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.

Comments

Thank You

[rsimmons]

Thank you for not linking directly to the ftp server here on slashdot!

those are all well and good...

[kootch]

but one thing that open source people haven't learned that MS and Apple and such have learned are to answer the following questions:

1. is it faster?
2. does it do more/kewler stuff?
3. will it crash less frequently?
4. will it boot faster?
5. will i still have to spend hours trying to install new programs and hardware?
6. does it come with new/more/kewl goodies like MS Office (or equivalent), a dictionary and thesaurus, 100 free hours of internet access, etc.?

only when an open source OS states these things in their press release will the general public listen.

Re:those are all well and good...

[Junks Jerzey]

only when an open source OS states these things in their press release will the general public listen.

Or will _anyone_ listen. Who is going to do something as major as upgrade an OS if there is no easily explainable benefit.

Re:those are all well and good...

[Diabolical]

only when an open source OS states these things in their press release will the general public listen.

The fact that FreeBSD is being released is of no importance to the "general" public. It is however important for the technical savvy who are allready looking into things.

The fact that a press release is issued does not mean it's targeted at the mainstream masses.. it's just that... a press release for the press that is interested in this kind of news... wether it be online of in print.

But the points (except numbers 3 and 6) are course of equal importance to the techies...

Re:those are all well and good...

[Amokscience]

Well, when you can't answer positively to any of the questions you don't mention them at all. After reading the release notes, it's pretty obvious this fixes minor bugs and adds more/better device support.

The FreeBSD people may say some things about wanting more public use but it's still extremely targetted at technical people who already use unix. It's definitely not for general public consumption. It's a much more word of mouth operation even among techies.

Re:those are all well and good...

[Shanep]

but one thing that open source people haven't learned that MS and Apple and such have learned are to answer the following questions:

People who are most likely to use FreeBSD, are more likely to test for themselves, rather than just blindly believe what some press release tells them or just keep using what works for them and only patch security and stability problems as they arise.

1. is it faster?

Typical question from an MS user (can you blame them?), but nix users tend to be practical people, interested more in flexibility and stability. If it works for them, they keep using it.

2. does it do more/kewler stuff?

cat /usr/share/dict/words|grep -ixc kewl
0

Maybe I need an MS spell checker?

3. will it crash less frequently?

Less frequently than practically never?

4. will it boot faster?

You think most people here care about how fast their OS boots?

5. will i still have to spend hours trying to install new programs and hardware?

You? Probably.

6. does it come with new/more/kewl goodies like MS Office (or equivalent),

Yeah, because computer science is just not science without Microsoft Office, eh?

a dictionary and thesaurus,

I quite like gdict thanks.

100 free hours of internet access, etc.?

Yeah, because what is an OS without a hook into some crap ISP that demands credit card details for a free service that you'll need a top lawyer to get out of after the free bit ends. Chances are, those ISP's are built with a free nix like FreeBSD.

only when an open source OS states these things in their press release will the general public listen.

Whatever. Talk to the hand, 'cause the face aint list'nin.

Re:those are all well and good...

[johnnyb]

I think the point is that what the techies need to know are what's given. What the CEO needs to know is the benefits, but the features are ultimately what's important, because that's where the rubber meets the road.

I could give you a list of 10 reasons to use it, but it would be pointless, because what really matters are the practicalities, which only your local geek can tell you. Yes, it may have a dictionary, but is it usable? Does it cause your printer to slow down unexpectedly? Will it modify your documents without permission?

Unfortunately, there are two major problems with the way IT is handled:

1) non-technical people make the decisions that technical people should be making

2) technical people have no idea what makes a good system

Since noone is trained on both sides of the issue, you end up with noone being able to make a sensible decision. Hence the number of installations of Oracle Applications in the world.

Re:those are all well and good...

[kootch]

man, way to rip into me. i use freebsd, and have 4.3 stable installed on 2 of my servers.

i enjoy it. i was just giving some food for thought. no need to go personal.

Re:those are all well and good...

[Shanep]

Sorry about #5 kootch.

I'm in a bad mood and the thought that FreeBSD needs MS Office set me off.

: )

Re:those are all well and good...

[chefren]

Or upgrade a KERNEL (the crowd goes ooh!) that doesn't have any updates that concern you (the crowd goes aah!)

Re:those are all well and good...

[Graspee_Leemoor]

"Microsoft may claim a new version of Windows might be faster, but all know that it can't be true."

Actually, the networking in Windows 2000 WAS faster than before. I can't speak for XP because the MSDN download site is jammed solid.

I am just burning the 4.4 install CD of FreeBSD as I write this. (633 Meg over a single 56K dialup- yay me!)

graspee

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Roofus]

One address:

http://www.cheapbytes.com

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Anonymous Coward]

Check the freebsd-small.iso file 200 MB on the main FTP server.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Maditude]

When will people decide to make certain iso's small enough for dial-up users to be able to download it in a reasonable period of time (say 24 hours) These iso's are getting far too huge for most of us to dl anymore where some can reach as much as a gig or so. Because of this I've taken to buying certain distro's, but when does this 'freeware' become costly, the moment that they start getting rediculously huge.

Well, you could just download the boot floppies, and then install from them (it'll only pull down the stuff you actually intend to install, so you can say skip X and save a ton of downloaded code).
And, once you've got FreeBSD installed, as long as you stay relatively current (very easy to do), you won't ever need to do a full reinstall again!

They should either offer: a free cd burn (either they provide the cd, or you send them one of yours), or put it in stores and have them give the email of people who want their software ( these people have pre-signed up on their site and they submit it to the store along with a shipment). I'd prefer the first one myself, of sending them a cd. It would cost maybe 66 cents to send a cd back and forth, vs the $20+ people charge. Anyways feel free to flame.

I'm sure you won't find any volunteers on the 'BSD team willing to open snail-mailed cdroms of varying characteristics (rated 2x/4x/8x/etc), pop them individually into a cd-burner, start the burn, verify, and send them back. That'd be a huge pain-in-da-butt.

Why I use FreeBSD

[smnolde]

1. cvsup r00lz for updating the OS
2. ports collection
3. single file (/etc/make.conf) for managing compile-time options and a master ftp server
4. VM
5. ports collection
6. no rpm or deb files
7. ports collection
8. linux binary compatibility
9. ports collection
10. softupdates
11. securelevel
12. make world

I converted all my computers from linux to FreeBSD about six months ago and never looked back. I find FreeBSD much simpler to manage, automate, and secure than any other *NIX (I haven't given OpenBSD a try yet).

There is no "journaled" filesystem since softupdates does a really good job and imporves the fs performance.

Oh, BTW, did I mention the ports collection?

'nuff said

Re:Why I use FreeBSD

[drodver]

Give OpenBSD a try, it's great for certain roles since it seems geared more to servers than FreeBSD. As of 2.9 I believe that it shares the ports collection with FreeBSD too. Highly recommended for firewalling or other network services.

Re:Why I use FreeBSD

[mwillis]

As of 2.9 I believe that it shares the ports collection with FreeBSD too.

I am not sure this is right. The number of ports increased in 2.9 and the ports originally came from FreeBSD (way back) but I am pretty sure that OpenBSD doesn't simply share the FreeBSD ports tree.

Re:Why I use FreeBSD

[SirGeek]

OpenBSD is focused on security.

FreeBSD is geared towards i386 server stability (with security too).

NebBSD is geared towards maximum platform support (with security and stability too).

Re:Why I use FreeBSD

[Leto2]

You forgot to mention the ports collection!

Re:Why I use FreeBSD

[drodver]

Whoops, my bad

Re:Why I use FreeBSD

[sawilson]

And therein lies the difference. I'm not a casual UNIX user. I started playing with commercial UNIX variants around 18 years ago. There was and still is a UNIX subculture. There is the concept of "The UNIX way" of doing things. FreeBSD is more in line with that. RTFM means something. BOFH's are idolized. They didn't get that way on their own. They are creatures of their environment. You don't bitch about things, you hack the code to make what you need if need be. I do the types of things for a living where you notice things like poor performance from a network stack, or poor memory management. You notice what OS's work better with certain hardware and memory. When I'm at home, I like having the same type of confidence in my home system as I have in my work systems. I love the fact that I can lovingly and with extreme prejudice craft a home machine, one hand selected piece at a time, install FreeBSD, and have the same, if not more reliability on inexpensive x86 hardware. At the same time, I like that you can recycle old machines. Recently at work (huge sun shop) the 2nd tier tech's were having nothing but problems and long bitch sessions about their sunray workstations. For those not familiar, it's basically a diskless X terminal that feeds off an e250 to e450 class machine. They are now in the process of replacing the lot of them with a bunch of deemed worthless optiplex celeron machines running FreeBSD-stable. Are they faster? sure are. More reliable? sure are. Cheaper? by far. The optiplex's had been sitting in storage for a while collecting dust. They probably would have been given away or sold for next to nothing. The sunray's are now piling up in their own stack in that room while the techs marvel at how nice and clean blackbox is and easier to configure. All of them are getting involved. Some guys working on a custom blackbox theme for their department, as other guys set up apache on a spare optiplex for a departmental webserver. It's like they found hidden gold to listen to them talk. They come to me and ask questions. If it's a question they could have found the answer to in 5 seconds with google, I tell them that. If it's something they can learn from a particular O'reilly book, I let them borrow it or tell them who already borrowed it. :) You can never have too many armadillo books on hand. The point is, they are shaking loose the "I'll just ask someone that knows" mentality and developing the "I can probably figure this out on my own, and learn a lot of useful things" mentality. Very few times do I find I need to bug anyone to find the answer to a problem. Either google, or deja(which is google now also) almost always has the answers I'm looking for. And when I'm in the middle of doing 5 different coding projects, 3 migrations, preparing for 3 different meetings, BEFORE lunch, and some tech walks up to me and asks me what that command is to figure out free disk space, you better believe I'm going to be VERY rude and condescending. It's very effective when you don't have time. You can't be thin skinned and work in a real UNIX shop. Not if you have hardcore admin types about. But I digress...

