly what you should do.

Just cvsup then:
cd /usr/ports/java/jdk && make all install clean

and then to get JFC (Swing):
cd /usr/ports/java/jfc && make all install clean

Source of these instructions.

More info on Java for FreeBSD.

There's a hardware compatibility list in the ISO. HARDWARE.TXT in the root directory gives it to you. Or: Here's the link.

Recently, they've started producing an HTML version of HARDWARE.TXT as well. Look for HARDWARE.HTM on the ISO.

I would use the FreeBSD bootloader instead, you will get that option during the installtion process, look here for details.

Please read, re-read and then read the FreeBSD handbook. It answers a lot of questions including the one you just asked, here is the installation section (complete with screenshots).

Please read, re-read and then read the FreeBSD handbook. It answers a lot of questions including the one you just asked, here is the installation section (complete with screenshots).

How many times have I compiled a "stable" and had it not boot?
FreeBSD: 0 Linux: lost count

How many times have I rebooted after new kernel, and corrupted all mounted filesystems?
FreeBSD: 0 Linux: 0, but I laughed like hell when it happend to you.

Even if FreeBSD did cease to exist, and develpoment stopped, I would still use it, because it is that damn good.

Oh, and considering DARPA is putting a bunch of money into furthering FreeBSD development, I don't see it going anywhere soon.

The DVD is manufactured and sold by FreeBSD Services Ltd, not the FreeBSD Project itself.

Who ever said XP was the enemy? I don't like using it. I also don't like using the philips screwdriver on my Swiss Army knife. But if someone called my favorite OS a philips I don't think I'd have a cow.

Someone tell me how to install this over a network, please.


There's a large portion of the bsd community that don't want you to run FreeBSD, based on this type of question. It's unfair, true, but you've not shown even the slightest interest in learning how to do something yourself. Check out www.freebsd.org, and READ THE DAMN HANDBOOK. Then, and only then, if you have questions, ask away (and provide sufficient details.)

Until such a time, I recommend you not run FreeBSD; you're not ready.

Why don't you decide for yourself? There is documentation on the installation process amongs other things at the FreeBSD project you know.

Not all of the sites have the full set of files (yet), I had to hunt around a bit to find the '4.5-install.iso'.

Don't trust my math on transfer speeds?

local: 4.5-disc2.iso remote: 4.5-disc2.iso
227 Entering Passive Mode (192.168.1.1,162,179)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for '4.5-disc2.iso' (631341056 bytes).
602 MB 00:00 ETA
226 Transfer complete.
631341056 bytes received in 796.65 seconds (773.92 KB/s)

I have been running an ISDN gateway with FreeBSD 4.2 on an AMD 5x86-133 which is roughly comparable to your Pentium 90 for some time. It works perfectly well. Compiling the operating system takes a bit long, but that's not much of a surprise.

ISDN support under FreeBSD is very convenient. It uses the isdn4bsd system, which is integrated into recent versions of FreeBSD. In my opinion, it's superior to Linux, partly because configuration is easier and partly because ituses user-mode ppp by default instead of kernel-based systems which are usually more difficult to configure and maintain. You have to see if your ISDN card is supported. Most passive cards are. Check the ISDN section of the FreeBSD handbook.

Someone tell me how to install this over a network, please.

The FreeBSD folks have already done this, in very plain language.

For myself, I'm doing a cvsup now as I write this. Make world gonna start to cooking tomorrow night. I'm probably about 2 weeks behind the release as I try to update fairly regularly with the latest stuff.

The really good part about this is that all that stuff that's been held back for release is now gonna start flowing back into the ports tree and src directories. Yummy!

and waste a lot of bandwidth in the process. cvsup is your friend.

Go from a mostly working project to mostly not working project. Wow. That's progress.

To avoid the problem of Linus and the Linux kernel, I'll suggest here, here, or perhaps here You could even go get Debian/NetBSD, or Apple's Darwin if that floats your boat.

Furthermore saying GNU/Linux appears to imply that one supports / agrees with FSF, and not all Linux users do.

Using GNU/Linux IS supporting the FSF & GNU because Linux users *are* GNU users.

However GNU users aren't necessarily Linux users.

If you don't agree with / support the FSF and the GNU project I suggest using something else.
(and even that comes with GNU tools bundled)!

oh, btw. good luck getting your kernel compiled with Perl!

