FreeBSD 5.0 Developer Preview #2

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."

Comments

Smp

[dcstimm]

SMP support in this new version should rock, Freebsd never had good SMP support until now, If you are a SMP user check this update out! I know its beta but its well worth it..HUGE speed increases.

Yaaay team!

[CoolVibe]

CURRENT has come a long way. Heck, I've stopped trying to keep a machine CURRENT because problems started with me when they changed ABI's and compilers (from gcc 2.9x to gcc3), so I went back to STABLE land for a while.

Now that DP2 is here, I might as well jump in the CURRENT water again and give it a go again. The time that CURRENT _did_ work for me, it worked great and I considered it stable. I have been following/lurking the current@ mailinglist for quite a while, and it's been fun seeing al these cool new things appear.

Great work. I'm definately going to give this a spin.

Know what I'd love to see?

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone take BSD and do a Mandrake version of it while at the same time keeping it all opensource and free. Ie make it really user friendly(Gui installer, admin tools etc). I'm surprised there has been no effort to do so. I mean beyond what Apple did I don't even hear any rumors of anyone even trying to do that.

I know BSD is a more thought of as a server OS, but I've heard plently of BSD users claim its makes a fine desktop as well. If that's every going to happen they definitely need to start working on making it more user friendly.

Re:Know what I'd love to see?

[Corporate Troll]

Ever installed Windows NT4 or Windows 2000 (don't know for XP) from scratch while booting form the CD?
The first part is text-based my dear AC. I don't know how you made it to +2, Insightfull but an installation should be a one-time activity and whatever you say: GUI doesn't cut it, because frankly, if you give a Windows 2000 CD to your little sister she won't figure it out either.
Because for installing a computer correctly you need at least some basic computer knowledge. The other 99% you talk about get their computers installed by "us" (meaning, people who know what they do). It's normal... I don't start drilling in my teeth when I've got toothache, I go to a dentist: a specialist. There is no difference with computers.

Re:Know what I'd love to see?

[d^2b]

Its fine if you want to stick to text only, but don't act like your too fucking stupid to realize why 99% of the world doesn't want to deal with ncurses and text menus and tools.

Well, somebody got up on the wrong side of bed this morning. If we can't act stupid on Slashdot, where can we :-)

I see this attitude a great deal on slashdot (and more elsewhere I suppose) that something cannot possibly be "user friendly" without being graphical.

Unless "user friendly" is defined as "conforms to the expectations of Windows users" I don't see this statement as being at all obvious. Being "Windows-like" is a possible design goal, but maybe not the top priority.

One can look at this debate from two sides:

1. Yes, if you want to sell Debian/FreeBSD/UnixALikes-in-General to people whose only background is Windows (or Mac), then a spiffy graphical installer might help.
2. On the other hand, if the FreeBSD (Debian, etc..) install process turns you off, the probably using the actual system won't be that much fun either.

This is different than the "Linux is not ready for gramma" discussion. None of these systems is that difficult to use, but roughly speaking, the install process is a preview of the user experience.

Re:Know what I'd love to see?

[Metrol]

Like FreeBSD's text-based install is hard. NOT.

No, it's not hard. It's not exactly intuitive either.

A decision was made to use sysinstall as both the installer, and post installation utility. In short, it's not really adequate for either.

It's not whether it's text based or GUI. The real problem is that it doesn't follow a linear path to complete the installation. Even after a number of installations it's not entirely obvious what step happens in which order. For a first timer at it, it is quite confusing.

What should happen is to have a step by step process that walks a user through the process without allowing for deviations. Aside from the GUI, this is what makes the Linux installers so much easier for someone who hasn't seen them before.

The one advantage to a GUI installer is to provide a little more screen space to describe exactly what is going on. Full descriptions of packages that can be installed, things like that.

Lastly, a GUI would provide a bit more professionalism to what the user perceives. Text based installers are just too closely associated with the 80's. It's harmful to FreeBSD's image essentially.

Re:Know what I'd love to see?

[arkane1234]

Its called progress and makes computers more accessible to the rest of us who just want to sit down and get our work done, not become computer experts.