I hope we can sell the sunray's back to sun, or find something else useful to do with them. The tech guys did keep the cool sun 18inch LCD's though. I hope I can get my hands on one of them. We've been steadily using FreeBSD machines for things traditionally done by an e250, or scsi netra. I'm hoping at some point I can get our company name added to the freebsd site list of large fortune 100 companies that use FreeBSD for mission critical things. That's where I'm coming from. It has to do with what level of user you are. For the most part, I find that the FreeBSD user base is a higher level of clued in individual. Most of them doing something with UNIX for a living. If I want to play a DVD, that's what my playstation2 is for. If I want to play games, same deal. If I want to surf the net, script out some perl, check my mail, ssh to a few work machines, run some test code with sun binary compatibility, listen to mp3's, play quake3, burn some cd's, do some instant messaging, connect to some opennap servers and grab some pixies, that's what my FreeBSD machine is for. Add to that the ease of updating my OS, /usr/ports for really easy software install, enhanced security, rock solid stability, and very little need to ever mess with anything(This machine was installed as freebsd 2.2.7 a billion years ago and is now 4.4-stable without reinstalling) and I can't think of a reason to use anything else. I wish all OS's were this perfect.

Re:Why I use FreeBSD

[sawilson]

And I suppose if I wanted to play DVD's under FreeBSD with ac3 audio, I could use:

http://xine.sourceforge.net/

And it looks like we had a working dxr3 driver back in december of 2000:

http://www.cs.duke.edu/~gadde/freebsd/em8300/

Ported from the linux driver you use. If the interest is there, it gets done. I'm sure I could finish that driver if I had a need for a dxr3. I'm thrilled with my playstation2 and madcat remote control though. ;)

Should have waited...

[turbine216]

the developers should have delayed this release until October so they could steal some of WinXP's thunder...

(Free)BSD v. Linux

[digitect]

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.")

Thanks.

Re:(Free)BSD v. Linux

[Noxxus]

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

Re:(Free)BSD v. Linux

[Zapman]

Unfortunatly, finding such hard data is almost imposible. I've been searching for years for data to back up claims of networking superiority from one camp or the other.

To give a short answer, *BSD's are all offshots of the historical 4.4BSDLite code, the final inheritance of Berkeley's system distribution. This is different from the SysV distribution, who's roots lie within ATT. Linux's philosophy has always been "That's a nifty idea... how can we do it?" so it is a hybred of BSD and SysV. (Free|Open|Net)BSD are 'true' BSD. Something like Solaris2 is going to be a more 'true' SysV. Some linux distributions are more BSD (like slackware) and some are more SysV (like Redhat and Debian).

The main, user visable, differences between SysV and BSD are in the flags that 'ps' takes. :-) There are a lot of differences at the syscall level, but most people don't see that. There are also significant differences in the boot procedure (one of the things that I prefer about SysV). BSD has one file (script) per runlevel. SysV has one script per service, organized in 1 directory per runlevel. Want to stop a service in sysv? '<service script> stop'.

The best thing you can do to learn more about it is to download it and give it a try yourself.

Re:(Free)BSD v. Linux

[marm]

I can give you a quick run down of the basic differences, at least wrt to Linux vs. FreeBSD - the other BSD's have a slightly different set of pros and cons but are largely similar to FreeBSD:

• Licensing - FreeBSD uses the BSD license for its core, which allows incorporation of the code into proprietary, binary-only products. The Linux core components use the GPL or LGPL licenses, which disallow such incorporation.
• Distribution and development - the FreeBSD core is developed and distributed as a complete OS. There is only a single FreeBSD distro, and it comes straight from the FreeBSD team. Linux is developed piecemeal by lots of different groups - the kernel group is quite separate from the libc group, which is quite separate from the group that develops the standard command-line utilities. With Linux, it is up to each individual distributor (of which there are many) to integrate all the various pieces into a coherent OS.
• Maturity - the BSDs have a history that goes all the way back to the 70's, and in some places it shows - notably in the virtual memory subsystem, which takes a long time and a lot of fiddling and testing to get right. Currently the FreeBSD VM system is much better than that in Linux. However, Linux gets a lot more active development due to its popularity. Only two or three years ago, Linux was far behind FreeBSD in terms of its TCP/IP stack. Things change very fast in the Linux world however, and it is arguable that Linux 2.4 now equals or surpasses FreeBSD in this department.
• SMP scalability - this is an area that FreeBSD is working on heavily, but currently Linux is far in the lead with this, scaling well up to 8 processors, whilst FreeBSD does relatively poorly even with just 2 processors. This will change when FreeBSD 5.0 is released, which incorporates much of the very good BSDi SMP code.
• Packaging systems, ports vs. apt - the BSD ports tree is an exceptionally powerful way of automatically distibuting and updating software, far in advance of anything commercially available. Debian's (and now Conectiva's and Mandrake's) apt system rivals or surpasses it, but it is not standard in all Linux distros. Plus, in Linux, there is still a great divide over which back-end packaging system to use - either RPM or deb, and the overall layout of the filesystem, which, despite standardization efforts, still varies from distro to distro.
• Portability - Linux has been ported to just about every architecture you could think of, and can be used on everything from a wristwatch all the way up to a big IBM mainframe. FreeBSD has... not, preferring to concentrate almost entirely on the Intel architecture. NetBSD rivals or surpasses Linux in terms of its portability, but is quite distinct from FreeBSD and has its own set of pros and cons in other areas.
• Ease of installation - the commercial Linux distributors have it here. With some, it is as simple as powering up, inserting a CD, and getting a fully-working desktop or server system 20 minutes later. FreeBSD requires a significant amount more work to install it. However, this is no more difficult than the noncommercial Linux distros (Debian or Slackware).

Well, that's just a quick list off the top of my head, anyone care to add more?

Re:(Free)BSD v. Linux

[stripes]

There are also significant differences in the boot procedure (one of the things that I prefer about SysV). BSD has one file (script) per runlevel. SysV has one script per service, organized in 1 directory per runlevel. Want to stop a service in sysv? ' stop'.

FYI, NetBSD has the script per-service (incl ' stop', and ' status') scheme. FreeBSD is experimenting with it as well (but have not decided for sure if they should adopt it). There is a Usenix paper about it, try the 2001 procedings.

Neither has the concept of runlevels though, other then single-user and multi-user that is.

Re:(Free)BSD v. Linux

[benedict]

Your information about the rc scripts is wrong. Generic BSD doesn't have run levels at all. FreeBSD, for example, has a main rc script (/etc/rc) and a bunch of subsidiary scripts: rc.network, rc.firewall, rc.sysctl, etc. These don't correspond to runlevels but rather to general areas of functionality.

NetBSD and Darwin, like SysV-derived systems, have one script per service, but instead of encoding dependency information in the filenames, they put it in the files themselves. Each comes with a program that examines the files and determines what their order should be, based on the dependency information. This is a lot more flexible and intuitive than the SysV method, in my humble opinion.

FreeBSD developers have begun the work of converting FreeBSD to the NetBSD system, by the way.

Re:(Free)BSD v. Linux

[Metrol]

First off, this is not meant to be any kind of definitive list of items, nor a flame on any other OS. Nothing more than what has kept me using FreeBSD rather than Linux.

Not too long ago I decided to get NT off of a laptop I've got here and get a *nix on there. Although I'm far more familiar with FreeBSD I figured that a Linux distro would have a better chance of having hardware support. After reading many a glowing review of Mandrake, I decided to give it a try on here.

The Mandrake installer is every bit as nice as folks claim, and then some. Very professional layout, wicked easy drive partitioner, and all the rest of the steps that get you through the install. It picked up on the proper video settings, handled all the X, Gnome, and KDE installation without a hitch. It's pretty impressive stuff.

Then I got to mucking around with the software updating utility. Darn thing takes as long to load up as a full cvsup of the FreeBSD ports tree. It also didn't seem to store my settings when I didn't want to load software off a CD, constantly demanding for an install CD to be inserted before continuing. Aside from all that, even when I did manage to get it to pull from a network source, the packages seemed to not be updated very often. I guess I'm just spoiled by the constant, daily, hourly, updating of the FreeBSD ports tree.

All this I was willing to deal with to some extent, but then I ran into another small problem. I'll disclaimer this up front by saying that had I put the time into it I'm sure I could have fixed it. For some reason the fancy network config settings for Mandrake kept changing my IP address. It was about then that I decided to dig a bit into the actual config files to see about fixing this problem.

After a couple of hours staring at a large number of these files, in which each of them seemed way too complex for their own good I'd had enough. I just kept saying to myself, "This is nuts!" Even the Apache config got busted up into multiple files, adding complexity rather than removing it. This pretty much defined my next course of action.

FreeBSD boot floppies in, re-format to UFS, and a new OS on. The FreeBSD install is pretty straight forward for anyone to follow, but some of the hand holding isn't there. For instance, if you're looking to put a newer version of X on, you get to do a manual config. It does take longer to run through the install up front, but what I keep being reminded is that once it's all in there it's far faster and easier to tweak on things, and to keep them up to date.

In less time than it took to type this out this here laptop completed an update of the source files and ports tree. Later tonight I'll run the make world process and be up to date with the latest stuff. A new release is nearly a non-event for an already running system.

From a user's point of view, one of the biggest differences between FreeBSD and a Linux distro is that FreeBSD doesn't have any specific GUI tools for administration. There is no such thing as a "linuxconf" or "HardDrake" utility. This is offset by what I feel are far simpler and fewer config files that the user can edit directly. Where I feel lost even looking at some of the start up scripts in a Linux /etc/rc.1, I feel totally comfortable going in and working with FreeBSD's scripts and config files.

I've heard a number of arguments stating the opposite of my view on this, but I'll leave those to the folks that hold that viewpoint. This is pretty much how I see it, if that perspective at all helps your understanding of some of the differences.

Re:(Free)BSD v. Linux

[IronChef]

Since I almost never use my Linux box I can't give you a good comparison. But just try it out; it's free after all! But basically you can do anything on BSD that you can do on Linux, it's just how you get it done that differs. You might find that you prefer the BSD style if you try it.

IMHO a strength of FreeBSD is that there is JUST ONE of them. No distro wars. I realize that distros are an advantage themselves for some folks, but especially when I was a BSD newbie I really appreciated how easy it was to get answers to my questions. One OS, one core team, one great product.

Re:(Free)BSD v. Linux

[fsmunoz]

Well, just to give my view on this :)


Licensing - FreeBSD uses the BSD license for its core, which allows incorporation of the code into proprietary, binary-only products. The Linux core components use the GPL or LGPL licenses, which disallow such incorporation.

Indeed, that I would say is one of the things that make both groups different in atitude and outlook (only mildly so, of course).


Distribution and development - the FreeBSD core is developed and distributed as a complete OS. There is only a single FreeBSD distro, and it comes straight from the FreeBSD team. Linux is developed piecemeal by lots of different groups - the kernel group is quite separate from the libc group, which is quite separate from the group that develops the standard command-line utilities. With Linux, it is up to each individual distributor (of which there are many) to integrate all the various pieces into a coherent OS.


Ummmm...... I don't agree. FreeBSD is distributed as a complete OS, such as OpenBSD or NetBSD or Debian or RedHat... now, the twist here is to define 'core OS'; if we stick with 'kernel plus shell and several other utilities that makes it useful' then all of them are alike: *BSD with BSD utils and GNU/Linux with GNU utils (in both cases the utils are developed by the a single group of people); now, the kernel itself is developed separatly, but I wouldn't call it 'quite separate' from the glibc group - onw wrong turn in glibc and the kernel doesn't compile... if you think of it, in GNU/Linux even the compiler is from the same group of ppl (i.e. the GNU Project).

An in any event distribution's like Debian take policy and integration to an extreme, so the whole dist really is quite coherent.
Apart from the kernel and utils, all the other stuff is the same for both, since 90% of them are used in both OS's, and are all from different people, etc.


Maturity - the BSDs have a history that goes all the way back to the 70's, and in some places it shows - notably in the virtual memory subsystem, which takes a long time and a lot of fiddling and testing to get right. Currently the FreeBSD VM system is much better than that in Linux. However, Linux gets a lot more active development due to its popularity. Only two or three years ago, Linux was far behind FreeBSD in terms of its TCP/IP stack. Things change very fast in the Linux world however, and it is arguable that Linux 2.4 now equals or surpasses FreeBSD in this department.


Very well said.


SMP scalability - this is an area that FreeBSD is working on heavily, but currently Linux is far in the lead with this, scaling well up to 8 processors, whilst FreeBSD does relatively poorly even with just 2 processors. This will change when FreeBSD 5.0 is released, which incorporates much of the very good BSDi SMP code.


Indeed, an area that - from what I have red - BSD comes from a late start but get's closes by the month.


Packaging systems, ports vs. apt - the BSD ports tree is an exceptionally powerful way of automatically distibuting and updating software, far in advance of anything commercially available. Debian's (and now Conectiva's and Mandrake's) apt system rivals or surpasses it, but it is not standard in all Linux distros. Plus, in Linux, there is still a great divide over which back-end packaging system to use - either RPM or deb, and the overall layout of the filesystem, which, despite standardization efforts, still varies from distro to distro.


The BSD ports are indeed wonderful, and the only other packaging method that rivals is apt. Why do I say this? Because both apt and the ports are wonderful not just because 'they get stuff from the net', or even because they compile the source for the host, etc. They are wonderful - for me - because not only do they do that but also one can be sure that every care has been put on making the said program compile/install according to a strict predefined set of policies and rules set by the ppl in charge

You are right on this whole deb vs rpm vs rpm(Mandrake, incompat.)vs rpm(SuSE, incompat) vs rpm (incompat ad nauseam). The filesystem likewise. This was supposed to get fixed by the FSHS and things like that, but it will be hard - on the other hand GNU/Hurd has removed /usr from the FS :)


Portability - Linux has been ported to just about every architecture you could think of, and can be used on everything from a wristwatch all the way up to a big IBM mainframe. FreeBSD has... not, preferring to concentrate almost entirely on the Intel architecture. NetBSD rivals or surpasses Linux in terms of its portability, but is quite distinct from FreeBSD and has its own set of pros and cons in other areas.

Isn't NetBSD's kernel the same as in FreeBSD? Porting is a lot of trouble and I can relate to FreeBSD developers not wanting the extra headache of 30 different ports, but if they really wnated to, well, it would be possible I suppose (could be severely misguided here though).

Concentrating on ix86 is always bad IMHO... one should at least have it run on Unix 64-bits workstations, if not only for historical legacy.


Ease of installation - the commercial Linux distributors have it here. With some, it is as simple as powering up, inserting a CD, and getting a fully-working desktop or server system 20 minutes later. FreeBSD requires a significant amount more work to install it. However, this is no more difficult than the noncommercial Linux distros (Debian or Slackware).

I found the FreeBSD install rather well streamlined; in fact, now that you mention it, it did remind me how Debian intall is (not Progeny, that is the probably the best 'insert and run' dist I have seen); eventually Debian could use Progeny stuff, but then again.... gotta love curses menus :).

Ease of instalation (i.e. in what eye candy and the like are concerned) say very little about the OS really...having an OS that installs in 4 minutes but is a nightmare to operate, now THAT says a lot.

Best Regards,

fsmunoz

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[theeds]

I am involved of a user group, consisting of over 10 people, I'm currently the only one with out cable/dsl. This doesn't matter however, because I'd rather download these files myself and burn them myself, preference, sorry.

-Theed

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Detritus]

You don't need the ISO or a CD. You can download two floppy images, reboot your computer and install from the network via the ftp install option. It takes a while over a 56K modem but it does work.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[0101000001001010]

It appears to be that FreeBSD is the wrong project to point the finger at when complaining about unreasonable download sizes. I have installed FreeBSD by modem before and I appreciated three features very much:

1. All one has to download right away are the two floppy disks (boot and root) for an FTP install.

2. Afterwards the installer downloads only those parts of FreeBSD that one selects.

3. The ingenious ports tree (which is available for Mac OS X too, BTW) allows one to easily add programs at a later time.

As of now I consider FreeBSD to have the best installer of any free software. I wish more Linux distros would adopt an FTP install option (I am aware that some do). The ones that do, kudos to you, but they need more refinement (if you have ever FTP installed SuSE, you know what I mean :) )

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[theeds]

I have bought a few distros on the past Debian $25 and slack $45, however I'm on an extremely fixed income and can't afford too much.

-Theed

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Nanuq]

Actually, closer to 180M, no doubt for 3" CDs :)

Now there's a cool idea.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[elefantstn]

This doesn't matter however, because I'd rather download these files myself and burn them myself, preference, sorry.

You're contradicting yourself. In the original post, you said you wanted to send a blank cd to the FreeBSD people so they could burn it for you, now you won't let other people do it cos you're a "burn it myself" kind of guy. Either you're confused or just trolling.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[dglo]

They should either offer: a free cd burn (either they provide the cd, or you send them one of yours), or put it in stores and have them give the email of people who want their software ( these people have pre-signed up on their site and they submit it to the store along with a shipment). I'd prefer the first one myself, of sending them a cd.

Hey, cool. A volunteer! You forgot to provide your address so we can start mailing our CDs to you. I'm sure your followup will remedy that!

Note for the clueless: Free software is about DIY (do it yourself) not about whining that something hasn't been hand-delivered and auto-installed on you machine.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[theeds]

Coming from a friend or coming direct from the creator is a different story, with the creator i can be sure everything will be there, with my friends i cannot.

-Theed

They need to address some serious issues

[Bob Abooey]

As a core consultant developer for the *BSD kernel for 6 months last year I can't believe they are releaseing this. There are many issues which have not been resolved and are not being publicized to the public. The issues as I see them:

1) The implementation of threads still uses fine grain kernel level locking which does not adhere to POSIXX IEEE 811.2b level requirements, meaning this software is not, nor could it ever be certified for level 4 security.

2) 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.

3) 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 benchmarks I saw before leaving were just short of horrible and the potential for data loss was rated as QQQ on the topenhiemer algorithm.

I am currently petitioning the core dev team to remove my code from the project due to my differences with them, but they are the most pious and insufferable people I have ever worked with, so I doubt they will. Use this product at your own risk.

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[BlowCat]

Posts like this are the primary reason why children shouldn't be allowed to read slashdot without being superwised.

It's complete junk. I'm sorry if somebody was fooled.

On the other hand, it would be appropriate on the 1st of April, much more than the idiotic jokes that slashdot was running.

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[CtrlPhreak]

Why would you ever want your code removed from the project? If there are no problems with your code, then wouldn't you be helping this project become better? If you cared so little about it so as to want your code removed making it worse, then why complain about it at all?

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[Cuchullain]

I don't think this guy is trolling here.

He/she may be disgruntled with the BSD folks, but there is no history of trolling that I can discern.

Seems like a qualified developer working for apple, (with whom he is definitely frustrated) who might be straight up about this.

What I am interested in is what he has to say about the 5.0 kernel. I understand that it is supposed to address the kernel problems.

Also, I was under the impression that the BSD tcp stack was pretty damn good.

I can't address the security stuff, as it isn't my forte.

I can also see a BSD dev guy asking that their code be removed. There are some pretty sanctimonious people in the BSD group. Would you want your code to be sold, if you didn't agree with the stuff it was with? With the BSD license, it just might.

my 2 cents.

Cuchullain

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[jkh]

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.

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[reg]

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

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[Cuchullain]

Cool.

Thanks man. I hate it when I get taken for a ride.

I didn't have the technical knowledge to discern truth. I thought the tcp stack part sounded fishy though.

Cuchullain

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[WasterDave]

Where are moderation points when you need them?

While I've got your ear Jordan, not that I have, I thought we might be looking at XFree4 in this release? Is the support still not really there?

Sorry to hear about the delays on SMPng. If I could help I would, but as you are aware this is kinda specialist work.

Hope you're enjoying Apple.
Dave :)

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[frost22]

In short, this guy's posting is a complete fabrication.

Yeah.
Buts sombody finally should invent the Topenhiemer Algorithm. After all these years, it's about time :-) :-)

Re:They need to address some serious issues

[Patrick Cable II]

>1) The implementation of threads still uses fine grain kernel level locking which does not adhere to POSIXX IEEE 811.2b level requirements, meaning this software is not, nor could it ever be certified for level 4 security.
> ... petitioning the core dev team to remove my code from the project ...

No OS is fully POSIX compliant. As a developer you should know that.

>3) 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 benchmarks I saw before leaving were just short of horrible and the potential for data loss was rated as QQQ on the topenhiemer algorithm.

I havn't had a problem.

>Use this product at your own risk.

I will continue to run my shell provider on FreeBSD.

Pat Cable
System Administrator, BlackNetworks Internet

Enough with those complaints already!

[c.r.o.c.o]

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.

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 /., 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.

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.

What I like and dislike about FreeBSD

[Florian]

What I like:

• better responsiveness under heavy load - Linux 2.4.x with its VM problems is particularly bad in comparison
• smaller base software/dependencies; BSD libc is much smaller than glibc; /bin/sh points to ash, so all shell and system scripts are ash processes (and not bloated bash processes); classic Unix tools are less heavyweight than GNU tools (Remember: you can use GNU tools, bash etc., but they're not a dependency)
• mature device file system
• Clear separation of what belongs to the core OS & third party software (=ports system)
• Best package management for installing/compiling from source (Debian's apt-get src isn't there yet)
• Kernel features are fewer, but proven & tested (as opposed to many experimental or not-yet-mature drivers/subsystems/filesystems in Linux)
• standard file system is 64 bit, allowing big single files
• Package selections show that FreeBSD maintainers are real Unix afficionados (vim 6.0 available etc.)
• the whole system is/feels very solid and mature

What I dislike:

• distribution/ports mixes free and non-free software (Motif etc.) without prompting the user what is free and not; bad not only for Free Software zealots, but also for people who want to make sure they can use software without limitations in their environment (FreeBSD looks as it is made by people for whom software freedom is a secondary concern)
• available for a smaller no. of hardware architectures than Linux (or use NetBSD on non-x86 platforms, but that's already a different OS)
• no journalling filesystems (no ReiserFS, no XFS), a very small number of filesystems supported
• no /proc, no framebuffer device, no ALSA sound drivers, no hardware accelerated graphics in the kernel
• much worse SMP support than current Linux kernels

. GNU/Linux feels more "modern" than FreeBSD, while FreeBSD is comparatively "conservative", but also more solid. Draw your own conclusions.

Re:What I like and dislike about FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

"No journalling filesystem."

Thats correct but they have "soft updates", thus making jounalling unnecessary. Different religion, solves same problem...

http://www.mckusick.com/softdep/

Re:What I like and dislike about FreeBSD

[jandrese]

Nice post, but I've got a couple of comments:

• FreeBSD does have /proc, but it's just less featureful than Linuxes proc (and implemented differently).
• I'm not sure if I'd call devfs "mature". Lots of FreeBSDers don't turn it on, so it doesn't get the kind of user testing that it should.
• Is no hardware acceleration in the kernel a big deal? I always thought that was a giant hack. My FreeBSD machine does have 3D acceleration with my Matrox G200 (it's still does the job).
• Just so people don't get the wrong idea, FreeBSD doesn't have ALSA support, but it does have it's own sound drivers (newpcm) that work ok and are voxware compatable.

Conservative is a good word for the FreeBSD project. They don't like instability, and they're willing to give up cutting edge technology support to get it. To be fair, most of the developers are aiming at the ISP and server markets where crashes are completely unacceptable and having 3D acceleration code in the kernel is considered a liability rather than a feature. Still, that doesn't prevent people from using FreeBSD on the desktop, where it actually does a pretty good job IMHO.

Re:What I like and dislike about FreeBSD

[Moosbert]

smaller base software/dependencies; BSD libc is much smaller than glibc; /bin/sh points to ash, so all shell and system scripts are ash processes (and not bloated bash processes)

FreeBSD's /bin/sh is one of the buggiest and brain-dead Bourne shells in existence. No thanks.

Re:What I like and dislike about FreeBSD

[sirinek]

Not as bad as the Solaris /sbin/sh! :)

siri

Re:What I like and dislike about FreeBSD

[swb]

But the default for root seems to be csh, which is a hard link to tcsh, so the whole /bin/sh issue is kind of moot relative to the FreeBSD system itself.

If you have a dependency on /bin/sh (scripts, etc), maybe bash would work in its place. If not, burying your head in the sand seems like a worthwhile alternative.

Re:What I like and dislike about FreeBSD

[Alex Farber]

What I dislike: distribution/ports mixes free and non-free software (Motif etc.) without prompting the user what is free and not; bad not only for Free Software zealots, but also for people who want to make sure they can use software without limitations in their environment (FreeBSD looks as it is made by people for whom software freedom is a secondary concern)

Then go for OpenBSD - they have performed (and are still performing) a licence audit. Which I think is very clever!

/Alex

Re:What I like and dislike about FreeBSD

[Wolfier]

>(FreeBSD looks as it is made by people for whom
>software freedom is a secondary concern)

Since when was software freedom a primary concern?
The primary concerns are always reliability, robustness and maintainability. I think FreeBSD does a very good job on these regards.

FTP upgrade

[dohcvtec]

I'd really like to upgrade my FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE firewall now that 4.4-RELEASE is out, but to save bandwidth, and for simplicity's sake, I'd like to do it via FTP upgrade. However, I'm wondering if there are any security issues involved in doing so. Normally, IPFilter is running to provide packet filtering, but during the FTP upgrade, I would assume that I'd be relatively unprotected. I have done a lot of searching into this situation and haven't come up with a good answer yet. Does anybody have any opinions on this matter?

Re:FTP upgrade

[greenplato]

cvsup is your answer. It grabs the newest sources, and then you can compile them and install them on your own with make world. It saves bandwidth and is pretty cool in general.

A change in your firewall rules to allow cvsup will not affect your security.

Re:FTP upgrade

[Maditude]

FTP upgrade? Use cvsup, it fetches all the changed source files for you.

When it's done, you'll want to take a look at your /usr/src/UPDATING file, which will describe the significant things that have changed.

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

Re:FTP upgrade

[glwillia]

FTP upgrade? Use cvsup, it fetches all the changed source files for you.

When it's done, you'll want to take a look at your /usr/src/UPDATING file, which will describe the significant things that have changed.

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)

Re:FTP upgrade

[Maditude]

You should also run mergemaster after make installworld, or else you'll get weird errors (like the PAM errors from 4.2->4.3)

Mergemaster fscked my box over real well going from 4.0 to 4.1 (I can't say that I truly knew what I was doing back then), and ever since, I've religiously avoided mergemaster.

Re:FTP upgrade

[_dim]

No, this is not the proper order! You need to install the newly built kernel before running installworld, ie:

• 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 /usr/src/UPDATING file very carefully, it explains this process in detail.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[turbine216]

IT'S AN ISO IMAGE!!!!

It's not like they're picking and choosing files to put on the disc!!!! They're burning a full image, with all necessary and included files!!! So how is it that your friends' burns would end up any different from discs coming from the creators????

Now i KNOW you're trolling.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[cymen]

I have bought a few distros on the past Debian $25 and slack $45, however I'm on an extremely fixed income and can't afford too much.

Well this is getting off topic but I do have some suggestions:

- make friends with someone who has a broadband connection
- join a user group (often you can get burned CDs for the cost of the media, a buck or two)
- look into using boot images that download only the information you want over the net (for example I found a 24mb Debian ISO image that had just enough information to boot the machine and install the base system, for other even easier systems look at OpenBSD or FreeBSD ftp install floppies)
- find a cheap supplier of burned CDs (cheapbytes.com, etc)

There really is no reason to pay a lot for a distribution (unless you are doing so to support the project). Lots of options out there...

Dumb noob question

[Anonymous Coward]

I was skimming over the Handbook and I noticed something about an option to install Linux compatibility binaries. Question for BSD users: how good is this compatibility? Perfect, so-so, or somewhere in the middle?

Re:Dumb noob question

[ocipio]

The Linux compatibility is excellent in my opinion. It runs my linux java and netscape binaries just fine.

Re:Dumb noob question

[jandrese]

The Linuxulator is excellent. 95% of all Linux apps "just work". The only problems I've run into are with apps that require funky custom kernel modules to be loaded.

Besides, most Linux apps come with the source, so you can compile the native FreeBSD version instead. (which is what the ports tree is good for)

Re:Dumb noob question

[Van Halen]

The one program that impressed me the most was VMWare 2.0 for Linux running flawlessly under FreeBSD. It requires a kernel module but somebody ported that to FreeBSD and it works like a charm. One of the many, many reasons I switched to FreeBSD permanently after running Linux for 7 years.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[cheezedawg]

Big iso's aren't the problem- the problem is that some people still have dial-up connections (I'm kidding of course).

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Sabalon]

Uh...isn't the idea of an ISO to be able to obtain the image of a CD-ROM (650MB) so you can burn the CD yourself?

So why on earth would you want them small? Yeah...there are like 5 CD's worth there to burn, but what you seem to be suggesting is that you have to burn 500 10MB CD's or something???

As for the "you wrote big software, you must burn it for me" argument, what about the time to process the cd's, to perform the actual burn, the equipment needed to do so? There is probably a reason that people charge $20...it's isn't free.

Find a friend with high-speed access, learn to use reget or something, or buy the CD's from someplace selling them.

A balanced OS

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD is a wonderfully consistent OS, great job!

The only woe I have is the plugin support for browsers. Most of them are binary only and built for Linux. Never seems to work for Mozilla (running under linux emulation) so I have to resort to buggy Netscape.

A lot of stuff out there uses Java or Shockwave...I just hate not being able to view them.

There's a smaller ISO available, if you check

[parc]

In the directory, there's a 4.4-mini.iso. It's 184M. Is that small enough for you?

Almost perfect

[flynn_nrg]

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.

Re:Almost perfect

[Thornae]

> I'm posting this on a FreeBSD box using no other than Opera for linux.

Ditto, and doesn't it just rock? (=

There are several things I like about FreeBSD that gets it my vote over Linux, the ports collection and Linux binary compatability being two of the biggies. However, my main, most influencing factor in choosing it over Linux is very simple: I know more FreeBSD gurus than Linux gurus.
Really, this should be high on anyone's list of considerations when starting to use a UNIX-alike OS - who do you know, and what do they use? Having expert help you can call up and ask dumb questions of, who you can repay in beer, is worth a lot more than SMP considerations when you're first getting going.

Re:Freebsd better now? (TROLL)

[ocipio]

FreeBSD performs, in my opinion, better as a file server compared to Linux. With Softupdates enabled, the disk i/o can be faster than ext2fs but with all the reliability.

As a database server, it works great. FreeBSD 4.x doesn't have the best threading support, but 5.0 will, and then some. However, it runs perfectly for most needs.

I have been using FreeBSD as my desktop for 3 years now.

Gaming? Well, most of the games are made for linux. However, I have heard that people play games with wine with better FPS.

I would say give 4.4 a try. You last used the 3.2 version? 4.x has come a long way since 3.x. I am sure you will be impressed and pleased.

Question about ports/cvsup...

[cymen]

How often is ports updated? Is it like Debian stable where you never get a new version of something like Apache? Or does ports get updated fairly regularly? I ask because as much as I like running Debian on my servers I really hate not getting recent releases of Apache/PHP/etc... My mail server actually runs FreeBSD at the moment but it's an ancient version and the machine is too slow for a cvsup (48mb ram, cyrix p150+, 8gb IDE ata33 drives, it grinds). I've got a way faster replacement and I'm just getting ready to go the Debian route with it but...

(and before anyone says I'm reckless for running recent releases of apache/php/etc on my server - it's for my own use)

Re:Question about ports/cvsup...

[reg]

The FreeBSD ports system is maintained seperately to the OS itself, and so you can generally install what ports you want. For popular software, the ports are normally updated within about one week of the release of a new version, although this varies heavily, epecially if the new version has some problems on FreeBSD.

For a lot of ports, you'll find that there are two versions in the ports tree, a "stable" version and a "devel" version. For example, the stable version of Apache is currently 1.3.20, and the devel version 2.0.16.

If your machine is slow, then you can install packages. These are built fairly frequently for the -STABLE branch, and can be found at http://www.freebsd.org/ports/. Or you can use 'pkg_add -r apache' (for example), which will fetch the latest stable package for apache and install it.

Hope this helps. If you have more questions, then try reading Chapter 4 of the FreeBSD Handbook (linked in the story above).

Regards,
-Jeremy

Re:Question about ports/cvsup...

[cymen]

Hope this helps. If you have more questions, then try reading Chapter 4 of the FreeBSD Handbook (linked in the story above).

Thanks Jeremy. Exactly what I needed to know :).

Re:Question about ports/cvsup...

[cymen]

That is true - I remember now why I left it alone. I hit some compilation error... It's a mess (running 4.0 rc2) so might as well blow it away. The real reason for upgrading is the load uw-imap puts on the it. Plus my impatience :).

So when was the last time you did a "make world" on a sparc2?

Re:Question about ports/cvsup...

[bwhalen]

Look at the activity on the freebsd-ports mailing list..

finally

[JDizzy]

Man... I've been waitting at least two week for this... Originally thsi was supposed to be released at about the time Jordan made the infamous press release about the 5.0. To make things worse they would allow their website to have a bad date on the release page. Making things appears as if they forgot to release the new version, and also forgot to update the website.

FreeBSD helped me out of a pickle.

[spinlocked]

I have an Alcatel speedtouch USB ADSL modem, which I spent monthes trying to get working reliably under Linux. The damn thing would lock up after about 200 packets went through it, either using the open-ish source Alcatel driver (utter, utter, c**p), or the real open source user-land driver.

In the end I tracked the problem down to the UHCI controller code in the 2.4.x Linux kernel and after some brief hacking about I gave up trying to fix it. I was just about to fire up windows/winroute when I thought I might try a *BSD.

3 days later I had a pretty well locked down NAT/IPFilter gateway machine, which has been connected to my ISP for well over 100 days at a stretch (I turn it off when I go away). It operates well under load and I get excellent ping times - even with the user-land ppp - better than windows.

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.

Now if only I could get my wireless card to work in it...

Re:FreeBSD helped me out of a pickle.

[jandrese]

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.

Re:FreeBSD helped me out of a pickle.

[pschmied]

No joke. Find me one authoritative, comprehensive (or nearly comprehensive) manual for Linux system administration. Go ahead I dare you. FreeBSD's handbook is great. And so are the man pages. After a long time using Linux I got into the habit of not reading man pages, but instead looking for a howto on one of the numerous sites. Now I type man, or if I need help with a general concept, I read the handbook.

If you read FreeBSD's handbook from front to back just casually, I guarantee that you'll be able to fix damn near anything on FreeBSD with the handbook as a reference. I'm now subscribed to the FreeBSD documentation mailing list, and I must say that they are a tight ship, and very professional.

For new users wanting to learn *NIX. I send them to FreeBSD. The learning curve is percieved to be steeper only because they do not abstract things for you. Where they do abstract things (/stand/sysinstall) they do so in a logical and completely coherent way. Plus they document the hell out of it.

After leaving Linux for the most part, my UNIX skills have grow exponentially, because I know HOW to figure stuff out now. As a result, I know a lot of other "tricks" that many Linux users don't about their own OS.

Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, and I'd probably still be using it if it weren't for *BSD.

-Peter

Re:FreeBSD helped me out of a pickle.

[tresstatus]

last time i checked, none of the bsds supported any usb dsl modems. my isp (bellsouth) sent me a free alcatel usb dsl modem. i just went out and bought my own efficient networks speedstream and it works 100x better in fbsd than that usb modem worked in windows. =)

journalling vs. softupdates

[elbuddha]

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:

Soft Updates holds the promise of providing stronger reliability guarantees than journaling, with faster recovery and superior performance

and that

journaling alone is not sufficient to "solve" the meta-data update problem.

Both methods achieve the same goals by different means.

Re:journalling vs. softupdates

[Otterley]

The proof is in the pudding -- you still have to fsck the filesystem, even with soft updates enabled, if it was left in an inconsistent state before mounting (power off a FreeBSD box without proper shutdown and you'll see).

Not having to fsck is one of the primary advantages of a journalling file system, and soft updates won't give you that, no matter what McKusick says.

Re:journalling vs. softupdates

[R.Caley]

Not having to fsck is one of the primary advantages of a journalling file system,

Given how rarely this happens, If this is a primay advantage it must make all the advantages pretty small.

Re:journalling vs. softupdates

[vs]

Poeple are working on background fsck which should help even more.

Should have waited... Or..

[archen]

OR it's better that they get it out now, so when people start jumping off the XP bandwagon like a ship on fire, they have something people have a bit of experience with.

No need for journaling...softupdates is as good.

[keepper]

AFAIK, there are different school's of thought on the issue of Journaling Vs "SoftUpdate-like" filesystems.

I could go on and on about this, but theres a perfect comment on this on daemonnews that points to a french article that summerizes the reasons.

http://daily.daemonnews.org/view_story.php3?story_ id=2327

The only thing lacking right now in softupdates is an unattended way of the filesystem coming back up in the case of large data lost. This will be addressed when the background fsck daemon is completed, Softupdates will have all the merits of a journalled FS, plus even more speed ( disputeable ).

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[b0r1s]

you should have known he was trolling when he said that some of the ISO's were approaching a gig....

Excellent! All ISOs are available

[hearingaid]

From the Readme, slightly reformatted:

This directory contains FreeBSD ISO images that can be used to burn a complete set of FreeBSD installation and package CDs. Starting with FreeBSD 4.4, 5 CD images are provided:

• 4.4-mini.iso
  Minimal bootable 4.4 installation CDROM image.
• 4.4-install.iso
  4.4 ISO 9660 bootable (El Torrito) CDROM image.
• 4.4-disc2.iso
  Live filesystem "Fix it" CD and CVS repository.
• 4.4-disc3.iso
  Extra packages for FreeBSD 4.4
• 4.4-disc4.iso
  Extra packages for FreeBSD 4.4

Only 4.4-install.iso is required for the "standard FreeBSD installation experience", e.g. FreeBSD 4.4 + XFree86 3.3.6 + an essential (but minimal) package collection. If you want just FreeBSD 4.4 and little else, the 4.4-mini.iso image can also be used. The other ISO images are more or less self-explanatory as listed above and purely optional.

Previous to this, you had two options:

1. Download the floppy images and FTP the files you needed during system setup (which SUCKS when you're setting up a machine which may not have net access during setup), or
2. download the -install.iso, customize your kernel using it, and then depend on ftp sites for ports.

Now you can just burn and go. This is excellent for anyone who wants to install on a lot of machines at once.

Also, the mini ISO gives some access for dialup users who don't want to leave their modems on all night ;)

Maybe with 5.0 they will give us UDF images. :)

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[benedict]

OK, I'll flame. Actually, I just want to pick a nit: how can an ISO be 1 gigabyte when one can't fit a gigabyte on a CD? I don't think ISO images get bigger than 650 MB.

(Now of course someone will come along and prove me wrong, but that's ok.)

FreeBSD ports collection too unstable for me

[tim_olsen]

I tried FreeBSD for about a month and found the ports collection to be too unstable. too many things just didn't compile.

I'm used to using Debian where apt-get install on the stable distro just works. and when I want to compile from source, I can use apt-get src.

however, I did notice that FreeBSD's responsiveness under load was much better than Linux (compared to 2.4 AND 2.2). also, installation was MUCH easier than Debian's.

Re:FreeBSD ports collection too unstable for me

[Garrett Rooney]

if you're having trouble making the ports compile (and i can't imagine why you would... i've never experienced any real problems with it.) you can always use the packages they precompile. try pkg_add -r to automatically download the precompiled package and install it.

Re:FreeBSD ports collection too unstable for me

[hearingaid]

er, compile?

I don't bother with compiling ports. I just grab the packages, with precompiled binaries.

I am using the Intel variety of FreeBSD; I am aware that this isn't an option for Alpha users. but really: why compile ports?

I only compile other things that I can't get from ports... (an increasing number these days, as I'm still living in 3.4 and I don't have the drive space necessary to upgrade; currently I get my ports from an unofficial mirror in Sweden :)

Re:FreeBSD ports collection too unstable for me

[Listen Up]

I am wondering why you are having so many problems with the 'ports' part of FreeBSD. You happen to be the *only* poster on Slashdot that has *ever* complained about the ports section of FreeBSD. I have used the ports since I first installed FreeBSD almost 3 years ago and have never had a problem with it at all. Have you installed all of the necessary libraries, etc. to complile? Are you trying to compile software written for 4.x series and using 3.x series of FreeBSD? Why don't you just use the precompiled binaries in the ports tree? I was unfortunately a little discouraged to hear you having so many problems. Debian may work for you better because you know it better. I know it sucks a lot more than FreeBSD ports when you are first learning to use apt-get and even after many, many years of using apt-get you still find it has many limitations that FreeBSD ports does not (apt-get will get better). Please give it another try and if you have any questions, please feel free to write or please feel free to look up what you need from other FreeBSD users. Use 'precompiled binaries' instead of source. That will help be what you want. Later

Oracle 8i and later won't play nice with FreeBSD

[Brecker]

I'm a BSD enthusiast, and concur with the other posts that state that Linux compat is nearly perfect. For most OSS, you won't even notice the difference (except that it's easier to get software running, due to the Ports system). Also, consider that most linux apps are really just unix apps, and can be compiled natively in FreeBSD.

Just a word of warning, if you're interested in running Oracle for Linux on your BSD box, you probably won't get it to work. There's a howto that will get Oracle 8.0 running on FreeBSD, but I'm not aware of anyone getting 8i or 9i to run on a FreeBSD installation. The main problem seems to be Oracle's Java-based installer. Linux Java on FreeBSD is generally very good, but Oracle's installer doesn't quite make it.

Re: CVSUP

[dohcvtec]

Thanks for the suggestions, but my firewall has a ~515MB hard drive, so CVSUP is likely not an option (I knew everybody would tell me to CVSUP.) Plus, a make world would put my 486 firewall to work for a long time. So, back to my question, let's say I was doing an initial installation; what would the security risks be in that case? I'm assuming that there wouldn't be any services running during the install/upgrade, and no listening ports, so my guess is that I'd be relatively safe during the process, but I want to be sure.

clearing up a couple more points

[elbuddha]

no /proc

beastie$ df
Filesystem Size Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
...
procfs 4.1K 4.1K 0B 100% /proc
linprocfs 4.1K 4.1K 0B 100% /usr/compat/linux/proc

no ALSA sound drivers

Of course there are no "Advanced Linux Sound Architecture" drivers, since they are rather Linux-specific and FreeBSD has its own sound driver implementations.

no hardware accelerated graphics in the kernel

Granted, but this issue is complicated by non-disclosure agreements on code from NVidia which has turned out to be less portable than claimed.

much worse SMP support than current Linux kernels

All of the work on FreeBSD's SMPng is being done in 5.0-CURRENT, and has inherited a lot of code from BSD/OS's widely-renowned SMP.

Re:cvsup through firewall

[lacoste]

I haven't tried this recently, but is there a way to get cvsup to work through a firewall? I have always had to use the ftp method because it is the only one that allowed access via passive HTTP firewall.

Thanks,

Lac

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[SirGeek]

Then.. Maybe do an INTERNET install ?

I've done them. Yes. Its painful to install 300MB but it can be done (from 2 single floppies).

As long as your modem or NIC is supported you can do it and all it will take is time. Then you don't need to download 600MB of binaries that you may / may not need.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[SirGeek]

When its an ISO image for a DVD-ROM device...

I think Slashdot jumped the gun.

[ehanneken]

The release announcement is not linked from the FreeBSD home page (which still says the current release is 4.3), and it has tomorrow's date on it.

Re:I think Slashdot jumped the gun.

[SirGeek]

I thought that it was strange that I didn't get the announcement email from FreeBSD before seeing the story here..

Lots of free goodness

[Metrol]

Brand new final release of FreeBSD 4.4
Update to KDE 2.2.1
New even more stable Mozilla release

cvsup cvsup cvsup make install!!!

Tasty!

Re:Lots of free goodness

[rtaylor]

Umm.. 2 of those use make world :)

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Shanep]

I wonder how feasible internet connected CD burning vending machines could be? Perhaps strategically placed at Universities, large train stations and malls.

Remotely administrated, for downloading of latest ISO's of the BSD's, Linux, QNX, BeOS, OSS softwares, etc. Accepting credit card orders on the net, allowing the user to choose where they would like to pick the CD up if they wish it to be pre-burnt and held, or perhaps even keeping a pre-burnt minimum of the latest, most popular for instant purchases. Or perhaps 1900 number purchasing with a mobile phone through a telephone voice menu system that asks for vending machine number, and requested CD(s), the cost of the call paying for the CD and the automated call centre authorising the machine to dispense.

Just to cover the cost of admin, machine maintenance, media, electricity and net connection, etc. Would people spend 1 or 2 bucks for the convenience of 20 seconds in front of a vending machine on their way home?

The machine could alert admin when the cdr low water mark is reached, hardware faults, etc. Keep stats on most popular images etc.

I've been toying with this idea for a while, just wish I had the money to try it out. Perhaps this could also be the future of book purchases (then again, by that time, everyone will probably have broadband? Assuming we live through WW3).

Re: CVSUP

[greenplato]

I'm assuming that there wouldn't be any services running during the install/upgrade, and no listening ports, so my guess is that I'd be relatively safe during the process, but I want to be sure.

I have relied on cvsup; make world for so long I'm not too sure what goes on with a fresh install. I can only guess that you would be safe using an ftp upgrade/install, I'm not sure exactly what is on the bootdisk. Sorry.

If you have a freebsd machine inside of the firewall you can use that to grab the latest sources and run make buildworld. Some pointers can be found here. That would allow highest security and the least downtime.

Re:Oracle 8i and later won't play nice with FreeBS

[beholder77]

The advice I got with this problem was to install Oracle on a Linux machine, and tar up the entire installed directory. Then just untar onto the FBSD machine and run.

Please don't trust my word on this though, ask the experts on the mailing list.

Yeah right...

[jandrese]

Why do BSD articles always attract trolls like dung beetles to crap?

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Tassach]

Great idea. Sounds like a good project for someone who can't write code to help the Open Source community. Why don't you go do it? Download the ISO's once, then sell really cheap copies on CD. Since it's covered by the BSD licence, you can legally do this.

Let's look at the logistics more closely. If people mail you their own CD-R's with return postage, your only expeses are your time and the electricity to run your computer (Assuming that your PC and burner are paid for, and you aren't planning to do anything else with them while you are doing this). A 16x burner will do a 650mb CD-R in about 5 minutes. Add one more minute to change CD's and stick them back in the envelopes, and you could do roughly 10 an hour. If you charge $1.00 each, you can make a whopping $10 an hour. Whoo hoo. You'll be rubbing shoulders with the Rockefellers in no time. Of course, now you'll have to listen to people bitch about how you are exploiting them by asking for a whole dollar to do somthing so easy -- don't you know that information wants to be FREE, you capitalist pig! Gimme, Gimme, Gimme!

When you actually look at it in a rational manner and look at the costs involved. you'll see that $20 is actually a very reasonable price to ask for a CD.

clarifying the clarification

[benedict]

FreeBSD 5.0's SMP has borrowed ideas, but not code, from BSD/OS.

GNU bloat

[fm6]

BSD libc is much smaller than glibc;

There seem to be a lot of issues with glibc, including simple code bloat and a nasty loader bug. Is moving to another code base something Linux people can/should think about? In theory it shouldn't be that hard -- it's all just Posix. Of course, theory and practice are two different things.

Borland fixed the GNU bug

[bugger]

Yes, there was a serious bug in the GNU loader. Borland fixed that bug and provides updated builds of glibc at

http://www.borland.com/kylix/

The loader bug is also fixed in glibc 2.2.x.

[Amusing note: If you read the release notes of the Nvidia Linux drivers, you notice that Borland fixed the same bug that Nvidia just complains about]

Re:not transparently

[Daeron]

If i recall correctly there have been postings on the FreeBSD maillinglist requesting people to test a new updated "linux_base" port that is based on a recent redhat-7.

I assume that when the port has received "enough" testing and reported issues are addressed ... marcel (port maintainer of linux_base) will surely replce the current linux_base port with this updated version ....

Re:No need for journaling...softupdates is as good

[funky womble]

I think softupdates background fsck uses snapshots (like NetApp has), which are *very* cool. They let you take a consistent immediate backup. (Not in 4.4, but something to look forward to...)

Re: CVSUP

[funky womble]

Probably best to download, dd and boot from the new floppies (or CD) and use the Upgrade option. Of course, if it's a critical machine like a firewall, I'd recommend waiting a few days or weeks just to see if anything shakes out when more people have started using it.

The Miracle of BSD (was Re:Why did *BSD fail?)

[Melantha_Bacchae]

> The record is clear on one thing: no
> operating system has ever come back from > the grave. [...]
>Now is the end time for *BSD.

How about Mac OS? Apple nearly died in 1996. It was far worse off than you think *BSD is now. Only a miracle could save it. The miracle happened on December 14, 1996, when the Mac-loving kaiju goddess Mothra Leo resurrected Hokkaido's scorched forests, along with a lone apple tree. The poor thing was just a sappling, all burned and blackened. She turned it into a mighty tree, ringed with flowers. Days later, Apple announced the surprise return of Steve Jobs, who turned the company around. The next year, Mothra's little friend Fairy perched on an Apple Performa. The heroic, wonder working goddess assumed the form of Aqua Mothra, shooting little OS X logos at her foes. Apple's fortunes immediately rose, and the company turned from near death to miraculous recovery over the next few years. In the current hard times, it is Apple that is among the strongest of the desktop computer makers. OS X is Mac OS reborn as a form of BSD, the desktop's last hope against the coming darkness of XP.

With the early, almost miraculous successes of OS X, the new release of FreeBSD, and OS X.1 due out any day now, there can be no doubt that *BSD's future is bright indeed. Apple is going to take BSD where it has never been before: the consumer desktop, the schools, etc. Apple plans to have all of its systems in the schools converted to OS X/BSD within a year (and it has more computers in the schools than Dell or Compaq). OS X has been favorably compared to Windows XP by the media (then again, anything would be better than XP). With it, Apple hopes to regain a good chunk of their ancient market share.

"Mothra isn't dying. This is just the end of her larval stage."
Cosmos, "Godzilla vs. Mothra"

(This was posted by a computer running OS X, purchased March 24, 2001.)

more & kewl

[AKAImBatman]

2. does it do more/kewler stuff?

cat /usr/share/dict/words|grep -ixc kewl
0

You shoulda done:

cat /usr/share/dict/words|grep -ixc kewl | more

Then it would have done MORE KEWL stuff! Of course, between you and me? less is better.
:-)

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[spaceyhackerlady]

I'm glad others have reliable Internet to consider something like this - I tried downloading the ISOs for a Linux distribution over ADSL over the weekend and gave up. Apparently 90 consecutive minutes of service was just not going to happen, not with the jokers I deal with.

Whine.

...laura who bought the CDs at a computer store that afternoon instead

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Teferi]

Quick note: ISO9660 doesn't handle FSes of that size very well. UDF is the standard for DVD-ROMs, and I've seen CDs that use it as well.