It's unfortunate that Red Hat has not offered this service sooner. I moved my home systems to FreeBSD only last week as it's much easier to upgrade to the latest release version (or even to the latest CVS version) or to get a package of a recently-released application. Similar benefits can be obtained from Debian GNU/Linux as well. Both can be upgraded at no cost.

From my experience of Red Hat, even if I did want to upgrade to a more recent version of Red Hat Linux, I wouldn't trust it to an automated system. I upgraded a Red Hat 6 production server to Red Hat 7 last year, and so many things broke I was quite disappointed.

I guess this service will be useful for those home users who want to automatically pull down the latest security patches, tho.

(For those who don't know, the quote is from Red Dwarf, a British comedy.)

It's unfortunate that Red Hat has not offered this service sooner. I moved my home systems to FreeBSD only last week as it's much easier to upgrade to the latest release version (or even to the latest CVS version) or to get a package of a recently-released application. Similar benefits can be obtained from Debian GNU/Linux as well. Both can be upgraded at no cost.

From my experience of Red Hat, even if I did want to upgrade to a more recent version of Red Hat Linux, I wouldn't trust it to an automated system. I upgraded a Red Hat 6 production server to Red Hat 7 last year, and so many things broke I was quite disappointed.

I guess this service will be useful for those home users who want to automatically pull down the latest security patches, tho.

(For those who don't know, the quote is from Red Dwarf, a British comedy.)

It's unfortunate that Red Hat has not offered this service sooner. I moved my home systems to FreeBSD only last week as it's much easier to upgrade to the latest release version (or even to the latest CVS version) or to get a package of a recently-released application. Similar benefits can be obtained from Debian GNU/Linux as well. Both can be upgraded at no cost.

From my experience of Red Hat, even if I did want to upgrade to a more recent version of Red Hat Linux, I wouldn't trust it to an automated system. I upgraded a Red Hat 6 production server to Red Hat 7 last year, and so many things broke I was quite disappointed.

I guess this service will be useful for those home users who want to automatically pull down the latest security patches, tho.

(For those who don't know, the quote is from Red Dwarf, a British comedy.)

It's unfortunate that Red Hat has not offered this service sooner. I moved my home systems to FreeBSD only last week as it's much easier to upgrade to the latest release version (or even to the latest CVS version) or to get a package of a recently-released application. Similar benefits can be obtained from Debian GNU/Linux as well. Both can be upgraded at no cost.

From my experience of Red Hat, even if I did want to upgrade to a more recent version of Red Hat Linux, I wouldn't trust it to an automated system. I upgraded a Red Hat 6 production server to Red Hat 7 last year, and so many things broke I was quite disappointed.

I guess this service will be useful for those home users who want to automatically pull down the latest security patches, tho.

(For those who don't know, the quote is from Red Dwarf, a British comedy.)

Hmm... Maybe I'll watch some FreeBSD tonight.

"Netcraft officially confirms: *BSD is dying"
Where in the vast depths of the hellish web did you locate this official statement? I've grep'd the entire netcraft site and am half tempted to call rainbow tech and chew on someone over there since they do that site and have harrassing me to buy one of their SSL accelerators. Hmmm... now that I think of it... check that out... NetCraft runs FreeBSD as thier OS... well now since you seem to need the education...

Well it's obvious that the Little Linux hackers (or as they call themselves h4x0rs or 313373) are once again out in force bashing. Well it's apparent that they, just like a place that was looking at hiring me for my expertise in *BSD *NIX OS, don't know their history nor do they know what the #@&* an industry standard is.

BSDi was around long before Linux. The Open Source community version of BSD (Free, Open, Net) may lack in hardware but, unlike the Linux hacker ideals of, get everything to work and run to get something else in before checking for stability with what was just done isn't exactly my idea of an OS that I would consider to be alive... as a matter of fact... I'd consider that to be a case of one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel. Compare this to *BSD, there may not be everyone and thier great grandmother spitting out dev drivers but when drivers come out they're stable and supported by the rest of the community. BSD also has the most robust TCP/IP stack out there in the known world of OS's... Trust me... Microsoft certainly isn't even out of the miniture putt putt in this particular area.