When you say "us", please say what you really mean.. you. Just because it's in a GUI doesn't mean it's easier, it's just prettier. Let's try to keep things in perspective, please.

FreeBSD's installer is very intuitive. (Well, except for the first screen, which needs to be read first to be understood) It's ncurses, but it's menu-based. It also leads to not requiring 64 megs of ram just to run the installer.

It would be different if we were talking about something that Joe Blow is going to install, but this is *BSD we're talking about. You have to have at least an ounce of common sense to use it.. and I consider the installer to be a litmus test of that, in a way.

Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me.

[Blaede]

At present I use Windows, cause that's what 98% of the apps I use are written only for. But I do like learning about other OSes.

So on to my question (with a possible coda). I read in a BSD guide that "most" apps written for Linux will run under any of the BSDs. Is this true, or was this dude just plain misinformed? Only reason is I ask this is that most of the info I've seen regarding the Unix variants is that BSD is superior over Linux. If that's the case, why use Linux? Anyway, if anyone can answer this 2 part question in a quick, general way, it would be appreciated.

Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me.

[Moridineas]

Yes, the BSD's have a binary compatibility mode so you can take a linux compiled program and run it most of the time flawlessly. You can ALSO just recompile any opensource program and it will again 99% of the time run fine.

As for which is superior, that's certaintly a matter of taste. My first Linux experience was with Slackware way back, and then RedHat starting with version 4 and then 5. Then I gave FreeBSD a try. I actually find it easier to get setup and in many ways more consistent in terms of design and organization (given at least beginner level *nix knowledge). It's really a matter of personal taste though.

Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me.

[The Original Yama]

Earlier this year, I was trying to decide which OS/distro I should try next. I narrrowed the list down to two choices: Debian (because apt makes things easy to administer) and FreeBSD (because the ports system makes compiling my own apps easy). Then I discovered Gentoo. It has an excellent ports-like system (Portage) which also takes care of dependencies. I don't know much about FreeBSD's ports system but I hear that Portage is better.

Sorry if I sound like a troll (I'm just adding my two cents), but Gentoo seems to have the best of both the FreeBSD and GNU/Linux worlds. I get the increased app compatibility of GNU/Linux with a great ports system.

Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

As of about a week ago, the Linux versions of many games run with full 3D acceleration on NVIDIA cards, for example Quake3 and Unreal Tournament 2003 (out of the box, although it's a pain to get installed).

99% of Linux executables can be run after a simple 'brandelf -t Linux executable', although I have found a couple of very sloppily coded sh scripts that ran on Linux and didn't work as-is on FreeBSD (most notibly the UT2003 install script mentioned above).

As someone who switched from Slackware to FreeBSD, I don't forsee ever moving to anything else. Not to disrespect Linux, but it is relatively a mess.

Someone else here described FreeBSD kernel as being a "borg cube", and that it is - in a structured and nicely organised way. And this philosophy extends to the entire distro.

If you're happy with Linux, fine - enjoy. You're only going to be able to run mostly the same software anyway. But I would recommend checking out FreeBSD if you're stuck with anything else.

Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me.

[CoolVibe]

I'm using Gentoo right now, and I have to admit that portage is pretty good, but still, *BSD's ports are still better. Gentoo's package masking system and USE variable cruft is just inconvenient and gets in the way sometimes, and that's one of the major gripes I got with it. But otherwise, portage is pretty spiffy.

The only thing Gentoo's portage has over *BSD's ports is the better updating mechanism. Portupgrade under freebsd just blows chunks, and not just because yet another script interpreter (ruby) needs to be installed. It croaks a lot when dependancies somehow shift (because you compiled new versions of something). Which lieves you with the dreaded pkgdb -F which sometimes leaves you guessing. I think the FreeBSD ports system could learn something from the NetBSD port system which has a make update target.

But that's just my personal opinion on both systems. They are both nice, but the FreeBSD ports system comes out on top wrt flexibility.

Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry if I sound like a troll (I'm just adding my two cents), but Gentoo seems to have the best of both the FreeBSD and GNU/Linux worlds. I get the increased app compatibility of GNU/Linux with a great ports system.

Nah, you don't sound like a troll, just uninformed.

Portage isn't better. Its different. Its also smaller (2,000 ports as listed on gentoo.org vs 8,000 as listed on freebsd.org and not as up to date and other such things.

As for App compatibility; gentoo doesn't use redhat, redhat libraries/versions of libraries, or RPM that 99% of "commercial" linux apps use. FreeBSD does, FreeBSD includes RedHat 7.mumble for its linux binary compatibilty. Loki Games, before they went under, testified to this fact by saying that it was easier to support Linux running on FreeBSD than it was to support straigh Linux. Why? Because of issues like you are runing gentoo that uses X, and someone else is running Debian, etc. If you want ports, and linux compatibility, and speed, and stability.. well its called FreeBSD and its here, come and drink the kool-aid!

Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me.

[Moridineas]

From my own experience my company uses FreeBSD. Yahoo uses FreeBSD. pair.com one of the bigger hosting providers uses FreeBSD. mp3.com uses FreeBSD. Hotmail used to use FreeBSD, I'm not sure if they still do. (after it was bought by MS that is). ftp.cdrom.com uses FreeBSD. I'm sure there are more, and this isn't even getting into the internal server rooms of companies, hard to say there. FreeBSD is definitely a proven platform, it's not fair to lump it as "ISP's only".

If you had to look at all the linux servers running on the internet today (and discounting personal boxes) I would bet you the VAST majority are running none of those applications you mention. That's one of the reasons that MS and the commercial unixes still hold a sway--running those apps. You do raise a good point--oracle on FreeBSD (for example) is not a viable solution. But I'm not at all convinced that Linux is beating out the BSD's the way you think.

I would be REALLY curious to see how many linux and bsd boxes are running what you call a little "utility" box (and I'll throw in fileservers too). I would bet that that is the big domain of linux and bsd alike.

Re:Someone explain this about BSD/Linux to me.

[Huge Pi Removal]

As I understand it, one of the reasons Linux took off so fast in the early 90s was that people were frightened of the whole IP/patents thing surrounding 4.4BSD Lite. Later on, the copyright (whatever) issues were resolved, but by then the damage had been done and Linux had gained a lot of recognition/popularity. *

So I reckon that early adopters of FreeBSD would have had to struggle to persuade management that it was worth using, and that it wasn't a dead-end platform.

BTW, I use FreeBSD in all my servers at our small place of work (except where I have to use OS X server). Personally, I love it. But maybe that's because we *do* use all of the ftp/sendmail/apache stuff the above poster mentioned, and none of the crap the next one mentioned :)

* Someone correct me if I'm spouting BS.

Re:Supported Applications

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, you stating that the FreeBSD team moving to streamline their installer brings one question to my mind: has their been any debate and/or decision made in regards to the, er, "desktop position" of the FreeBSD project?

I mean, have they decided to concentrate on making the best server OS, period, they can make -- or have they decided to create a "one size fits all" OS that can be a pretty darn desktop *and* a pretty darn server OS?

Have they decided to make it a goal to make the project's output more "desktop friendly", like what has happened generally with Linux?

This is not a troll. I was using FreeBSD way back when as my "desktop" *nix until I needed something that was just available for Linux at the time and switched horses (around RH 5.0). At the time, the installers of the various Linux distros were not that different from 'BSD (ok, maybe except Debian, IIRC) and Linux was as much "desktop friendly" as 'BSD was. But things have changed (Caldera Open Linux 2.2 in '99, etc.) since. Even though I had a bit louch touch/contact with FreeBSD since my switch, I still had a soft spot for it. I've been wondering recently how they were considering The Desktop these days and if they made (substantial (sp?)) changes to their installer.

Anyone care to light up my lantern? Thanks.

Re:Native jdk 1.4 hopefully

[Kwikymart]

Well, the native patchset for 1.4 for developers is available. There are no legal troubles afaik, but it just takes time to port.

will OS X be updated with this?

[Tumbleweed]

Anyone know if Apple plans on updating their FreeBSD-based bits with this anytime soon?

