FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 Now Ready

Dan writes "Scott Long announces that FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 has been released and available at all mirrors sites. Release notes can be viewed here, you can download 5.0 RC3 from ftp.freebsd.org or from one of your favorite mirror sites. Many thanks to the FreeBSD Release Engineering team for their work efforts!"

Comments

Look it moved

[Anonymous Coward]

So it can't be completely dead!

Re:Look it moved

[Anonymous Coward]

uh.. you're aware that they plan releases long in advance, right? its not a "HEY WE NEED GEEK POINTS FROM THE SLASHDOT CROWD LETS MAKE A RELEASE!@#$!%" situation.

oh wait, i mean LINUX RAWKS.

Re:Look it moved

[adamofgreyskull]

Quick someone pick up that strange-looking pointy stick and give it a poke...

Re:Look it moved

[stevey]

No he didn't. That was you pushing the cage.

Re:Look it moved

[spencerogden]

CART MASTER:
'Ere. He says he's not dead!
CUSTOMER:
Yes, he is.
DEAD PERSON:
I'm not!
CART MASTER:
He isn't?
CUSTOMER:
Well, he will be soon. He's very ill.
DEAD PERSON:
I'm getting better!
CUSTOMER:
No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in a moment.

credit to http://bau2.uibk.ac.at/sg/python/Scripts/HolyGrail /grail.htm

Re:Look it moved

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi,

What's up! Just wanted to thank you for reminding me of the movie I have seen so many times since I was 10 years old (I'm now 29).

Seriously though, this reference is way too overused, especially here. Please, please find something more obscure and clever (and no, quotes from Douglas Adams do not count either).

Peace and Love in 2003

hurra

[Anonymous Coward]

first post

Who cares?

[keesh]

*BSD is dead.

Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

headline should be:

FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 Now Dying

talk about beating a dead horse.

No! Kill it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Who cares if it says it's not dead yet? We have a quota to meet!

*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I've used Linux for a while now, and wonder how it compares to the *BSDs.

So... how does it compare? More / less reliable? Easier to use? Etc?

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

its far more intuitive in the gui, and has better graphics for a start

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Common question, what you will hear:

1. BSD can do everything Linux can do

2. Better server OS though in recent years linux has greatly caught up

3. Not as good on the desktop on Linux

4. FreeBSD ports system is better than anything linux offers

5. Not as good hardware support on FreeBSD as Linux, or games.

6. I think FreeBSD is easier to install(others think I am crazy)

7. Java sucks on FreeBSD

7. BSD is dead

I switched from linux to FreeBSD and prefer FreeBSD so take my comments with a grain of salt.

Since I don;t want to label a linux-haters and watch my karma drop like a rock, I'm posting ac

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

4. FreeBSD ports system is better than anything linux offers

Tried gentoo?

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[MamasGun]

3a.)Some people think that FreeBSD actually performs better on the desktop than Linux. From personal experience, I am in this camp. However, Linux is EASIER on the desktop...it doesn't require the same amount of tweaking that FreeBSD on the desktop does. However, the rewards of all that tweaking are amazing. Also: a non-optimized FreeBSD install can be passed between two machines with disparate equipment without problems. Just did it recently. A HD originally set up on a 733MHz PIII was transfered to a 180MHz Pentium Pro box without bad consequences. However, once you recompile the kernel from Generic, it's a different story...

7a.) You have two entries under "7.)" ;-)

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Test Drive]

FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD are available for you to try out in the HP Test Drive Program. We also have several Linux distributions available for you to try, as well as HP-UX, Tru64 UNIX, and OpenVMS. Personally, I've found the *BSDs to be quite stable and easy to comprehend. Try them out for yourself in Test Drive and see what you think.

I may work for HP, but I don't speak for them.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[The_DOD_player]

Better GUI?

..well both use KDE and Gnome.. Ive seen a couple of both FreeBSD and Linux systems now, and cant really tell the difference between KDE on FreeBSD or Linux.

Most programs installed with ./configure, make, make install will run just fine with *BSD. The major problem with *BSD is the lack of closed source software. In particular Java is a problem.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Strog]

Gentoo looks good but still has a ways to go to catch up to FreeBSD. It will get better as more people work out their ports and the port system. There are more people all the time so maybe it won't be terribly long. I think they will suffer a bit like Mandrake if they stay too much on the bleeding edge of things with the main releases. Mandrake learned to back off a bit on releases and still keep bleeding edge going with Cooker. Gentoo will be good if they realize it and will avoid some of the black eyes Mandrake took before they did.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[gomerbud]

I will never consider using Gentoo again until they bump the ebuild version when a change is made to the ebuild script. This lack of versioning is disgusting and can be the cause of serious problems. Use FreeBSD. They bump the patch version of a port when any change is made to the Makefile.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[tgreiner]

7. Java sucks on FreeBSD

Both Sun Linux JDK 1.3.1 and 1.4.1 run very well under 5.0. I'm using JBoss, ant and a lot of JFC/Swing stuff.

7. BSD is dead

Shouldn't that be '8. BSD is dead' ?

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[big_groo]

6. I think FreeBSD is easier to install(others think I am crazy)

As a relative noob here, I have to say that I've found the exact same thing. I've tried Redhat, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware(fav. linux distro - since 4.0) Caldera and SuSE. After trying all these, I found that the BSD install just makes sense (and talk about your options!!) Kind of like Slackware.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

YHBT, my friend.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Synn]

Here's Gentoo's exact policy on this:


Package revision numbers should be incremented by Gentoo Linux developers when the ebuild has changed to the point where users would want to upgrade. Typically, this is the case when fixes are made to an ebuild that affect the resultant installed files, but the ebuild uses the same source tarball as the previous release. If you make an internal, stylistic change to the ebuild that does not change any of the installed files, then there is no need to bump the revision number. Likewise, if you fix a compilation problem in the ebuild that was affecting some users, there is no need to bump the revision number, since those for whom it worked perfectly would see no benefit in installing a new revision, and those who experienced the problem do not have the package installed (since compilation failed) and thus have no need for the new revision number to force an upgrade.

Gentoo bumps ebuild versions, just not for style changes.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

well, for servers the BSD's and Linux are about the same with a slight edge in performance going to *BSD, but if you want support (paid), you'd best stick with RedHat or even Suse Linux.

On the desktop of course, I wouldn't use *BSD or Linux. Windows 2000/XP and Mac OS X blows them away in terms of hardware compatability and easier to use GUI.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Afrosheen]

Do they give you guys a time machine for the Test Drive program? From the page: "November 25, 2002

We have just added our fourth Itanium I system! This ProLiant DL590/64 is running Mandrake 8.1..."

It'd be difficult just to come up with a copy of 8.1 now. 8.2 has been out forever and a day, and 9.0 hit a few months ago. Is it due to Mandrake having an Itanium release that's based on a really old distro?

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[zootread]

I like both. It just depends on what you want from the OS. I also found FreeBSD easier to install, and generally easier to make configuration changes and install new software. It has that feel that reminds of SunOS/Solaris which is nice.

I am using Debian right now, though because Linux is simply better supported: by the package maintainers as well as hardware/software manuafacturers. I had problems with FreeBSD such as necessary files completely missing from the official ftp sites (example: trying to install Windowmaker). I found XFree86 to run faster on Linux, though this could have been a configuration issue or have more to do with the video drivers.

FreeBSD is completely capable as a desktop OS, I will run it again at some point. For example, running KDE/Gnome under FreeBSD is basically the same experience as under Linux.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[m1chael]

with the eventual arrival of gentoo 1.4 we should be seeing the GRP (gentoo reference platform) which will essentially be a stable 'version' (which basically means thoroughly tested packages are the unmasked ones :P). so it is your choice if you want to bleed or not.

unfortunately for me i dont have a choice. im an update addict...

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[LinuxGeek8]

Yes, I believe that was up till now the first and only Mandrake release for Itanium. They are now working on an IA-64 version, probably of 9.0 or 9.1.
I assume the market just isn't there to make it profitable to release that often.
For ppc they released a 8.2 version, and a 9.1 is in the make, and I assume ppc has a rather big marketshare compared to Itanium and IA-64.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[gomerbud]

Likewise, if you fix a compilation problem in the ebuild that was affecting some users, there is no need to bump the revision number, since those for whom it worked perfectly would see no benefit in installing a new revision, and those who experienced the problem do not have the package installed (since compilation failed) and thus have no need for the new revision number to force an upgrade.

This is not a style issue my friend. I would like to hear someone with a good deal of realease engineering experience comment on this. If its broken for some people, its broken.

It really bothers me when a port on one machine segfaults reguarly and the same port on another machine works just fine because versioning is a mute point on gentoo.

On a FreeBSD box, if i know that port version x.y.z is broken on my box, i'll wait until x.y.z+1 is out and give it a try. On gentoo, i completely ignore the versioning and as i run 'emerge rsync; emerge foo/bar', i pray to the gods that someone has changed the ebuild. And dont even try to tell me that the ChangeLog files are reguarly updated.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Test Drive]

Actually, that is the most recent version of Mandrake Linux for the Itanium. If you look through our previous news, you will also note that we have had Mandrake 9.0 available for quite a while as well - since September, if I recall correctly. The fact that Mandrake 9.0 is their latest release on the x86 platform does not imply the same for other platforms. If you would like to verify the most recent version number of Mandrake for any particular platform, may I suggest you try the news and download pages on their site.

I may work for HP, but I don't speak for them.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Afrosheen]

"I may work for HP, but I don't speak for them."

Actually, you just did. Thanks for the insight. I tried using the Testdrive program around 2 years ago but it was just a disaster online. If it's improved I might take a look again.