So *BSD is dead according to this almight OS basher... that's interesting... I've converted 50+ servers to *BSD with TrustedBSD recommendations from Linux, @ work, and haven't had a sucessful breakin to date, nor have I had a kernel seg fault in so long that I'm able to actually enjoy life rather than waste it at work fixing what the little h4x0rs break. Also on this point... BSD is so dead that all of my friends have at least installed a *BSD partition on thier machines and do most of their playing in *BSD rather than WinBlows or Linux. The majority of them have done this within the past 5 months.

Sorry this particular article from SA has got all kinds of big bugs thru it... especially when they say that a MS OS beat a *nix OS based on thier metrics, what in the sam hell are those? I'm running BSD on a 486DX4/100mhz as a private webserver and it's pushing almost as many SETI projects thru in a week as my 600mhz PIII running ms-windows!

Want proof BSD's not dead? Got Proof that BSD's not dead... here it is...

Apache.org, developers of the ever-popular apache webserver uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/Reports/200112/deve lopers/apache.html

Yahoo.Com, one of the more famous search engines uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/article s/explaining-bsd/index.html or look it up yourself!

cdrom.com, The world's busiest FTP server uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/article s/explaining-bsd/index.html

Oh and before I forget... Did you enjoy the movie "The Matrix"? If so... Guess what was the OS on the CG cluster of 32 *nix boxes... FreeBSD!
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/news/press-rel-1.html

System stability and uptimes? That's the easy one... the "ENTIRE" BSD set of versions... out of the top 50 @ NetCraft

BSD/OS has 24 of the 50 slots with 5 of those being in the top 20.

FreeBSD has 18 of the 50 slots with 10 of those being in the top 20.

IRIX has 8 of the 50 slots with 5 of those being in the top 20.

That's funny... Where's linux?

PROOF? http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

Oh BTW there is one thing that I will also mention... they couldn't measure or detect for FreeBSD default configurations in versions 3 to 4.3, which would be; 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 4.1, 4.11, 4.2, & 4.3. Which was about 2 + years worth of releases.

So don't think for a minute that BSD is dead or dying.

FACT: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOUR TALKING ABOUT and neither did that author in this instance!

Regards,
Neo@/dev/null

"Netcraft officially confirms: *BSD is dying"
Where in the vast depths of the hellish web did you locate this official statement? I've grep'd the entire netcraft site and am half tempted to call rainbow tech and chew on someone over there since they do that site and have harrassing me to buy one of their SSL accelerators. Hmmm... now that I think of it... check that out... NetCraft runs FreeBSD as thier OS... well now since you seem to need the education...

Well it's obvious that the Little Linux hackers (or as they call themselves h4x0rs or 313373) are once again out in force bashing. Well it's apparent that they, just like a place that was looking at hiring me for my expertise in *BSD *NIX OS, don't know their history nor do they know what the #@&* an industry standard is.

BSDi was around long before Linux. The Open Source community version of BSD (Free, Open, Net) may lack in hardware but, unlike the Linux hacker ideals of, get everything to work and run to get something else in before checking for stability with what was just done isn't exactly my idea of an OS that I would consider to be alive... as a matter of fact... I'd consider that to be a case of one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel. Compare this to *BSD, there may not be everyone and thier great grandmother spitting out dev drivers but when drivers come out they're stable and supported by the rest of the community. BSD also has the most robust TCP/IP stack out there in the known world of OS's... Trust me... Microsoft certainly isn't even out of the miniture putt putt in this particular area.

So *BSD is dead according to this almight OS basher... that's interesting... I've converted 50+ servers to *BSD with TrustedBSD recommendations from Linux, @ work, and haven't had a sucessful breakin to date, nor have I had a kernel seg fault in so long that I'm able to actually enjoy life rather than waste it at work fixing what the little h4x0rs break. Also on this point... BSD is so dead that all of my friends have at least installed a *BSD partition on thier machines and do most of their playing in *BSD rather than WinBlows or Linux. The majority of them have done this within the past 5 months.

Sorry this particular article from SA has got all kinds of big bugs thru it... especially when they say that a MS OS beat a *nix OS based on thier metrics, what in the sam hell are those? I'm running BSD on a 486DX4/100mhz as a private webserver and it's pushing almost as many SETI projects thru in a week as my 600mhz PIII running ms-windows!

