FreeBSD 4.2 Is Out

Quite a number of people have e-mailed in the last bit about the release of FreeBSD 4.2. This is the release - you should try it out today, because CowboyNeal sez so, and he's currently updating it on his Vaio.

Comments

heh

[mirwor]

Now let's see if ftp.freebsd.org gets slashdotted...is bsd as good as everyone says? ;)

Re:heh

[august70]

I have been using FreeBSD for over 3 years now,and one thing I can say about it is that it is solid! even in the current branches! It has the ability to run Linux binaries if you feel the need, but the ports collection offers quite a variety of apps. I am not asking to get flamed here but I have benched my dual PIII-550 w/FreeBSD against my dual PIII-650 and found that apps are a lot faster on FreeBSD ( e.g. gimp,). And yes they both have the exact hardware!

Re:heh

[AntiBasic]

Probably, since slashdot linked to ISO's rather than the tgz's themselves. Not smart Hemos.

Re:heh

[radja]

well... if this is true, I wouldn't want to be seen using bsd...

//rdj

Re:heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool, but that's too many words for linux users.


# ftp ftp.redhat.com

Anonymous user limit reached


Damn, I hate always being the 10th person to hit the redhat site.


ftp ftp.freesoftware.com

Welcome to ftp.freesoftware.com - home FTP site for Walnut Creek CDROM. There are currently 2047 users out of 5000 possible.


One machine.

Re:heh

[swdunlop]

Yep. It was ftp.cdrom.com's banner back in '96 that made me a FreeBSD convert. =)

Re:heh

[sik puppy]

the solution is at:
www.mustbedestroyed.com

Re:BSD vs. Solaris

[kyrre]

As far as i know BSD forked from unix. The original AT&T. And the university of california was tied up in court with them for a long time.

Ahh, a new release...

[11thangel]

Maybe i should get my other releases to boot properly before trying this one =) Of course, it would also help if my partition table was properly installed too =)

Quick link to the release notes / changelog

[StandardDeviant]

For those of you who might be curious and lazy, here's a quick link to the RELNOTE S.T XT for this release (i.e. the changelog/release notes).

--

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[AntiBasic]

Nice flame kiddie. Solaris on x86 is a joke. It's been dubbed "Slowaris." It also scales better than Linux so why use Linux then? If you want a tight system, best TCP stack (except those new zero copy sockets where Linux rules), and unstoppable performance, then FreeBSD is for you.

Dammit...

[The_Messenger]

...and I just upgraded my boxes to 4.1 a few weeks ago! Oh well. 4.1 was the first release to show BSDi's influence, and I'm curious to see if this will continue to become more apparent as time goes on.

Hey, where's that Java 2 I was promised?

Anyway, this release is predisposed to good karma because of 4.2BSD.

All generalizations are false.

Re:Dammit...

[shippo]

I used to call this Tony's law, after a collegue at work.

"A new OS version will be released on they day that Tony downloads the ISO for the previous version".

He did it at least 3 times in a few months, offering to sell us CDs he'd just cut for media-only costs.

I don't know where he is now, but he's probably installing FreeBSD 4.1.

Re:Dammit...

[ps]

The Java 2 is availible in /usr/ports/java/jdk12-beta as well as ;Ta r file We've been running it with no problems for some time now

Re:Dammit...

[R.Caley]

..and I just upgraded my boxes to 4.1 a few weeks ago!

cvsup and rebuild isn't too painful. I went from 4.1 to 4.2 beta with no significant work.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[StandardDeviant]

Well, Solaris isn't exactly iron-clad in the security dept. by default. For that, it's OpenBSD hands down. If you need big iron, well, then you're probably running a proprietary Unix anyway (like irix for some huge SGI-based vis lab, AIX on some huge S/80 ibm db2 box, Solaris on some huge Sun Oracle box, etc.). Free unixen are IMHO best suited to the problem space addressed by bunches of ``little'' boxes (best hardware support there, anyway, and similar price structure), by little I mean <= 4 cpus and <= 2gb of ram... (i.e. web farms, render farms, distributed DB serving, workstations, etc)

--

PCMCIA on BSD's

[SirStanley]

He is updating his VAIO? That would require PCMCIA working? I've tried and tried and tried and cried many a long hours to get PCMCIA working on my damn laptop with FreeBsd 4.1 And it was shotty at best. Am I missing something? Or does anyone else have issues with PCMCIA working with BSD's in general?

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[jcs]

OpenBSD works great on laptops. USB, PCMCIA, APM, etc.

I have a page describing how to get OpenBSD running on two Sony Vaios.

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[AntiBasic]

FreeBSD pcmcia support isn't that great. The FreeBSD Japan group started PAO extentions for 3.x series but it hasn't really been merged in the 4.x branch. OpenBSD is the best for pcmcia support on notebooks though. Look into that.

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[agshekeloh]

I use FreeBSD on my Toshiba Satellite just fine. Sound, X, pcmcia, everything. If you're having trouble with PCMCIA, check out this Big Scary Daemons article: Laptops, PC Cards, and FreeBSD Short answer; if it doesn't work, you probably have an IRQ conflict.

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[fuzzcat]

I find that the PCMCIA stuff works pretty well under FreeBSD 4.x. I just recently bought a used IBM Thinkpad 365XD, and I've got everything up and running smoothly (with the minor exception that I can't get X running in 800x600). The pccard daemon smoothly handles the hot swapping of my various cards quite happily.

I had a lot of trouble getting my PCMCIA ethernet card - a LinkSys PCMPC100 V2 - working with the standard 4.1.1 boot floppies (I wanted to use that card to download via FTP). The fact that the ID string for the card had "V2" in it was confusing pccardd. So I hacked up my own installation floppies which recognized the card and it worked like a dream.

Plus (I know this is kind of lame), FreeBSD 5.x PCMCIA support is going to be even better. (Try tracking bleeding edge -CURRENT to see what I'm talking about.)

I have nothing against Linux. BSD just feels a lot more natural to me.

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[kan]

What? PAO code has been merged into FreeBSD 4.0 for quite some time now. NEWCARD code is under active development in FreeBSD-CURRENT and will provide support for native cardbus mode cards (as opposed to using then in 16 bit compatibility mode). If you need working cardbus, I'd suggest NetBSD over OpenBSD any time.

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[SIGFPE]

I used FreeBSD 3.4 (PAO) and FreeBSD 4.0 with PCMCIA and it just worked (on a Vaio 505TX). I was using it for a year with absolutely no problem - in fact PCMCIA worked 100% reliably unlike under Windows 98 or Linux. However I was completely unable to install FreeBSD 4.1.1 - it failed to detect the PCMCIA ethernet card and so I couldn't do a net installation. I tried every IRQ setting possible as well as the 'correct' settings gleaned from Windows 2000. Maybe it got broken somewhere along the way. It's very frustrating!
--

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[swdunlop]

It's fat, dumb and happy on my Dell Latitude.

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[rho]

FreeBSD pcmcia support isn't that great.

Somebody better tell my laptop, then. The IBM 760ED with a Megahertz PCMCIA Ethernet card in it, the one I'm using right now to post this. My main axe.

PCMCIA support in FBSD and OBSD are just fine. FBSD had USB support before Linux did, IIRC. Hell, FBSD and OBSD just rock. I like Linux, mind, but I prefer xBSD. YMMV

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[AntiBasic]

Oh christ, my undernet comments have come back to haunt me! But come on, my posts have been in support of BSD yet again.

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[AntiBasic]

FreeBSD's pcmcia support in 4.x isn't that good compared to any MicroSoft OS, Linux or OpenBSD. Does that satisfy you?

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[Voivod]

Why is this marked as informative? It's incorrect. The PAO work was merged with 4.0 and PCMCIA in FreeBSD works great now. I am posting this from a FreeBSD 4.1 laptop via a Lucent Wavelan card which has been totally solid.

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[NatePuri]

you're missing something... No really, check the hardware compat page. Not all pcmcia works, cardbus doesn't work at all, for example.

If you are really dying for the performance/stability/security boost you get with freebsd (like I was), then you'll shell out a couple hundred extra sheckles for the cards (like I did).

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[NatePuri]

sorry about the bold, wrong tag; I didn't mean to yell folks... my bad...

Re:PCMCIA on BSD's

[rho]

I suppose -- I guess it depends on what you need in PCMCIA support. It works fine for me. If you've got a PCMCIA CDROM or something that doesn't work, it may suck for you.

Just wanted to hold up my end on my fave OS :)

Re:BSD vs. Solaris - No, sun forked

[bluGill]

No, you have that wrong. Sun forked sunOS versions 1.0-4.x from BSD. BSD always was BSD, sunOS was the fork by sun. Suns lawyers never sued BSD. Currently sunOS is at version 5.x (I think they call it vesion 8 now, but it is still version 5) which is NOT based on the forked BSD code but rather based on the orginial AT&T code.

There were legal problems in the early battles, but they were caused by whoever owned unix at that time (AT&T yet? I'm not sure) BSD got around them by re-writing the code in question, and setteling. since BSD never has had (much) money the settelment wasn't a big deal.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[selectspec]

No offense, but what kind of crack are you smokin? Solaris on x86 is like molasses riddled with bugs. Don't get me wrong, if your running an E10k or something, don't install BSD (athough it might be interesting).

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[Anonymous Coward]

From my own personal experience, Solaris on Intel doesn't perform nearly as well as BSD on Intel. Perform your own benchmarks if you want. Use bonnie or rawio or anything you want. I think you will see how it stacks up. Also, I just tried installing Solaris on one of our new Dell Poweredges only to find out that Solaris doesn't support the SCSI card that is in there. BSD does. Solaris also doesn't support my network card in my workstation. BSD does. I guess what I am trying to say is that in some cases BSD has better hardware support than Solaris on Intel. Solaris on Sparc is an entirely different ballgame.

Re:BSD vs. Solaris

[Icebox]

Take a look at the Unix Roadmap. BSD forked from the Unix Time Sharing System (V6). SunOS actually came from 4BSD, FreeBSD shows up right after 386 BSD 0.1.

Anyway, the map is so convoluted at that point that it is hard to tell what shares code with what.

Really...

[JurriAlt137n]

This is the release - you should try it out today, because CowboyNeal sez so, and he's currently updating it on his Vaio.

I'd somehow really appreciate it if he were to install it first and tell me to do so later...when he's sure it works...

Re:Really...

