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FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE

Posted by timothy on from the now-with-improved-goodness dept.

Triumph The Insult C writes "FreeBSD 4.7 is out. Here is the announcement. New items include an option for IPFW2, a number of disk controller updates, security updates, and some changes to userland. Remember, please use a mirror." Among other things, the release announcement says: "FreeBSD 4.7 also incorporates all of the security and bug fixes from 4.6.2 (released in August 2002), including several ATA-related bugfixes, updates for OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and fixes to address several security advisories." And here are the release notes.

8 of 336 comments (clear)

  1. Mirrors by aridhol · · Score: 5, Informative

    Instead of pointing to the front page, it may be more useful to point at the mirror list.

    --
    I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
  2. Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? by Moridineas · · Score: 5, Informative

    The best of FreeBSD? Well some would say the best of FreeBSD is the BSD part (license and architecture). Another advantage (and what I like a lot) is the ability to keep track of the CVS tree and "make world" any time you want and have a completely upgraded core system. The ports system is also in my mind infinitely preferable to binary package hell. Ports has been tried in some linux distributions I believe (Gentoo? not sure). So in a way, some of the best parts of the BSD's are going into linux

    On the other hand, linux because of it's size and diversity will never have the core development group, and central design that the BSD's have.

  3. Re:Heh jsut in time :) by DoctorPepper · · Score: 5, Informative

    Why is that a good thing? Hell, once you install a FreeBSD distribution, you never have to install another one on the same computer again (assuming you don't mess it up :-). Just point your cvsfile at the branch you wish (RELENG_4 in this case) and do a buildworld, and voila! You will have FreeBSD 4.7.

    --

    No matter where you go... there you are.
  4. Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? by b0r1s · · Score: 5, Informative
    Many will argue that FreeBSD is still more stable than linux. That is debateable, but I think a case could be made either way. Much of the difference is due to preference (some of it is due to the dislike of the GPL by many, many people).

    The advantages of FreeBSD over Linux is:
    • Complete control of ENTIRE operating system. With a few exceptions, tools in the base systems are BSD derived rather than GNU tools. This prevents the FSF people from calling it "GNU/FreeBSD", and allows the contributors to the operating system the ability to modify userland tools to better integrate with the kernel.
    • Incredibly well developed updating system. The CVSup setup employed by FreeBSD is simply unmatched by anything linux has. Yes, Redhat allows you to grab new kernel RPMs, and debian allows you to apt-get kernels, but FreeBSD is designed to be updated often ('updated' means the entire source heirarchy, if need by), and the system in place makes this possible. When you also consider that a single 'make buildworld' followed by an NFS mount, and multiple 'make installworld's on other machines can update an entire server farm to a custom built OS, you'll realize that linux can not compete with the level of customization that to which FreeBSD administrators have become acustomed.
    • Make tools that make developing nice. Things like <bsd.port.mk> et. al. have no rivals in the linux world. Creating kernel makefiles becomes trivial; a simple include statement handles 90% of the grunt work involved in writing makefiles.
    • Freedom from the GPL. Like it or not, most corporations do not want to give away all of their work to their competitors if they ever decide to release a product that required modification to the OS.


    Yes, linux is nice ... for the desktop. But I'd still prefer FreeBSD in the rack, or in any corporate situation.
    --
    Mooniacs for iOS and Android
  5. Re:FreeBSD running behind linux? by Hoxworth · · Score: 5, Informative

    I suggest trying it out. If by support you are referring to hardware, it is true that FreeBSD is not as heavily advanced as Linux. FreeBSD is built more as a server operating system than a desktop operating system, and as such, the developers are more worried about producing a stable operating system and hardening the actual core than providing driver support for the latest and greatest soundcard. Don't get me wrong, they do have an excellent list of supported hardware. In my experience, FreeBSD has been able to utilize my system a heck of a lot better than Linux ever has. Large X processes seem to always have no problem running simultaneously with 3-4 builds taking place in the background. Even binaries built for Linux run at incredible speed; as stated on the FreeBSD website, Linux binaries can even run faster on a FreeBSD machine using Linux emulation than Linux itself can run it. I'm not going to get into a holy war over which operating system is better, because they both definitely have their ups and downs. I do suggest, however, to give FreeBSD a try if you are interested in seeing what it can do.

  6. Re:Still no CARDBUS support yet? by CoolVibe · · Score: 5, Informative
    FreeBSD has cardbus support, but you'd have to dare to run the CURRENT branch. CURRENT is now having a big overall nouw ith the recent additions of the new KSE threading and GEOM, so I'd just wait for a bit until everything in CURRENT dampens out a bit.

    CURRENT is going to rock when it goes STABLE.

  7. Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? by dsb3 · · Score: 5, Informative

    > There's no RedHat FreeBSD, SuSE FreeBSD, Debian FreeBSD, etc. It's just FreeBSD.

    Um. Actually there *is* Debian/FreeBSD. You can find more details here: http://www.debian.org/ports/freebsd/

    That said, I do agree with your original point.

    --

    Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
  8. actually, since you mention it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The various BSDs are not differet distributions of a single operating system. They originate from a single source code base, but are separate operating system.

    Their kernels differ (often substantially), their filesystem layouts and utilities (to some degree) differ, their packaging systems differ, etc. There is cross pollination, and it's easier to adapt kernel features among the BSDs than between BSD and other *nix type operating systems, but they are not the same Beastie.

    And while we're on the topic, OsX is not really a BSD operating system; it's a Mach microkernel with a BSD layer on top that provides some utiltiy functionality. It's not substantially BSDish.