Want proof BSD's not dead? Got Proof that BSD's not dead... here it is...

Apache.org, developers of the ever-popular apache webserver uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/Reports/200112/deve lopers/apache.html

Yahoo.Com, one of the more famous search engines uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/article s/explaining-bsd/index.html or look it up yourself!

cdrom.com, The world's busiest FTP server uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/article s/explaining-bsd/index.html

Oh and before I forget... Did you enjoy the movie "The Matrix"? If so... Guess what was the OS on the CG cluster of 32 *nix boxes... FreeBSD!
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/news/press-rel-1.html

System stability and uptimes? That's the easy one... the "ENTIRE" BSD set of versions... out of the top 50 @ NetCraft

BSD/OS has 24 of the 50 slots with 5 of those being in the top 20.

FreeBSD has 18 of the 50 slots with 10 of those being in the top 20.

IRIX has 8 of the 50 slots with 5 of those being in the top 20.

That's funny... Where's linux?

PROOF? http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

Oh BTW there is one thing that I will also mention... they couldn't measure or detect for FreeBSD default configurations in versions 3 to 4.3, which would be; 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 4.1, 4.11, 4.2, & 4.3. Which was about 2 + years worth of releases.

So don't think for a minute that BSD is dead or dying.

FACT: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOUR TALKING ABOUT and neither did that author in this instance!

Regards,
Neo@/dev/null

"Netcraft officially confirms: *BSD is dying"
Where in the vast depths of the hellish web did you locate this official statement? I've grep'd the entire netcraft site and am half tempted to call rainbow tech and chew on someone over there since they do that site and have harrassing me to buy one of their SSL accelerators. Hmmm... now that I think of it... check that out... NetCraft runs FreeBSD as thier OS... well now since you seem to need the education...

Well it's obvious that the Little Linux hackers (or as they call themselves h4x0rs or 313373) are once again out in force bashing. Well it's apparent that they, just like a place that was looking at hiring me for my expertise in *BSD *NIX OS, don't know their history nor do they know what the #@&* an industry standard is.

BSDi was around long before Linux. The Open Source community version of BSD (Free, Open, Net) may lack in hardware but, unlike the Linux hacker ideals of, get everything to work and run to get something else in before checking for stability with what was just done isn't exactly my idea of an OS that I would consider to be alive... as a matter of fact... I'd consider that to be a case of one foot in the grave and the other one on a banana peel. Compare this to *BSD, there may not be everyone and thier great grandmother spitting out dev drivers but when drivers come out they're stable and supported by the rest of the community. BSD also has the most robust TCP/IP stack out there in the known world of OS's... Trust me... Microsoft certainly isn't even out of the miniture putt putt in this particular area.

So *BSD is dead according to this almight OS basher... that's interesting... I've converted 50+ servers to *BSD with TrustedBSD recommendations from Linux, @ work, and haven't had a sucessful breakin to date, nor have I had a kernel seg fault in so long that I'm able to actually enjoy life rather than waste it at work fixing what the little h4x0rs break. Also on this point... BSD is so dead that all of my friends have at least installed a *BSD partition on thier machines and do most of their playing in *BSD rather than WinBlows or Linux. The majority of them have done this within the past 5 months.

Sorry this particular article from SA has got all kinds of big bugs thru it... especially when they say that a MS OS beat a *nix OS based on thier metrics, what in the sam hell are those? I'm running BSD on a 486DX4/100mhz as a private webserver and it's pushing almost as many SETI projects thru in a week as my 600mhz PIII running ms-windows!

Want proof BSD's not dead? Got Proof that BSD's not dead... here it is...

Apache.org, developers of the ever-popular apache webserver uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.netcraft.com/Survey/Reports/200112/deve lopers/apache.html

Yahoo.Com, one of the more famous search engines uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/article s/explaining-bsd/index.html or look it up yourself!

cdrom.com, The world's busiest FTP server uses... FreeBSD as the OS on thier servers.
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/article s/explaining-bsd/index.html

Oh and before I forget... Did you enjoy the movie "The Matrix"? If so... Guess what was the OS on the CG cluster of 32 *nix boxes... FreeBSD!
Proof: http://www.freebsd.org/news/press-rel-1.html

System stability and uptimes? That's the easy one... the "ENTIRE" BSD set of versions... out of the top 50 @ NetCraft

BSD/OS has 24 of the 50 slots with 5 of those being in the top 20.

