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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.
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
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.0R/notes.html
Another day closer to redwood heaven
Wait, it should be split in two very soon.
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Industrial space for lease in Flatlandia.
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)
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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
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...
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.
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
Uhm, the only thing OpenBSD has over FreeBSD for security is embedded crypto, but that doesn't mean you can't make a FreeBSD box as secure as an OpenBSD box, you just have to _know what you're doing_!!!
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 Mac OS X kernel is a Mach kernel, not BSD. The toolset used is the BSD toolset, among other BSD bits and pieces thrown in. Overall architecture is (as of DP3) NeXT on a Mach kernel though... so, that would be a "probably no" answer to your question, although I'm sure they're putting in patches based on what other people are updating all the time while they're working. It's not like they're going to release any time soon :)
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Tim Wilde
Gimme 42 daemons!
...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 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?
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 :-)
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
Actually, Mach is a microkernel so it doesn't actually expose the system interface. The MacOS X system is kind of like NeXT. It has a Mach microkernel, on top of which is a modified FreeBSD 3.2 system server. There is a great deal more BSD in there then just "bits and pieces."
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
FreeBSD does have SMP support, but it sucks. No fear, though, SMP is being rewritten for the 5.0 release (I think.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
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
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."
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Pardon me for asking, but what the hell do you need SMP on a gateway for?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned