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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."

45 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. Re:just the cd? by realdpk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Daemonnews is not *directly* related to the FreeBSD project (I don't know how deep the ties are, if at all - please post if you know). I do believe some of the money does go on to the project, however.

      Anyways, I'm a subscriber to the FreeBSD CD set, and I suggest that anyone else who has found FreeBSD useful in work or home should subscribe as well. FreeBSD has saved me unmeasurable time and aggravation that I would have experienced using other OSs, so it's worth well more than the $40 or so the subscription costs a couple of times a year.

      I realize not all of the money goes directly to the project, but Daemonnews has good people and I'm proud to support them as well.

    3. Re:just the cd? by Arandir · · Score: 2

      It's not a bad price if you compare similar products. Looking at SuSE, Redhat, Slackware, Mandrake, this price is right in the ballpark. I see Linux distros averaging between $35 and $50 US. It wasn't all that long ago that Redhat sold for $80.

      This is four CDs, has official status, and you get a big discount if you set up a subscription. The price hasn't changed since the heyday of Walnut Creek.

      --
      A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
    4. Re:just the cd? by j-pimp · · Score: 2, Informative

      You also get FreeBSD 5-CURRENT and the whole cvs repository.

      --
      --- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
  2. Re:this is nice by Snowfox · · Score: 4, Informative
    it's good to see bsd getting with the times and being released on cd. Although ms-windows has had a 6 year head start with the cd-format I'm sure bsd will be able to compete.

    I normally don't respond to trolls, but what the hell.

    I believe the story is supposed to be "First official FreeBSD 4.5 CDs." Walnut Creek had been supporting FreeBSD development and creating CDs forever. I think FreeBSD CDs may even predate Windows CDs.

  3. Re:Copyright by bfree · · Score: 2

    Well seeing as though you can find 4.4 on cheapbytes I'd be quite sure anyone could sell them. I guess the idea is that these are Official CDs from the originators and hence spending the extra $27.01 will get you the happy feeling of knowing you have substantially supported the FreeBSD project.

    --

    Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

  4. What Timothy SHOULD have used as title .... by Daeron · · Score: 5, Informative

    is that this is the First Official CD Release of FreeBSD by the DaemonNews Crew. FreeBSD by itself has been available on CD for as long as i can remember .... (at least back to the 2.2.x days).

    1. Re:What Timothy SHOULD have used as title .... by hearingaid · · Score: 2

      Groovy. Keep it. I believe it's now illegal as it violates some of the AT&T copyrights. :)

      --

      my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore

  5. Re:Pre-Ordering is stupid... by -brazil- · · Score: 2, Informative

    If you know you want is ASAP, pre-ordering saves you some hassle, and you might get it significantly earlier in cases where the supply is scarce and pre-orders are served first. Additionally, pre-orders often get a discount. Finally, some special-interest products get made at all only after a large enough number of pre-orders guarantees that it will be profitable.

    --

    The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
    --Henry Kissinger

  6. Sigh. This submission is almost completely wrong. by Palin+Majere · · Score: 4, Flamebait

    FreeBSD has had "official" CD sellers for a damn long time. Just flip through freebsdmall's history list and see how long they've been selling them for. Oh, and I hate to break it to you, but FreeBSD's been sold in chain-stores like CompUSA for quite a while too.

    Now, had anybody (the original submitter, or the Slashdot staff) actually bothered to read this, they would've noticed that it said that this is Daemon News' first time carrying official FreeBSD CDs. Which isn't true either, based on the Daemon News online store, but hey. This is Slashdot. What do we care about actual fact?

    I mean, geez. Come on, Slashdot staff, can't you actually take 30 seconds and read the @#$#ing article you're posting?

  7. 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.------
  8. Re:Sigh. This submission is almost completely wron by SirSlud · · Score: 4, Troll

    I think you're the one that read this wrong.

    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.

    our which means, their, which means Daemon News. So its Daemon News' first time offering 4.5 on CD. So yeah, it's not news, but the submission isn't wrong. What bothers me about the way things are going, submissions are turning more and more into (community-level, granted) ads.

