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Updated FreeBSD Release Schedule
Serin K Medusa writes: "The folks over at FreeBSD.org have put up a new 'roadmap' detailing the plan of action for the remainder of the year. In particular, check out the plans for a 5.0 preview and expected dates for 4.6.
Interesting reading if you're following -CURRENT."
It's been a hectic year and a lot of confusion in the FreeBSD arena with the loss of Jordan and the selling off of Walnut Creek. Thanks to the team for staying focused. It is appreciated. For non-users, try FreeBSD if you have concerns about your favorite Linux distro being around. FreeBSD is for UNIX lovers. Linux is for those who hate microsoft. Join the Daemon Revolution.
It seems to me that FreeBSD is more well planned than Linux in terms of project management(This is not Linux bashing). When a development project gets bigger, it takes a lot more planning as a group effort than one man's decision, there maybe something for Linux development team to learn. I agree that it is hard to find the balance because most of us like Linux for some advanced new feature but there's got to be better planning and announcement system to let user know what to expect.
I would really appreciate if Linux kernel set stable checkpoint to indicate "This is a stable kernel" instead of 2.4 series trial and error approach.
Expected:1 Apr 2002
Description:A full release for the i386, Alpha, and sparc64 architectures.
Prerelease planned for April 1st? Hmmm...
SMPng - fully threaded, preemptable and re-entrant kernel with interrupt handlers running as threads. More than one CPU can run in the kernel simultaneously.
devfs - fully dynamic device creation and tear-down (for things like PCCARD and USB).
Geom - stackable disk model (http://www.freebsd.org/~phk/Geom)
Newcard - New PCCARD/CARDBUS subsystem with much better support for newer hardware (like CARDBUS) and integration with FreeBSD's newbus driver API.
gcc 3.0 - Upgrade to latest compiler technology
source
this is my sig.
I've been running linux since kernel 0.99pl14. I like the hardware support, but freebsd has :)
matured so much and is so much more stable that
I moved away from linux to an all-freebsd environment.
For those of you that bitch about the time between releases, just look at debian. And learn how to cvsup.
The packages/ports collection rocks. Software works as documented. Documentation exists.
I can't wait to see all the goodies planned for FreeBSD-5.
Anyone who is interested in UNIX should check it out. It is one of the very "cleanest" implimentations out there, and it also happens to perform quite well.
Go ahead download the
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Try harder next time, please.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
It's interesting to me how you can think FreeBSD is dying when several major things have happened on the FreeBSD front.
1)FreeBSD released FreeBSD-4.5 RELEASE just not to long ago, and it has full Java support.
2)FreeBSD is getting new applications ported to it every day. (Note: XFree86 4.2.0 now has FreeBSD binaries available, check XFree86.org)
3)FreeBSD was a good enough OS to have Apple base their new flagship OS (MacOSX) on it. (I don't see them planning to make a Linux based MacOS)
4)FreeBSD's TCP/IP stack was good enough for Microsoft to steal and put in Win2k/XP
With all this said, and the new release schedule, how in the world can you call it dead?
Regards,
Neovanglist
FreeBSD has run java via linux emulation for ages. FreeBSD 4.5 runs a native FreeBSD version that gets installed via the ports collection.
Regards,
Neovanglist
So?
As a happy FreeBSD user, I fail to see why this "sucks". FreeBSD users tend to have the attitude that if FreeBSD is a good thing, why keep it from anyone? Business or non-business, it doesn't matter. In fact, generally it is a good thing for businesses to use FreeBSD wherever they want, because sooner or later they realize that they will benefit directly by contributing back to the main FreeBSD effort. Otherwise their (patched) version will drift too far from the main releases to be able to keep taking advantage of FreeBSD. Symbiotic relationship, you dig...?
2) The attitude of the FreeBSD elite towards the hoi paloi is well known and noted. FreeBSD zealots have accused both me and David Miller of needing Qualudes in our meals when we point out (with code patches) idiocies in FreeBSD that need fixing (especially irritating when we just finished fixing the same idiocy in Linux... idiocy is idiocy, no matter what OS it is in or who wrote the code, and the migration goes from Linux->FreeBSD as often as it goes from FreeBSD->Linux, there's no reason for FreeBSD zealots to jump down our throats just because we're Linux geeks who found a bug in their precious OS).
3) The so-called stability advantages of FreeBSD are a myth. From FreeBSD 3.3 up to FreeBSD 4.0, both my system at home and my system at work would spontaneously reboot at random intervals under FreeBSD (I mention two different systems because that rules out hardware problems -- hell, they didn't even have the same chipset, one was AMD and one was Intel, the only thing they had in common was that both had an IDE hard drive). In fact, FreeBSD 3.4 led me to switch back to Linux -- I got tired of my system spontaneously rebooting and destroying all my unsaved work.
I love the FreeBSD ports system, and wish there was something similar for "mainstream" Linux distributions. RPM's rock for pre-packaged software (pkg_add etc. are decidedly showing their age as package management tools), but suck for software that you're trying to update from the source stream.
FreeBSD has one advantage: It is an operating system. Linux is not an operating system. Linux is a kernel, surrounded by a hodge-podge of tools tossed into it willy-nilly kitchen sink fashion. In particular, the entire "C" library situation in Linux is tragic. It seems like every other release of a distribution will go to a new incompatible version of the "C" library, to the point where we have over 10mb of "C" libraries loaded in memory to run our normal work load of software compiled against various different versions of those libraries, and the "C" library suffers hugely from code bloat. FreeBSD never seems to have that problem. Of course, FreeBSD doesn't have any precompiled commercial software written for it anyhow...
Basically: I see no religious reasons to use one OS over the other. At various times in each OS's development they have swapped places as to which one was least stable. Neither one is anywhere near perfect. But I expect to be flamed roundly from FreeBSD zealots with attitude for daring to suggest that their precious OS was at anytime unstable, even though they can go to their very own mailing list and see the bug report for the problem -- and see how long it took to solve it.
I currently run Linux. I run Linux for one reason, and one reason only: software availability. Yes, FreeBSD has a Linux emulator. No, it isn't perfect, and I don't have time to play with it nowdays. I am by no means a rabid fan of Linux nowdays -- the whole 2.4 series kernel has been a disaster, for example -- but I need to get work done, and it's "good enough". Purity is for virgins, not software.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I have a question of this community. I remember back in the days when conversations would be carried out over BBS forums/newsgroups. What I remembered of those "old-school" programming/networking communities was a group of people who were always ready to help, and who were always ready to encourage someone in whatever they set out to do. I have a hard time understanding how this community turned into something as bitter and close-minded as what it is now. It seems that there are only a handful of people left out there that still have the original focus of what created this community.
I do not understand how this bitter *BSD vs. *Linux war started. One side blames the other, and vice-versa. The result is a spiral toward a completely destroyed community. You may ask yourself "Well what is in being nice and helpful for me" the answer is, if this trend continues and expands itself onto others like it has as of recent, there will be no more community. That means that once again the computer world will be dominated by companies who are out for nothing but money, and as a direct result, you will suffer from it. Even with corporations like Sun Microsystems, who are big supporters of this community, if the community turns south, it will start to hurt them as well, resulting in them ceasing involvement with it.
As much as you all say *BSD is dead, you do nothing but complain about how it is dead, and why nobody should focus on it any more. Wouldn't someone truly in the spirit of open-source do what they could, or contribute to *BSD in some way to help it? You must all see that the reason any OS will fail is because of a lack of support from a community. Even Windows would disappear off the face of the earth should no person want to use it or support it. I do not believe that *BSD is dead, but with respect to those who do, please answer my question. Why do you continue to say this without making a effot to help? The only reasons I can find is that it is either easier for you to just complain and do nothing, or you vent personal frustration on it thus making yourself feel better at the expense of others. Both are acceptable, but there are other answers that would benefit the community as a whole as well.
This community greatly reminds me of a failed Communist government. It started with intentions to make everyone equal, and make everything available to everyone on the terms that some people would give to the community as well as take. But this proves that history repeats itself, even on a medium such as the Internet. It would seem to me that once again a Communist government has failed because of one thing. Money. Greed from corporation's, people's frustration from it, and a mixed, and cut-throat atmosphere have destroyed it. The people are becoming bitter, and taking harsh sides, (Note the way people acted during the Russian/Soviet revolutions, because the community activity matches up quite well with what we see here) and making bitter enemies.