Again, thanks for the clues.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why you keep a copy of GENERIC around in /.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[ViVeLaMe]

well, it make senses that both FreeBSD and slackware installs make sense.. Slack is the most BSDish of the linuxes out there :-)
I started using linux with a slack, then tried a couple other distros (redhat, debian, namely) and didn't like those very much... Then tried FreeBSD, and just love it :-)
An OS for engineers, not for political statements. See FreeS/WAN and 1DES support to see what i mean.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[CmdrTHAC0]

Wrong on #4. Gentoo's Portage is quite similar, but with one killer feature: the ability to select a version. Both FreeBSD and Gentoo's latest XFree builds don't work for me, but under Gentoo, I can easily install the official, unpatched XFree86.org release. BSD is just screwed.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[foyle]

5. Not as good hardware support on FreeBSD as Linux, or games.

I don't agree with this. I just spent most of the weekend attempting to install RedHat 8.0 on a hand-me-down server. The server uses an Intel L440GX+ motherboard. RedHat 7.x installers choke on this motherboard. The RedHat 8.0 installer works, but the machine won't finish booting afterwards (Linux of any variety doesn't get along well with the Adaptec AIC-789x built into the motherboard). Maybe it's just me, but this is about the 3rd machine in the past year that I've had serious install issues with Linux. All of them have been older machines that older versions of Linux worked fine on.

It took me about two hours to install FreeBSD 4.7 on it instead. The installer ran fine. The machine booted fine after the install. I like FreeBSD.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

How in the name of fuck is that a troll?

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[tigga]

5. Not as good hardware support on FreeBSD as Linux, or games.

I don't agree with this.

I also have more hardware problems with Linux. Anybody tried to install it onto IDE RAID? The kernel could not see controller...
Basically you have to install it on regular device, recompile kernel, then install it to RAID.. Bleh!

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

I've recently started using FreeBSD for a couple of routers; we're hooking up to a frame relay network, and the telco will only support Cisco-type LMI (which Linux doesn't support.) FreeBSD's netgraph, however, does, so we're experimenting with that instead.

FreeBSD is OK, but there are some problems I've observed; keep in mind that these are only MY OPINIONS AFTER A WEEK. For the most part, I could be entirely wrong about them. If so, I'd appreciate hearing it, (without flames, please.) Note that I had no such problems when I started with Linux.

1. Poor documentation. The docs are pretty thin - the handbook contains SOME information, but doesn't cross-reference any of it (for example, docs on Frame Relay are pretty much nonexistant.) Another example is support for network cards - each router has an ISA network card in it, which FreeBSD should support - but finding out which driver to use was a pain in the ass. I thought maybe the FAQ would help, but nope - all there is is "How do I find out what's supported?" - which has an answer something like "view a particular file"... which basically just said "Yes" (Which doesn't really help me find out which driver to use.)

2. Installs easily (easier than the Linux distros I've tried), but aggrivation occur as so:
- select install types, all that apply (X developer, Kernel developer, desktop, etc...) You select one, then are immediately prompted with "Would you like to install Ports?" - select "NO", then go on to select another install set, and are AGAIN promted if you want to install the Ports.. every time you select (or unselect something) you are asked about Ports.. this is a collossal pain in the ass.

3. Poor support for ISA network cards. You have to recompile your Kernel to the I/O and IRQ settings on the card (in Linux, you just pass parameters to insmod). This is a huge pain in the ass - especially when you want to use a standard kernel, and don't want to put a development environment on each machine. Now, looking at the source for the FreeBSD bootloader, I think it MAY be possible to pass the needed parameters to the kernel at boot time, but I couldn't find any way to do this (which would bring us to point #1, documentation.)

4. Routing isn't as powerful as Linux. BSD routes based solely on destination IP address, whereas Linux's iproute2 gives the ability to select a destination interface based on virtually anything you could imagine (including source or destination port, which process generated the packet, which interface the packet came in on, or the price of tea in China) - this is VERY useful for complex sites.. like "we have a high-bandwidth, high-latency sattelite link, and a lower latency 56K centrex line - have all the high bandwidth stuff, like web surfing, go through the sattelite link, and the latency intensive stuff, like terminal sessions, go through the centrex line.)

Again, the just might be possible to do this with BSD - but if so, I haven't found any documentation on it (again, see point #1)

5. IP firewalling is more flexible under Linux. - FreeBSD's IPFW is very well documented, and very straightforward, but not as powerful as ipchains or iptables, which is almost like a miniature programming language. It also ties in nicely with iproute2.

6. FreeBSD's NAT is done is user space (?). You have to run natd(8) - a userspace program - in order to do NAT in FreeBSD. This would (logically) make Linux's NAT/Masquerading higher performance. (Note, I've not benchmarked FreeBSD's NAT, nor have I examined the source; it's entirely possible FreeBSD's context switches aren't as slow as in Linux. Also, it's possible that FreeBSD's NAT still happens in kernel space, but I would tend to doubt it, as the kernel option to enable NAT is "IPDIVERT", which is used to divert frames to userspace.)

Again, if any of what I've written here is incorrect, please let me know.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[azaze1]

I really wanted to try gentoo for its portage system, but the install process is fundamentally flawed. I have an Asus P4PE with an onboard broadcom gigabit nic... and gentoo does not support this nic, even though it says it supports every nic out there (as it should since it is required to go about installing gentoo). So... I'm unable to progress to whatever stage install requires online connectivity. If only they had a traditional self-contained CD install system like every single other OS as an option.... I could at least get gentoo up and running. Then install the drivers from the Asus cd that came with the motherboard. But until that happens, I have to stick with other distros. I hope FreeBSD supports it too in the future.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Java sucks on every system!

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, you are right on that!

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[__past__]

Is there a native 1.4.1 yet, or do you use the Linux version?

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux

[tgreiner]

Is there a native 1.4.1 yet, or do you use the Linux version?

There is an initial patchset for JDK 1.4 but it is said not to have production quality. I am using the Linux version.

Subway. eat fresh?

[Trolling Stones]

Ok, so I need a new trolling gimmick. Any ideas? It should still revolve around subway, but I need a fresh outlook, fresh like the subway subs, if you will.

You know...

[sofo]

...saying *BSD is dead is dead.

What was that supposed to mean ?

[MrCrimson]

What is this "BSD is dead"-stuff ?
A joke ? :>

UDF Support

[vasqzr]

Finally.

Now I don't have to copy my clients Adaptec DirectCD's to the network on a Windows machine before I can use them.

Why people mail me $3 CDRW's instead of $0.03 CDR's I'll never know.

Re:UDF Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Why people mail me $3 CDRW's instead of $0.03 CDR's I'll never know.

Over the course of a job I was working on - the client sent me 6 Zip disks.

I understand keeping your drive around to read the occasional disk. But to be actively sending out stuff on $10 media is crazy.

They're not expecting them back either - but what do I want with them?

Re:UDF Support

[vasqzr]

They're not expecting them back either - but what do I want with them?

eBay, my friend. eBay.

You'll get a couple bucks for them. Beer+Pizza money.

On the other hand, one of our marketing droids is always asking me to buy 5 packs of Zip 250's when I'm at the store.

What goes around, comes around...

Re:UDF Support

[Anonymous Coward]

Why people mail me $3 CDRW's instead of $0.03 CDR's I'll never know.

You may send them to me if it is too much of an inconvenience.

In Soviet Russia..

[Znonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, BSD is alive.

Re:In Soviet Russia..

[Anonymous Coward]

I is thinkink you are meanink:

In Soviet Russia, *BSD say "You are dyink!"

In one week...

[koinu]

... we can celebrate the FreeBSD-5.0 release.

Yay! Finally! FreeBSD rules!

Re:In one week...

[bsharitt]

I just don't understand why they are doing this. According to several reliable sources right here at Slashdot, BSD is dead. Is my information wrong. So maybe Steven King is still alive too, and hopfully all my arn't belong to them.

Re:In one week...

[SILIZIUMM]

Anyone could explain me why some people like you are alyaws saying that "BSD is dead" ? I just can't understand...

Re:In one week...

[lateral]

It's the 'open source' methodology applied to humour: everybody has to write their own half-baked copy of somebody else's good idea and nobody does anything original.

If only the community would rally around. If we combined our efforts instead of everyone doing there own thing we could make one, truely world-class, *BSD is dying post.

L.

Re:In one week...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know where the first BSD is dying post is?

Re:In one week...

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL!!

I think you just popped my stomach. Oh, man...

Are we sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we sure this isn't just one of those after death body twitches? Sure, the person may be dead but they're still moving!

Jokes aside, I need to give FreeBSD another shot. I liked it when I used it, I just didn't have the time to play around with it.

Excellent System

[martinmcc]

I've just changed my Desktop OS from Mandrake to FreeBSD - I'd been running FreeBSD as my server OS for a few years now and have always been impressed by its stability (NEVER had a crash) and ease of configuration. I was unsure about it as a desktop system since in that I want something that just works without any fuss, and Mandrake seemed to do the job. After 4 hours I had FreeBSD running kde with kdm, my mail/news/browsers, sound etc. all set up and working without any touble at all. All I have left is to get my scroll mouse working and I have everything I need, and I am confident I will have much less problems then with Mandrake (a fair few crashes and awkward to troubleshoot).

I would now recommend FreeBSD as the unix of choice for any purpose, it may not have a fancy graphical install program, but you will really appreciate this simplicity when you come to make changes/ do something a little out of the ordinary.

My OS catagories -

Windows XX - For the clueless masses, and often a neccassary evil (esp. games)
Linux Mandrake - Good when it is good (i.e. installs without a problem and no strange configurations), but a hog to troubleshoot.
FreeBSD - The king of server OS's, and by the look of things a great Desktop system.

Re:Excellent System

[marvin]

FreeBSD is king on uniprocessor server or workstation. Even 5.0 SMP support is too young to be
compared to Linux.

