Slashdot Mirror


First Official CD Release of FreeBSD

Chris Coleman writes: "Daemon News is pleased to announce the availability of pre-orders for FreeBSD 4.5. This will be our first release of FreeBSD on CD. We will be using the official FreeBSD 4.5 ISOs created by the FreeBSD project. The expected release date for FreeBSD 4.5 is January 20th. We expect to have CDs available two weeks after that. We are taking pre-orders at this time to help gauge the number of CDs we will need to produce. You can pre-order CDs here. CD subscriptions are available here. Vendor pricing will be handled through cylogistics.com."

6 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. just the cd? by minusthink · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I looked on the page, and didn't see anything about what comes for the 40 dollars.

    Is it just the CD? Because I'd rather just donate 40 dollars and download the ISO when I can get it. (Which would seem to be less than 2 weeks after the release).

    =\ /shrug

    --
    "when life gets complicated, I like to take a nap in a tree and wait for dinner" - Hobbes.
    1. Re:just the cd? by whee · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It says the standard 4 FreeBSD ISOS, so I'm assuming you get the following on CD (version 4.5 of course):

      4.x-install.iso - 4.x ISO 9660 bootable (El Torrito) CDROM image.
      4.x-disc2.iso - Live filesystem "Fix it" CD and CVS repository.
      4.x-disc3.iso - Extra packages for FreeBSD 4.x
      4.x-disc4.iso - Extra packages for FreeBSD 4.x

      This probably includes ports, tons of documentation, and everything else that you'd expect from FreeBSD.

  2. Why not a support fee? by GdoL · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are already Cds with this. So why not create a way tosupport, wich should be reliable and tax deductible, for donate the money? It would be far less expensive, didn't had to have a hard logistics, only an account on some emonet stuff and a piece of paper for tax deductions!

    --

    ------I can please only one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't looking good either.------
  3. Native Java ? by FauxPasIII · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This release is supposed to be the first one to include out of the box, native support for Java, right ? Does anyone know if they are still on track with that ?

    --
    25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
  4. Time to desert Linux ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    We are running on all desktops and servers SuSE 7.0 Linux plus Win2K as second operating system on the desktops. However I am getting increasingly worried about security issues.
    Quite frankly it is almost impossible for us (due to time constraints) to keep track of all software updates necessary to keep the firewall and main server secure. The SuSE distributions are at times painful to use for upgrades - As far as I can see the SuSE scripts cant handle all our configurations. We tried on the server to upgrade from 7.0 to 7.1 SuSE but numerous reconfigurations were required to keep the running e.g. yellow pages - so we didnt upgrade in the end. I guess we would need to sit down several days to do it properly - but simply dont have the time. It is beyond me why distros as SuSE must make it that hard to upgrade. It seems that upgrading involves inevitably to reconfigure half of the system because numerous configuration file formats have changed which the SuSE scripts cant handle. I really wonder why we do pay for distros - only to have several GB of software which we dont install anyway ?

    The firewall machine acts as a proxy, masquarading, DSL access point - so I do regard it as the most crucial point to tackle. The firewall log is now spilling out lines as if there is no tomorrow, the fw crashes the DSL regularly over weekend (absolutely no clue why) and we could probably employ another person just to check the logs. I am now thinking about switching over to BSD on the firewall (and possibly later on the server).
    My reasoning is that BSD is less exposed since there are fewer systems around and secondly it should be easier to keep track of security problems since development is more centralised. Any views on that ? What would be the choice FreeBSD, OpenBSD ?

  5. Why I like FreeBSD by jetski666 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is just my opinion. Nothing more.

    After trying to use Linux (redhat 6x/7x, mandrake 7x/8x, debian, slackware) I found that none were upgradeable as easy as FreeBSD. Try upgrading from Redhat 7.1 -> 7.2. I've had it fail on 3 different machines (at work). Nightmares doing that. Plus everything is changing on a .x release. Debian sounds the best, but it didn't even install on the computer I tried. Mandrake just died one day (no clue)...the os wouldn't boot and i just gave up. Slackware is good, but it doesn't seem to have the documentation of FreeBSD. I used to love Linux, until I used it. The biggest problems I have had are with dependencies and non-kernel related problems. I think a centrally managed OS like the BSD's are much more efficient. With kernel releases every few months for Linux, how can you expect it to be stable? I'm a business person. I value time and money. /stand/sysinstall is the greatest utility FreeBSD has. From that 1 utility I can change anything I need to. Simple as that. Redhat had utilities that don't even work right!

    BSD is just rock solid. It's easy to install, upgrade and use. It has been proven. I can't wait to use 4.5 and try it out. Linux is trying to emulate Windows, and it never will. Linux should find it's niche over time. I know BSD has and it's thriving. Doing everything for everyone is bad, and I know BSD isn't.