Probably too soon for 10.3 to be based on this, but maybe 10.4?

FreeBSD Sells Itself

[SuperDuG]

BSD IS DEAD!!!

Just ask ... yahoo ... netcraft ... and slew of other servers that rely on BSD. If you want a server and you want the best bang for the buck, freebsd is the best price out there. (free)

For all the trolls who say BSD isn't GPL, well duh, BSD is in itself a license. Sometimes you just gotta wonder. If linux was so wonderful then why would apple choose BSD for OS X and not linux? It's more than just the license, BSD is a very nice OS that is wonderfully stable.

Rule of Thumb, if it works in linux it will more than likely work in freebsd, and vice versa, well that is until you try to compile a kernel not of that OS :-) ... try it before you bash it.

Don't fret about the BSD dying trolls...

[CoolVibe]

They probably wouldn't recognise a truly living and actively developed Operating System Environment if it gnawed one of their legs off and slapped them in the face with it.

I use BSD everywhere. I sneak it into places where I work and impress the locals with it. And then it ends up in the server room. FreeBSD world domination! muhahahaha

Oh, and I never got fired for installing BSD somewhere :)

perl out of base system

[Anonymous Coward]

Glad to see Perl has been given the axe in the base system. Now I won't have to have two Perl installs all the time (the base + the port).

Now if they could only do the same for Sendmail, BIND, and other junk.

Maybe I'm just more comfortable with systems like Red Hat where *everything* is in a package, but it seems silly to have this 3rd-party stuff in the base, especially if many people use the ports version anyway.

Re:Gentoo gentoo gentoo

[gomerbud]

Maybe i'll do gentoo again in the future, but definitely not now. Yes, it does do ports, but the ports tools are far from complete and almost useless. You can install a port using the portage tool 'emerge', but once it is installed there is no way to manage your installed ports. FreeBSD has a good variety of package management frontends. The pkg_* tools let you manipulate binary packages. The ports tree is based off of make files which makes versioning a bit of a pain, but there are tools that exist like 'portupgrade' which allow you to keep a current package/ports database _WITH_ version info. For some strange reason, there are changes appended to the changelogs of each port in gentoo without bumping the patch level of the port. This is insane! Thus it is not impossible, but a royal pain in the ass to keep two machines synced when it comes to package versions.

On to easy updates... A whole bunch of tarballs with patchfiles works for a ports system, but not the base system. FreeBSD keeps the entire base system in CVS. FreeBSD actually has a base system. FreeBSD has multiple branches of development. Maybe gentoo will mature to the point where they make a real base system and do real release engineering, but it currently isnt the OS of choice for me.

Also, because the development cycle of FreeBSD is significantly more sane than that of the Linux kernel and the base system/toolchain which never has and never will exist in one master repository, nVidia's drivers work on the -CURRENT development branch of FreeBSD from which this developers preview was taken. Change one line in one file, and they build flawlessly (or at least they can, hopefully on this developer's preview too). The drivers even register properly with devfs.

Do yourself a favor and try FreeBSD, then you can check the FreeBSD mailling list archive if something is broken, instead of searching for a fix with google. It'll save you hours.

Compared to Debian?

[LittleLebowskiUrbanA]

I understand every BSD user's complaints about Redhat/Mandrake and the rpm package mess but how does Debian and apt-get compare? I figure that w/ the design philosophy and package system Debian has, it's quite comparable to all of the benefits of BSD. After installing Debian, I'm not ruled by my Linux box, I have time to do other things. Rock solid, secure (enough for me), and easy to update and install packages. Anyway, I'm still a newbie and ask newbie questions.

Kernel Threads!

[PizzaFace]

Kernel threads are going to mean more than any other feature to FreeBSD 5. Benchmark performance may not increase that much because of kernel threads, but they'll allow many applications to be ported to FreeBSD. Now, a lot of programs that run on Linux, Solaris, and Windows, can't be ported to FreeBSD because of its inferior threading. Thread-intensive languages (most notoriously, Java) and database servers should be much more comfortable on FreeBSD 5, after it shakes down.