Re:Excellent System

[Tyler Eaves]

Edit in rc.conf:

moused_enable="YES"

moused_flags="-z 4"

moused_port="/dev/psm0"

moused_type="auto"

In your XF86Config:

Section "InputDevice"

Identifier "Mouse0"

Option "Protocol" "auto"

Option "Device" "/dev/sysmouse"

Option "Buttons" "5"

EndSection

That's my setup in 4.7-RELEASE with an MS Optical. Should be generic though.

Re:Excellent System

[Wylfing]

Linux Mandrake - Good when it is good (i.e. installs without a problem and no strange configurations), but a hog to troubleshoot.

This is what keeps Mandrake from being a great OS -- desktop, server, or otherwise. If something doesn't come out of the box from Mandrakesoft, you can pretty much forget about it. I have moved every machine that once had MDK to something more, er, alterable like Debian or FreeBSD (which really shines in the turning-old-machines-into-dedicated-servers department).

Re:Excellent System

[IamTheRealMike]

I would now recommend FreeBSD as the unix of choice for any purpose, it may not have a fancy graphical install program, but you will really appreciate this simplicity when you come to make changes/ do something a little out of the ordinary.

Well no offence but I hope you don't recommend it to newbies. I've had friends tell me Linux was still in the dark ages because it lacked a friendly install program and they couldn't figure out how to configure it. It turned out some smartass had recommended Debian because "it's so cool, everyone uses Debian, and it's free", ignoring the fact that newbies want simplicity perhaps at the expense of reliability.

Re:Excellent System

[essdodson]

It may not be graphical, but after no more than an hour or two I was very comfortable with installing packages. I've not looked back to the package hell that's associated with rpms since.

Re:Excellent System

[BigBir3d]

After 4 hours I had FreeBSD running kde with kdm, my mail/news/browsers, sound etc. all set up and working without any touble at all.

Sadly for you... it takes me about 45min to get to the same spot, but with a working scroll mouse and 802.11b running fine using Mandrake 9.0. This is on a P3 500MHz ThinkPad. If it had taken 4hrs... I would be using something else. And yes, the thing hasn't crashed yet (2 weeks or so of use, don't keep it on all the time being that it is a laptop). When the battery dies, it goes into sleep mode fine, and powers up again running again right where it left off. Overall, a nice experience so far.

Even RH 6.0 didn't take 4hrs on my old Cyrix 300MHz system. And that thing was a royal pain in the ass.

Re:Excellent System

[mrm677]

Windows XX - For the clueless masses, and often a neccassary evil (esp. games)

Or for those who use a computer and don't tinker with them.

These type of comments make you guys look clueless to ordinary people.

I'm not clueless and can handle Linux better than most. I've developed Linux device drivers, built my Linux system from scratch before (ugh), and am a seasoned Unix systems developer in industry. I use Windows 2000 and I like it. Fast, never-ever crashed before, and works with all of my hardware.

Re:Excellent System

[SILIZIUMM]

I am considering myself using FreeBSD on my computer as desktop OS. I am using Mandrake 9.0 right now. After using Linux for a while now, I found that :

- Linux is a real nice OS;
- The *nix system is great (never used *nix before);
- I don't want to have any other MS product, thank you;
- RPMs are making me sick (deps);
- apt-get is really nice, but Debian packages are always outdated (no, I don't want to run Debian unstable..);
- A bit of standartization would be nice (install dirs, etc.). If you install something not for your distrib, it will more likely fail;
- Linux community is great;
- I want to get some latest packages (ie. KDE) instead of compiling them myself;

So my two choices are either :
a) find the Linux distribution that meet my needs (Slack? Gentoo? others ? imputs welcome.);
b) try FreeBSD because it seems to fit my needs (it even has the nVidia drivers, hmmm:) ).

I'll wait until FreeBSD 5.0 Release will be out and I'll try it.

Any others comments on FreeBSD on desktop ?

Re:Excellent System

[eht]

Yeah, i'm not sure what he was doing as it takes me significantly less time than 4 hours to do what he did, including recompiling the kernel, and i'm by no means a master of freebsd, still lots of stuff for me to learn, takes probably about an hour total, maybe he's using something along the lines of a pentium 200 and compiling x from ports instead of using the package.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

"After 4 hours I had FreeBSD running kde ...."

30 minutes after placing the Red Hat 7.3 disk in the computer and hitting the reboot button, EVERYTHING was installed, configured, and running. Why waste the extra 3.5 hours? I think you are clueless.

Re:Excellent System

[Darth RadaR]

I dunno about that. 4.6 works great on some dual processor Dell PE2550 servers and a dual processor Compaq proliant. They're all pretty quick and have some bitchen' uptime. In fact, the last time I rebooted them is when they moved from test to production. (Around 5 months)

OTOH, the other OS being used for similar boxen on the same project is Nutware 5.0 which has the uptime of a mayfly when groupwise is running on it.

Re:Excellent System

[gomerbud]

If he was 1337 enough to do an optimized buildworld thats about two hours already. I just love it when 'rm' is built with '-02 -march=athlon-xp'. Removing files is so much quicker.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

I went through a similar process, 'maturing' in the *nix world. Now I'm an OpenBSD user, and I doubt that'll ever change.
Linux is very stable and clean compared to windows.
FreeBSD (and NetBSD too) is even more stable and clean than Linux (though maybe some distro's approach FreeBSD's level of 'cleanness')
And OpenBSD takes that cleanness and correctness even further, sometimes being paranoid about it, but I like that.
If you like FreeBSD, give OpenBSD a shot. I'm sure you'll like it.
(And now a few dozen of linux users will start trolling that OpenBSD doesn't have . To them I say: You're just using Linux because it's 'l337', not because it's a good OS. Go and use windows, because that best fits your needs)

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

horse crap.

So the best os is the one that installs the quickest? DOS here i come

Re:Excellent System

[gyratedotorg]

Well no offence but I hope you don't recommend it to newbies.

i think freebsd is a better choice for newbies who actually want to learn about unix, and i say this from experience. when i started playing with *nix, i tried linux and freebsd, and i found freebsd to be much more consistant in general. in linux, things tend to vary drastically between distros and versions, but freebsd has pretty much stayed the same over the last few years that ive used it. i've also found the freebsd handbook to be very helpful, since it doesnt become obsolete with every new release (unlike a lot of linux documentation).

Re:Excellent System

[rutledjw]

I was under the impression that while FreeBSD may not effectively utilize as MANY processors as Linux, it was more efficient with the ones it DID utilize.

i.e. BSD doesn't really work well with more than 4 processors, but it has more efficient utilization of the additional processors (~%83 I think) than would Linux (~%75 I think)

I wish I had a link to this doc, it was on another /. discussion a while back...

Re:Excellent System

[carrox]

Yes, FreeBSD is really good as a Desktop system. If you like FreeBSD, Mandrake is propably not the best linux distribution for you, but maybe Slackware. Slackware is the most BSD-like linux distribution. The only thing I miss in Slackware is the ports tree from FreeBSD.

Re:Excellent System

[MattBurke]

my XF86Config for a ps2 microsoft wheelmouse:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse0"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Buttons" "5"
Option "Protocol" "Auto"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Device" "/dev/psm0"
EndSection

no configuration needed elsewhere

Re:Excellent System

[MattBurke]

X/Gnome/E on a dual athlon box seems noticably more responsive than under Linux.

However (and I'm not an expert on this stuff) dnetc runs around 5% slower under FreeBSD than Linux, which in turn is around 3% slower than under WinXP.

I'm on about 4.7-STABLE here...

Re:Excellent System

[martinmcc]

Well I'm quite happy to spend four hours - The reason I moved from Mandrake was becuase I want to know exactly what is going on with the system - so I spend my 4 hours reading the docs and checking out the config files to make sure I know just that. My philosophy is spend the time when you have it (as I did) to save time when you don't (sooner or later I will need to do something out of the ordinary and be in a big rush), but yeah there is no reason why you can't get it all up much quicker if your not to fussed on what is going on (or already know).

Re:Excellent System

[martinmcc]

I'm not 'you guys' I'm Martin, an individual, and I speak for noone but myself. And who are you to speak for 'Ordinary People' as far as I am aware there was no mass movement by the 'Ordinary People' to elect a speaker on their behalf. Why don't you just speak for yourself, and let the 'Ordinary People' (don't know who they are anyway, I've never meet one) speak for themselves.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

"I was under the impression that while FreeBSD may not effectively utilize as MANY processors as Linux, it was more efficient with the ones it DID utilize."

No. In 4.x SMP had what was called the "giant lock". It boils down to not being able to run one given process on more than one processor. The most crude way to perform MP (does work OK though).

However, the advantage of SMP is supposed to be a gain in efficiency by getting N jobs(*) done faster with N processors than would be done with a computer cluster of N boxes of equivalent processors. (*) jobs is meant to be CPU time only here.

In 5.0 SMP support should be a lot better (though not completely finished I believe).

The # of processors that can be used is another matter and I imagine its number scales with code complexity. IIRC 4.x can deal with up to 4 CPUs.

Re:Excellent System

[jonbelson]

>No. In 4.x SMP had what was called the "giant lock". It boils down to not being able to run one given process on more than one processor. The most crude way to perform MP (does work OK though).

Not quite true. The giant lock means that only one process can call a kernel function at any one time.

--Jon

http://www.witchspace.com

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, don't use 5.0 once it is released. There are bound to be come bugs, if you want to try FreeBSD, go with the current stable version (4.7.2 I believe).

I've tried many different linux distros and even if the only difference was the ports system I would still choose freebsd.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

I use FreeBSD 4.7 on my Dell Latitue 600 laptop, works great, KDE didn't like the default DHCP settings though so when swithing networks KDE freaked out. Took a day of troubleshoting before I found the DHCP-DNS setting was the problem.

Re:Excellent System

[Bishop]

While I love OpenBSD and use it daily, it is lacking in the desktop department. Mozilla can be made to run, but it is not in ports. I also found it a little unstable. The Gnome and KDE ports under FreeBSD are more mature. OpenBSD has a smaller development group whose priority is secure well written code, not desktops.