    Ah well.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  9. Not wrong. by Baki · · Score: 2

    It is not wrong. It *is* the first release of Daemon News. Before they were sold by others, such as Walnut Creek etc.

  10. 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
    1. Re:Native Java ? by Krellis · · Score: 4, Informative

      You are correct, Java support has been incorporated into the FreeBSD-STABLE source tree since briefly before the 4.5-PRERELEASE code freeze, and has been in testing since then. As far as I know it's working fine, and should be in 4.5-RELEASE without any worries. The FreeBSD Foundation worked with Sun to get this licensing taken care of.

    2. Re:Native Java ? by MadAhab · · Score: 2
      Uh, not quite. You can build it as a port without having to go through Sun's licensing thing and separate download, and packages may be included on the new CDs, but:

      find /usr/src -name "*java*"
      /usr/src/contrib/file/Magdir/java
      /usr/src/contrib/perl5/eg/cgi/javascript.cgi

      So it's not in the source tree, which includes, unlike linux, a complete system. Vi, not a stripped-down Vim, for example.

      Still, this represents a nice bump in convenience for FreeBSD and Java together. And it's a whole lot nicer than using linux java binaries. That's also part of the recent achievement; I haven't installed it yet, but it apparently means you don't need the linux-jdk1.2.2 port to build java 1.2 for FreeBSD, which is great.

      --
      Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
  11. Does the install work properly again ? by MarkoNo5 · · Score: 2, Informative

    I've have enormous trouble installing 4.3 and 4.4 (and I'm not the only one). The base install goes fine as always, but when installing additional packages, the problems start. The first packages are installed at normal speed, but after a few minutes, it takes about 2 minutes/package, no matter how big or small it is. I've tried the cd, ftp install, it doesn't matter. Does anyone know whether or not that problem is fixed ?

    Marko No. 5

  12. Re:this is nice by javilon · · Score: 2, Funny

    " I think FreeBSD CDs may even predate Windows CDs"

    Do you mean that Windows CDs could eat FreeBSD CDs? That would give a new meaning to market competition!

    --


    When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
  13. Re:so this is instead of BSDi ? by nt2UNIX · · Score: 2, Informative

    BSDi is no more. When Wind River bought them they took the embedded stuff that BSDi was working on and hired a few FreeBSD programmers. Since the economy in the US has turned to crap, they fired all of the FreeBSD programmers.

    I have been a FreeBSD CD purchaser for a long time, since the Walnut Creek FreeBSD 2.1 days. At that time part of the money for the CD's went back into the project. Since the Wind River take over, they have stopped putting money back in.

    The guys over at Deamonnews have started publishing a magazine and started doing the CD subscriptions. They have said that they will put money back into the project. So I dropped by Wind River subscription and decided to put my money with these guys. I'm also a subscriber to the magazine and have been very happy with it also.

  14. Re:Copyright by Alien54 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Do I miss-understand, or can any produce these cd's and charge a "reasonable" free for them ?

    I believe that is how it works. But IANAL [smile]

    Even so, I intend to pre-order and pay these guys for at least one set of CDs, if not more. Just to reward them for doing the work and doing a good job.

    They deserve it.

    --
    "It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
  15. Re:*BSD is dying by fredbsd · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's funny. I have been able to moderate for some time now but I never did. Now when I want to, I don't have the ability. Go figure.

    How can anyone in their right mind score this as "funny"?

    I hate to be the bearer of bad news to this guy, but FreeBSD is far from dead. It lives on in Mac OS X (at least parts of it). Moreover, BSDi was purchased by Wind River (yes, that Wind River). They will eventually producte an embedded version of BSD.

    Why can't people just get the facts straight?

    I don't like to reply to flamebait/troll trash but this just got my goat.