[ozzmosis]

it works.

bash-2.04$ uname -a FreeBSD slaughter.necro.edu 4.2-STABLE FreeBSD
4.2-STABLE #0: Mon Nov 20 21:00:17 EST 2000
ahze@slaughter.necro.edu:/usr/src/sys/compile/whor e i386

Re:Really...

[CowboyNeal]

It works. Fortunately, more people run FreeBSD than just me, so you'd be amazed at how well it gets tested before it even gets tagged for release.

--

Re:Really...

[mosch]

FreeBSD mosch.eng.foo.net 4.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE #0: Mon Nov 20 16:42:35 EST 2000 root@mosch.eng.tvol.net:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/BASTI D i386

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:Really...

[JurriAlt137n]

Guess someone mistook my miserable attempt at being funny for something else. Ah well, guess that's why I do techsupport instead of being a highly overpaid comedian...maybe Seinfeld should start doing techsup as well...

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[buttfucker2000]

Ah good point. For x86 systems.

But would you take Solaris over BSD on its own hardware?

PS. Is the slowness because of the quality of Sun's hardware or the poor quality of its compiler?

Do yourself a favor: Try it

[f5426]

FreeBSD rocks. I used linux for 3 years. I tried FreeBSD 6 months ago, and felt in love with it.

The very very best thing about FreeBSD is the coherence of the whole. For instance, all the sources in /usr/src

/usr/src/sys: the kernel
/usr/src/bin: /bin directory
/usr/src/sbin: /sbin
/usr/src/usr.bin: /usr/bin
/usr/src/usr.sbin /usr/sbin
etc, etc

The sources of ls are in /usr/src/bin/ls
Wanna change and recompile ls ? Change /usr/bin/ls/ls., cd /usr/bin/ls and make install.

Wanna recompile the whole thing ?

cd /usr/src
make buildworld
make installworld
mergemaster (if config files have changed)
reboot

All the system is maintained under CVS. Want to upgrade the *whole* system to current version ?

cvsup -L 2 stable-supfile

Then make buildworld & installworld.

Almost all of the configuration is made in /etc/rc.conf

And there is the very clean port tree. About 4500 programs in /usr/ports, present in the form of patches to the original versions. For instance:

cd /usr/ports/graphics/gimp1
make install
[Downloads source of the gimp]
[Patches sources]
[Compile]
[Install]

Of course all needed libraries will be fetched/patched/compiled in the way.

And all the ports are in CVS too, so

cvsup -L 2 ports-supfile

will keep you up-to-date with latest ports

Everything in the system is very very nicely engineered. There is a vision here, not a collection of hacks.

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Howie]

And there is the very clean port tree.

The port tree is indeed very cool, as long as you stick within it. I spent a few annoying hours yesterday trying to convince various GTK/KDE/Tk napster-clones to compile on my 4.1 system, without a great deal of luck.

I'm not sure if it's just people assuming that GTK==Linux and the files will be in particular places (FreeBSD prefixes stuff with the version number for gtk and tcl/tk at least) or me or dodgy software, but it was rather frustrating.

While on that subject, could those folks writing these types of things stop writing Linux apps, and start writing Unix apps, please? It's like "all the world's SunOS 4.1" or "all the world's a VAX" all over again!

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Jakdaw]

It strikes me that all the stuff you list above as things you like are to do with the FreeBSD distribution as opposed to it's kernel. The above could all be achieved with a linux distribution.

Which distribution were you using for the past three years which compared so poorly to BSD? I've not tried it personally but I believe Debian shares a good number of the examples you give, and has the advantage of using the linux kernel with more hardware support (and commercial support - look at the plugin debate). (Yes I know there are lots of other differences, pros and cons between the two kernels but none of those are what f5426 is talking about in his post).

My own systems run a very minimal (ie libc, gcc, a shell and as little as possible else) install of the latest Slackware, with all my applications installed from source and managed using the Encap Package Manager, which I'd recommend to anyone. This leaves me with an exceedingly easy to manage system, over which I have full control, and free from the coarse dependancies in modern distributions that leave them so bloody bloated (SuSE, Mandrake, Redhat.... probably FreeBSD too). What seems to be needed (both for linux, bsd etc) is a packaging system with much finer grained package dependancies - several versions of each package with different options compiled in depending upon what other libraries etc are available.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[RickHunter]

I agree! I'm a Linux user myself, but I've got a lot of friends that use BSD-style systems... Enough so that I'm going to try FreeBSD myself when I get some spare time. Even within the Linux world, there's a lot of problems with coders assuming that Linux == Red Hat, which causes me no end of pain when I want to install some software that isn't available as a Debian package.

-RickHunter

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[warlock]

> It strikes me that all the stuff
> you list above as things you like
> are to do with the FreeBSD distribution
> as opposed to it's kernel.

A distinction between the "kernel" and
a "distribution" in FreeBSD does not
exist, and doesn't make sense either.

There's one CVS repository with the kernel,
the userland, the ports and documentation,
and jkh calls for a freeze on the release
engineering branch every now and then
and rolls a release, much like 4.2 now.

> The above could all be achieved
> with a linux distribution.

In theory yes, anything can be achieved.

In practice I've seen no linux distribution
even coming close to such a degree of elegance,
although I do agree that this is subjective,
and other people might prefer Debians scheme
of organizing things.

You really have to try managing a few dozen
boxes and try to keep them up to date with
local customizations (at the source level)
both with FreeBSD and with ANY other system
to realise just how simple and elegant the
FreeBSD way is *engineered*...

-W

PS - Yes, I've tried debian and wasn't
particularly impressed.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[JDBrechtel]

>>and free from the coarse dependancies in modern distributions that leave >>them so bloody bloated (SuSE, Mandrake, Redhat.... probably FreeBSD >>too).

That's the most wrong statement I've read all day. Seriously, if you think FreeBSD is anything like those three Linux distribs then you are very very misguided. Try it for yourself and find out.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[J. J. Ramsey]

I remember when I was using FreeBSD myself that the port of GTK+ 1.2 had gtk-config renamed to gtk12-config, and GTK+ 1.3 had gtk-config renamed to gtk13-config, in order that both versions of GTK+ could be on the system. Arguably, this is useful, but it's not standard for a GTK+ installation, so configure scripts and Makefiles that look for the standard-issue "gtk-config" don't work. The problem here is more a matter of the porter of GTK+ taking some liberties rather than the programmer of those napster-clones using Linux-isms.

Making a symlink "gtk-config" pointing to gtk12-config should solve the problem.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you can set up make.conf so that it doesnt automatically update your source - just in case you want to customize login.c or what not :-)

cvsup is awesome, btw. Everything, user and kernel, is under cvs and when you update the source tree you simply download the deltas. 5 minutes per day, that's it, and you are constantly up to date.

Contrast that with linux. (1) A typical linux install doesnt install the sources at all. (2) Even if it did, the sources would come from 10 different places and be installed in 10 different locations. (3) not even the damn kernel is under cvs.

This is not a sane operating system. You have to do work, real work, keeping Linux current and cohesive.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Howie]

This was the problem - and Tcl/Tk is handled in a similar way because of the many variations between versions there too. I can see the reasons for doing it, but the DESCR for the package doesn't let you know about it, even! The fix is just a bunch of extra configure options, but it's still hassle.

The linuxisms comment wasn't really directly related to that problem but just to some generally suboptimal practices I've come across lately with stuff - assuming GID 0 is called root (and not wheel or something else), mentioning a requirement for GNU Make if there is one (many systems don't have GNU Make), using linux/types.h rather than sys/types.h for standard types (I think it was time_t or size_t), that sort of thing. With potentially very little additional tweaking, you can get your app onto quite a few more platforms.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[god, did I say that]

The above could all be achieved with a linux distribution.

No, it cant. You'd need to merge DEVELOPMENT of kernel AND userland software for that to happen in any remotely effective manner. FreeBSD isnt a distribution in the sense Linux users understand. Even 3rd party ports have a structure imposed upon them. Their sources, when installed, all live under a single directory structure which is readily grokked and upgradeable.

This is Linux's biggest failing, for me, that it is merely a kernel There is a distinct lack of cohesion that simply _cannot_ be addressed by any distribution. Performance issues are a wash. Sometimes FreeBSD is faster, sometimes Linux. The numbers never justify any crowing, though.

The cohesion extends into policy, as well. Changes arent committed to ls.c if they cant survive a majority vote of professional developers. Linux distributions have no say over what transpires in the source code. I never understood Linux's popularity over BSD. I've always attributed it to a naive reading of the GPL which seems to draw in all the l33t anarchists. No one I (_I_) know with experience of either prefers Linux to FreeBSD.

--

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[swdunlop]

Yeah.. I've been starting to use encap more and more.. It's handy for people used to slapping everything in /opt then symlinking.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[swdunlop]

Rrrr, last time I noticed, Linux depended pretty heavily on the GNU toolchain for building.. Just like FreeBSD.. Beyond GNU's chain for compilation, the kernel doesn't have dependencies. There's no reason a new distro couldn't be built around FreeBSD's kernel. I seem to remember some Debian packagers talking about adopting FreeBSD's kernel way back when.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[swdunlop]

The point is, sometimes us non-Linux users don't /want/ to spend hours patching and coercing someone else's crappy code to play nicely with other Unixen.

And if you're about to suggest 'submit a patch', be assured, I always do, and half the time, it takes an eternity to make it into the source tree.

Usually, it's -fpermissive, to make gcc stop wailing about the crufty old OpenWindows headers.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Eil]

And there is the very clean port tree. About 4500 programs in /usr/ports,

My reason for installing, trying, and then erasing FreeBSD (with a Mandrake 7.2 distro) is that the ports seem highly overrated in my opinion. Yes, it is an absolutely wonderful idea, but I had problems with almost every program I downloaded, compiled, and ran under FreeBSD. The build process itself went well, but it's almost as if the people who did the ports went, "well, it compiles correctly, everything must be fine, let's update ports."

For example, I downloaded Gnome and Sawfish (absolute requirements for any production system that I intend to use), and all went well except when it came time to actually run the apps. Sawfish never would work correctly, and Gnome would do various things like freeze occasionally upon startup, crash apps randomly, and be very buggy in general. Whether it's the fault of the Gnome developers or the FBSD porters, something wasn't right because I'm now using that same version on my Linux system without any problems.

As for my own personal opinion, I'd gladly use FreeBSD for something non-complicated but requiring stability and power. As for my workstation, I do believe I'll stick with Linux.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Arandir]

Ditto on the linuxisms. When 99% of Linux software can be made to work with every single Unix out there with only a minimum amount of effort, there is no excuse for linuxisms. FreeBSD is free (hence the name). Throw it on a spare partition and make sure your software will compile and run on it before you release it into the world.