That said I encourage every one to install OpenBSD twice to get a feel for it. OpenBSD is one of the easiest and fastest installs once you have done it 1-2 times. (Most people screw up their first install of OpenBSD.) If I need a generic unix machine (server or workstation) on the test bench I will always grab my OpenBSD CD.

Re:Excellent System

[phoenix_rizzen]

You need the ZAxisMapping option as well in order to get the scroll wheel/button working.

And for those that don't want a mouse at the console, don't start moused, and change the mouse device in XF86Config to point to the mouse device (/dev/psm0, /dev/ums0, /dev/sio0, and so on).

Re:Excellent System

[phoenix_rizzen]

FreeBSD is great, if you are willing to take the time to learn. The man pages are up-to-date and useful, so don't be afraid to use them (you'll definitely want to read the pages in section 7). There are lots of online resources on the FreeBSD website, don't be afraid to use them.

Learn to use the ports tree, and learn to really use it. Read the Porter's Handbook to really understand how it works, it'll save you a lot of time down the road, especially when doing updates.

FreeBSD makes a great system, whether it is a desktop running X Window, or a server running a bunch of services. (I've got 5.0-RC2 running on my laptop, and all I had to tweak was the XF86Config to use the right savage driver -- even hibernate works.)

Jump in, RTFM, and have fun. :)

Re:Excellent System

[satanami69]

You should try LOAF

Linux on a Floppy. Installs in 1.44 MB

Re:Excellent System

[KiwiSurfer]

For moused all you need to do is to change the device line to "/dev/sysmouse". If you plug in a USB mouse FreeBSD will start moused by default, and its also possible to use moused with a PS/2 mouse.

- James

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be fucking joking.

Easy to configure. Oh, really? Where's my control panel, where I can immediately remove/disable drivers, configure which ones are loaded, hell..where are my drivers at all? Where's SoundBlaster Live support? Oh, I have to pay a company to use my sound card. Thanks FreeBSD. Thanks a fucking pantload.

If I were to trash Windows for FreeBSD, just as an example, I would have to throw the following pieces of hardware in the garbage:

1) Scanner
2) Printer
3) Cordless optical mouse
4) MP3 player

There's a few more, totalling up to about $1000 or so. Not supported. None of it. Not even my CD burner is supported by lovely FreeBSD. How is it a good desktop system when I'd have to throw away $1000 worth of investments to do it?

I might add, by the way, that I'm able to use all of the above in Linux, and have to pay nothing for it.

Re:Excellent System

[CoolVibe]

All I have left is to get my scroll mouse working and I have everything I need,

Use mouse type "Auto" in your XF86Config file in your Mouse section and your mousewheel will work. Don't forget to put the ZAxisMapping to "4 5". Oh, do use /dev/sysmouse. It'll play nice with moused in the console that way :)

There, now you have nothing left :)

Re:Excellent System

[Arandir]

Well no offence but I hope you don't recommend it to newbies.

It depends on the newbie. If they're a clueless luser, they won't like FreeBSD, Debian, Slackware, etc. But if they have some technical background, a willingness to actually read the documentation, and the desire to learn the system, then FreeBSD is an excellent recommendation.

The biggest mistake Mandrake is making is assuming that "once a newbie always a newbie." It's a fine system for newbies, but you won't be a newbie forever.

Re:Excellent System

[Arandir]

I've got you beat! I've done a full install of FreeBSD, including KDE, etc, in about twenty to thirty minutes.

But I usually take the full four hours on an *clean* install. Why? Because that how much time it takes to rebuild world, read the release notes, and verify my configuration. I don't know how long it takes to do an upgrade install, because I'm using the system with full productivity while I'm upgrading...

Careless installs are bad installs.

p.s. If you're top priority is how long an OS takes to install, switch to QNX. Five minutes!

Re:Excellent System

[Arandir]

Linux is a real nice OS

So is FreeBSD.

The *nix system is great

There's a not-so-old saying that "Linux is for people who hate Windows, BSD is for people who love UNIX". It's not the truth, and I'm not claiming it is, but for certain tiny sectors of the Linux community, it fits like a glove.

I don't want to have any other MS product, thank you

WINE works under FreeBSD, making your transition out of Microsoftland that much easier.

RPMs are making me sick

I have nothing against RPMs, or any other binary package format. But I have serious worries about the sanity of the packaging teams at certain distros. RPMs can be made to work well, but it's rare to find someone who bothers to make a package right.

apt-get is really nice, but Debian packages are always outdated (no, I don't want to run Debian unstable..)

Then you'll love the ports/packages system. Ports to automatically build from sources, and packages for those that just want ready-to-go binaries. Use cvsup and portupgrade to keep all your software current and stable.

A bit of standartization would be nice (install dirs, etc.). If you install something not for your distrib, it will more likely fail

FreeBSD is a firm believer in standards. The file hiearchy is standard. System calls, userland, libc, etc., all follow the standards as much as possible. Work is ongoing to get full POSIX conformance.

Linux community is great

So is the FreeBSD community. Join the newbies mailing list. It's not for asking questions, its for chatting with other newbies. The questions list is very high volume, but that's where all technical questions need to go. Then check out www.freshports.org and www.freebsddiary.org. Great sites.

I want to get some latest packages (ie. KDE) instead of compiling them myself

Everyone raves about the build-from-source ports system of FreeBSD, but you are free to use precompiled packages instead. Packages are merely ports that have already been built and tarballed for you.

What I like to do is to install the packages of everything I need, then build them again from ports in the background while I work. That way I get the benefits of a quick install AND the benefits of an build optimized and customized for my system.

I'll wait until FreeBSD 5.0 Release will be out and I'll try it.

The old adage to "avoid x.0 releases" holds true here as well. The official word from FreeBSD is for those who don't like taking risks to stay with the 4.x branch until 5.1.

FreeBSD-4.7 works fine and is rock solid. 4.8 should be out soon. You can start with 4.7 and upgrade to later versions painlessly.

Re:Excellent System

[wdr1]

FreeBSD - The king of server OS's, and by the look of things a great Desktop system.

Except for threads?

And if your response is LinuxThreads, if that's what I wanted, why wouldn't I just use Linux?

-Bill

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD's got a much better scheduler. As a result, it will feel more responsive.

For now, Linux will show better throughput in many tasks on SMP machines due to it (Linux) having more finely grained locking in the kernel.

FreeBSD's locking in the kernel is improving rapidly, and by 5.2/5.3 will probably at least match Linux for performance.

Re:Excellent System

[Zeio]

I've actually found cases where the SMP on FreeBSD 4.x was superior to Linux. In order to test Linux's networking performance vs. FreeBSD, I changed a program for an algorithm to just run in the background calculating the Ackermann Function.

Anyways, the base rate was to run two Ackerman's at once, thus causing 100% USER CPU usage on both CPUs. The base rate for FreeBSD 4.62 was 15.5 Ackerman's per time period, vs. Linux's v2.4.18 14.0 during the same time period. Now this isn't a smoking gun, but the hardware was identical, and they were both running on custom compiled thin as possible kernels under the same duress.

Why would anyone do this? Well, my goal was to eat up all USER CPU and see how much I could rob from user with system under severe network abuse. Needless to say, that both OS's did very poorly, with FreeBSD having a clear edge, when the interface was brought to promiscuous mode to listen to a packet flood. FreeBSD degraded less, but in both cases an almost useless amount of CPU was left over for USERland. FreeBSD with RX polling turned on - a feature that practically seems unique to FreeBSD, from the XORP router project. I am aware of polling endeavors in Linux but was never able to get them working. As usual with FreeBSD, 'features' aren't creeping in, so they tend to work. I even changed the polling to work under SMP (it wasn't designed to) and it worked in a situation where it shouldn't have. The usefulness of RX polling cannot be stressed enough, its imperative to consider the live-locking of interrupt driven kernels when dealing with massive amounts of bandwidth. If interested, see: 'Eliminating Receive Livelock in an Interrupt-driven Kernel', USENIX 1996, its amazing to me livelock still happens over 5 years after stuff like this gets presented to the public.

So, how bad is FreeBSD SMP? As far as I was concerned in my test, 2.4 Linux SMP seemed inferior (in my case) to FreeBSD on identical hardware. Are people touting Linux's big bad SMP zealots. Most probably, most good kernel hackers think highly of FreeBSD, particularly the VM. I find it amusing that RedHat is not porting to SPARC or Alpha anymore, and yes FreeBSD 5 is planned stable on IA64, IA32, SPARC64, PowerPC [stable planned a bit later, probably when a real PPC gets offered by IBM - die Motorola PPC, die] and Alpha. Clean code and standards compliance begets portability.

As far as saying "SMP" is better. Linux may have a better approach, but like my example, and I am sure there are others, empirical tests say a whole lot more. It's important to keep the machinery well oiled and coherent, which is something I think FreeBSD does rather nicely. Empirical tests such as mine prove that approach and theory and real life are different.

FreeBSD - it's coherent, well documented, "thin," bloody fast, BSD licensed so call it your own. You can see that well written code goes across architectures; the FreeBSD discipline is allowing them to easily stay stable on several platforms. I have run several tests that suggest that even FreeBSD 4.X is 'better' than Linux at various things, let alone 5.0. The VM subsystem is superior [2.5 is catching up]. Most big companies provide virtual servers with FreeBSD, such as Verio. The biggest irony of all is how small the FreeBSD community is compared to legions of hackers and companies trying to improve Linux. Yet why is Linux fragmented so horribly? You will eventually come to understand why this is the only free and open commercial grade OS there is. You will know what you are missing when you finally get a coherent UNIX. GCC, the C library and the kernel are all a matched set, not of this he said she said GNU-of-the-day distribution crap or fake compilers from RedHat and frozen broken CVS snapshots of the C library [RedHat again, with a fake C-lib on RH8]. FreeBSD is used by Juniper as the core OS, with network processors instead of 'real' network cards. It's beautiful. A full version of FreeBSD, relabeled JuneOS, with an IOS-like CLI for those who need it and superior design and interfaces. The UFS2 filesystem is also incredible. I really, really like XFS for Linux, but the Linux kernel maintainers won't merge it in [to 2.4] but have a myriad of vastly inferior filesystems merged into Linux [ext3 fake journaling, Reiser fsck for fun FS, JFS which is robust but slow]. RedHat's refusal not to embrace XFS with open arms boggles my mind. UFS2 addresses this problem. A fast, robust logging filesystem that is stable and in the kernel. I think UFS2 is a far superior improvement to UFS than was ETX3 to EXT2.