  16. It is easy to donate by TheAlabamaKid · · Score: 2, Informative

    I just got this from the Free BSD site:
    http://www.freebsd.org

    Even if you're not a programmer, there are other ways to contribute to FreeBSD. The FreeBSD Foundation is a non-profit organization for which direct contributions are fully tax deductible. Please contact bod@FreeBSDFoundation.org for more information or write to: The FreeBSD Foundation, 7321 Brockway Dr. Boulder, CO. 80303. USA

  17. needn't be reasonable by hawk · · Score: 2
    It's fully free, not GPL. YOu can give it away, turn it proprietary, charge an outrageous price, use it to plan a nuclear attack on Australia, or to engage in the violent overthrow of the government. About the only thing you *can't* do is remove the copyright when you place it under the GPL :)


    hawk

  18. Not only it's the official first CD release ... by BlowCat · · Score: 2

    it is also the first *BSD OS to have version above 4.4.

  19. _NOT_ 1st CD. 1st CD from DN. by Lazaru5 · · Score: 4, Informative

    "Official" FreeBSD CDs have been available for years and years, at least as far as 2.1.X (as that's the earliest I've seen) and probably earlier.

    This announcement marks the first CD published by Daemon News, which took over the CD distribution after Wind River (who did 4.4 after inheriting it from BSDi (who did 4.3 and 4.2 as well I think after inheriting it from Walnut Creek CDROM (who did all of them up to 4.2))) stopped.

    The CDs have always been "Official"ly mastered by Jordan Hubbard as the Release Manager. The only difference is that the only .iso's available have been for CD #1 of the 4 CD Set. Now there's an .iso for all 4 CDs.

    Hopefully the majority of people know this (at least the first part), but the story title could be confusing to those who don't, or those who have limited memory capacity.

    --

    --
    My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
  20. Re:support for Daemon News by Lazaru5 · · Score: 2

    Just donate $5 after your ftp install or .iso download.

    --

    --
    My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
  21. Important clarification on the wording of this by jkh · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm sure that being first or official isn't what Chris meant to imply and is as distressed by the heading of "BSD: First Official CD Release of FreeBSD" as everyone else is.

    Just to clarify this for everyone else, there is no longer any "official" CD publisher of FreeBSD in the sense that they're somehow blessed or endorsed by the FreeBSD project. The project releases all the ISO images one would need to build a full 4-CD boxed set, that being the benchmark product standard established by Walnut Creek CDROM, and simply leaves it up for grabs as to who publishes them in whatever packaged form.

    The ISO images themselves are called "official" simply to denote the fact that they're the authoritative reference for FreeBSD release bits. Anyone who publishes something which doesn't deviate too much from this standard is more than free to call the resulting product "FreeBSD" and sell it/give it away/rub it on their bodies/whatever as such.

    Needless to say, there also are and have been multiple publishers of FreeBSD CDROM products, so this isn't exactly the "first" such distribution of FreeBSD on CD. But hey, this is Slashdot so two errors in one sentence is actually a fairly high standard when taken in context. :)

    --
    - Jordan Hubbard co-founder, the FreeBSD Project. Director, UNIX Technology. Apple Computer
  22. Re:Time for the BSD fans to sing praise.... by Tailhook · · Score: 2, Informative

    It will work fine and you will be happy with it. I've been running smb, ssh, smtp, pop, nfs, dns, dhcp, ldp, ipfw and natd services on a 486/133 with 64MB RAM for about 5 years now. I upgrade the machine to STABLE at 18-month intervals and watch the security notices closely.

    I've been subscribed to the company formerly known as Walnut Creek's FreeBSD subscription service since somewhere in the early 2.2.x's. Although I only used about every fourth release of the CDs I received, the money was going where I wanted it, when I wanted it.

    If you haven't been beyond Linux, FreeBSD has a lot to teach you. It is a strong server OS.

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
  23. Re:Sigh. This submission is almost completely wron by irix · · Score: 2

    Guess what? The original submitter of the aritcle is Chris Coleman what is the Editor in Chief of daemonnews.org.

    So I am pretty sure that the original submitter bothered to read this, and that is why the slashdot staff posted it verbatim. Who looks like they didn't read the @#$#ing article now?

    How your post got modded up to +5 is beyond me.

    --

    Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
  24. Re:Time for the BSD fans to sing praise.... by Snowfox · · Score: 2
    I'm good with the command line; I use bash all the time at home and telnetted into a Solaris system all the time in college. How is FreeBSD in terms of maintainability of things like NFS, Samba and Apache servers?