Saying your software only runs on Linux just lets the world know you're lazy.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Ded Bob]

A very useful tool: pkg_version. Try pkg_version -l '<' to see what ports are out-of-date.

You can use it to make sure the software you have installed is up-to-date. It is a port for v3.x systems while it comes with v4.x systems.

It even has an option (-c) to output a script to upgrade your current ports. I do not know if it checks dependencies to upgrade the software that other upgrades will depend on first. I just copied and pasted what I needed.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[theJeff]

And there is the very clean port tree. About 4500 programs in /usr/ports, present in the form of patches to the original versions. For instance:
cd /usr/ports/graphics/gimp1
make install
[Downloads source of the gimp]
[Patches sources]
[Compile]
[Install]
Of course all needed libraries will be fetched/patched/compiled in the way.

And all the ports are in CVS too, so

cvsup -L 2 ports-supfile

will keep you up-to-date with latest ports

How does this work? (I've just installed FreeBSD but haven't even got the box on line yet.)

cvsup -L 2 ports-supfile just gets the new patches right? The actual source for the packages comes when you do a make in that directory.

More importantly, is there a way to update and rebuild all of the ports you have installed with one command? I don't want to have to track the versions of all the ports I have installed to know that I need to update them. (Maybe I've been spoiled by apt-get :>)

thejeff

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Gid1]

A major problem I have with the ports collection is this:

The idea of remapping the package tree tidily onto /usr/local is a good one, but a bit limiting. Installing more than one version of a package on a box is not supported.

I've taken to using the ports as references and patches, and then performed the installation by hand into /app, so I'd have, say, /app/pkg/apache-1.3.14 and /app/pkg/apache-1.3.12, with a symlink /app/pkg/apache to the current production version. I then split the configuration into /app/etc/apache, the data into /app/data/web (not apache-specific!) and the logs into /app/var/apache. Sources go in /app/src/apache-1.3.14.

This way I can build a new version of apache while keeping the old version running and intact, with a simple symlink change to make the new version go live.

I'd like to see 'ports' have similar capabilities. Also, extending the whole of FreeBSD to the package database would be good, so we can remove perl, sendmail, named, gcc, etc. with pkg_delete and replace with new versions (or ideally, version them as above).

The package concept is a good one, but I don't feel it's been taken to it's logical conclusion.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Ded Bob]

I am not the most knowledgable concerning the ports systems. I have made only one port. Maybe you can try one of the macros. If you want to install elsewhere besides /usr/local, you can enter 'make install PREFIX=/usr/blotto'. I am sure there is a way to make this permanent if you desire (/etc/make.conf probably).

Also, there may be hope for you in the unification of the BSD port/package systems: Open Packages.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Enahs]

The thing I see wrong here is that, hey, all those distribs ship the same kernel. You can't say the same thing for FreeBSD and OpenBSD.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Lazaru5]

There is not as yet an automated procedure for upgrading installed packages. Leaving the question of "why would you want one?" aside... pkg_version will at least give you the information necessary to determine if you have old versions of installed packages.

Recent changes to the Ports format (from which pre-built packages are actually made) are paving the way for such an automated procedure.

Myself, I wouldn't ever use such a feature because of errata or security problems inherent in unattended version changes. Perhaps for minor programs...certainly nothing that provides network services or on production servers. If you could make a list of packages that were auto-upgraded and leave everything else alone that might be alright, but such programs are probably so insignificant that I wouldn't care if I was a few releases behind.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[f5426]

Another poster replied to most of your questions.

> More importantly, is there a way to update and rebuild all of the ports you have installed with one command? I don't want to have to track the versions of all the ports I have installed to know that I need to update them. (Maybe I've been spoiled by apt-get :)

Yes. You look spoiled by apt-get :-). Magic upgrading of the ports (by opposition to manual upgrading of the system) is not possible yet (but pkg_version can help you, but this won't be magic).

It is supposed to come in a forthcoming version. Note that I didn't had any real need of that. I aim at a stable (but secure) system. The constant run-for-the-bleeding-edge of linux pissed me. I had a couple of box. One was a 'forgotten server' that was not upgraded (because it ran essential services. Guess what ? It have been cracked). The other one was one of my development machine. I'd say that about a quarter of the time was used to try to keep thing together while upgrading things (maynly the kernel, which in turn asked for binutils, which asked for an upgrade, which fucked up my pam configuration, etc, etc). Generally, when the system was too fucked, it was time for a re-install from scracth. Maybe I am a moron. Or, maybe I should have used a RH ditrib :-)

I may run into troubles with FreeBSD too, but the first 6 months have been a pleasant experience. It seems that debian aim at giving the same kind of user-experience too.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

I also love FreeBSD for this:

bash-2.03$ man ata

ATA(4) FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual ATA(4)

NAME
ata, acd, ad, afd, ast - Generic ATA/ATAPI disk controller driver

[...]

bash-2.03$ ls -l /usr/share/man/man4 | wc -l
261
bash-2.03$

This come from the fact that FreeBSD is a system, not a kernel + userland.

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[RevDigger]

Laz, You should also mention to the home audience that 'pkg_version -c' will actually print out the commands required to upgrade your installed packages. the output looks like this:

#
# ncftp3
# needs updating (index has 3.0.2)
#
cd /usr/ports/ftp/ncftp3
make && pkg_delete -f ncftp3-3.0.1
make install

You could easily cron that to automatically update things, but of course that would be a really bad idea...

A more usefull trick would be to throw it in the weeklies so it would alert you to a package that may need upgrading.

- H

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[Astastrafal]

I also love FreeBSD for this:

bash-2.03$ man ata

ATA(4) FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual ATA(4)

NAME ata, acd, ad, afd, ast - Generic ATA/ATAPI disk controller driver

[...]

bash-2.03$ ls -l /usr/share/man/man4 | wc -l 261 bash-2.03$

Damn cool, I love it (except for the fact that man pages are something stuck in the 70s, a new cross-*nix standard needs to be defined).

I just wish somebody would put as much care into creating such a distro for linux, one which didn't have the cobbled-together, DIY feel that I usually get with linux distros. Apparently, Debian is the one which comes the closest to FreeBSD in these departments, I should be get off my backside and install it one of these days. As you say, it requires closer integration of the kernel and userland, something which just isn't happening on the linux side, and which isn't likely to happen considering how the development of the kernel and other bits and pieces are all separate and utterly chaotic. It does seem to me that FreeBSD people take a much more profesional approach than most linux distros, spending less time on the flashy stuff, and more time on making the whole system appear as a coherent entity. To those in the know: How does Debian compare to FreeBSD in terms of integration and attention to detail, for example consistency of utilities, presence of man pages and their 'uptodateness'? I'd really like to know.

Anyway, I hope to be installing both of those systems sometime in the future and play around with them.

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[f5426]

> except for the fact that man pages are something stuck in the 70s, a new cross-*nix standard needs to be defined

Yeah. But it would have to be at least as good as manpages. That means readable from a text terminal, and visible in a single-page format... And it would need to be compatible with man pages...

> How does Debian compare to FreeBSD in terms of integration and attention to detail, for example consistency of utilities, presence of man pages and their 'uptodateness'? I'd really like to know.

I don't have an extensive experience with debian (ie: I tried it only once), but based to what knowledgable people said on various mailing lists, it is a very cleanly integrated system. Apt-get is supposed superior to any other packaging system in this side of the universe.

But no matter how hard they try, they can't match a few niceties of FreeBSD that come from the fact that it is integrated. I, for one, track stable which means that all my systems are at most 1 week behind the latest stable release of FreeBSD. (There is a new stable release several times in a day. Each time a developer commit a modification, in fact). Debian is very well known to be an extremely robust linux distribution that uses extensively tested kernels. Which means that they are outdated (ie: stable debian is 2.2.x kernel)

This come from the linux kernel development process as there is no new stable linux release since 2.2.x. Why should anyone have to choose between USB and stability ? FreeBSD have USB since a long time ago.

In my opinion FreeBSD have a much more "bazaar" way of doing things than linux.

What I would dream of is exactly when FreeBSD did to the kernel + user-land beeing extended to the graphical interface software. This would produce a hackable box, with which one could get the job done without spending days downloading things as basic as text editors, mail software, and configuring things, etc, etc

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Do yourself a favor: Try it

[ajs]

(1) A typical linux install doesnt install the sources at all.

Install? Not by default, of course. However, every Linux distribution I know of comes with sources (except the ones that specialize in being tiny like the one-floppy distros). Red Hat and Debian both have very sophisticated (Debian slightly more so) ways of managing these sources.

(2) Even if it did, the sources would come from 10 different places and be installed in 10 different locations.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and just assume you're misinformed. Red Hat, for example:

• mount /mnt/cdrom
  cd /mnt/cdrom/SRPMS
  rpm -i *.src.rpm

Now all of my sources live under /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES, and to build any one of them, I type the same command (modulo the name of the package): rpm -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/<package>.spec This deposits the binary packages into /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/<arch>

If you just wanted the sources unpacked, and any local patches applied, change -bb to -bp. Type rpm --help if you want a full list of all available options (you might want to pipe that through a pager, since RPM has about as many uses as any 10 swiss-army knives including post-install verification, signature checking, many forms of package query on installed or pending packages, etc.

Of course, if by "from 10 different locations" you meant that the development teams were in 10 different locations, then you're right (though under-stating the case) for every free UNIX and UNIX-like system I've ever seen. XFree86 is maintained by their development team, not BSD, not Red Hat, not VA/Linux. Red Hat maintains patches against XFree86 and contributes to the development, but so does NetBSD. However both Red Hat and NetBSD have their own version of XFree86, configured, patched and tuned for their platforms that get released with their software. That version has sources which can be acquired from their respective organizations in the same place that all other sources for that distribution are maintained. There is no difference in approach here.

(3) not even the damn kernel is under cvs.

Re-read that as: "the kernel is one of the very, very few things that is not maintained under CVS", and even that's wrong as most Linux distribution vendors maintain their own source countrol over their distributions (which is, after all, what happens in the BSD world... it's just that no one thinks of BSDi, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD and all of the commercial applications of BSD as distributions). Linus maintains the Kernel sources in the way that he sees fit, and it seems to work quite well. I don't see the problem here.