Anyways, I don't think I'll wait for Linux kernel 2.6 or any of the flavors of Linux distributors to come out with something stable, well documented, coherent with UNIX as a standard and each other. Don't be fooled, LSB is a standards base, but you don't get decades of discipline, you get maybe a years worth of un-actualized planning. FreeBSD 5.0 is here. This project needs a better installer, and some 'for workstation use' cleanups, and probably a better package system, although, there are lots of people who like PKG and PORTS much, much better than RPM or DEB. Another annoying omission [and yet another Sun self-screwing maneuver] it that it is difficult to get a JRE/JDK to run natively [1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4 are available as ports] and Sun does not provide one [they are apparently planning one]. People have lots of luck though using the Linux binary emulator, FreeBSD can run everything Linux does in binary form and it's easier to port to. Another good reason to develop for FreeBSD is this: Linux has /usr/include/linux. That in and of itself is a reason not to start there for development work. World, see a more beautiful future, one which was paved with the golden road made of FreeBSD - Certainly FreeBSD has a place, and in my opinion it clearly deprecates Linux in some situations. Particularly if you need to have a nice server box stay up forever or stay GPL-virus-free. [this said affectionately, I like the GPL, but you may not be able to afford giving your intellectual property to the world but would like to contribute in some way nevertheless. If it's a non-novel concept, the "community" will just implement it out of need/demand, if it's too difficult for the hackers to trivially add, then it might just be worth calling intellectual property.]

Re:Excellent System

[Shanep]

p.s. If you're top priority is how long an OS takes to install, switch to QNX. Five minutes!

I typically install OpenBSD in minutes. If I'm doing a local network install and using the whole of a fast smallish disk, it's less than 2 minutes.

People have serious problems if they hold install time as a high priority.

Re:Excellent System

[Shanep]

I also found it a little unstable.

Using OpenBSD since 2.5, and now as a desktop system with a lovely WindowMaker setup... I've got to know what instabilities you've found. I can only make it crash if I blindly play with custom kernels.

???

Re:Excellent System

[Mithy]

It took me an entire weekend, but then again I rebuilt everything from source with "-O2 -march=athlon-xp". When "everything" includes the base system and kernel, GNOME, OpenOffice and Mozilla, this can take a while. :)

Re:Excellent System

[Bishop]

I found Mozilla a little unstable. I have not had any problems with useing or compiling Mozilla under Linux.

I have never found the core OpenBSD system to be unstable. I don't recall any problems with any of the official OpenBSD ports either.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

Native jdk1.3 applets seem to work pretty well, although it's not the most reliable thing in the world. jdk1.4 compiles as well I hear. Hotspot is another thing they've been chasing after.

Re:Excellent System

[Shanep]

Sorry Bishop, my mistake.

Moz certainly has issues with OpenBSD.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

> - apt-get is really nice, but Debian packages are always outdated (no, I don't want to run Debian unstable..);

3rd choice: Debian testing ("Sarge"). Packages are current, yet have been pounded on by the bleeding-edgers for at least a few weeks before they migrate from unstable to testing (packages won't migrate until they have no critical bugs logged against them).

Re:Excellent System

[snak0rific]

you cannot make such conclusions on a sample of one. it's been proven other wise in production use. post your code and we'll try to add to your samples.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

Now this isn't a smoking gun

Learn to fucking read. He disclaimed making declarations by his presentation of his rhetoric - which I rather much enjoyed.

I am so fucking sick of Linux zealotry, and I get pissed off seeing it. I know for a fact FreeBSD is better for most server applications I have ever had to provide. RedHat is laughably maintained.

He doesn't have to post code shit. Write you own ackermann program and convince yourself you're right. Even if a FreeBSD user shows people Linux sucks for reasons XYZ you animals always come up with some bullshit. BUT YOU FUCKS WILL NEVER CONVINCE the experienced operators and systems maintainers. Your fucking pissy, girlish fag Linux and GNU virus will sit there and percolate, bubble and froth. We will be busy working FUCKER.

God damn little negative bitch. Go fuck with your toys. I'll stick to Solaris and FreeBSD, you can fuckin play with Samba and Windows and Linux, fucker.

FUCKER.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

moused also converts mouse event into /dev/sysmouse, so X Window can open /dev/sysmouse, X window can co-exists with moused without problem.

Re:Excellent System

[Anonymous Coward]

*thumbs up*

Best thread I've read in a while! :D

*eagerly awaiting FreeBSD 5.1*

FUCKER! :D

Re:Excellent System

[bcc123]

Nice to know I'm not alone :)

Still a few gotchas

[TheCrazyFinn]

There's still a few gotchas in this one. Wait for the Release if you need stability.

Barring any nasty bugs, 5.0-Release may show up this week.

Re:Still a few gotchas

[gomerbud]

Or you could read their Early Adopter's Guide and wait until 5.1-RELEASE or 5.2-RELEASE as suggested if stability is an issue.

Re:Still a few gotchas

[shlong]

What are the gotchas? Should I put something on the release TODO list? Very little is changing from RC3 to 5.0R, so I'd like to know if you have actual information here.

Re:Still a few gotchas

[TheCrazyFinn]

if_awi.ko not laoding, and the fdisk issues are the two that come to mind. I doubt the fdisk problem is on the TODO for Release, since it's minor.

The required configuration of IPv6 name resolution is rather annoying as well.

Re:Still a few gotchas

[geniusj]

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.0R/todo.html

Cheers,
-JD-

Re:Still a few gotchas

[shlong]

Thanks for the feedback. We are looking at this right now.

Re:Still a few gotchas

[__past__]

No. If you need stability, don't wait for the release of 5.0, wait until the -STABLE branch tracks 5.

Even if I didn't have any problems with 5.0RC2 and it's predecessors yet (I'm a porter, so I need both -STABLE and -CURRENT boxes to test on), on a production server, don't switch until the releng team tells you to. You are unlikely to depend on the new features in 5, so play it safe and don't touch a running system except for the usual fixes.

bsd better then linux??????

[Spellbinder]

is it better as desktop os???
if(bsd > linux){ cout why; }

Re:bsd better then linux??????

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux dweebs don't know their C++ from their bungholes.

Great!

[Tyler Eaves]

Really looking to 5.0-RELEASE, which is getting quite close now. FreeBSD really is a nice OS> I'd really encourage all linux users to give it a try!

Re:No! Kill it!

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a Monty Python reference? "I feel happy! I feel happy -- PLONK"

Insider scoop: Why FreeBSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

The End of FreeBSD

[ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]

When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.

Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.

FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.

It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best.
Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.

So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.

I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.

From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.

There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.

Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.

Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?

To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.

To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It's when you get distracted by the politickers that they sideline you. The tireless work that you perform keeping the system clean and building is what provides the platform for the obsessives and the prima donnas to have their moments in the sun. In the end, we need you all; in order to go forwards we must first avoid going backwards.

To the paranoid conspiracy theorists - yes, I work for Apple too. No, my resignation wasn't on Steve's direct orders, or in any way related to work I'm doing, may do, may not do, or indeed what was in the tea I had at lunchtime today. It's about real problems that the project faces, real problems that the project has brought upon itself. You can't escape them by inventing excuses about outside influence, the problem stems from within.

To the politically obsessed - give it a break, if you can. No, the project isn't a lemonade stand anymore, but it's not a world-spanning corporate juggernaut either and some of the more grandiose visions going around are in need of a solid dose of reality. Keep it simple, stupid.

To the grandstanders, the prima donnas, and anyone that thinks that they can hold the project to ransom for their own agenda - give it a break, if you can. When the current core were elected, we took a conscious stand against vigorous sanctions, and some of you have exploited that. A new core is going to have to decide whether to repeat this mistake or get tough. I hope they learn from our errors.

I started work on FreeBSD because it was fun. If I'm going to continue, it has to be fun again. There are things I still feel obligated to do, and with any luck I'll find the time to meet those obligations.

However I don't feel an obligation to get involved in the political mess the project is in right now. I tried, I burnt out. I don't feel that my efforts were worthwhile. So I won't be standing for election, I won't be shouting from the sidelines, and I probably won't vote in the next round of ballots.

You could say I'm packing up my toys. I'm not going home just yet, but I'm not going to play unless you can work out how to make the project somewhere fun to be again.

= Mike

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. -- Theodore Roosevelt

Correction to the correction?

[adamofgreyskull]

"Flogging a dead horse"?

Dr. Laura and my cock

[Anonymous Coward]

Mmm... this morning I woke up with an erection and for some reason felt an overpowering desire to sink my mighty penis inside Dr. Laura's hot, moist and homophobic cunt with a one swift stroke and to hear her whimper both in pleasure and pain.

I am a bit ashamed of it, but before getting up I actually masturbated thinking of Dr. Laura.

Re:Dr. Laura and my cock

[Anonymous Coward]

you sick fuck....oh well i suppose it coulda been worse....coulda been dreaming of slashdot mods

Re:Dr. Laura and my cock

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Or yet another bitch extraordinaire, namely Ann Coulter. She's at least good looking.

Re:Dr. Laura and my cock

[DoctorPepper]

I don't know, she doesn't seem to have very much meat on her bones. She looks rather like a stick.