    The standard configuration tools that you'll see in most Linux distributions work. The FreeBSD folks are also very good about including documentation and plenty of sample configuration files for manual reference.

    Anyone who feels at home with a Linux distribution such as Debian should be quite happy with FreeBSD as well. If you want a central configurator for everything, such as is offered with RedHat, you may have difficulty.

    Check out the Daemon News site. You can order a very nicely written FreeBSD book to go along with the CDs. It covers many common BSD and UNIX tasks, as well as pretty much everything that's unique to FreeBSD.

  25. Re:extras by Rich_Morin · · Score: 2, Informative

    Previous distributions have included image files for the boot floppies; I assume that this one will, as well. Most modern PCs can boot directly from the CD-ROM, however.

    --
    Technical editing and writing, programming, and web development
  26. Re:Sigh. This submission is almost completely wron by DrSkwid · · Score: 2

    It's whoever wrote the headline that can't read.

    I noticed this morning on freeBSD.announce. I read it wrong myself to start with but seeing as I can remember a bit further back than Timothy i said "eh, but I've seen it in the shop? ah it's Daemon News's first CD, big deal."

    In fact I'd forgotten all about it until I came here and wondered what all the fuss was about.

    we live in a world of hype & attention grabbing.

    I'm sure it must satisfy a deep human need for novelty. Neoteny at work I suppose.

    .

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  27. 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.

    1. Re:Why I like FreeBSD by King_TJ · · Score: 2

      I hear you... I really do. But I still don't run any flavor of BSD myself. Right now, I find I'd rather have support for more devices, and learn to deal with some of the quirks in most Linux distros.

      (Linux has always been very stable for me as a server. It runs into serious problems only when you start trying to make it into a desktop system and extensively use the X environment. In fact, X itself works just fine with a trimmed down window manager like fvwm. It's just not very "cool" or flashy, and not at all user-friendly when you need to add new items to menus.)

      As a business user, I'd assume you're trying to use BSD (or Linux) in a server situation? If so, I'm not sure why you had so many issues with Linux. On the other hand, BSD installs all the basic stuff you need to run a very stable web, ftp, mail, news, etc. type of server - so I'm not faulting you at all for making that choice.

    2. Re:Why I like FreeBSD by bugg · · Score: 2
      Why does everyone like to have support for devices they probably don't have?

      The only thing that I'm missing out on is support for this Iomega Ditto Professional Max or whatnot, which is a bullshit tape drive that I got for free. *Shrug*

      --
      -bugg
  28. Re:Sigh. This submission is almost completely wron by Arandir · · Score: 2

    No, it's not yellow journalism. This is DaemonNews' first official release of FreeBSD. Before this time DaemonNews only *distributed* the CDs from Windriver and BSDi. This release is their own, and it's official.

    --
    A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
  29. Re:yay. by bugg · · Score: 2
    And FTP installs are *much* more convienent.

    Why download 650 megs of stuff when you only need, say, 120 megs for your install?

    --
    -bugg
  30. I'll be getting mine via CVSup by LM741N · · Score: 2, Informative

    One of the great things about FreeBSD is the ability to upgrade to -STABLE, ie new releases via the CVSup utility. The software goes out and finds the source needed to be updated. Then you give the commands "make buildworld", compile a new kernel, and then in single user mode "make installworld". (/etc gets merged seperately)

    It can take less than an hour on a fast computer with SCSI drive.

  31. -CURRENT versus 4.5 by Satai · · Score: 2

    Does anybody know if there's a place I can check to see if changes made to -CURRENT are being brought into 4.5? I'm particularly curious about some changes made to the IDE CD-Burner technology, but I'm pretty sure it'd be a waste of (their) time to e-mail developers or mailing lists, particularly if there's a place that lists all the changes for the new release.

    (Or maybe I should sit on my hands until the 20th, when I can check it online. ;-)

    1. Re:-CURRENT versus 4.5 by hearingaid · · Score: 2

      Check the release notes. They should be on the FreeBSD Foundation main site.