Keep in mind that a lot of the software we're talking about here (X, Emacs, browsers, gcc) is the same anyway. The differences between your average Linux distribution and your average BSD distribution really should be shrinking as time goes on. Of course, this is not true because everyone is in their own camp and wants to do their own thing.

The Red Hat and Debian systems work well, and accomplish what people generally want. If there's something specific that you want and those don't do it, you can always submit a bug report to your distribution vendor. Include a patch, and it's that much more likely to be dealt with quickly.

BSD, Linux, Solaris, HP/UX... it's all the same. Good software poorly managed by factions of semi-religous cults (not trolling here, just summing up what I've observed over the last 12 years). I really hope someone, someday can see past all of the crap and reach into this stew of open source code and pull out a single set of internally-consistent, well documented tools for getting work done.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[AntiBasic]

Solaris isn't slow on Sun-type hardware and neither is Net/OpenBSD. In fact, its faster than Linux on sun4m and sun4c's. Why? Linux/sparc really needs to redo its MMU. gcc is pretty crappy on all non-x86 hardware. It's disgusting on Alpha's in particular. In case you have been tracking freebsd-alpha development, theres been talk of switching to ccc. SUNSpro is kickass btw.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[wbb4]

Solaris IS NOT availible for free download. It is availible on media, at the cost of the media.

Get it right. Besides, BSD is just more fun than solaris.

(refrence: http://www.sun.com/solaris/downloads.html
... see the box at the top?)

LANCE ISA cards still not working (lnc0)

[CowbertPrime]

ISA NICs using LANCE AMD chipsets are still borked in 4.2's default kernel (the one used to boot the setup interfaces). I was informed by someone on -questions that prior to 4.2, the lance driver (lnc0) conflicted with the pnp driver called 'pcn0'. However my card (a 79C960 chip) still won't initialise properly under 4.2 (and all "trivial" problems have been ruled out extensively).

I have tried and tried again to get someone to troubleshoot the card - AT1500BT - **Which works perfectly in Linux** including emailing the author of the LANCE driver (lnc0), with no avail!

This is considered critical as the system has no cdrom drive, and thus needs to use FTP or NFS based install which means that it needs the nic to work.

Re:LANCE ISA cards still not working (lnc0)

[swdunlop]

This will also affect PCI chipsets.. Basically, anything using PCNet or PCNet fast chipsets will have problems with the install.. Vectra VLs, for example, can't do the network install with the bundled NIC.

Java 2 for FreeBSD

[dglo]

Hey, where's that Java 2 I was promised?

For the Linux port

cd /usr/ports/java/linux-jdk && make install

For the native port,

cd /usr/ports/java/jdk12-beta && make install

Note that the native port is built from scratch due to licensing restrictions.

Re:Dammit... it is out there

[kuiken]

java version "1.2.2"
Classic VM (build jdk1.2.2-FreeBSD:root:2000/11/18-16:58, green threads, nojit)

you can get it to work just check out www.eyesbeyond.com/freebsddom /ja va/index.html

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[corrosiv]

and the 'media cost' is $75 USD!!!!!! Free as a bird...

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[ozzmosis]

>It's available for free download What are you talking about? you have to pay freaking 75$ to get them to send you the cds!

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[fuerstma]

From that very site that you quoted..

"While Solaris 8 software is not currently available in a downloadable format, we are working to provide a download option - please check back at this site for updates on the status of a download"

So no, Solaris is not available and while it is "Free" according to Sun, you still somehow have to give them $75 US and dont expect any code or support. Sounds like a great deal to me.

Why don't you get another NIC?

[ripcrd]

I bought some used 3Com ISA NICs on eBay for about $6 ea. 3Com works with anything. In fact, they contribute. They coded their own device drivers and submitted to the kernel hackers ages ago. When in doubt I use 3Com.

freaks!

[segmond]

i run freebsd 2.2, why? it has never broken since I got it,if it ain't broke, don't fix it! :)

Re:freaks!

[ozzmosis]

yeah , but isnt it nice to have an elf system or even ata-100 which is now supported in 4.2 and well and even ata-66! I know thats not supported in 2.2 , better pcm sound support? md5 password files, updated ide drivers for faster r/w access. ssh on the default install. What about USB kernel support? And then theres ipv6, which we will all be useing in the near future. What about SMP on FreeBSD 5? which is in -CURRENT right now, FreeBSD is reworking the whole smp code based on BSDi's.

Re:freaks!

[segmond]

if I am running 2.2 you can imagine what hardware I am running it on, SMP, USB, PCM sound, ATA-66 are all out of the questions. I installed secure shell, it is just a tunneling server. :)

Re:freaks!

[swdunlop]

If you are using FreeBSD 2.2 for a server, you might want to upgrade, since there have been many security updates to the kernel and various userland apps. Also, there have been numerous performance improvements that you might want.

If it's just sitting in the corner doing one or two simple tasks, by all means, stick with 2.2. My old 486 laptop is still running 2.2.x, since all it does is telnet and a little lynx-work.

But how's the IEEE1394 support?

[gaj]

I'm afraid I'm not willing to do away with the IEEE1394 CD-RW I recently grabbed. Linux 2.4.0-test10 is working like a champ on my Z505LS, including support for the "ILink" port. (Sony's name for IEEE1394. Apple's name for it is FireWire)

I know the USB suppor on BSD is good, but I've not heard much of anything about FireWire. I'd also be a bit worried about my ORiNOCO wireles LAN card.

Nothing agains BSD, mind you. In fact I run Slack on most of my home systems, which is rather BSDish in feel.
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.

Re:But how's the IEEE1394 support?

[VFVTHUNTER]

I've been learning a ton of stuff from the responses to this post, so I thought I'd share. For all of you out there who are thinking about buying a VAIO but are hesitant because of the Firewire (iLink) issue, you need to know that the only difference between plain-vanilla firewire and Sony's "iLink" is that the iLink does not provide power to FireWire Devices. The port on my laptop, a PCGF540, is an S400. It's the smaller type of Firewire port, and it only has 4 pins as opposed to the normal 6 (you guessed it - the missing pins are positive voltage and ground).

In the latest 2.4 kernels, the Sony CXD-3222 chipset, which is what I've got, works like a charm. Not sure about FreeBSD tho. Anyways, if you're shopping for one, boot it up in Windoze, go to Control Panel --> System --> Device Manager --> 1394 Bus Controller. If you Sony CXD3222 OCHI, it will work :)

The you can use FIPS to get rid of the Win partition.

Windows has detected that you have moved your mouse. Windows will now reboot in order for this change to take effect

Re:But how's the IEEE1394 support?

[gaj]

Actually the only real difference between iLink and FireWire is the spelling. Both are implementations of IEEE1394, wich allows for both powered and unpowered ports (6-pin and 4-pin, respectivly).

If my 505's battery life were better I would have loved to have a 6-pin port, but most devices are self-powered anyway, so no big deal.
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.

Re:But how's the IEEE1394 support?

[VFVTHUNTER]

Actually no. See, if this were true, then *ALL* Sony laptops would run Firewire under linux, but not all do. This is because not all are OHCI, and all iLink/S400 (or 200 for that matter) are built from proprietary Sony chipsets, some of which are close enough to Firewire to work, and some of which aren't. However, your point about both 4 and 6 pin being part of Firewire, is true.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[VFVTHUNTER]

Because I can't get the source code to Solaris :)

Beware

[Fervent]

A friend of mine installed FreeBSD 4.2 on a new machine and got scrambled text on boot. No joke.

There might still be a few bugs to work out.

Re:Beware

[ozzmosis]

first off , freebsd releases a daily snapshot which is tested by 100's of people DAILY!

Sure there is a few bugs to work out. But if you would please tell me 1 o/s that doesnt have bugs to work out.But I gurantee you this , there is not a boot bug. there is too much testing done to release something of that poor quility.

heres the links to the daily snapshots. ftp://releng4.freebsd.org (for -STABLE) and for ftp://current.freebsd.org

Re:Beware

[mosch]

Your friend should report the bug, and a method of reproducing it. No joke.

Running 4.2 here, no probs.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:Pooh goes apeshit

[imac.usr]

Oh...my...god.

I'm going to have a permanent psyche-scar now....

Orinoco Support

[gavinhall]

Posted by BSD-Pat:

Orinoco/Wavelan support is actually, imho better than Linux's. I use wavelans in both IEEE and ad-hoc mode, WITH WEP.

Now firewire is another story. Not there yet, however I personally have no firewire devices, so what do *I* care? =)

Re:Orinoco Support

[WildBill1941]

Out of curiosity, are you saying that Orinoco's WEP doesn't work in Linux? Odd, cause I've been running it for some time... one just needs to specify the encryption settings in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts.
--WildBill

Re:Orinoco Support

[gaj]

What is your definition of "better"?

I'm running the Silver cards w/WEP at home right now using Linux 2.2.17 and 2.4.0-test10. The 2.4 kernel support for pcmcia was giving me fits, so I'm back to running the pcmcia-cs package of kernel modules, but no problems so far. WEP, Ad-Hoc mode (I'm using an old P90 laptop as a IPMASQ/Firewall box for my cablemodem), microwave oven robustness, etc. All work fine.

Mind you, I'm not saying that BSD doesn't support the card just fine ... I just don't know what you mean by better.
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.

Re:Orinoco Support

[Lazaru5]

How do you get "doesn't work in Linux" from "works better than Linux"?

(Disclaimer: Numbers are arbitrary. If I don't say so now you'll read to much into it.)

10 > 5

5 != 0

Got it?

Stop being so bloody paranoid. And that goes for ALL OF YOU!

Yes, it's important to stay with the ports...

[pschmied]

Unless you are interested installing some other parts by hand. You're gtk problem is very likely remedied by getting the latest port and: "make install"

I have found very few times when there has not been a port for the software I'm looking for. After software is released, a port usually comes a couple days after. Keep czeching Fresh Ports for new ones!

-Peter

Solid as a rock

[tsikora]

Just updated all my servers. I'm impressed. Look out TuX.

Re:BSD 4.2 is crap - User BeOS then

[tsikora]

Bullshit.. I got Slack/ReiserFS on an Athlon and that sucker is the fastest Unix I ever used. As a Workstation it's king. FreeBSD is close but still lacks on the desktop but not by much with 4.2.

wrong server to slashdot

[hawk]

That server holds pretty much *all* of the download records, and has for several years.

It may get slow, but it can saturate its link, and a mere slashdotting can't bring it down . . .

