Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD 3.5-RELEASE Now Available
dougc writes: "FreeBSD 3.5-RELEASE is now available for the x86 architecture. Many changes in both the kernel and userland, plus several very small security fixes were included. A bunch of neat things were also merged from -current." 3.5 is the continuation of the 3.x branch, with mostly important bug and security fixes. New development continues on 5.x. This release is almost certainly the last on the 3.x line, with 4.x becoming the new ``stable'' release. The release notes have the full details on what's changed, you can download 3.5 from here.
I am happy every time I see an Open Source project progressing, especially FreeBSD which is a superb OS.
Unfortunately for me it is of limited use: what I need right now is an OS that has IPSEC integrated in the TCP/IP stack which FreeBSD is lacking. I could also use SMP support in order to install it to our gateways but it looks like this will take even longer as it requires an effective re-write as far as I am aware.
Merci,
Philipe
Besides, there aren't any interesting Linux-news out there currently.
This is great stuff. Now all FreeBSD needs is a little more security like its brother OpenBSD and we have the perfect operating system
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
3.5 is the last of the 3.x release branch. 4.0 is the beginning of the 4.x branch. Why the multiple branches? So that FreeBSD can introduce new, major features without breaking stablility. Now that 3.x is finished the 4.x release is the STABLE branch and 5.x is the CURRENT branch ie. the development branch.
It is better to keep ones mouth shut and let people think you are a fool rather than open ones mouth and remove all doubt.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Wait, it should be split in two very soon.
--
Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
Made me smile at least...
I always get this *slightly* wrong, so bear with me.
:)
BSD sets off on branches with a fairly broad set of features. So, the 3.x branch changed a whole lot of stuff from 2.x and added (for instance) support for the Alpha.
4.x binned the whole of 3.x's IDE architecture and replaced it with a new ATA one. The jail system call was added. A new network card driver architecture for cards that use the MII physical layer went in. Stateful extensions were put on the firewall. Lots of USB stuff. IP6 is now *very* integrated, SSL is quite integrated and all is good. Go see the changes for your self. I use it every day with no problem.
Anyway, development continues along all these branches until no-one needs/wants it any more. There are thousands of incredibly serious users of the 3.x branch that have no desire to break their scripts so development continues along 3.x. Most users now use 4.x that I believe has just had its' first "-STABLE" release. I should cvsup and buildworld, really.
There is a 5.x branch that is merging some of the work from BSDi. This is cowboy country, for hackers developers and nutters only. Not for production servers.
So there you go. A more verbose explaination is yours for the taking in the FAQ.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Uhmm... BSD *is* mainstream. Linux just happens to get all the media coverage. Ever wonder what sites like Yahoo!, Hotmail, eBay, run? Why it's FreeBSD! Oh my god, it's mainstream! Linux is slow compared to *BSD, for the mere fact that *BSD has more code maturity. Hell, NT is about on par with Linux for performance but *BSD smokes them (AIX and Solaris around the top of the study I saw, they didn't test my favorite FreeBSD, but it's up there). You Linux people need to stop thinking Linux is the be all and end all, it needs to catch up with BSD in alot of areas first. However, to be fair, I must say for software compatibility Linux is out in front (though FreeBSD's linux emulation levels it out). A *BSD beats Linux in all other areas, NetBSD for hardware, OpenBSD for security, and FreeBSD for performance. Read up next time.
(I know some Linux-fanatic moderator is gonna mod me down for this, but I refuse to post anonymously)
--
Sort of true.
CURRENT is where all the major development goes on, think of it as a permanent beta test. It usually complies and works, but not always.
STABLE gets some new features back-ported from CURRENT, plus bugfixes and other enhancements.
Periodially STABLE is frozen for a short period, and is released as a RELEASE version, therefore think of RELEASE as a snapshot of STABLE at a particular period in time, with effort made to ensure that it's a worthwhile release point.
Currently 5 is CURRENT, and STABLE sort of encompasses 4.0 and 3.5 depending upon your point of view. 4.0 was generally reckoned to be more stable than 3.4 and hence was adopted slightly quicker than normal.
4.1 will most likely be the official STABLE version when it is released.