      Releases are snapshots of -STABLE I believe made at the time of the release. If you want to find out whether a particular change made it into a release, you need to know whether the code change migrated from -CURRENT to -STABLE before the release was done. A lot of stuff in -CURRENT is pretty experimental though and takes a while to get over to -STABLE. Your best bet is probably to check the release notes, or of course the hairy method which is to download the sucker, install it, and read /usr/src/ to find out what code is there if you think you'll recognize the changes. :)

      --

      my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore

  32. Re:Screw pkg_add by hearingaid · · Score: 2
    Real Men download tarballs using FTP and figure out their own damn config options and find needed patches by scouring old Usenet postings, mailing list archives, and Magic 8 Balls.

    Okay, well, I guess I'm half of a Real Man then. :)

    I do download tarballs and figure out my own config options; but the only time I ever use the patch command is when I've been sent a FreeBSD Security Update that tells me to; I think the last time was when I patched telnetd a year or so ago. :)

    However, the only Standard Tools that I have compiled from tarballs on my FreeBSD box are Apache, sendmail, openssl, openssh, and socks5. These are all programs that I know I will never remove from the box (unfortunately I can't run qmail; I do actually need sendmail, sigh). The only ones with very wacky config directives are Apache and sendmail. (The gateway box runs Apache with CGI turned off, along with a lot of other things disabled; mostly it's a front-end for the web servers that sit behind it on my LAN.)

    However, ports are really really good for one major thing: experimenting with new software. I played with about a dozen or so text editors before settling on jed (which I'm still running from the port). Also, they're handy for installing tools that you need to compile certain tarballs. (For example, automake tends to get deleted off my system once I've got Stuff Installed. Another one is GCC-2.95. I don't have nearly enough drive space on the gateway box to compile it but I can bring it in as a port without too much pain when I really need it.)

    --

    my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore

  33. Re:Time to desert Linux ? by hearingaid · · Score: 2

    You only mention having one firewall. It sounds to me like you've moved past the time where one firewall is sufficient.

    Normally, big organizations use two firewalls. One firewall sits at the main connection to the 'net. Behind this firewall are the organization's public servers; web servers and so on.

    Another machine which sits behind this firewall is also a firewall. This second firewall is much more paranoid; ideally it's just running a SOCKS5 proxy and maybe a few other proxies, no NAT. Anyway, it blocks all incoming server accesses: you can't run a server on any machine behind it that will talk to the public 'net. You put every machine that doesn't need to be a public server behind the second firewall.

    This makes it much easier to relax. Intruders have to compromise two firewalls in order to reach your organization's private documents and databases.

    Normally, the area between the two firewalls where the servers live is called the DMZ. You can find out much more about this method of firewalling in an excellent book with a rather dull title: Building Internet Firewalls by Elizabeth D. Zwicky, Simon Cooper, D. Brent Chapman, and Deborah Russell.

    Anyway, back to your original question. Generally if you want to run a pure firewall, with no non-standard services, and don't mind a certain degree of hair, OpenBSD is recommended. It's got a stellar security record, and will dramatically reduce the number of updates you have to make. FreeBSD's advantages usually lie in performance: but with a firewall, performance issues matter a lot less than they do with, say, a database server. FreeBSD is far from insecure though, but OpenBSD is definitely up there in the sky as the God of Freenix Security.

    But lastly, I will tell you something that you'll find out anyway if you read Zwicky: Masquerading provides inferior security to application-based proxies. Get NEC SOCKS5, or at least Dante SOCKS4 running (if you don't use any UDP services, SOCKS4 is fine). Turn off the NAT (or masq or whatever you linuxies call it :)... Your firewall will thank you.

    --

    my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore

  34. now that you mention it . . . by hawk · · Score: 2
    the reasonableness limitation only applies to the source code, doesn't it . . .


    hawk

  35. Re:Incorrect by reg · · Score: 2

    I don't know about the new 4.5 CD's but the 4.4-RELEASE CD's say "This CDROM may be duplicated and redistributed" right under the copyright notice on the disc.

    The 3.2 CD's don't have this, so I don't know when this was changed. Probably at the same time the project begun releasing ISO images on the FTP site.

    Regards,
    -Jeremy