FreeBSD 5.0 RC2 Almost Ready

essdodson writes "Scott Long of the FreeBSD release engineering team has posted that FreeBSD 5.0 RC2 has been compiled and should be available shortly. Check it out and help make this the best FreeBSD release so far. The updated release schedule lists Jan 17, 2003 as the anticipated release date."

Comments

Jan 17 is the anticipated release date of 5.0

[atrus]

The story body isn't worded very clearly... Jan 17th is the anticipated release date of 5.0, not 5.0RC2

Preemptive Slashdotting

[robbyjo]

... should be available shortly. Check it out ...

This gives a whole new meaning to preemptive Slashdotting.

ahhh nuts

[Morgahastu]

I better retract my email to wired that nominated FreeBSD 5.0 RC2 as the biggest vapourware.

Re:Just in time for Christmas!!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean, Linux is enough like BSD, that FreeBSD is still usable for the average Linux user.

Personally, I think everyone would have been a lot better off if FreeBSD had been adopted as the 'standard' 'unix' rather than linux.

ah well..

say what?

[ldspartan]

Not to join the ranks of the whining /. denizens, but you just announced thate a release candidate is almost ready? Granted its important, but almost doesn't really count, and its not a final release, it just might be.

"Something that might some day be a final release is almost ready!"
"Say what?"

--
Phil

Re:say what?

[softweyr]

Uh, duh, the announcement didn't say it was almost ready, it said it was done. The available shortly part means it was being copied to the ftp mirrors as the post went out. You're really dense about online software, aren't you?

Re:Just in time for Christmas!!

[jon787]

I would be the happiest man alive if debian would use the FreeBSD kernel.

They're working on it

In related news, Duke Nukem Forever...

[Blaede]

...is almost done as well, we think. All that's left to do is the art, programming and game design.

Re:I vote FBSD 5.0 as the best vaporware in 2002

[PFAK]

It's only been delayed 3 months, how is that a vaporware? At least the FreeBSD core team makes sure they have a quality release before they actually release it to the public, unlike other Operating Systems..

cylinder limit

[guile*fr]

wonder if they worked out the 1024 cylinder limit.
it's a big show stopper for me

Re:cylinder limit

[shamilton]

man boot0cfg

-o options
A comma-separated string of any of the following options may be
specified (with ``no'' prepended as necessary):

packet Use the disk packet (BIOS Int 0x13 extensions) interface,
as as opposed to the legacy (CHS) interface, when doing
disk I/O. This allows booting above cylinder 1023, but
requires specific BIOS support. The default is
`nopacket'.

sh

Re:cylinder limit

[MobyTurbo]

Upgrading within 4.x has been pretty smooth

4.x to 5.0 may not be however. This from the 5.0-DP2 release notes "Warning: Binary upgrades to FreeBSD 5.0-DP2 from FreeBSD 4-STABLE are not supported at this time. This may change by the time 5.0 is released."

Yes, but the best way to upgrade if the computer is on the internet and is already running FreeBSD is to CVSup /usr/src, which, with changes documented in the early adopter's guide, and in /usr/src/UPDATE after the CVSup, should work fine. (Disclaimer, I haven't tried this myself - but since it's not the "binary upgrade" that is warned against it should work, as long as you *read* the UPDATE file and follow it step by step.)

Re:Just in time for Christmas!!

[cymen]

I would be the happiest man alive if debian would use the FreeBSD kernel.

I'd be the happiest man if a decent distribution was put together with the FreeBSD world and the linux kernel. Why would you want the opposite? I guess I can see it, but not really. make world + linux kernel == wahooO!

The real story

[shlong]

I appreciate the submitter's enthusiasm with submitting this article, but it really doesn't come across well. RC2 is available now, though it probably hasn't reached all of the mirrors yet because I jumped the gun with announcing it. And yes, 5.0-RELEASE is scheduled for Jan 17. There will be an RC3 on Jan 10 in order to verify that some last-minute bug fixes don't cause more regressions. Still, I encourage everyone to give it a try and let us know how it works for you.

Difference between FreeBSD and OpenBSD?

[Eric_Cartman_South_P]

What the diff? Is FreeBSD as secure-luvin as OpenBSD? Does FreeBSD also have cryptographic drivers (need PW to access all content on encrypted partition, etc). I'm choosing FreeBSD unless there is some strong crypto that OpenBSD offers that FreeBSd doesn't have.

Yeah, I know, RTFM and spend more time searching on Google... just thought I'd pick your smart brain in addition. Thanks!

Re:Difference between FreeBSD and OpenBSD?

[Clover_Kicker]

What the diff?

FreeBSD installs tcsh as /bin/csh . The others don't.

NetBSD runs on a Cobalt Qube2. The others don't.

OpenBSD can encrypt swap. The others don't.

Re:Just in time for Christmas!!

[MobyTurbo]

I would be the happiest man alive if debian would use the FreeBSD kernel.

Well, as has been pointed out, a very non-release-quality version of Debian has been made for FreeBSD. A somewhat more mature Debian is available for NetBSD. (My guess for their motivation for porting Debian to NetBSD first is that part of their philosophy is to be available on a lot of architectures, like NetBSD.)

Personally I prefer to run *BSD without debianising it, pkgsrc/ports rock, and I consider the NetBSD and FreeBSD package and source tree upgrade utilities slightly superior to apt-get and friends. To each his own I guess. :-)

Re:Just in time for Christmas!!

[Weedhopper]

I'd be the happiest man if a decent distribution was put together with the FreeBSD world and the linux kernel. Why would you want the opposite? I guess I can see it, but not really. make world + linux kernel == wahooO!

Its called gentoo linux.

Re:FreeBSD...GEEBSD....

[MobyTurbo]

Anything that does not work on my laptop truly sucks for me

One of the things 5.0 is supposed to bring is better laptop support.

FreeBSD has interesting History

[Anonymous Coward]

I converted to FreeBSD 3 from RedHat 5 and have not looked back since. It just makes more sense structurally and is more solid than anything I have found on i386. BSD argueably has the most solid TCP/IP stack out there. A few examples:

- F5 BigIP's converted from BSDi to a modified FreeBSD kernel in v4 (microsoft uses these for Windows update)

- Also I had to laugh when I found out F5 inserted the BSD TCP/IP stack in one of their "Red Hat" cache appliances (EdgeFX) for performance resons. :)

- The evil empire also uses FreeBSD for hotmail. You didn't think Winders could hang?

- Nokia/Checkpoint FW1 and IDS sensors run BSD kernels

- Can you folks think of anymore on the resume?
The interesting history is that Bill Joy (went on to help form SUN) was behind the original BSD movement. I heard it used to be called Bills' Software Distro... Wasn't Berkley behind tcp/ip? You folks probably know more of the history than me.

Anyways, I had a crash and burn attempt at 5.0RC2 last night so I'll probably wait for 1/17/03 and get a new box for 5.0 Release.

FYI - looks like RC2 is posted.