I guess I am a typical example of the target group of the *BSD's.
I started out with Linux 2.0.14 and tried numerous distributions, and am running Mandrake 6.1 now. Because I have to be really productive on my machine right now, so I can't afford a non-clean system upgrade. Unfortunately, a simple upgrade-patch-whatever (just upgrade what needs to be upgraded) is not available for Mandrake.
OK, so there is Debian. So I happen to be one of the "unfortunate" KDE users. I have read the Slashdot article the other day, I fully understand the legal issues, but I happen to still don't understand why an inclusion in non-free seems to be a non-option.
After a while, spending a time on the 'net, looking and comparing...
Hey, there's FreeBSD! IMO, if FreeBSD would run the Linux kernel, it would be the very best distribution available. It's port collection is unmatched. Simple total system upgrades by typing a few words.
I need a file system which supports files larger than 2 GB and some sort of journaling facility. I found out that UFS with soft-updates can be the answer to my question. Could be a replacement of the ReiserFS partitions now. SMP support in FreeBSD 4.0 is improved.
All my hardware is supported by FreeBSD.
As soon as I can find the time, the change from Linux to FreeBSD will not be unrealistic. I want to do stuff with my computer, not muddle around.
I started using freebsd with 3.0 and haven't went back to redhack linux since. Everyone should try it at least once. Use the tools for the job.
If you don't like ftp-installs or don't want to wait for the CD from Walnut Creek/BSDi, you can also download the ISO image at ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/IS O-IMAGES/3.5-install.iso
Buy the CD later to support the FreeBSD project.
Related to this: the OpenBSD 2.7 ISO's can be grabbed at ftp://ftp.zedz.net/pub/varia/OpenBSD-2.7.iso/
-- unix is for people without a social life - Patrick van Eijk
Like Sun and HP, FreeBSD maintains two branches of development at any given time. FreeBSD calls these branches CURRENT and STABLE. Unlike Sun and HP, FreeBSD allows the public to see the CURRENT branch. A RELEASE is a snaphot in time in which the given state of the CURRENT branch is judged to stable enough to be a release. This becomes a .0 release and is then called STABLE instead of CURRENT. This how we got FreeBSD 4.0.
Like all OSs there are bug fixes. Sun and HP release patches to their current rev of their OS. We in the FreeBSD world see patches as messy. What we do is to incorporate the patches into the OS source code on the STABLE branch and periodically snapshot the STABLE branch as a dot release. FreeBSD 3.5 is the last snapshot on the 3.x STABLE branch. 3.x is now being retired and 4.x is now the STABLE branch and 5.x is the CURRENT branch
STABLE is for those who want the most stable version of FreeBSD. CURRENT is for those who are willing to experment and don't mind if source tree is less than perfect from time to time.
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Even Linux-kernels come out in different "trees/branches" of development.
... We can make some sort of parallel like the following:
... For Linux that means 2.2-kernels ... for FreeBSD that means the 3.x-branch
...
... Things get broken (accidentilly Or on purpose) way more often when compared to their more stable-branches ... But they also get a lot more average/major changes in their internals.
.. the following shift will basically happen:
... i know the parallel is probably not water-proof ... but i think it comes close. Feel free to ask any question.
You have the old 2.0-kernels
You have the newer 2.2-kernels
and You have the 2.3-series of kernels
If we leave out the FreeBSD-5.x and the linux 2.4-branch
2.0-kernels/FreeBSD-2.2.x
-------------------------
Both are reasonably functional and stable just not really supported any longer. People are advised to switch over to the newer "branches"
2.2-kernels/FreeBSD-3.x
-----------------------
Both are currently considdered to be the mainstream branches of both development trees. Expected to be quite stable and are known to catch occasional minor/average changes in their internals
2.3-kernels/FreeBSD-4.x
-----------------------
These two trees are the "Playground" of the developers
These branches are where all the really interesting stuff happens.
Now taking linux-2.4-kernels and the FreeBSD-5.x-branch into account. I assume as soon as linux-2.4 kernels will be released the 2.2-kernel branch will take on the role of the 2.0-kernel-branch.