However, you will generally get *much* faster results from a regional server.

hawk

Upgrading FreeBSD

[cd-w]

I installed FreeBSD 4.0 some time ago, and I
like it a lot. However, I'm not sure how
to upgrade to 4.2. I'm accustomed to Debian Linux with the fantastic APT tool.
Is there anything equivalent for FreeBSD?

Re:Upgrading FreeBSD

[mosch]

nothing as nice as apt-get dist-upgrade, FreeBSD still lacks a really good binary upgrade system, the only really easy way to do it is to keep the source handy and remake the world and the kernel yourself. as for the ports, pkg_version -c can help with keeping them up to date.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:Upgrading FreeBSD

[spohl]

The easiest way to (binary-) upgrade is to use the upgrade option of /stand/sysinstall. I did this yesterday to upgrade my 4.0-RELEASE to 4.1.1-RELEASE and it worked flawlessly (and probably a lot faster than a makeworld). But before doing that you should carefully read UPGRADE.TXT provided in the root-directory of every release. The most important points you have to take care of are: make backups (just in case... ;-) and use 'the version of sysinstall supplied with the version of FreeBSD to which you intend to upgrade'.

Re:Upgrading FreeBSD

[mosch]

That binary upgrade option isn't remotely comparable to an 'apt-get upgrade' style upgrade. It lacks the modularity, and sanity of apt-get, and the method of handling configuration files is messy (your *real* /etc is elsewhere now).

It's a known problem, and jkh has made proposals for a good solution, but it's not implemented yet.

As for the source tree, I agree sometimes. I use source upgrades on my desktop, where it uses a mere 280 megs of disk space for /usr/src, but theoretically say that a company has a couple thousand servers.... suddenly modular binary upgrades become much more important.

What I'd really like is to be able to replace a running kernel, but I don't see any of the Free OSen approaching that capability anytime soon.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:Upgrading FreeBSD

[chenwah]

I always keep a single source and ports tree on one machine and NFS export this to all others on the network.

Want to upgrade the entire LAN from 4.1 to RELENG_4 (4-STABLE)? Easy, cvsup the one source tree, buildworld, then on each machine on the lan installworld. You can do the same things with the ports if you want, or you can actually make binary packages from the ports tree (this is how they are done for a release) and share them across the network for each of your thousands of servers to install.

I think everyone agrees that the package management needs to be improved tho'. Daemonnews covered a mail written by Jordan that covers things very well.

http://daily.daemonnew s.o rg/view_story.php3?story_id=1185

It would be great to see the entire distribution become more modular - if parts of the base distribution were added as packages it would be sooo easy to chop and change things for custom installs.

.flip.

Re:Upgrading FreeBSD

[mosch]

No, I meant thousands of servers, and if you don't think it's possible, look at really large ISPs or telecommunication companies, or even Yahoo.

The company I work for actually has deployed thousands of FreeBSD, Linux and QNX servers, and probably our biggest operational challenge is maintainance and configuration management.

Some of these sites are have poor quality network connection, so you can't assume that your script will have ten minutes where everything will be fine, in order to perform the upgrade, and if, for example, the Peru servers crash, we need to send a field tech, at a real cost of somewhere in the neighborhood of $5k, and that's doesn't count the cost of downtime.

I know this isn't the "standard" use of FreeBSD, but it's definitely not totally uncommon, and it definitely does exist.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Solid, but . . .

[hawk]

I've brought both FreeBSD (3.2?) and Linux down from userland, and both are repeateable. I've never seen responses to bug reprots, so I don't know if it applies.

FreeBSD: go to image-link laden page (news collages, etc.) and middle-click on a slew of images under netscape 3. This causes many netscape windows and instances of xv to try to load. It overwhelmed the vm (but i didn't leave it until morning--it still answered pings, but eventually stopped swapping)>

Linux: debian kerenl 2.4.pre5. a) load 1.6G file into beav with only 160M of memory. Same vm oveload
b) I still don't know exactly what happened, as my fingers slipped, but I believe I selected two columns, and pasted them overlapping one of the two, causing massive memory allocation with recursion. *wham*.

All three of these were done from userland, not as root. The first two are repeatable, and I expect I could repeat the third if i knew what happened :)

hawk

Re:Solid, but . . .

[mosch]

Yes, you can always do stupid things to make a machine die, that's why a smart FreeBSD administrator would have an /etc/login.conf which had restrictions so that some idiot couldn't initiate a DOS from userland.

Get back to me when you can repeat those with a properly configured machine.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:Solid, but . . .

[GypC]

Linux has resource limits.

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

Re:Solid, but . . .

[GypC]

man limit, man ulimit, in bash try 'help ulimit'.

"Free your mind and your ass will follow"

Re:Solid, but . . .

[Astastrafal]

What exactly do these provide that's missing in Linux? I don't have the inclination to drudge through all those crosslinked man pages, so a little summary would be nice from somebody who knows about this stuff.

fucking troll

[mosch]

Maybe because ummm... we want/need to use free software.

I'd respond further, but honestly, it's really evident you're:

1. Trolling (poorly)
2. Really damned stupid
3. Uneducated

Anyway, if I'm wrong, then go do some real computing, and come back when you've answered your own question.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:fucking troll

[mosch]

ah, so you don't like releasing product. typical asshole mentality.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[mosch]

Actually, there are patches for zero copy sockets and NFS for FreeBSD-current. It's bleeding edge, but if you want zero-copy, it might be worth exploring, at least for future development.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[mosch]

No, it wouldn't even be possible. FreeBSD doesn't run on sparc.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

RC2?

[rm-r]

Hi,

I'm a BSD newbie so please be gentle, I thought I'd download 4.2 and take a look but I notice there 2 4.2 files, 4.2-install.iso and 4.2-RC2-install2.iso- which one should I install? Whats the difference? the Readme doesn't shead any light

Re:RC2?

[cetan]

RC2 = Release Canidate 2

Re:RC2?

[travisd]

Why bother downloading either of them? Do an FTP install and just take what you need. You're sure to get the latest this way.

FreeBSD is an OS, not a distribution

[ArtPepper]

subject says it all

Re:FreeBSD is an OS, not a distribution

[Enahs]

FreeBSD is a variant of BSD, as is OpenBSD, NetBSD, Darwin...

Come to think of it, why do different variants have different kernels, eh?

Re:FreeBSD is an OS, not a distribution

[mr]

For the same reason various Linux distros have differently patched kernels. The people who package up the code think it would be better with their own changes.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[Strog]

It all boils to using the right tool for the job. BSD kicks on a single CPU. Linux kicks on 2 to 4 CPU's. Solaris and Irix don't start to shine until you have more processors than fingers (I realize that this can vary slightly but you get the point). They can do very well at dual on up but I'm talking about really kicking it up on their native hardware. Even MS could be the right tool for the job. Of course the licensing, babysitting, etc. makes it more difficult to be the right tool for the job but not impossible. I realize that BSD/Linux are both working on major improvements in their respective areas concerning SMP and doing well from what I've seen.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[jallen02]

Funny.. I paid like 15 bucks total..

Jeremy

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[Chalst]

Solaris scales great on Sun hardware. If you happen to actually like
Solaris, and you have lots of Sun hardware, then no doubt about it, go
for Solaris over FreeBSD.

We had some Sun folks here offering free Sun boxes. We took some
boxes as clients, but my research group decided to stick with FreeBSD
on Intel as our main server...

X 4

[8bit]

Anyone know if it installs XFree 4 be default? My fBSD box has been acting up lately and I want to wipe my hard drive. I'd really like to use X4 w/o too much fuss.

Roy Miller
:wq! DOH!

Re:X 4

[ozzmosis]

no it does not install X4 by default. because of possable root exploits in XFree86 4.X but you can compile it in /usr/ports

Re:X 4

[jmcneill]

Not installed by default, but it's in the ports collection.

Re:BSD 4.2 is crap - User BeOS then

[ArtPepper]

/it wants 500MB ... it won't fit on the dinky partition .../

Well, I'd suggest setting up a larger partition. Be 4.5 had three partition size options, and would let you make a 1.5 G partition, and 5.0 lets you define the partition size.

Debian does it ...just as well

[Ars-Fartsica]

Not only will it download and install gimp, but all the dependencies as well.

So does FreeBSD. So would any package system that intended to create a working port.

And since the packages are binary, there is no need to wait for it to compile.

FreeBSD supports binary packages as well.

You can, of course, always force it, but if you do that make sure the force is with you!

FreeBSD supports similar conflict management, and a FORCE feature.

Re:Debian does it ...just as well

[J. J. Ramsey]

One thing the FreeBSD packaging system seems to lack is a way for a package to depend on a package with a version greater than or equal to a particular version number. I noticed that, for example, package xfce-3.5.0 would depend on esound-0.2.17 exactly. esound-0.2.20 would not be satisfactory to the package manager, even though as far as the xfce binary was concerned, either version of esound would have worked. There also didn't seem to be a way to upgrade a package per se, aside from uninstalling the last version and then installing the newer version.

There may have been a way around those problems that I just missed, or a different way of handling things that I missed, but I couldn't find them.

Re:Debian does it ...just as well

[J. J. Ramsey]

No, no, no. That's not what I was trying to say. The software binaries themselves, the ones for XFce in this case, could have used an up-to-date version of the esound library. The package info within the xfce-3.5.0 package, though, required the esound-0.2.17 package.

My point was that the package manager didn't seem to have a mechanism so that a package could specify a dependence on a package with a version number greater than or equal to a particular value, i.e. something that would let the xfce package specify a dependence on esound version 0.2.17 *or greater*.

Re:Debian does it ...just as well

[spohl]

Maybe because a depending package with a greater version number might incorporate new features and design changes, which might cause the main package to break.

I had a similar problem last week, when I made a stupid mistake while I tried to upgrade the ports-tree on my workstation in an under-caffeinated condition. This caused the pkg_tools to expect a shared object, whichs natural habitat is in a newer FreeBSD-Release than mine (4.0) and so they didn't work anymore.

Re:Debian does it ...just as well

[J. J. Ramsey]

"Maybe because a depending package with a greater version number might incorporate new features and design changes, which might cause the main package to break."

Except in this case that wasn't the problem. Like I said, the XFce binaries could make use of either version of esound.