Please don't do this

[AKAImBatman]

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.

Re:Oracle 8i and later won't play nice with FreeBS

[rtaylor]

I've always thought that was hilarious that the installer was written in Java to provide the ultimate (matter of opinion) portability would have actually worked better if it was written in assembly strictly for redhat on 386.

Why run release?

[tresstatus]

Most of you linux zealots probably don't realize that just the Release version isn't much to look forward too. I'll wait until it's 4.4 Stable before I upgrade any of my boxes. Also, for you FreeBSD newbies, go read the faq for cvsup and save yourself some cds. You can cvsup to the stable tree, then rebuild your system and your kernel. Unless your system is extremely slow, this is the best way to upgrade. On my old 56k connection, cvsup would typically take about 7-9 hours. buildworld on a 200Mhz system with 32MB of ram will take a while. I forgot exactly how long that takes. A few hours I'm sure. On a 550Mhz athlon with 128MB, I can buildworld in about an hour or two and installworld in about 30 minutes. 8)

Re:FreeBSD security advisory

[Patrick Cable II]

>Then run out and purchase OpenBSD 2.8 a real OS

Freebsd isnt a real OS? Lets check the definition of Operating System again...

Operating System (noun, computer science):
Software designed to control the hardware of a specific data-processing system in order to allow users and application programs to employ it easily.

Guess im wrong Patrick Cable II BlackNetworks Sysadmin

Growfs?

[otomo_1001]

Is this what I hope it is?

Will it let me grow/shrink partitions at runtime? Ala legato storage manager for Solaris?

Please let this be the case.

Re:Growfs?

[lertl]

growfs will let you grow filesystems (which I already did, and it works fine), but I don't think it also lets you shrink them. It will especially come in handy when you have some concatenated vinum volumes (the FreeBSD LVM and RAID implementation), that you want to enlarge. You might take a look at growfs(8).

Re:Growfs?

[otomo_1001]

Thanks for the working link, the one in the linked page didn't work.

Re:Help! XFree86 and Nvidia ?

[bwhalen]

Install the ports system and get it that way.

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[bwhalen]

The base install takes very little time..
Do the minimal install, then add ports, you can do it fast. Or get a cd cheapskate.

get a cd from www.cheapbytes.com

[bwhalen]

If u dont wanna spend $ for a faster internet connection, u can always get a cd from the above site, I'm sure they'll have em soon.

Re:Why i don't use linux.

[codeforprofit2]

1: Socialist fanatics rules the Linux-scene.

Enough reason for me not to use it.

Technically I like the OS but I just can't stand the socialist politics directing it.

4.4-mini.iso is 180224KB

[Beast Of Bodmin]

ftp://ftp9.freebsd.org/pub/os/FreeBSD/\ ISO-IMAGES-i386/4.4-mini.iso is 180224KB small. Still too big? You can cvsup the rest as and when.

Re:FreeBSD security advisory

[Daeron]

I Know it's a troll i am responding to ... but for those interested in how to avoid the here mentioned boot -s "security flaw" ....

in /etc/ttys set ttyv0 to insecure
that will require root to STILL authtenticate him/herself EVEN when booting to Single User mode.

Re:FreeBSD security advisory

[Daeron]

Oops ... I said "ttyv0" where i meant "console"

So, set "console" to "insecure" in "/etc/ttys" to force root to authtenticate him/herself even when booting to single user mode using the boot -s command at the boot loader.

Why I use FreeBSD

[sawilson]

#1 Modules
#2 Industry recognition
#3 Most linux binaries run faster under FreeBSD than they do on linux natively
#4 Fewer morons asking stupid questions they could find the answer to in 15 seconds with a google search
#5 simple /etc/rc.conf to configure almost EVERYTHING. That's one stop shopping folks.
#6 Good, fast, filesystem (softupdates)
#7 FreeBSD has more stable hardware support thanks to better code (thanks to more stringent coding practices)
#8 I can play quake3 using linux compatibility mode while doing just about anything else, and get a 10-15ms ping improvement thanks to the best tcp/ip stack on the planet.
#9 ALL my hardware works because I compiled my kernel specifically for my hardware, instead of running some lazy precompiled crap that wastes memory.
#10 I can use burncd to burn to EIDE burners if I feel like it.
#11 FreeBSD runs the largest FTP site in the world. Gotta love that.
#12 Fewer kids.

As a friend of mine says,

Linux is Luke, FreeBSD is Yoda.

I've seen a ton of people migrate from windows, to Linux, to FreeBSD. I've seen a lot of people with short attention spans and no clue give up on Linux after one week and go back to windows. I've seen a lot of people whine about how hard FreeBSD is, then come up with as many other reasons they can to justify their lack of clue. I've never seen someone that's fallen in love with FreeBSD go back to Linux. Ever. Linux is this 'in' movement. It's the momentum that got slashdot started in the first place. This idea of a big movement taking over the world. Some of us just want a stable, secure, OS that isn't treated like a testbed for unreliable code. Something rock solid that does what we need. We aren't out to change the world. We aren't planning to 'dominate' the world. We think all that stuff is silly. We just like our stable, fast, safe OS. If enough people take interest in something (DRI for example) we'll get some people together and do it up. And you can be sure that it will be a stable, awesome solution. Good things take time. It is harder to get large companies to play ball when you are a freebsd developer, but not impossible. The nVidia drivers are on the way thanks to the good folks at http://nvidia.netexplorer.org/. Instead of going nuts trying to get every silly thing in the world that runs on linux compiled for FreeBSD, some smart person put the linuxator inside FreeBSD making it a moot point. It's nice running linux stuff with the benefit of better VM and tcp/ip. Things are done differently in this camp. Some of us are more than a little easy to troll, and that's because we honestly can't understand why so many misinformed people say such clueless things about our OS. It's painfully obvious that most of the FreeBSD haters have either:

A: never used it
B: tried but couldn't figure it out.

And yes, there is some eleetism. Big surprise. We know something you don't, and it makes us swell up a little. Clue doesn't come easy. I swear I'm not trolling, that's just how it is. It's how UNIX has been traditionally for a long long time. I did my time in the trenches, and got laid wide open by yoda level sysadmins. It's a great way to learn how computers really work. Don't knock it. And don't for one second try to tell me that you haven't taken an uppity attitude towards some 'clueless windows user' at some point. Thought that "if they were just smarter they'd know Linux is the way". Me and a lot of my FreeBSD using friends feel pretty much the same way about the average Linux user most of the time. :) The point is to take the time to truly know your OS. You also have to be the sick kind of bastard that enjoys figuring out problems. I've been struggling with DRI under FreeBSD for months now, and grinning my head off. In the meantime, everything else works wonderfully. FreeBSD isn't afraid of y
ou. :) It's never going away because it has no predators. The userbase grows because it's good, not because of corporate sponsorship and good *cough* marketing *cough* press.

Flame away. At least I was dead honest.

FreeBSD is not for the General Public.

[sawilson]

If the general public loved freebsd, then I'd probably hate it. It would mean that it had been dumbed down to the point that it would be quite possibly useless to me. That and, I don't think most hardcore FreeBSD users really care if the General Public likes FreeBSD or not. We like things nice and quiet. People find FreeBSD that are looking for it. FreeBSD isn't out there actively trying to recruit users much, or force you to use it by preinstalling it on your dell or hp machine. There isn't any FreeBSD movement to 'dominate the world'. FreeBSD users don't care. We are happy with our OS. That's all that matters. That's why the userbase steadily grows as people find it and tell their friends, without the benefit of hardcore evangelism or sketchy marketing practices. It's just good enough that word of mouth works well enough to get the kind of people using it that won't piss off the ones already using it. :)

We don't expect much...

[sawilson]

You are obviously a windows user, so it's understandable that you'd mess something up. :)

SEE!!!

Try not using scarcasm and just being really damn mean and honest. :) It's just as effective. Try asking the paperclip for help next time!

That's all good, but...

[david8210]

Yeah! wonderful FreeBSD, it is a best distribution I ever used. the only thing I don't like is it shells. while all system scripts were wrotten in sh compatible style, but for user and root, the only offical supported interactive shell is csh, this is none sh compatible. NetBSD and OpenBSD has ksh (pdksh) in standard distribution, it is sh compatible and very small and efficient, and its size is half of sh and csh!

Re:Size and the dial up dilemna

[Tassach]

You also have to figure in capital costs: buying and maintainging the computer & cd burner, rent/mortgage on the building you're working in, electricity to run everything, tax & bookkeeping, etc. $5 is probably close to the break-even point when you consider all the additional expenses

Also, please remember that the whole point in selling the CD's is to give the CODERS money to live on. If a hacker spends 8 hours burning cd's (a job that could be done by a trained monkey), that's 8 hours he isn't making the software better.

Anyhow, if you really believe that you can make $200 an hour burning CD's, I say quit your day job and go for it.