FreeBSD has 18 of the 50 slots with 10 of those being in the top 20.

IRIX has 8 of the 50 slots with 5 of those being in the top 20.

That's funny... Where's linux?

PROOF? http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html

Oh BTW there is one thing that I will also mention... they couldn't measure or detect for FreeBSD default configurations in versions 3 to 4.3, which would be; 3.0, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.51, 4.0, 4.1, 4.11, 4.2, & 4.3. Which was about 2 + years worth of releases.

So don't think for a minute that BSD is dead or dying.

FACT: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOUR TALKING ABOUT and neither did that author in this instance!

Regards,
Neo@/dev/null

This hibernation mode snapshot can be duplicated or even put on other machines in the event of a system failure. The virtual machine will then come back online like nothing ever happened, with hardware devices effectively still attached and processes still running.

It works really slick, you can perform other tasks and come back to your virtual machine later without slow boot times. This will also work on Linux, Solaris, and Windows platforms. I'd highly recommend VMware for on-demand OS access.

-Pat

I wish the Supertrak SX6000 / I2O would have made it to this release. A good thing to see that Søren is working on the case. I have such a controller waiting for a FreeBSD driver. :)
I have had it running since October on RedHat 7.2 using the I2O drivers, but I'm not going to use the machine before I can use it with FreeBSD.

On the FreeBSD RELEASE page, it says:

The next scheduled release on the -stable branch will be FreeBSD 4.5 on January 26, 2002.

It said the same two days ago.

It's in the FAQ. do check it out!

> As promised we've now entered the code freeze for RELENG_4. Please
> submit all MFC requests to re@FreeBSD.org before committing to this
> branch.

For your hacking and/or holiday pleasure, I give you: "The Twelve Days of Code-Freeze"

Sung to the tune of:"The Twelve Days of Christmas"
Words by:bmah@freebsd.org

On the first day of code-freeze, my -hackers gave to me:
A bad patch in the src/ tree.

On the second day of code-freeze, my -hackers gave to me:
Two flamewars,
And a bad patch in the src/ tree.

On the third day of code-freeze, my -hackers gave to me:
Three bikesheds,
Two flamewars,
And a bad patch in the src/ tree.

On the fourth day of code-freeze, my -hackers gave to me:
Four broken worlds,
Three bikesheds,
Two flamewars,
And a bad patch in the src/ tree.

> As promised we've now entered the code freeze for RELENG_4. Please
> submit all MFC requests to re@FreeBSD.org before committing to this
> branch.

For your hacking and/or holiday pleasure, I give you: "The Twelve Days of Code-Freeze"

Sung to the tune of:"The Twelve Days of Christmas"
Words by:bmah@freebsd.org

On the first day of code-freeze, my -hackers gave to me:
A bad patch in the src/ tree.

On the second day of code-freeze, my -hackers gave to me:
Two flamewars,
And a bad patch in the src/ tree.

On the third day of code-freeze, my -hackers gave to me:
Three bikesheds,
Two flamewars,
And a bad patch in the src/ tree.

On the fourth day of code-freeze, my -hackers gave to me:
Four broken worlds,
Three bikesheds,
Two flamewars,
And a bad patch in the src/ tree.

The i386 Release notes give me a 404. Anyone know what's been updated (other than TCP and NFS)?

Official release-date is Jan 26th, as can be seen here.

Slashdot jumped the gun, again.

You could try watching newvers.sh in CVS for a 4.5-RELEASE tag, or at least check the FTP sites.

4.5 is still in Release Candidate 3, as far as I know.

Keep an eye on the freebsd-announce list or the news page.

Official release-date is Jan 26th, as can be seen here.

Slashdot jumped the gun, again.

You could try watching newvers.sh in CVS for a 4.5-RELEASE tag, or at least check the FTP sites.

4.5 is still in Release Candidate 3, as far as I know.

Keep an eye on the freebsd-announce list or the news page.

Official release-date is Jan 26th, as can be seen here.

Slashdot jumped the gun, again.

You could try watching newvers.sh in CVS for a 4.5-RELEASE tag, or at least check the FTP sites.