The problem seems to be the way dependencies are specified in the package tarball. From the +CONTENTS file of the most recent FreeBSD (not the one that I tried, which was 4.1.1):

@name xfce-3.5.2
@cwd /usr/X11R6
@pkgdep xpm-3.4k
@pkgdep tiff-3.5.5
@pkgdep png-1.0.8_1
@pkgdep libungif-4.1.0b1
@pkgdep libaudiofile-0.1.9
@pkgdep jpeg-6b
@pkgdep imlib-1.9.8.1
@pkgdep gtk-1.2.8
@pkgdep glib-1.2.8
@pkgdep gettext-0.10.35
@pkgdep esound-0.2.20

Or the +CONTENTS file from the latest package of toolbox-0.4.6 (a configuration tool for Blackbox 0.5x.x)

@name toolbox-0.4.6
@cwd /usr/X11R6
@pkgdep qt-2.2.1
@pkgdep png-1.0.8_1
@pkgdep jpeg-6b
@pkgdep Mesa-3.2.1_1

The dependencies for toolbox are especially telling, since Toolbox 0.4.6 was written well before Qt 2.2.1 existed, and not that long after Qt 2.0 came out.

What seems to be going on is that the package depends on a package with a particular name, such as grizzle-1.0.2, and the version number is hardcoded into the name of the package itself. So even though XFce could have used esound 0.2.20, the xfce-3.5.0 package itself specified a dependence specifically on the esound-0.2.17 package.

My guess is that if I had more experience with FreeBSD I could have worked around that limitation, but still, it's a limitation.

Re:Debian does it ...just as well

[Astastrafal]

Maybe because a depending package with a greater version number might incorporate new features and design changes, which might cause the main package to break

As you say, it might. If you know that package foo, currently at R27 v2.3.90, is okay with your lil' proggy way back from R23 v3.40.9, you don't force the poor sod who's installing your package to have to upgrade his perfectly okay foo to satisfy your dependencies. If you don't know that, then you simply don't say so in your package. Point is: such a feature has its uses. Don't try to cover up deficiencies by pretending that such possbilities don't exist. You see a good idea that you don't have in your current kickass world-beating utterly purrrfect system, don't turn up your nose at it (and then a few months later implementing it on the sly). Acknowledge it and borrow it. Nobody's perfect, we can all learn from one another, and we'll all be better off that way.

:)

Re:Debian does it ...just as well

[J. J. Ramsey]

"Don't try to cover up deficiencies by pretending that such possbilities don't exist."

In all fairness, I suspect that spohl figured that what was going on was happening intentionally, by design. It's not necessarily obvious what the problem is unless one peers into the contents of a package tarball.

I don't think he was "pretending" anything.

Re:Debian does it ...just as well

[Astastrafal]

I don't think he was "pretending" anything.

<BR>
He might not have been (are you him BTW? Just a question :)), but looking around this thread, there are plenty of others who are doing so, on both "sides". It's amazing how many people are so bigoted about 2 free OSes and don't make much effort to be fair-minded. Here we have to high-quality, free systems, and all some people care is to engage in a foul-mouthed pissing contest. Then again, knowing human nature this isn't so surprising.

BSD is better :-D

[jallen02]

This brings us to the most important point, BSD is far superior to Linux because BSd is already on version 4.2, while Linux lags behind at version 2.4!!! Can you believe that people?

:-) (ITS A JOKE LAUGH!:)

Jeremy

Re:BSD is better :-D

[T-Punkt]

> This brings us to the most important point, BSD is far superior to Linux because BSd is already on
> version 4.2

Actually:
The latest release of BSD was 4.4
The latest release of FreeBSD is 4.2
The latest release of NetBSD is 1.4.2, 1.5 will be out in a few days (weeks?)
The latest release of OpenBSD is 2.7, 2.8 is on its way
The latest release of BSD/OS (BSDi Internet Server) is 4.1

Re:BSD is better :-D

[kps]

And the latest release of UNIX for the PDP11 is 2.11 BSD, still maintained. Just mentioning it so we can repeat these threads when OpenBSD reaches 2.11.

Re:BSD is better :-D

[Kleedrac2]

Well of coarse it is. The biggest blaring hole in the Linux Kernel is the single threaded IDE driver. Put a box of anything up against linux and try to copy a file from hd0 to hd1 and see how long it takes. Also the fact that Linus (whom I respect) wrote the Linux kernel based upon what he thought it should be as opposed to FreeBSD simply modifying the original Unix kernel (you know the one that DOS was supposedly based upon!) Besides the idea of having three versions; a) Current (we're workin' on it) b) Release (we think we're done) c) Stable (It's been up and running without a reboot for at least 6 months!!!) Really works great!! I like Linux ... but I love my FreeBSD! Kleedrac

This story is a bit late...

[Len]

I was using 4.2 BSD back in, oh, 1986 was it?

watdaisy!lpopp
--

Woohoo! Procrastination pays off!

[flimflam]

I've been meaning to update my test machine running 4.0 for the past few weeks (ahem- months). I almost got to it last week, but thank god I waited! Maybe if I wait a few more months I'll upgrade it to 4.3 instead!

Re:Support for toys

[speedbump]

When I need support for the latest toy thingy, I go to WinBlows or Linux. When I need to squeeze every bit of performance out of my Intel boxes or need to keep the script kiddies at bay, it's FreeBSD, baby.

What's the big deal?

[sconeu]

I remember using BSD 4.2 when it came out back in 1983!

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[T-Punkt]

He said "BSD" not "FreeBSD".

NetBSD and OpenBSD run fine on sparcs.

Yes, I prefer NetBSD to Solaris on my sun4c and sun4m systems. It's smaller, faster and much, much better structured => much more easy to maintain (and I think more secure).

On sun4u I would probably go for Solaris... (but I don't have one (yet))...

FreeBSD!

[muyThaiBxr]

Well, I don't see why people think FreeBSD is so hard to get used to. I started my UNIX days on FreeBSD, and have never had a problem making anything work. It has been rock-solid for anything and everything I wanted to use it for. Nothing compares to the upgrade path (cvsup, make a kernel, make world, merge configs...) and nothing compares to the ports tree.... not even the apt system... And speed wise, I've tried out just about every linux dist out there... and was left wondering why it took so long to do certain things...(mainly just it's responsiveness is the thing that "got" me... FreeBSD just seemed more responsive... but that could be because the default install for almost every linux leaves way to many un-needed daemons running) Anyway, good job to the FreeBSD people.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[Strog]

Calm down and take in a deep breath Mr. Coward. Ok, now that you are calm and ready to talk.

I'm not trying to say Linux is better than BSD. I personally prefer BSD and will be upgrading to 4.2 after it calms down a little but that really isn't the issue. FreeBSD on a single seems faster to me than a dual Linux box. The real point was they are both good if you are going up to 4 CPU's and Solaris/Irix will do better on the bigger iron. Sure they can go higher but this isn't where they shine. Things are changing and this might not always be so. IBM is working on Linux kernel patches for bigmem, etc. Linus won't accept it into the main tree but it will probably be available as a patch for those wanting to run on the big iron. I know that there are similar BSD projects out there too.

P.S. Where are your numbers?

Oh yes! Encap!!

[BetaJim]

I must second that. Encap is great for managing installations from source.

If anyone thinks that managing compiled tar balls it difficult, well encap is a must have tool.

Basically, just do this for any source install:

$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/encap/xxx-1.2.3

$ make

$ sudo sh

# make install

# cd /usr/local/encap

# epkg -i xxx.1.2.3

Thats it! And the package is in a central location and can be easly removed or updated using epkg.

Re:Debian does it better

[ozzmosis]

well isnt that special.
well what do you know. FreeBSD does the EXACT same thing! it downloads all the dependants. and everything , next time do some research before you troll.
i see you say things like you say you dont want to wait on it to compile. well pkg_add -r gimp ? it downloads the binary and installs it. With ALL dependencies.

upgradeing is also a breeze.. 'cvsup stable-supfile' its that simple.

there are over 4000 ports in freebsd.

Re:Debian does it better

[ozzmosis]

btw. dont belive me about 4000 ports..
freshports.org check it out.

Re:Debian does it better

[Omega996]

does 'apt-get source gimp' check for dependencies, and automatically resolve those dependencies (i.e., download the source and build those packages)? The *BSD ports trees do this, and i've been trying to find a linux distro that does the same thing. i like building my system myself, and haven't been able to figure out for myself if there are any linux distributions that offer this functionality.

it would seem to me that an OS used by so many who are proponents of the open source mode would have this feature, rather than rely on repositories of precompiled, generic binaries, possibly of questionable origin.

just my $.02

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[Omega996]

bought it on ebay, eh?

i got mine from sun for $75, plus shipping...

just had to see what all the fuss was about. Not worth the effort or the money. I love the lack of supported hardware.

Don't forget about CTM!

[Whelkman]

CTM rules, too. That is, after you get that first painful delta. But after that, you just CTM all those little 4k updates, and you've got an up to date system. CVSup is probably less hassle, but because CTM doesn't check anything before it starts butchering your sources, it ends up being a little faster for people with slow connections.

Re:BSD vs. Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Most companies using *BSD never contribute back to the community. They hoard the software and might dribble back some trivial fix. Usually they keep the good stuff for themselves and never help the community evolve. That is one of the main reasons *BSD is stagnating. Too few give back. There are a couple companies that are exceptions to the rule. They are to be commended of course. But it is too little too late. To make matters worse for *BSD, one of the main BSD directors has recently quit over one of the long running (and unresolved) legitamacy disputes. The outlook for *BSD is bleak indeed.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[swdunlop]

On a LX or an IPC, OpenBSD seems to support the hardware better than Solaris. Then again, these are crufty old orphans. =)

Calm down....

[rppp01]

And please, go to hell. If we want shit from you, we'll hit you upside your head.

Re:BSD 4.2 is crap - User BeOS then

[rppp01]

BeOS's install is only about 120mb. The extra space is for other shit you may want to put on, swapping, and what not. BeOS does need more driver support than what it has, but it is getting better.
As far as its viability as a desktop, I believe Be is so close. It lacks just a few things- mostly the network support and applications needed. Yes those are big things, but it has already overcome the small footprint and gui problems, as well as multimedia support.

*gasp*

[zentex]

an article about BSD _actually_ made it to the front of slashdot?! my gawd! perhaps today is a good day....

I think the averages are once every blue moon a BSD article makes it...other wise i just see them mysteriously appear in my BSD slashbox...I do belive there is some bigotry going on here....

NO SPORK

Re:*gasp*

[gavinhall]

Posted by BSD-Pat:

heh, the fact remains is that BSD news, other than releases, is not always interesting to the whole of Slashdot's readership. However, the BSD section is for those stories that may be interesting to you and I, but may not be interesting otherwise.

We try, most of the time to please the whole readership, and releases, and conferences as an event usually make the front page.

