Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FreeBSD 5.0-RC1 Now Available

Posted by michael on from the five-candles-on-the-cake dept.

Dan writes "Murray Stokely of FreeBSD release engineering team announces that they're one milestone closer with the immediate availability of FreeBSD first release candidate for the i386, alpha, sparc64, and ia64 platforms. ISO images and FTP installation directories are available now from the FreeBSD FTP site."

9 of 261 comments (clear)

  1. Good enough for production use? by zmcgrew · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I have 4.6 running in our office, never had any problems, but with all the talk of the improvements, I'm tempted to upgrade.

    Is this stuff ready for "prime time?"

    --
    Location: Mt. Xinu
  2. vinum and its replacement? by lyapunov · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Vinum has not been mantained at a high level for some time and I have heard that there is a replacement in 5.0 that emulates the IBM AIX volume manager (which kicks ass in my opinion).

    Any word on this?

    --

    Either give it away or get top dollar, but never sell yourself cheap.
  3. Re:I swirched to FreeBSD... by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Actually, what I've noticed about FreeBSD people is that they are mostly very utilitarian. Ussually they aren't religious about FreeBSD. The ones I know use whatever works to get the job done in whatever fashion they consider to be most appropriate for that specific situation. Sometimes FreeBSD is the best solution, sometimes it is not. I doubt any FreeBSD user would argue against this point.

    Linux users will religiously try to force Linux to do everything even when other options are easier, better, faster, or "more free". Mac users are the same way. Even Windows-Exclusive users are like this at times.

    So in some sense, I suppose you could say the FreeBSD people truely are the least religious. After all, they DO have a little devil as their mascot.

    *VERY EVIL GRIN*

    --

    "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

    Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
  4. Re:Yes... - And well, finally. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As a note to the curious, the Linux compatibility improved "greatly" in the latter half of the 4.x series. It's more likely that one or two simple functions were fixed (I haven't followed closely, and it's been a while), but this means that previously tempermental software- the Amiga/Elate SDK, for one example- now runs flawlessly as of 4.5 or so.

    Loki games should be no problem, not that they were before. ;)

  5. Re:ia64 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ...because both Intel and AMD are quite big on having a running system to test with? ...and Microsoft doesn't much like others modifying their sources? ;)

    Seriously, it's impressive the role that both Linux and *BSD have played in getting IA64 and x86-64 up to speed...

  6. the forgotten smaller machines by MORTAR_COMBAT! · · Score: 4, Interesting

    FreeBSD has grown larger and larger -- back in the 3.x days I could run it easily. The 4.x series have consumed much more memory, even when the kernel is compiled to use the same features. I had heard that one of the 5.x trees goals was to regain some of that "thin" nature which IMHO is one of FreeBSD's biggest draws. Anyone know how that is coming along?

    --
    MORTAR COMBAT!
  7. Re:Mac OS X vs. FreeBSD architecture by Spencerian · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think, between our two comments, lies the truth.

    Apple does use 4.4BSD subsystem elements for 10.2--it says so in their documentation and its man pages are peppered with this reference. The rest of your information does clarify any oversimplifications or other inaccuracies...thanks.

    --
    Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
  8. Urhmmm... by cjsnell · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Actually, I've had no problems with x.0-RELEASEs. We installed 3.0-RELEASE on our machines the day it was released. We were waiting for it because we needed support for our SCSI card. This was before I knew about -SNAPSHOTs. Anyway, we installed it and ended up running it for like two years without a reboot. I remember a few security issues that could be patched while the machine was running but I don't remember any showstopper stability issues or system corruption issues. In fact, in all the releases that I've installed since 2.something-really-low, I don't think I've ever seen an unstable or dangerous -RELEASE.

  9. Re:disk space in base install by driehuis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You're looking at the wrong page, you want PicoBSD.

    I used to have a full development system with BSDI or NetBSD on two 100MB drives, with Xwindows source. Those days are well behind us now.

    I'm not sure I mind, seeing that disk is cheap these days, but the disk footprint of the 5.0 DP2 kernel was just shocking (filling the better part of a 128MB root partition). Now, I realize that is probably because that kernel was built with -g, but it is shocking nonetheless to see that an out of the box kernel takes up more disk space than my entire production systems in the BSDI 0.9.3 era.

    --

    Bert Driehuis -- All I asked was a friggin' rotatin' chair. Throw me a bone here, people.