Debian

[koinu]

Debian is dead. It's not moving at all.
We are getting one release in 2 years.

FreeBSD has released 4.7 on October 10th, so they are moving very fast, in my opinion.

Re:Debian

[m1chael]

something that is stable, and that which is dead are 2 different things, unless it is dead stable.

Re:Debian

[Penguinoflight]

You may want to note that Freebsd beats all the Linux records for stability. I'm not a BSD troll, but lets welcome 5.0 ok?

FreeBSD Install Process

[indyracing]

I have used FreeBSD in past and like it, but have usually chosen Red Hat because in my opinion it is a lot easier to install and get configured. Hopefully they have improved on this for 5.0. Has anyone who has tried the RC noticed any changes in this arena?

Re:FreeBSD Install Process

[lactose99]

The installer is very similar to that of 4.7, which is probably not as easy to setup as RedHat is. FreeBSD still requires you to know a bit about what hardware is installed, and how you want the system to function (disk partitioning, package installation, user creation, X setup are all still a manual process within the installer).

That being said, I still find it quite easy to install and it works great on newer hardware (FINALLY!! CardBus and ACPI support). Besides, I still think the ports tree is perhaps the easiest and most complete package management system around, light-years ahead of RPM.

Re:FreeBSD Install Process

[indyracing]

Glad to hear that about the hardware support. I usually had to look for some custom drivers or buy new hardware just to get FreeBSD support. Looks like it may be time to give it another shot!

Re:FreeBSD Install Process

[Arandir]

chosen Red Hat because in my opinion it is a lot easier to install and get configured.

How often are you installing and configuration Redhat that this has become your overriding priority? With FreeBSD you install and configure once, then when a new release comes out you upgrade painlessly. If you are in charge of multiple machines you can upgrade them remotely.

You can't fool us

[R.Caley]

Since /. didn't announce it prematurely, it can't be for real.

Re:You can't fool us

[Strog]

This is the premature announcement. Please wait for the following before trying to download.

"FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 NOT ready yet. Sorry."

"I'm downloading FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 now, wait, this is really RC2"

"FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 finally released"

Re:You can't fool us

[R.Caley]

Of course, I got two email notifications of this reply...

Java integration just rocks!

[Spotless Tiger]

From the changelog:

1/10/2003: Integrated Java VM into kernel and replaced /usr/bin and /bin with keithw's java byte-code versions. Platform independence, here we come!

This is great news, although as I understand it, this doesn't mean Java itself is integrated, just the byte-code JVM part of the thing. /bin/sh, for example, uses BSD type calls, but it's compiled Java byte code (using jgcc) rather than i386 code.

And this is great because it's a start on making binary formats less of an issue. Sure, there's always going to be those who want the fastest versions of, say, "rm", but for the rest of us, being able to compile something on one system and then just move it across anywhere will help tremendously.

Does anyone know if the OpenBSD and NetBSD projects are doing anything similar?

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Now THAT is innovation.

Damn. Now I can't say anymore that open source projects do not innovate (and I am not being sarcastic).

If we only could have GUI integrated to the kernel...

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[stef0x77]

Ha ha! What's with the moderators today? Ummm, can you say "troll"?

Where are you getting your (dis)information? Provide links or don't start rumors.

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[jmallett]

Above should be moderated Funny, not Informative.

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[DoctorPepper]

If we only could have GUI integrated to the kernel...

We'd be running Windows, you dummy!

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[ostiguy]

I would strongly bet against openbsd ever putting java in the base system, as I am 99.9% certain it won't ever come near their open and free requirements.

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[jandrese]

You forgot to include the second bullet point:

• 1/10/2003: Dropped floppy based installer for CD only approach to accomodate the extra 55MB of compressed kernel needed for boot.
• 1/10/2003: Upped minimum requirements from a 386 with 5MB of ram to a Pentium II-400 with 64MB of ram, 128MB of ram if you want to run X.
• 1/10/2003: Upped minimum reccomended size of root partition to 1 GB to fit new kernel and associated files
• 1/10/2003: Redirected FreeBSD download page to Sun's site. Users wishing to download FreeBSD will need to click through badly worded and or hidden links on 5 different pages, sign up twice, and click through at least three liceneses, then do it all again for the patch set.

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[jayed_99]

Damn! I missed that commit message! Thanks for pointing it out!

It must have come fast on the heels of the following commit message that so enthralled me:
From the changelog:
"1/10/2003: Replaced our TCP/IP stack with one licensed from Microsoft. Work continues on porting over the Linux virtual memory management system. "

No wonder I missed it.

*grumbles at the trolls -- even the funny ones*

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[krishy]

What exactly does this mean?. Can someone provide some 'informative' links for this?.

take care there..

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Man, don't snip the commit messages like that. You trimmed the change over to ext3 for the fs.

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

An elaborate troll. You have way too much free time on your hands, friend.

Let me direct you all to the FreeBSD Java Project webpage.

Re:Java integration just rocks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it between that one and the one where ext3 was adopted as the default file system.

FreeBSD project has matured

[Anonymous Coward]

has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics

In other words, the project has matured and begun to turn into a real software engineering project.

Maybe there is still hope. Maybe BSD is not dying afterall, but just transforming into a more professional product.

Who says that?

[koinu]

Your reliable sources are not so reliable, it seems. FreeBSD is not dead and never was, because it has much which other Unixes/Linuxes don't offer.

I hope you know that Mac OS-X is based on a modified FreeBSD kernel. I like FreeBSD and I am using it as a desktop system. I don't need Linux, because it's emulated here ("emulation" means "emulation which works", not like Wine or stuff like that)

Re:Who says that?

[gomerbud]

I hope you know that Mac OS-X is based on a modified FreeBSD kernel.

Mac OS X uses the FreeBSD userland. The kernel is Mach with a BSD API layer on top of it.

Re:Who says that?

[TheGreek]

No. The kernel is xnu. With both Mach and BSD symbols. In one memory space.

Re:Who says that?

[axxackall]

No. The kernel is xnu.

You mean xnu as in Xnu's Not Unix?

Re:Who says that?

[be-fan]

Um, isn't that what he just said? A Mach kernel with BSD layer on top?

Re:Who says that?

[TheGreek]

No. Mach and BSD are not in a on-top/below relationship in xnu. They are peers. Do not be distracted by the fact that it's called /mach_kernel. It's all one binary, and it has both BSD and Mach symbols.

Re:Who says that?

[be-fan]

It is one binary, but there is most definately a top/below relationship. The whole "dual-kernel" is just Apple marketing. The BSD layer provides user level services using the core functionality present in the Mach kernel.

RCs seem to be immune to slashdotting !

[skrowl]

Unlike full releases, RCs seem to be immune to slashdotting! I'm currently pulling over 200K from a Canadian (eh!) FTP mirror site. The day of the last full release, you were lucky to pull over 5 K from ANYWHERE.

Re:RCs seem to be immune to slashdotting !

[TheCrazyFinn]

Umm, ftp.ca.freebsd.org is a CNAME to ftp.freebsd.org

There currently isn't a Canadian Mirror for FreeBSD.

Re:RCs seem to be immune to slashdotting !

[Afrosheen]

Maybe that's just a clear sign that BSD is dying? Alot less demand than a linux distro announcement would create....

Watch out. SCO might sue you!

[Newer Guy]

After all, you're an OS that runs on a computer. They have a patent for that you know!

Re:Watch out. SCO might sue you!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not an OS, I'm an Anonymous Coward, you can't sue me

Re:Watch out. SCO might sue you!

[elbuddha]

No worries. Any code derived from BSD4.4-Lite (e.g., FreeBSD) is indemnified of any SystemV-related intellectual property claims, as per the settlement between Novell and BSDI/UC-Berkeley of the infamous lawsuit begun by AT&T. This is the same SystemV intellectual property that SCO is waving around.

A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[uncleFester]

If someone is able, please enlighten me...

I'm starting to become a little frustrated with having to download new ISOs every time an update comes around; examples readily springing to mind are deadRat and FreeBSD. I'm trying out all these things to obtain a better Unix/Linux Background.

I also use 2-3 distros that are a more piecemeal download structure: Gentoo, Debian & Slack. Slack, in particular, is what I'm most familiar with. When a change is made to the Slack9 (slack-current) layout I simply pull the CHANGES via rsync and then build my own isos: thus, I'm not overly wasting bandwidth.

Is there a similar process for other distros, notably Mandrake, SuSE, RHat & *BSD? Or do I have to roll my own for this stuff?

Curious,
-fester

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[Tyler Eaves]

Look into doing a make world in FreeBSD. This is s omewhat involved process, but after a few hours of compiling and and building a new kernel, a bit of luck, and a reboot, and you'll be running the release of your choice. This is covered in great detail in the excellent FreeBSD handbook.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[MalHavoc]

What you seek is cvsup:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books /h andbook/synching.html

You create your cvsup config file, and then run the command line cvsup app. It polls a CVS server and downloads the source tree you want into /usr/src, typically. Then you can go about your make buildworld/make buildkernel/make installworld/make installkernel process (documented in /usr/src/UPDATING), and you're golden.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[stratjakt]

I don't even bother with any of that. I start with a Slackware basic install, just to get linux on my machine, then upgrade/install what I need from the source tarballs.

I just set up a machine over the weekend, just installed enough from the slackware disc to get a command prompt, then compiled the latest kernel/mods, samba and squid on my 'compiling' linux machine, then copied over the binaries and configurated them.

I generally use linux in fileserver/router/firewall/proxy types of situations, and have never tried to run it on a desktop. Which would be a big hassle if I wanted to keep a myriad of little apps up to date.

I've no doubt the difficulties/inconsistancies of upgrading the various distributions is a big factor keeping the masses on windows.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[koinu]

If you know Gentoo, you should know that FreeBSD is also build from sources.

