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FreeBSD 5.0 Developer Preview #2

Posted by timothy on from the five-is-a-prime-number dept.

noackjr writes "'The FreeBSD Project is proud to announce the availability of the second Developer Preview snapshot of FreeBSD 5.0 (5.0-DP2). This snapshot, intended for widespread testing purposes, is the latest milestone towards the eventual release of FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE, currently scheduled for mid-December 2002.' See the announcement, early adopter's guide, and the release notes."

5 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Know what I'd love to see? by CoolVibe · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Like FreeBSD's text-based install is hard. NOT.

    It's an installer that doesn't get in your way. The partitioning/labelling is pretty easy (and has reasonable auto-defaults). And finishing up after (enabling ssh, nfs et al) is a doddle.

    I don't see why FreeBSD needs graphical cruft in it's installer. The simple ncurses based one lets me install a fully working FreeBSD base system + ports tree in under 30 minutes. If I want something extra after that, pkg_add -r isn't far away.

    I mean, come on... It's an installation, not something you have to work in for more than 8 hours. Yeah sure, GUI installers look nice, but what's the USE?

  2. Re:Why not Linux? by MsGeek · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Here's a reason you might not hear from anyone else. FreeBSD is fast. It can make an old 486 seem like a Pentium 233MMX and a 733MHz PIII seem like a 3GHz P4. I'm serious, man. This has been my personal experience. Stop griping and try it. The installer isn't half as bad as the Debian installer and just about anything that can run on Linux can be recompiled for FreeBSD. Give it a shot.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
  3. Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me. by runderwo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This of course is just my opinion, but I would have to say that the development effort for Linux is outpacing that of the FreeBSD community.
    Remember that software being ported to any Unix-like system is a win for all Unix-like systems. FreeBSD can run many Linux binaries through its emulated execution layer, and many apps ported to Linux can be recompiled on BSD with relative ease.

    Just because Linux is gaining share doesn't necessarily mean that BSD is losing. It does mean that UNIX is gaining though. :)

    --
    LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
  4. Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me. by Moridineas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You do raise a good point in some ways--Linux has a lot of corporate backing and is very "loud" and attention grabbing. In the meanwhile, the server room is running bsd ;)

    Don't forget that when you say development for linux is outpacing bsd what does that mean? The servers apps most people run has nothing to do with the OS. Samba, Bind, Netatalk, Squid, Apache, IP NAT+firewall etc, ssh, ftp, sendmail and variants of these programs--these are what most people run, and these have absolutely no connection to linux.

  5. Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me. by sql*kitten · · Score: 5, Insightful

    One of the reasons I choose Linux over BSD is the rate at which Linux development takes place.

    Well, a new kernel every couple of weeks is fine if you're running Linux on a PC in your bedroom, but in the real world, it takes time to deploy software. It has to be tested, downtime scheduled, documentation updated, staff trained, etc. The big advantage of FreeBSD (and Debian for that matter) is that it gets much more thoroughly tested before it's declared "STABLE". Although it may lag behind the cutting edge a little, that's a far, far happier place to be if you are relying on your systems to run your business. Not only that, but there is one FreeBSD, maintained in a consistent way by a single organization. If you are writing or deploying software that requires certain versions of certain things to be in certain places, then you have to only support a subset of the possible Linux distributions, or choose something like FreeBSD which is far more consistent. FreeBSD does not need to make compromises for portability to other platforms (like NetBSD and Linux), it is wholly developed for x86.

    In short, my position is that Linux is better if you want to experiment, FreeBSD is better if you want to run crucial applications or infrastructure.