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FreeBSD 4.4-RELEASE Is Ready
ocipio writes: "The FreeBSD team announced that 4.4-RELEASE is available for download. There are a whole bunch of changes and notes. Please be sure to use a mirror." Those installing for the first time will no doubt find chapter two of the Handbook invaluable.
Check the freebsd-small.iso file 200 MB on the main FTP server.
The FreeBSD 4.4 news haven't been posted for more than a few minutes, there are (were when I started writing) 6 posts, and already people are following a very annoying thread. What I mean is the stupid (IMO) advice that *BSD (or Linux or any open source project) should do this and that, be like this and that in order to be more average user friendly and to gain more market share.
/., and most of all, don't complain so much about it. Instead, do something about it. Mail the developers this advice, or better yet, help code the OS, write the documentation, and in general, help improve it.
PEOPLE! Do you think that the people, or the companies developing with those OSes are not aware of those problems? That they have no clue whatsoever as to what the general public wants? That they simply refuze to make their OSes user friendly, just to spite the users, and stay in a tiny share of the market?
They want more users, and they're doing everything possible to make their experience as pain-free and easy as possible. That they haven't reached perfection is not a surprise. But don't give such stupid advice on
But even this is not very relevant, for I'm using Linux because it suits me, and I like it, no matter how small its market share. And no matter how user (un)friendly it is. I like it (and I've been running it for the past 4.5 years)
I know, I know. My complaining does not help either. But I'm not doing it every time such a story is posted (check my posts if you don't believe me). I'm just getting fed up with all this useless noise. I'd much rather hear about the technical issues with FreeBSD (I haven't tried it yet, I'm running Linux and OpenBSD), the user experience, the major apps that have been ported to it, etc. THAT would help me, and others.
As a rather novice Linux user, I've been curious as the differences between it and BSD. Can somebody point to a link that goes into some rather sophisticated detail between the two? (More than "Supports themes, is cool, etc.")
This article might be a good read for you:
http://www.daemonnews.org/199907/d-advocate.html
In the ports directory you will find applications such as StarOffice (5.1 and 5.2), Netscape (linux version), linux version of Flash Plug-in and some more that work perfectly with Linux compat mode. What FreeBSD does is install a package (currently based on Redhat 6.1) and user a kernel module to provide binary compatibility, so it's no emulation. I've successfully ran Quake3 with h/w accel and all IPlanet products. Some other linux stuff you might run is e.g. acrored4 and the linux jvm. I'm posting this on a FreeBSD box using no other than Opera for linux.
FTP upgrade? Use cvsup, it fetches all the changed source files for you.
/usr/src/UPDATING file, which will describe the significant things that have changed.
When it's done, you'll want to take a look at your
After that, it's just a matter of doing a:
make buildworld
make buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC (or whichever kernel you are building, if you have a custom one)
make installworld
make installkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC (or whatever)
reboot
FTP upgrade? Use cvsup, it fetches all the changed source files for you.
/usr/src/UPDATING file, which will describe the significant things that have changed.
When it's done, you'll want to take a look at your
After that, it's just a matter of doing a:
make buildworld
make buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC (or whichever kernel you are building, if you have a custom one)
make installworld
make installkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC (or whatever)
reboot
You should also run mergemaster after make installworld, or else you'll get weird errors (like the PAM errors from 4.2->4.3)
BSD's FFS with softupdates could be considered to obviate the need for journalling.
Read Journalling Versus Soft Updates for a good Usenix 2000 paper comparing both approaches, which concludes that:
and that
Both methods achieve the same goals by different means.
My only gripe with FreeBSD is the amount of documentation available. You pretty much have to work out most things for yourself, there aren't the sheer number of different HOWTOs available like there are with Linux.
One thing you should remember is FreeBSD is better about keeping their manpages up to date and useful. One of the things that drove me nuts with RedHat was the sheer lack of manpages for many of the commands and almost all of the drivers (try running man 4 pcm in FreeBSD and it will tell you all about the sound driver). FreeBSD doesn't have as many HOWTOs because it doesn't need them, the manual has all the information you need in many cases.
I read the internet for the articles.
Sorry guys, but this one really is a troll. We've never even heard of this guy nor is there even any such position as "core consultant developer." Nobody has petitioned the core team for a code removal action, either, so it would difficult for us to be "pious and insufferable" in response to a non-event. In short, this guy's posting is a complete fabrication.
- Jordan Hubbard co-founder, the FreeBSD Project. Director, UNIX Technology. Apple Computer
Afraid you're wrong. It's a troll from end to end, and not even a very good one...
As a core consultant developer for the *BSD kernel for 6 months last year
No one by this name is involved in any BSD, certainly not at the core level. Also, there are no core team members in common between Free, Net and OpenBSD.
There are many issues which have not been resolved and are not being publicized to the public.
The FreeBSD project does all of it's development in public mailing lists...
1) The implementation of threads still uses fine grain kernel level locking
The 4.x kernel does not have fine grained locking, this is being developed in 5.x.
which does not adhere to POSIXX IEEE 811.2b level requirements
POSIX is an IEEE OS standard.
IEEE 801.11b is an IEEE wireless networking standard.
A seasoned kernel hacker would know the difference...
certified for level 4 security.
There is no such things. Secure systems conform to data books such as the 'orange book'.
The hash implementation which was used for prior backdoor's still exists and the modules which access it have not been auditied by third party engineers. This is a serious security violation which the dev team refuses to address. In fact they are doing all they can to sweep it underground, hoping people will just forget about it.
4.4 uses a IETF standard algorithm for sequence number generation (hash algorithms cant be backdoored), and this replaces the algorithm in 4.3 and earlier versions which did have a problem with sequence number guessing.
There is still no credible evidence that the new implementation of the TCP/IP stack is an improvement over the broken one they are trying to replace from the 4.3.xx series.
The TCP/IP stack in 4.4 is the same as in 4.3 (there was no 4.3.xx) and is the best performing TCP/IP stack around (even compared to the new Linux stack).
and the potential for data loss was rated as QQQ on the topenhiemer algorithm.
The stack does not loose data, and there is no such thing as a topenhiemer algorithm to rate it as a QQQ.
I am currently petitioning the core dev team to remove my code from the project due to my differences with them
No one is currently petitioning the FreeBSD core team to remove any code.
For some reason all sorts of people crawl out of the woodwork, and begin trolling on FreeBSD stories. Normally, like this post, they've read the last few news items from the FreeBSD web site, managed to store a few terms, and then try to put them into some or other attack on FreeBSD...
Regards,
-Jeremy
If you really want a CD, go to BSD Mall and buy a cd there. You may pay a little extra, but you are supporting the development. Of course, if you just want to try it for the first time and don't want pyhsical media or upgrade, then cheapbytes is a good choice.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
- make buildworld
- make buildkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_HERE
- make installkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_HERE
- reboot (preferably to single user)
- make installworld
- mergemaster
- reboot
Please read the