Check the FreeBSD Handbook section 21 about how to keeping the system up-to-date (e.g. cvsup). The "make world"-approach works fine and resolves all troubles by merging your existing configuration files with new configuration files (mergemaster).
Many people write their own scripts to control the compilation/merging process.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[ahertz]

Sure, FreeBSD makes it easy to do an upgrade. You have to compile everything from source, but that only takes a few hours.

For more information, check out Chapter 21 of the FreeBSD Handbook.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[The Droek]

WRT FreeBSD, read Chapter 21 of the Handbook.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you don't want to "make world" you can always download the two floppy images (or the 2.88MB one and burn it to CD which is what I usually do if I want an install media), boot off it, run sysinstall and do a binary upgrade through the network.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

`man release`.

Make it yourself. Details for OpenBSD, and FreeBSD. (I don't use NetBSD, but I assume it is there as well)

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few hours? Depends on h/w of course. On a modern machine with good disk system my buildworlds are between 20 and 25 minutes (uni-processors, # of disks varies however, putting /usr/obj on a separate drive helps a lot). A kernel build is under five minutes. The final mergemaster step depends on how lately I've updated, a few minutes on average.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[uncleFester]

to whoever labelled this flamebait.. this is NOT flamebait. I'm simply toying with how to install things and don't (yet) know the answers. So pull your head out of your ass.

This post is flamebait. :)

-fester (no '(x) is better here' crap; everything has its positives)

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[Blackknight]

RTFHB.

You can do a binary upgrade or a CVSup and Make World.

run /stand/sysinstall and choose Upgrade.

Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades?

[binarie]

um... all I upgrade in linux, is the kernel (usualy compile my own from kernel.org) and sometimes few new packages that are released every now and then. I don't understand what do you need a new CD/ISO everytime?

Darn!

[leomekenkamp]

My prediction is one day off...

Can anyone recommend a display cleaner?

Re:Darn!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, two days off. Daemon News had a news item posted on the 12th.

Re:Darn!

[shlong]

Hey, you look like a good candidate for the release engineering team!
:-)

Yeah, sure it is

[Anonymous Coward]

Like I'm going to fall for this a second time.

Stephan Hawking, dead at 58

[Anonymous Coward]

I just heard the sad news on the interweb superhighway, reviled parapalygic adulterer and gangsta rapper Stephen "M.C." Hawking was found dead in his Cambridge crib early this morning. Funkmaster Hawking apparently died due to multiple gunshots to the head. His assistant is being held by Scotland Yard for questioning.

You may not have understood the deep cosmological significance of "A Brief History of Rhyme", but there is not denying his crucial role in the establishment of gangsta cosmology. Truly a geniusly depraved English pervert, he will be missed.

Re:Stephan Hawking, dead at 58

[Anonymous Coward]

That was funny until you got to the "Truly a geniusly depraved English pervert" part.

I believe you have the esteemed (MC) Stephen Hawking confused with Pete Townsend.

"Doomsday, get my gun"

- meta.chris, down with entropy

YOU FAIL IT

[Anonymous Coward]

N0 FP 4 J00. U R A L4M3R!!

if_awi.ko not found ?

[rainer_d]

Hi,

I can't boot my laptop with the RC2 and RC3 floppies, because it claims it cannot find said module.
The install hangs at this point.
(in a late stage of probing, after having found the network-card etc.)

4.7 runs OK.

Re:if_awi.ko not found ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please enter it with send-pr or the web-based bug-reporting tool on FreeBSD.org!

I feel like such an old fogey

[AssFace]

(however one spells "fogey")

I can recall my days in college where I would always install the newest, latest and greatest stuff on my pc and then learn it and think I was cool... well, I don't know if I ever thought I was cool.

but nowadays I'm constantly just thinking "why should I upgrade? this stuff works just fine for me the way it is now!"

I think it is because I'm more business minded now and the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality has an effect on costs in that world.

after reading through what is new in FreeBSD 5, I see no reason for me to change. it looks like things that I don't have much need for in my world.
4.whatever works just dandy for me.

Re:I feel like such an old fogey

[Anonymous Coward]

Um, yeah. Your name "AssFace" is correct.

Re:I feel like such an old fogey

[Moridineas]

I agree with you for most of your post..the upgrade cycle can get painful at times.

On a personal note, on my desktop computer I've gotten much better sound/video performance on current than stable--I don't know why, but that's a big thing for me.

On the server side, Samba ACL's are the big thing..can't wait to upgrade the servers for that (probably will wait until at least 5.2 or more).

Also it's nice to have devfs and the new RCng boot system (from NetBSD) imho.

Re:I feel like such an old fogey

[Anonymous Coward]

Once it hits 5.3-5.5 or so, there'll be a reason, hence it can't hurt to help testing now (though this release is specifically *not* suggested for production).

Re:I feel like such an old fogey

[Anonymous Coward]

The answer is in your original post: you haven't changed, the distros have. It's no longer necessary to ride the bleeding edge in order to get the functionality you need. This is good.

Why do people always choose "Expert-Installation"?

[koinu]

If you ARE NOT an expert, don't touch the "Custom installation"! People often cannot admit that they are newbies when configuring a system. Please choose "Standard" or at least read the FreeBSD Handbook. You NEED the FreeBSD Handbook, because it's a great document.

Use simple installation (default) and the installation is very easy. The installer mostly suggest correct settings and you don't need to do much except pressing .

The installation of 5.0-RC2 is almost equal to 4.7-stable. In my opinion the installation phase is not meant to have a complete system after it finishes. It is only for having a basic environment for adapting everything. Almost everyone will want to recompile the kernel and install further software from the ports collection.

Expecting the Weekly Linux-BSD Inquisition

[n9fzx]

Before posting yet another Linux-is-ghod rant, why not consider this: We are all so lucky to have more than one freeware Unix to choose from. That choice provides the needed competition to force both variants to improve in meaningful ways.

Without that competition, Unix would eventually stagnate. Or worse, innovation would be driven into the same kind of useless creeping featurism we've come to expect from the folks in Redmond.

FreeBSD's threading and MySQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

So does MySQL under 5.0-RC3 use native threading and are those threads efficient enough that large shops can move back from Linux to FreeBSD on their MySQL servers? We use FreeBSD almost exclusively except for on our multi-CPU SMP MySQL database servers where FreeBSD just couldn't deliver due to threading inefficiencies. We would LOVE to move back to FreeBSD since systems maintenance is very easy and it would also mean having a uniform OS on all our servers.

Re:FreeBSD's threading and MySQL?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not sure the next generation KSE threading architecture (which should be a lot better than Linux threading) is ready for the 5.0 release. Search for "FreeBSD KSE" and you may find some clues.

I think this can teach everyone a valuable lesson

[plazman30]

No open source project is dead as long as there is ONE hacker out there willing to hack on it. Everyone has been screaming FreeBSD is dead for a long time now and guess what? Here comes 5.0. The success of an open source project is not measure by it's use, but by whether or not someone is still willing to hack on it.

Re:*BSD Vs. Ninnle Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Comparison tests show that Ninnle Linux is more stable, more configurable, more user friendly than any of the other Linux distros, and definitely better than any of the BSDs. Try Ninnle today!

FreeBSD and the KDE startup times.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to reinstall my OS the next week, and am chosing between FreeBSD and Linux. I've run Linux for a while and would like to try out FreeBSD. However, my machine is a bit old (P2/400 256 ram) and so the startup speeds of KDE applications are important to me.

In Linux, KDE startup speeds have been improved recently with gcc 3.x, new ld.so in latest glibc, and the objprelink-stuff. How is FreeBSD doing here? Has similiar things been done to the FreeBSD compiler chain to speed up C++ linking times?

From the har-bloody-har dept

[mentalist23]

Wooo, imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things!

Depends where you're coming from.

[Anonymous Coward]

I always found Debian a bit obtuse, but mostly per the old, now-deprecated package manager it chose to dump you into on install.

The distros that emphasize what you call 'simplicity' seem to work okay for users who expect a full XPerience, but to someone like myself, coming from small, customizable systems like DOS and AmigaOS, I couldn't wrap my head around 900 preinstalled entries in /usr/bin ("and why do I have /usr/local/bin, and why is it empty?").

What finally got me flying with *NIX was an install of OpenBSD; Slack, Gentoo or Sourcemage would probably have worked as well, if they'd existed in modern form at that time. [Of course, in retrospect, OpenBSD is still a bit crufty with BIND and Apache by default, but it was a good start, and I now know when to use each of Free, Net, and Open.]

I should also note I'm one of those weird ones who finds BSD kernel config files much more intelligible than (2.2's, admittedly) menuconfig... that's an even more subjective matter than arguing inits, but when you're a noob praying for hardware support, it makes or breaks you. [This was in the bad old days, when Debian's stable kernel hadn't heard of generic Tulip-based NICs, and FreeBSD hadn't either. I stuck with OS/2 for another dozen months, then put FreeBSD 3.5 on a 486 with a 14.4 modem (no LAN!), and evolved from there.

Re:Depends where you're coming from.

[debrain]

("and why do I have /usr/local/bin, and why is it empty?").

See:

/usr/local

cheers & hth
bmh

5.0 Chicken or Egg Conundrum

[FrandGunk]

FreeBSD 5.0 is as important a milestone
as ever seen in the *NIX world. Many new
features and core technologies are
incorporated in this release.

The main problems with this release will be
caused by the "Chicken or Egg Conundrum",
in that the release will spur many new 5.0
users, whose input will come "after" the
pre-release testing process, finding bugs
that are not apparent in the release candidate
series due to limited testing on the incredibly
varied hardware and software systems found
in the "wild".

This is not a FreeBSD specific problem, this is
a reflection of the reality of a volunteer based
project with limited resources.

The incredible speed that FreeBSD developers,
contributers, and users update and solve
problems is amazing. Just check the mail
list archives for *many* examples of this!

