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

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