Thats all there is to it.

-Pat

Re:*gasp*

[zentex]

ok, i can dig that...but *every* single story on linux gets the front page...no matter how stupid it is...

(I smell a VA Linux consiracy theory here)...

damnation...

NO SPORK

dumb 4.1/4.2 question

[xeno]

Maybe this is a dumb newbie question, but I should probably ask it before trying out this new 4.2 release. I recently attempted to install 4.1 on a 486 box for use as a router, and it completed the install routine ok. However, on first boot, it hangs at the boot loader. From the behavior, it seems as if the 4.1 boot loader is compiled for pentium and above and panics pretty fast. So much for my first experience with BSD.

Is this normal? Should this behavior change with 4.2? Can I use the 4.2 cd to do a simple install on a 486, or do I have to (a) roll my own from source or (b) install an older rev and upgrade from there?

J

Re:dumb 4.1/4.2 question

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the errata, there was a problem with the bootloader on the 4.1 CD. 4.2 should be okay though.

Re:dumb 4.1/4.2 question

[Lazaru5]

So does it hang or does it panic? There's a difference. Anyway, the problem is prob ably the wrong disk geometry (ie, BIOS reports one geometry, disklabel is setup another.) I'd say it was a 1024th cylinder problem but the BIOS Extensions are supported in 4.1's boot loader. Are you sure it was 4.1?

And the whole system is compiled for all *386 machines.

Re:dumb 4.1/4.2 question

[Lazaru5]

Strictly speaking, it *was* entirely true. -CURRENT was not in the scope of the discussion. There is an implied disclaimer that -CURRENT doesn't apply, given it's nature.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[mosch]

yes, but the article is about FreeBSD, thus I assumed he was improperly abbreviating, after all, he didn't show much clue.

--
"Don't trolls get tired?"

Daddy, why are we hiding from the police?

[Omega996]

Because we use vi, son. They use emacs...

Re:Daddy, why are we hiding from the police?

[The_Messenger]

Yes, I have that shirt. :-) But the funny thing was, I ordered it, and they sent me the Emacs version! I was so pissed! Luckily, I was able to exchange it quickly. I think the first day I wore it to work was the day my boss lost all hope for my sanity.

For the record, I very much prefer vi, but often use GNU Emacs when editing large programs because I like the auto-indent. I also don't mind the syntax highlighting available when running from X. Yes, I've used Vim. Its syntax highlighting leaves much to be desired. The C, C++, Java, and Perl modes are pretty good, but I've had consistent problems with Vim's interpretation of quoted strings in SQL mode. And in any case, it doesn't to the fab auto-indent. (Which is a finger-saver for those who use spaces (as opposed to hard tabs) for indenting!!) It's a pity, because otherwise think Vim is an excellent program, and it doesn't conflict too much with the Berkeley and SVR4 vi's I'm used to.

I've tried Emacs' various vi-alike modes, but they just don't cut it. See, "viper" and the like are just vi-like enough so that I get comfortable, and then I discover that it doesn't emulate all of vi's keymaps, and it fucks me up.

Anyway, even syntax highlighting and auto-indent aren't to lure me away from vi. God bless BJ.

Okay, that was offtopic. :-)

All generalizations are false.

Re:Daddy, why are we hiding from the police?

[Felius]

:set autoindent

This has worked as long as I've been using vi (which is the version supplied with FreeBSD).

I use spaces for indenting as well, so I could never live without it.

#include sig.h

Re:Daddy, why are we hiding from the police?

[The_Messenger]

Yes, I use that autoindent frequently... but it's not nearly as good as Emacs'. vi's autoindent just places point at the last line's indent position. Emacs will indent appropriately, line up braces, et cetera, as you type. Very helpful. For instace, if you type this

01: while (someCondition)
02: {
03: do_something ();
04: }
05:
06: /* lots more code */

and later, mindlessly/drunkenly/accidentally delete the right brace at line 4, Emacs will automatically indent everything afterwards appropriately, which should make it obvious that you have an open brace. This greatly reduces the number of "stupid little programmer errors" that are time-consuming to isolate at compile time.

Normally, this is what indent(1) is for. However, while GNU indent works with C, C++, and Java, the indent I have avilable at work (/usr/ucb/indent on AIX 4.3) only understands C. If I'm using Perl or some other non-C family language, Emacs is not only the best choice for automatic source formatting (IMHO), but it is the only choice in some cases.

While vi's autoindent still requires you to manually indent the first line in a block, and also requires you in un-indent closing braces, Emacs does everything for you, and will also tell you, as you type, if you have mismatched parenthesis, braces.

That's why I'm willing to give up my favorite editor now and then. I mean, Emacs always takes up at least 1MB of memory; it must do something useful, right? ;-)

Wow, I don't think a vi user has ever been as kind to Emacs as I just have.

All generalizations are false.

Re:Volcano Report: FreeBSD JDK is world's slowest

[warlock]

There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. I guess we should also add 'benchmarks' and their interpretations to this list.

First of all, what you decided to ignore is the fact that according to those benchmarks, the slowest of the bunch is not FreeBSD's JDK, but Transvirtual Kaffe 1.0 for Linux. How convenient, but does it matter? No. Why?

TowerJ is a NATIVE COMPILER, and IBM's, as well as all the other VMs tested APPART from FreeBSDs used a JIT compiler - and we're talking about FreeBSD 2.2.8 for crying out loud. I'm surprised it actually HAD a JDK.

Needless to say, things changed:
http://www.freebsd.org/java/

-W

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[guacamole]

Mr. Troll, you should know that Solaris is not for free download and the media costs $75. This is sa pretty good deal considering that the license you get is nearly unlimited, but still, free download... it aint.

Re:Debian does it better

[yka]

Yeah mostly ported Linux programs.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[be-fan]

Umm, its $75. There's no free download. Solaris 8 is crazy slow on smaller Intel machines.

Re:BSD 4.2 is crap - User BeOS then

[be-fan]

You can accuse BeOS of a lot of things, but you can't accuse it of being bloated. This is the OS that fits more or less unchanged onto handhelds. The entire BeOS /system directory is 30MB. This includes all the servers, the kernel, and drivers for all the devices. The kernel, all the servers, and the GUI take up 8MB, while a full set of drivers takes up another 5-7 MB. XFree86 alone takes up more than that. The maximum install for the OS is 180MB, including all sample code, compilers, IDE, a large number of GNU utilities. If you need more, than almost any UNIX utility you need is included in the geek gadgets port. While hardware support is still spotty, you're probably using strange hardware. If you use it on modern, mainstream hardware, then it is fairly rare to find an unsupported config. All three of my computers (2 hand-built with the weird OEM parts) support BeOS fully. Inkjet printer support is sketchy, but if your doing media, you're probably using a Postscript (430-something of those supported) printer anyway. Since it looks like you haven't checked, there is a SANE port as well, so scanner support should be similar to Linux. If you don't like the dinky partition (which is interesting, given the fact that my 3GB BeOS partition is only half full and I use it 90% of the time) you can install it on any size harddrive you want courtesy of the 64bit file system. Networking is being rewritten (out real soon now! Probably not much later than Linux 2.4, if that late, as the beta is already running some website servers) which should allow NFS, and SMB (I assume SAMBA?) has a port as does Apache 2.0

Re:BSD 4.2 is crap - User BeOS then

[be-fan]

X takes up more space than all of BeOS, and it still runs OpenGL and regular 2D apps slower than Windows. What more proof do you need? QSSL had the right idea to never use X in an OS meant for speed. (Photon is damn nifty!)

Re:Christians beware -- BSD and Satanic symbols

[iie1195]

You work for Microsoft, don't you...?

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[Strog]

If you post as Anonymous Coward then that is how you will be addressed. Mr. Coward would be the appropriate salutation as would Mr. whateveryournameis would be is you where logged in as whateveryournameis. I realize people on /. don't use much manners but didn't realize doing so would get someone bent out shape. There is no call for you to call people idiots, linuxbots and swear. It doesn't offend me but I expect more from the intelligent and informed users.

Back to the topic. I didn't say FreeBSD but did say BSD. This includes Open, Free, Net, BSD/OS, etc. Obviously BSD/OS is the king of this list and probably FreeBSD is next(I could be wrong about NetBSD though). OpenBSD's SMP has a ways to go but they have been make good headway. FreeBSD's own developers don't think that there code is up to where it should be yet(Read the dicussions on the site). FreeBSD may be faster (looks like it is to me) on a dual CPU setup but there is one problem with SMP on FreeBSD. FreeBSD uses a giant kernel lock for SMP implementation. This means that one CPU must "own" the lock to use the kernel space which limits it to only one CPU at a time. This makes for quickly diminishing reuturns as you go over 2 CPU's. This will hamper performance that FreeBSD could be capable of when it is I/O intensive. This current setup limits how far FreeBSD can scale up with maximum efficency.

It doesn't matter whether or not FreeBSD or Linux is faster on 1 or 2 CPU systems. I still stand by my original opinion that you use Linux/BSD for systems up to 4 CPU's and need to consider the options if you are looking at the big iron.

There are plenty of comparisons for single vs dual Linux and FreeBSD. I don't know of any that compare both setup on both OS's but you can see how each compares effiencies on 1 vs 2 CPU's on the same hardware. Try to avoid absolutes, a lot of things have been that you don't know about. You can end up with egg on your face(hopefully not in front of the boss).

Re:Christians beware -- BSD and Satanic symbols

[iie1195]

I hate to sound too stupid and/or gullible here... But I just can't seem to figure out if this post is a hoax or not... Somebody please confirm to me that I haven't gone insane, and that I haven't been teleported to some evil, strange parallell universe... Somebody...? Help...? Please...?

Re:Not good for desktop

[NatePuri]

Then you should use MS's products, where there are supposedly supported closed desktop products that the world uses.

As for you gripe about "shareware" Mr. "I just started using Unix and still use the word 'shareware'" things like LyX are awesome, try the GIMP film version to see why the open source world of shareware kicks much ass. Seriously, no one really cares a hell of a lot about using a Unix for the "business productivity apps." If I wanted to be bored out of my mind, I would use my WinME box with Word, what the Hell. If I want to see what's really going on I hack on multimedia apps for making movies, music, etc. and sharing them with friends. Believe me, these apps are coming down the pipe soon.

Applixware may not be your cup of tea, but it is fast stable and very very useful. It's conversion filters are the best in the business, they have to be or no one could use it.