As much as it would seem, that all hope is lost, it is not. With cooperation of this community, and a re-focus of what we all try to stand for, we can rebuild it into something far greater, and something remarkable that can leave it's positive mark on the world for future generations to behold.
Please, join me and join all of us who want to make this community great, and voice your thoughts on what this should become. Lets build toward a future, not destroy it. I am going to call this emotion of mine the "Open-source Manifesto" and hope that one day the world will share it for the good of not only the Internet, but the people that love it so.
Regards,
Chris Gilbert
"It sucks!! Why are you using it!!??"
"Its dead/dying!!"
etc..
If you're going to whine and complain about someone elses OS, at least provide _VALID_ _TECHNICAL_ points.
Systinstall works pretty well for installation, especially if you do a complete non-X installation. It gets weird if you try to do anything out of the ordinary, tho.
I've actually roached a disk or two trying to do post-installation partitioning of a disk with sysinstall. To do this day I'm not sure what went wrong. Heh, nor do I remember how to make FBSD partitions and slices using fdisk and disklabel..
I think the biggest obstacles to improvement is probably the urge to fit the whole thing on two floppies. I'm sure no one will agree with me, but it'd be nice to see some modularization that would create multiple disk 2s depending on what kind of install you were doing -- CD, FTP, NFS. Putting those methods and their supporting code on seperate disk 2s might leave enough room to clean up and strengthen sysinstall.
One thing I don't think it needs is a GUI installer, or lots of flash. I'm not sure why people like GUI installs so much, but a clean, text-based installer seems so much easier to work with than a bad UNIX GUI.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
There are a number of us who switch back and forth between the two based on what we feel like running at any given time. For example, I did the port of mtx to FreeBSD myself, mostly by reading their scsictl source code.
Lately I've been stymied in doing this by the resolute refusal of the FreeBSD and Reiser people to get along. The Reiser file system is the best filesystem for Linux right now -- it does away with that aweful inode limit for example (I need the ability to put 40,000,000 symlinks onto a single volume, no, that's not a typo, these symlinks are pointing off into a virtualized DVD jukebox). So some of my most important filesystems on my home server are now Reiser'ed. That basically means that it has become excruciatingly difficult to flip back and forth between the two. Other than going back to the pathologically broken ext2 filesystem (which is altogether too shaky for my preference), there's little I can do about that situation. Thus FreeBSD has faded from my horizons lately, even though I've been very frustrated by the Linux 2.4 kernel (well, up until 2.4.18, which so far actually appears to WORK RIGHT, a new thing for 2.4 series kernels!). The fact that my employer can't find any jukebox virtualization software for FreeBSD undoubtedly contributes to this too (we have found at least four different commercial jukebox virtualization packages for Linux).
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I guess the "BSD is DEAD" boneheads do not manage servers on the net.. Can you say STABLE.. SECURE, UPTIME? As for support? -- Rackspace offers FreeBSD on Dedicated servers with 24x7 Support.. Hmm I have never called them for support on my machines.. wonder why? Isn't Hotmail still "stuck" with BSD on the backend? I remember an article on the WALNUT CREEK ftp server, serving more ftp users daily (over a terrabyte of data) on a single Pentuim Pro than the entire MS FTP Farm (700 GB)... Hmm I recently remember having to change out 3 Linux boxes to FreeBSD because the Linux boxes choked on 160K mail messages per hour. Hmm have not recieved an alarm on the FreeBsd boxes in six months.. I wonder if my pager is broken?
Boy did I get bitchslapped.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
Are you just a total tard or a plant from some company trying to spread FUD?
This combined with your WindRiver/FreeBSD 6.0 troll earlier leads me to believe the second.
Yes, there's nothing the FreeBSD project can do to prevent people from using their code. That's their INTENT. They _want_ their code used.
The public CVS server is anonymous, read-only access. The master cvs repository is only writable for FreeBSD committers (about 300) with accounts.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.