With that assumption
- FreeBSD-2.2.x will be the linux-2.0-kernels
- FreeBSD-3.x will be like linux-2.2-kernels
- FreeBSD-4.x will be like linux-2.4-kernels
- FreeBSD-5.x will be like linux-2.5-kernels*
* assuming 2.4 will released anytime soon and the 2.5-kernel tree will be started.
I hope this parallel will basically explain how FreeBSD's Release Engineering works
KDE in Debian is as easy as visiting http://kde.tdyc.com/ and adding a line to /etc/apt/sources.list (per the instructions).
You will then have all the benefits of Debian and KDE together. You can even try a beta of KDE2 if you like.
you lose
This is called the concurrent model of software engineering. M$ also uses this model, in daily build form, similar to CVS. Though our textbook referred to it as build and test, we affectionately referred to it as the build and "fsck up" model, in order to help us remember the drawbacks (can lead to miscommunication and differences in builds chrologically).
Eh...
you lose
did you think that one up yourself?
you lose
you lose
you lose
you lose
you lose
Please be more considerate in the future. Thank you from your friends at the ULTOAD.
United League of Troll and Orc Anti-Defamation
They don't market CURRENT, they market STABLE.
CURRENT is available via CVS or by downloading a snapshot, you can't (normally) get it on CD and you actually have to go looking for it so you can't install it by mistake.
Well, I actually did (sort of). I was following the 4.0-CURRENT branch (i.e., cvsup tag=.) before 5.0-CURRENT existed. Of course, once 5.0 became the head and I recompiled a new kernel, I got loads of nasty surprises. The funny thing was that I didn't notice that the bootup message said 5.0 until a few days later, and I was terribly upset by how unstable the 4.0 branch suddenly had become.
Care to cite these studies? Are they recent? Do they compare recent linux and BSD kernels? In my experience, neither linux nor BSD has any advantage over the other as workstations or as mid-range servers. I cannot comment on very high load applications.
Hari.
Uh... What study are you referring to? A link,
:)
please. And could you elaborate on the specific
areas where *BSD smokes Linux? Not that I doubt
that e.g. the BSD MMU is currently better than
the Linux MMU, but I recently saw some netstats
that one of my friends ran on identical HW with
linux (2.2.x) and FreeBSD (3.3?) and linux
smoked FreeBSD's ass. And that ran somewhat
contrary to my understanding of things as I had
gathered by word-of-mouth.
To sum up: Please supply links and be specific.
Thank you for listening,
Rasmus
PS: And yes, I know that Im being as whooly as
Mr. DestructioN, but I dont have the numbers
here. Sorry
OK,I guess its kinda hard to make a statement sound retorical on a message board.
I didnt really mean they needed to cover more linux, Its was a attemp to show how much bitching goes on with every linux post.
and I ment main stream y media covrage not by server use, I know BSD smokes linuxs ass, I love the BSD way things are done, hell the linux distro I use is slackware if I'm going to run linux.
GET A LIFE PEOPLE
Free Unix? Free Windows. http://www.reactos.com
I'd like to know whether apple is going to try and modify its kernel along with the updates to BSD.
I like Stuff - http://voda.dhs.org/
YOu would think that there might be one or two /.'s who use linux *and* freebsd.
If there are, "they are being very very quiet"
I think I'll try FreeBSD soon. I just gotta free up a computer....
I need a TiVo for my car. Pause live traffic now.
Ebay does not run BSD. Try using Netcraft and see what you get: IIS on NT.
STABLE is for those who want the most stable version of FreeBSD. CURRENT is for those who are willing to experment and don't mind if source tree is less than perfect from time to time.
.0 release and is then called STABLE instead of CURRENT. This how we got FreeBSD 4.0.", which makes sense, but what is the criteria by which a RELEASE becomes STABLE. If that's how we get 4.0, is "4.0 RELEASE" basically the same as "4.0 STABLE", and if so, why isn't it labelled as such?
This much I understand, but what (if any) is the difference between STABLE/CURRENT and RELEASE? Who is RELEASE for?
You say "A RELEASE is a snaphot in time in which the given state of the CURRENT branch is judged to stable enough to be a release. This becomes a
Sincerely wanting to understand...