4.5 is still in Release Candidate 3, as far as I know.

Keep an eye on the freebsd-announce list or the news page.

Official release-date is Jan 26th, as can be seen here.

Slashdot jumped the gun, again.

You could try watching newvers.sh in CVS for a 4.5-RELEASE tag, or at least check the FTP sites.

4.5 is still in Release Candidate 3, as far as I know.

Keep an eye on the freebsd-announce list or the news page.

looks like the links on that page are broken, and it seems that 4.5-release hasn't made it's way out to all the ftp sites yet.

in the mean time, here are the relnotes for 4.5-rc3 i386 alpha

looks like the links on that page are broken, and it seems that 4.5-release hasn't made it's way out to all the ftp sites yet.

in the mean time, here are the relnotes for 4.5-rc3 i386 alpha

The FDP is run exactly like an open source project; in fact, it shares a single CVS repository with the source of the operating system, and the ports tree containing ports of third party applications. It's authored in (slightly amended) Docbook by a diverse collection of people around the world, and they seem to have the technicalities of distributed authoring and editing down pat.

Fortunately there's a way around it

Yes, there is

no problems on FreeBSD, apparently

So it's basically the same thing which Sorcerer wants to achieve, right? Than maybe Sorcerer should just use FreeBSD ports instead of reinventing the wheel?

What exactly is the ports system?

More like, what are rpm users missing out on? With rpm -i package.rpm the user may or may not be able to install the intended software. There could be real dependency problems, as in kde2 needs qt2. There could also be bogus dependency problems since you may have compiled qt2 from source but rpm wouldn't know about it.

Enter FreeBSD and ports. A typical FreeBSD install creates a directory called /usr/ports which is a whole tree of makefiles. So to install something, you just cd /usr/ports/category/WhateverYouWantToInstall/ && make && make install. All dependencies are taken care of automagically. The makefiles in these directories are smart enough to download whatever you need and then compile the source on your machine. So installing a new package doesn't take several hours of trolling newsgroups and searching for rpms.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Check this out.

My experience is limited to Mandrake, Slackware, FreeBSD and OpenBSD. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, but when I need to get sh*t done, BSD, espescially FreeBSD is my first choice just because the ports tree contains nearly any software I'd want to run, eliminating the bottleneck that software installation sometimes turns into and letting me get to the task at hand.

As an aside, it seems like everything that Mandrake tries to be to "joe sixpack" who is just getting into trying linux on the desktop, BSD is to the sysadmin or programmer who needs to get a *nix platform up and running for a certain task. Compiling a custom kernel, installing software, modifying the init process, etc are at least as easy for the sysadmin on BSD as adjusting the screen fonts and changing the wallpaper are for a newbie in Mandrake.

Ports is a collection of applications that can easily be compiled for your operating system. Basically for FreeBSD you have /usr/ports. That directory contains various subdirectories dividing applications into www (apache, mod_php4, etc), lang (ruby, etc), mail (mutt, exim, etc), and so forth. Each directory for a specific application contains a number of files. Some of these are patch files that are applied to the source code of the port. See the ports tree doesn't contain the actual code of the application - it only contains enough logic to get the regular .tar.gz release (usually from the developers home site) and the patches to build it properly (particular distribution preferences on file structure, libraries, etc).

Every couple days I use cvsup to suck down the modifications to the ports tree to my FreeBSD box. Then I happen to use a relatively new tool not in the base system (portupgrade, written in ruby) to check if my currently installed packages are up to date. If they aren't, I can instruct portupgrade to upgrade them or go to each directory individually and do a "make install". Oh yeah, each directory has a Makefile :).

It's sort of like why distribute the source code if it is just going to get out of date (plus you'll be getting the source for all kinds of crap you never end up using). Of course now each application must be compiled but if you don't want to do that you can use the packages (precompiled binaries that can be added with pkg_add, etc).

Another benefit is ports can be on any version of the operating system because it is independent of the base system. Look at RedHat and you'll see compiled packages for RedHat 6.2, 7.2, etc (of course, before someone knee jerks a reply, RPMS are out there but I'm trying to make a point here). Ports avoids this. The price is compilation. A trade off. You make the call.

Hope that helps. Here is the FreeBSD handbook section for ports: ports-using.html (it contains a better description of what files are in a ports directory).