I can't believe you say "public domain shareware 'ports'". You must have just migrated to the open source world. Get a clue, man.

Re:Debian does it better

[Kwikymart]

I dont usually take part in these freebsd/linux troll-quests, but who cares what is borrowed from whom? Really, neither freebsd or linux would be anything without borrowed code and using programs that weren't originally designed for that system. All those "ported linux programs" were most likely ported from other systems or had borrowed code in them as well. And another thing, most of these programs are not designed for a specific OS, you only assume they do because they come in the standard linux distro. My advice would be to keep your mouth closed (and your keyboard in your pants) whenever you feel the urge to spread FUD.

*NIX Linux

[redi]

While on that subject, could those folks writing these types of things stop writing Linux apps, and start writing Unix apps, please?

Good call, Linux was originally written to be UNIX-compatible, so that "standard" UNIX code would run on Linux almost unaltered. Write code for UNIX/POSIX/BSD and it will work fine under Linux, but will give other people the chance to use it too. It can't be that hard, people have managed to code for UNIX for decades without Linux-specific calls.

I'm a Linux user but now also run FreeBSD after using it at work and realising that almost everything I like about linux is a unix feature, not something special to linux (as the GNU project tries to point out with "GNU/Linux").
All linux boxen are unix, but not all unix is linux boxen!

As an aside, can anyone tell me whether the linux-compatibility features of FreeBSD can handle linux-specific calls, or just run the binaries when they contain only calls supported by FreeBSD?

--

Re:BSD vs. Solaris (Quick history)

[AKAImBatman]

Okay, whirlwind history here:

Bill Joy and others at Berkley designed utilities for SystemIV Unix. These Utilities were packaged as 'Berkley Software Distribution(BSD)'. Berkley then got some new Digital (VAX) machines and wanted Unix on them. The BSD guys ported Unix to the Digital machines and because of that were contacted by DARPA to make a common OS for all the machines on their newfangled 'ARPANET' later known as the Internet. When ARPANET was dismantled (leaving the commercial internet in place), BSD was released to the public. In the internim, Solaris became a fork of BSD with changes from System V added in.

Re:BSD vs. Solaris

[reg]

This is complete FUD!

Actually, FreeBSD has been so successful that BSDi (the makers of BSD/OS - the commercial BSD) have made big investments in FreeBSD and have opened their entire source tree to FreeBSD developers.

FreeBSD continues to develop at a rate at least equal to Linux, and often beats Linux on support for new technologies (especially in stable releases). Examples from this release are ATA-100, USB, free RSA (OpenSSL and Open SSH).

I'm not sure which director you are trying to refer to... Since you're posting anonymously, why not name the person.

-Jeremy

Re:BSD vs. Solaris - No, sun forked

[AKAImBatman]

IIRC, it was actually an anti-trust issue that dragged BSD into the middle of a lawsuit. At that point BSD had had only 3 or 4 modules that hadn't been rewriten because of the work involved. My understanding was that this issue was solved by AT&T gifting the remaining code to the BSD code base.

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[AKAImBatman]

Because I can't get the source code to Solaris :)

Not true. You have the option of getting a Solaris 8 CD containing the source code. Go check Sun's site if you don't believe me.

Re:*BSD struggles to survive

[AntiBasic]

*BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline.

Yeah, you can thank BSD you're using TCP/IP rather than some assanine OSI protocol suite. BSD has never lost market share, its growing, just not as fast as the pimple faced 15 year old trolls on slashdot who just had mommy take them to CompUSA to get their very first Linux distro cd set.I beg you to show me a graph of BSD user-ship ever in a decline.

BSD is about 4 years behind Linux in terms of popularity while still being 2 ahead in performance alone.

Re:BSD 4.2 is crap - User BeOS then

[tsikora]

Once BDSI gets Java up to par with Linux there isn't a damn thing FreeBSD couldn't do. It almost runs Linux better than Linux itself. Security is improving rapidly, IPv6, cvsup, ports, shall I go on. We already know it's the most stable and robust server on this planet. Beos don't make me laugh... a refugee from the gameboy planet like Mac and Win.

Re:Christians beware -- BSD and Satanic symbols

[crtreece]

Unfortunately, Mr[s]. A. Coward probably believes the crap that was spewed forth, just not strongly enough to give a real name or email address. Of course that doesn't make any of it true either.

I cannot confirm that you are not insane, nor whether you are in the same evil, strange (and possibly parallel) universe as myself.

Re:A Warning to Christians--BSD Daemons and Satani

[kps]

Daemon bondage can be brought about ... (sins of the flesh).

Rack-mount my hardware, finger(1) me, fsck(8) my raw partitions, mount(8) my file systems, abort(3) my child processes, chmod -R ugo=rw ~,... /etc, /etc.

The Bible makes it clear that there are daemons, or evil spirits, in the world that interfere in people's lives.

Yeah, had some trouble with rarpd(8) terminating; ended up putting the X terminals' IP addresses in NVRAM instead.

"There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire ...

Like I'm leaving my network open to script kiddies.

... or that useth divination, or an observer of times, ...

1:22AM up 28 days, 7:38, 1 user, load averages: 2.03, 0.71, 0.32
(Storm. Power cut outlasted the UPS. And just whose fault was that? "Act of God", they said.)

... a consulter with familiar spirits...

Aw, c'mon. It's not just BSD sysadmins who are driven to drink.

... or a wizard ...

Well. Don't blame me when your universe crashes.

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like

Yay, new Slashdot poll! I got 82%; how about you?

1. Compulsion to abuse animals or people;

Fuck you.

2. Sexual perversion and immorality (homosexuality, molestation,etc.);

See #1.

Also, counselors at CBN 700 Club can pray with you by telephone.

$4.99/minute. Have your credit card ready; will appear as "Bondage Daemons" on your statement. Must be 18 to call. For entertainment purposes only.

Re:Debian does it better

[yka]

My advice would be to keep your mouth closed

Nice. But there are plenty of linux apps that doesn't compile on BSD without major porting effort and still BSD would be even more of niche project as it is now without help of Linux, just face it.

Well...

[Whelkman]

I didn't mean it doesn't check ANYTHING before it starts because I know it does. I consider any kind of overlay patch as "butchering sources".

What I meant was that it doesn't check anything compared to CVSup, which looks at every file and asks the server if the file has changed.

Successful upgrade

[smnolde]

I burned the 4.2-RC2 ISO last night and successfully upgraded my machine and ports tree without a hitch. It is by far a simple upgrade.

I'm not a programmer, but I enjoy the option of using Linux or FreeBSD for tinkering.

Re:code for blah was Re:Do yourself a favor: Try i

[Howie]

There is a difference between testing it on all those things, and deliberately using linux-specific things in writing software! Writing portable code is usually not much harder than writing platform-specific, if at all, aside from situations where you need to use particular ioctls or similar.

I don't write much code that others would find useful, but I sometimes do test it on the 5 platforms I have access to (Irix, Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, and BSD/OS) more out of curiosity than anything else - the majority can easily be made to work. GNU autoconf can do a lot of the things for you that would otherwise tie you down to a specific system.

The point is not that it could be changed to run on particular systems, but that it needn't be changed to run on any system.

[if I were to supply patches for your softwware (whatever it is) to allow it to run on (say) SGIs or *BSD, would you incorporate them?]

Re:BSD 4.2 is crap - User BeOS then

[be-fan]

Linsux sucks. Why don't use just use FreeBSD? It is a bloated, slow POS. Why is it that anti-BeOS trolls never get modded?

Re:code for blah was Re:Do yourself a favor: Try i

[Howie]

Since I happen to have just come across it in this weeks NTK, here
http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/download.html is some (so far - I haven't finished reading it) pretty decent docs for autoconf and automake.

minor mishap with the ISO image

[step]

fresh from the freebsd-announce mailing list:

Due to a last-minute problem (a build error, not a bug with KDE or FreeBSD itself) which was discovered with the KDE packages on the Intel architecture ISO image for 4.2-RELEASE, I've updated the image at:

ftp:/ /ft p.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ISO-IMAGES /4.2-install.iso

I also took the opportunity to include the windowmaker package, which was mistakenly left off (and referenced by one of FreeBSD's canned Desktop profiles).

The new MD5 checksum for this image is:
MD5 (4.2-install.iso) = 7eec8a2e4bc2211fccf18b5a6fd5b55e

If you do not have any interest in installing the KDE desktop or windowmaker and you have already grabbed the previous installation ISO then you can safely ignore this announcement; nothing else was changed.

Apologies to everyone who downloaded the first ISO image and had an unsatisfactory KDE experience. Excrement occurs.

- Jordan

Re:Debian does it better

[Omega996]

that's cool... I'm gonna give it (debian) a try!

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[Astastrafal]

The Internet Archive (www.archive.org) uses FreeBSD as the OS for its 10+ terabyte disk farm

Thanks for that link, I had never heard of that site before. But your information appears to be outdated:

- This link says that they use Linux to store all that data (with IDE hard drives, it's specified).
- This link says they use Linux for both access to the data (via ssh) and storage.

So it appears that they've switched OSes.

Re:Debian does it better

[mr]

Really?

xv is a linux package?
xsane?

Why don't you go through the list of ports/packages on FreeBSD and provide a detailed history of the packages/ports and see what 'is a linux program'

Once you get over your shock, you'd see that these programs are UNIX programs. You may have 1st seen them with Linux, and Linux has more hype, but that doesn't mean code was "Linux".

In fact, the only code that is "Linux" is the kernel.

Re:Freebsd has problems

[mr]

The number one problem facing Freebsd now is loss of marketshare. Week after week Freebsd keeps slipping lower in the marketshare surveys.

Really?

Got some URL's showing this on a week by week basis?

Re:BSD vs. Solaris

[lomion]

Interesting? More like uninformed. Alot of companies that use any BSD give back. Look at Whistle, Yahoo and Applee with darwin will be releasing some code back.

As for bsd forking from solaris. BSD unix predates solaris.

Ha ha - funny joke

[smiller-time]

this is a joke, right? hey buddy - no disrespect is intended, but the daemon is NOT a symbol of satan... sorry. the daemon is merely an icon. to say the daemon is satanic is just like saying tux [of linux fame] is also satanic. my advice to you is to get a life. "The only problem with your computer is that you are the user" [from the Book of smiller-time, 1:1-2]

Re:Why not use Solaris instead?

[j-pimp]

I currently run RedHat on my LX, but will switch to SuSe when its available and I have the time. Hardware support is great in Linux except it can't handle scsi hard drives without BIOS's.