] D
If BSD had gone for the insanely large popular push that linux did, then BSD would have been linux. and not just linux, but a better linux, as i will admit, BSD in general seems to be a better platform than Linux, however, the following is just not as big... just as macs are arguably better than PC's in terms of architecture, but PC's have saturation.
The point is, don't hold FreeBSD or any OS on a pedestal. If you do more digging in Netcraft, you'll actually find that a lot of big sites are also running Solaris, Tru64 Digital Unix, IRIX, HP/UX, GNU/Linux, NT 4 and even Windows 2000. There are plenty of operating systems in use out there, and to point out one site as a reason why one OS is superior to another...it's ummm...ridiculous.
At work, we use Linux because it's free and does the job well for us. We don't use it because it "powers a bigger site than another OS, blah blah." That's basically bullshit. Personally I wouldn't use NT because it only logs NetBIOS names, amoung other annoyances. (Yep, "HAXOR" machine logged in and tried to hack the network....now, let's search the whole internet for that "HAXOR", it'll be easy, really!)But, all things considered, if corporations are willing to pay the price for NT (in more ways than one) and are happy with it, good luck to them. Linux will probably stay on our servers and everyone else is free to use whatever OS they'd like, although I'd not recommend NT - it crashes, it's slow, and it's a general pain. These are my experiences, though, and might not apply to everyone. Management at the last company I worked for wanted to switch from Digital Fortran compiler to some Windows NT-based package. We lost 2 months of work and after another month, our lead scientests started complaining and demanding their Digital workstations back.
These are my experiences, though, and might not apply to everyone
Cliffton Watermore"A few atoms won't even light a match" - Dr Jones, 1933
...which I just downloaded and stayed up all night trying to get onto my f*$^@!# laptop.
.inf files that my install needed, so I'm wondering if it isn't somehow a pre-release or upgrade-only sort of distro at the moment.
My impression is that FreeBSD "Release" is somewhat equivalent to Linux's "Stable", with "Current" tracking the changes from the CD-ROM's. So which # is the current "Release" now? Is it 3.5 or 4.0? Surely there is some distinction that I am missing...
Apparently 4.0 was missing all sorts of
Any FreeBSD users in the audience?
--Lenny
The scripts break because things are entirely rewritten and put in different places. Now I'm not the most experienced FreeBSD user but just as a hypothetical example. Lets just say a whole new backup technology comes out and eradicats tape drives. Now naturally all the freebsd backup utilities will be replaced. Assuming these new utilities still work on tape drives, and you have a tape drive, upgrading to lets just say the 5.x branch from your 4.x bsd means you scripts that run from cron will need o be rewritten. This is probally a poor example so I'll give another one.
Lets say that the BSD people decide to create a devfs in 5.x. Now along with this thet develop a new naming mechanism for the whole dev directory, which btw is very different from linux's. Now assuming you had a network of FreeBSD systems and for some reason NFS wouldn't do (probally security) you probally would have a series of scripts that would perform the functions of Norton Disk doctor.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Here's a picture:
~
|
+--3.0--3.1--3.2--3.3--3.4--3.5--x (3.x-STABLE |
|
+--4.0--x (4.x-STABLE)
|
|
x (5.x-CURRENT)
Thus, the -CURRENT branch is where the experimental stuff gets done. Every so often, -CURRENT is frozen, made stable, and released as a .0 version. A -STABLE branch is then created starting with that .0 release, to which only bug/security fixes and a few enhancements from -CURRENT are added. When enough changes accumulate on a -STABLE branch, the .1, .2, etc. releases are made. So at any one time, there are several separate branches being worked on; the ones receiving the most attention right now are 5.0-CURRENT, 4.x-STABLE, and 3.x-STABLE (but there are others). This means that even as work progresses on the 4.x-STABLE branch towards release 4.1, work progresses simultaneously on the older 3.x-STABLE branch. One side-effect of this system that confuses some newcomers is that versions can be released seemingly out-of-order, like 3.5 after 4.0.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
The development branch is 2 major releases ahead of the stable? What's up with that?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'm also considering moving to freebsd because of its lauded stability. They say it has some linux binary compatibility, but how much linux-only software will it run?
;-) )
Will linux WordPerfect Office 2000 work on it?
Those Loki-ported games?
If it can't run my applications, then I'm not going to switch. (gee, where have we heard that one before?
Going from 2.x to 3.x a.out stopped being the executable format, and ELF started. 3.x could be compiled to run a.out files, but by default it wasn't. The shared libs for new things were also made as ELF by default, and if you wanted a.out shared libs you had to thwack it yourself. In the short run, it's a big pain. In the long run ELF is much better (better debugging support, better shared loader support for example).
Going from 3.x to 4.x (or maybe this was 2.x to 3.x again) the low level SCSI stuff changed. If you had a program that did raw SCSI it had to be "updated", the new interface is much nicer, so programmers in the future will be far happyer with the system, then the old one.
Going from 3.x to 4.x some of the sound and interrupt things changed (interrupt for better SMP I think, sound for supporting modern PCI sound cards better). The one-two-punch finally took out the old PAS-16 driver (the cards were state of the art nine years ago, and the compony that makes them defunct for 5 years). /it still compiled, but had config and boot time warnings and lost interrupts. I might have been able to fix it, but decided to buy a better audio card for $30.
All of these changes are nice in the long run. Any of them could be a short term show stopper. It's nice that the "old" branch still gets important patches. It's nice that things can be changed in incompatable ways when that will be better in the long run. That way we only have four async I/O systems, not 28 :-)
Last night I just updated my Mandrake 6.1 to 7.1... the CD install program *will* let you selectively update packages. Takes a little time (and the GUI has a nasty little feature that makes it hard to tell which packages are selected in tree view), but it all worked out real well... the only thing I had to do afterward (because I wanted to) was to get the newest kernel and reapply the VPN-MASQ patch (if you don't know, you don't need it).
I've been rather happy with Mandrake for a long while now, though I have used FreeBSD on and off for a couple of years now - a great system, too...
that's why I have multiple boxen 8^)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
However, I have a fairly strong preference for *bsd. In every case where I've noted a difference between the GNU stuff used in Linux distributions (no, not GNU/Linux. It also includes perl, X, som bsd stuff, and many other things before it's something that would be called Linux. Something that was merely GNU/Linux rather than BSD/Perl/X/GNU/sendmail/.../linux would be useless, but I digress), I've preferered the bsd way/implementation/mindset.
However, my laptop runs linux (an old debian and 2.0 kernel), and my last office machine ran debian (not enough disk/memory to take advantage of the source for bsd). I also keep a small installation of an old debian on my main home machine for repairs, though Tom's has made this kind of redundant . . .
hawk
BSD is not run on the Linux kernel, they don't have Linus... Those moderating this, please read the parent...
Eh...
BSD doesn't smoke Linux in all areas. (Hey, I use BeOS mainly, so I have no preference for either.) In terms of usage, I'd give the upper hand to BSD because it is a much more coherent system, and the ports system absolutely rocks. As for performance, it all depends on what you're gauging. Under low load single proc systems doing network stuff, Linux has a slight edge. However, BSD handles high load MUCH better than Linux does. Also, the MM in BSD is better, but the multimedia subsystems (sound, graphics, etc) are better under Linux. As for NT, NT smokes both Linux and BSD when it comes to certain gauges of performance. It wins for raw throughput through the network, for raw disk I/O speed, an has insanely better multimedia capabilities. (Courtesy DirectX and a very mature OpenGL.) However, you have to look at its performance in real world terms. NT makes a lot of sacrifices to achieve these raw benchmarks. First, it has small in kernel bufers for I/O and stuff. That makes it faster, but mucks up the system and increases non-pagable memory use. Then there is graphics. The Win2K HAL integrates DirectX calls, again messing with the cleanliness of the system, increasing the code size of a very low level layer, and introducing a major source of bugs into the HAL. Also, all system servers run in kernel mode, so they do not enjoy the protectedness inherent in micokernel designs. By running stuff like graphics in the kernel and running the server in kernel mode, it becomes a lot faster, but at the cost of stability, memory use etc. Also, NT has problems under heavy load, so when comparing a FreeBSD and an NT machine, the FreeBSD machine will wipe the floor with NT, even though NT has the raw throughput advantage.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I know the issue of having 3.5 come out AFTER 4.0 is confusing, so let me try to explain why.
.0 tended to be a bit rough around the edges.
There are many thousands of users who are using 3.4, which are quite happy doing so.
When 4.0 came out, it was using lots of (relatively) untested code, so the general advice was "unless you have a good reason to use 4.0, stick with 3.x until 4.1 comes out". To be perfectly blunt, in the past anything ending in
4.0 came out, and actually has been very stable and bugs have been scarce. However, they still have the comittment to the 3.x users to incorporate some of the recent changes, so here came 3.5.
5.0 is the "bleeding-edge/scary" code that hasn't been released yet, and is where developers to go make huge changes. Right now they're making gigantic changes to the SMP structure to make interrupts more thread-like, and the such.
While I give the FreeBSD team kudos for supporting users who aren't tracking the latest and greatest, I've had no problems with 4.0 at all, and am recommending it to anyone who is getting a fresh start.
If you're a 3.x user who just wants to update, go with a 3.5 upgrade.
If you're a new users, grab 4.0. (4.1 isn't too far away, too).
-- Kevin
The site that this is a mirror of, ftp.fsn.hu, is a very nice high-speed mirror of both unofficial OpenBSD 2.7 ISOs and the official (md5-checked) FreeBSD 3.5 ISO. I immediately dropped my connections to Walnut Creek CDROM and fire up this one, and it's roaring away now. Best of luck.
Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru?
Only if it can do more that 1 TB/sec.
Sure it can!
Ok, the latency is a little high, but if you drive a semi full of CDs over it, I'm sure you could break 1 TB/sec...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
All I hear about from here is Linux. You know I heard somewhere that FreeBSD just released a major version and there is NO mention of ... oh, hehe ahhh, nevermind :)
I wasn't lost... I was only momentaraly confused of my spacial orientation relative to my prime destination.
Actually, it was a snipe at me, and my description of the BSD development model, it was child to my post. I mentioned CVS, and Microsoft, and he sorta used those words, but none of them were coherent or even together.
Eh...
I keep hearing over and over again how all the *BSD variants are so much faster than Linux because of tighter kernel code etc... I've searched all over the web for some kind of benchmarks to back these statements up and haven't found anything. My question is, does anyone know where I can find non-anecdotal evidence to prove this point, or is it all just hype?
A musician without the RIAA, is like a fish without a bicycle.
Only packages that are in the default install are subjected to OpenBSD's auditing. Everything you just said sounds like paraphrased material that you read on slashdot.
-o Disclaimer: My employer doesn't even agree with me about C indentation style o-
Theo de Raadt copyrighted the Official OpenBSD CD layout. There is nothing illegal about what they are doing, in distributing an iso based on an unofficial cd layout.
-o Disclaimer: My employer doesn't even agree with me about C indentation style o-
5.x is the -CURRENT version.
4 is the current -STABLE version.
3.5 is the last release in the 3.x series. (which like 2.x maintains a -STABLE branch)
-o Disclaimer: My employer doesn't even agree with me about C indentation style o-
It's a shame that this has to be run using two compatibility layers (WINE + linux emulation). I don't know that it matters that much, but it would be possible to run WP 2000 with a natively compiled WINE (this could also apply to all other BSD's and Solaris x86).
I wonder how hard it would be.
-o Disclaimer: My employer doesn't even agree with me about C indentation style o-
That was a poor choice of words on my part :)
I used "current" as in, "the version that is generally installed today," which was a particularly poor choice given the meaning of "CURRENT" . . . .
eBay uses NT
They also use Solaris (although it seems to be used less in recent times).
Different OSes of choice for different people. There's no need to rant and claim that moderators are "out to get you."
---
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
> YOu would think that there might be one or two /.'s who use linux *and* freebsd.
CompUsa has the FreeBSD power pak ( 10 cd's plus 800 page manual) for $40
Here you go: The BSD Daemon giving it to Tux!
It gave me a hoot, anyway.
--