IMHO many of the best and brightest minds in
the *NIX world have gravitated to the BSD's
stability and more structured development
model. For younger readers a "structured"
development model may seem to be a turn off,
but a few years of real world experience
will certainly temper this argument.

Thanks and Best Wishes to the BSD community,
and when the dust settles FreeBSD 5.X will
be the standard others are compared to.

How about the low-latency

[Anonymous Coward]

How about the low-latency (kernel preemption) patch that exists for Linux? How does FreeBSD compare with that? Already have good low latency?

Re:How about the low-latency

[Anonymous Coward]

*BSD is preemptable, so it didn't need the patch.

The only thing keeping me back (warning: woes)

[mnmn]

... is driver support. I run my entire home network (12 hosts) on token-ring, but was forced to switch to redhat due to a buggy oltr (OC3140) driver. Beside this, FreeBSD never had another token-ring driver.

Even Linux has its own problems, not counting TX packets and lots of Soft errors on heavy traffic pausing sometimes for upto 10 sec. This is a bummer for online games.

It seems I'll be further forced to use Solaris x86 which naturally has drivers MADE by the madge/olicom people themselves. I dont yet know the quiality of their SNAT code, neet testing. Then again, I run a website on PHP/MYSQL on the same server (one ip ), and theres no PHP for Solaris. Adding GNU GCC and compiling PHP isnt a very tested solution and I'll have trouble there, but gotta try that before switching.

Would have been nice to have ONE real token-ring driver for FreeBSD. I miss its simplicity and standard on Linux, but am discovering so many new networking features on Linux its mind-boggling.

Hardware companies should release a standard driver code (based on XML) that can be translated to C for the platform and natively compiled. Token-ring equipment isnt bad for its price, but only the VERY proprietary OSes get drivers from hardware OEMs. Companies like SUN just sit back while the driver list grows (stability is also the manufacturers problem). *BSD and Linux have to rely on the developer community which is increasingly getting splintered between Linux distros and BSD flavors.

Re:The only thing keeping me back (warning: woes)

[JumpSuit Boy]

Why in dogs name are you still using Token-ring. For 25-30 bucks at any computer supplus store could get enough stuff to convert to 10baseT atleast. There is a reason that there are no drivers for Token-ring no one uses it any more. The shear flexiblity of setup wins over token instantly.

Re:The only thing keeping me back (warning: woes)

[adolf]

I feel like I'm stating the obvious, but:

Why are you still running token ring?

Cat5 is way cheap. Even good 10/100 ethernet adapters are less than $20. Hubs, switches, and other connection hardware sells for approximately one dime per dozen. And the drivers, generally speaking, don't suck; I've been throwing random ethernet adapters at both Linux and FreeBSD for years, and have never had a driver issue. (YMMV.)

Over at compgeeks.com, a week or two ago, I noticed they were selling a kit with crimpers, strippers, a bag of ends, and a 1000' box of Cat5 for ~$45.

At these prices, which I realize are non-zero, you can probably afford to pull extra pairs for telephone or video at the same time. There's no shortage of applications which directly use Cat5, and baluns are available for most of the rest (probably token ring, too).

This makes for good infrastructure for the home, and would probably help quite a bit with resale value.

And yet, I'm sure you know all of this already. So I'll ask again, because I'm really quite curious: Why are you still running token ring? If it's that cool, I might want to look into it myself...

If you really want to run FreeBSD and the driver support is too horrible to use (due to the problems you state), just set up a Linux box to route IP between the two networks. This'll give you infinite time to transition the rest of the network (or not), while remaining OS-agnostic and allowing you to plug in any of the myraid of Ethernet-equipped devices available today. Minimum hardware required: Two ethernet adapters, one crossover cable. Total investment of less than $10, if you don't mind buying used hardware and are willing to do some legwork.

Re:The only thing keeping me back (warning: woes)

[mnmn]

OK heres why I still use token ring:

(1) Ethernet is below $20. TR is $2. And I mean PCI cards made in 1998.

(2) TR hubs (16 ports) are $14 CDN. Same switch for ethernet 10baseT is at least $50.

(3) Its a better technology. Handles packets by tokens rather than ad-hoc random timer transmit. On larger networks, measure the latency (networks with heavy netbios elections all the time) and you'll see a BIT of a difference.

(4) Most TR cards do most of their processing on a huge chip on the card. Equivalent ethernet cards are the Dlink 550tx and 3Com 590, but you might end up with lousy ones that offload processing to the CPU.

(5) Even an HP JetDirect TR card was $14CDN last time I checked (used).

(6) Because its cool and you can add it to your resume. I have TR, Ethernet, 802.11a/b, Fibre, arcnet and X.25 cards. Looking for more.

(7) Because I already have a huge pile of them, and the thrown away pentium1 systems I pick up arent worth buying fancy ethernets for.

(8) Because I can brag about it on slashdot.

Now give it a think. Cost should be the single biggest factor. And BTW they take CAT5.

Re:The only thing keeping me back (warning: woes)

[tyrnight]

I see his point.. TR is MUCH better at Packet throughput.. i.e a 16mb TR will tear the hell out of a 100mb tcp network in speed..
I think its just the fact that its bulky and clumbsy looking that made it a turn off..

other than that it would have made great strides in the networking world.. minus the HUGE hubs.

Re:The only thing keeping me back (warning: woes)

[Anonymous Coward]

That, and back in the bad old days, it was IBM's proprietary baby (part of the triple threat of PS/2, MCA, and TokenRing), and was an order of magnitude more expensive than equivalent Ethernet hardware. And the Ring architecture was awkward and expensive to work with.

Re:Why do people always choose "Expert-Installatio

[Anonymous Coward]

...mostly because the non-expert installation has been fairly broken at times, says the user who was allowed to choose both KDE and Gnome, and then noticed X was configured for neither. [Not that you shouldn't be able to install both KDE and Gnome, of course, but there's really no RHAT-like integration, and you just get left confused as to what packages actually got installed.]

I'd argue that users *should* be doing expert installations, and should expect to do at least 10 of them in the first year of learning. After that, there should be enough clue gained to produce the result desired.

--

Hopefully libh will lead to a less braindead installer sometime in the next 12-24 months.

Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE?

[swb]

Will there be a reasonable upgrade path from 4.X-STABLE to the 5.X STABLE branch, when it becomes available?

There was from 3.x->4.x, although it may have stretched some people's idea of reasonable. I pulled it off without problems on two boxes, although both were soon replaced with new hardware and fresh installs of 4.x.

Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't, unfortunetly. Please read the Changelog/Release Notes. A complete reinstall is recommended.

Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE?

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

Yea, super easy.

make buildworld
make buildkernel
make installkernel
rm -r /usr/include/c++
make installworld
mergemaster
reboot

(Check UPDATING for more precise instructions.)

Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE?

[BasharTeg]

For the love of God, sir, how could you do this? I had finally forgotten the brutal turmoil that was 3.4 to 4.0. Some old wounds should simply not be reopened. As far as I am concerned, major version number upgrade program = newfs.

Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE?

[MattBurke]

except you spend hours in mergemaster... much easier and quicker to take tarballs of configs/etc and reinstall. saves outdated files being left around too

Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE?

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

How do you propose incorporating your local changes? `mergemaster` is the easiest way.

Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE?

[Groganz]

But first don't forget to edit your CVSup file to

*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_5 (Does it exist yet. Use a "." for current.)

Otherwise you will still be running 4.x

Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE?

[Mithy]

You can use RELENG_5_0 for the time being to track 5.0-RC/RELEASE + errata and security patches, until they get around to creating the RELENG_5 tag.

You forgot the link!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.mchawking.com/ M.C. Hawking for president!!.. :)

I love FreeBSD to death, but...

[Hu Phlung Pu]

...there is no way in hell I'm installing 5.0 on anything important, even though it's going to be a "production" release. 4.8, 4.9 all the way baby.

Why you ask? There's far too much new code for 5.0 to be stable yet. I was using 5.0-CURRENT SMP in November and December of 2001, and was very impressed. Alas, it was running on an IBM DeathStar 75GXP, which died (lol--like the name suggests)...

I unsubscribed from the -current list a month or so later because Matt Dillon (the real one) was being his usual dickheaded self and causing a massive flamewar.

Anyway, I resusbscribed to -current in October cause I knew they had slipped the release date to somewhere around November, January, etc. and I wanted to find out how things were going (i.e. is this good enough that I should install it and have more fun with it). Ooh boy. Since I left, we've added GEOM, GDBE, a new init script system, IPFW2, UFS2, etc. vn has been replaced by md, devfs hasn't gotten any better, and as far as I can tell, they still have background fsck turned on by default, which tends to hose you when the least thing goes wrong with your fs (background fsck was FreeBSD's bitter parting shot to me when my GXP died -- it murdered my filesystem before I had a chance to save my valuable data -- admittedly this was a "for fun" desktop system, but that's typically considered Naughty). On -current today we have a couple people posting about panics. I enjoy the response in this one:

From: phk@freebsd.org (for those who don't know, Poul-Henning Kamp is one of the wisest, most respected, and ancient of all FreeBSD hackers)
Subject: Re: FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 now available

"Roderick van Domburg" writes:

I would like to point to a currently unresolved issue
[snip]
The thread is titled "panic: trap: fast data access mmu miss" and is about an error causing the sym SCSI controller to fail to mount root at best, and panic at worst.

Mr. Henning-Kamp's response:

Well, we all want our pet bug fixed before the release rolls, but at some point we simply have to call it quits and ship the release.
[snip]
In the meantime we _really_ have to ship 5.0-RELEASE, we keep slipping it.

Commentary: I agree, they really need to get 5.0 out the door, and I don't necessarily disagree with phk's opinion. But it does say massive Bad Things(tm) to me about the quality of this software that release engineering is leaving *known panics* in the software cause it is so late and over-schedule!!! Ah, and don't even get me started on not being able to install new boot blocks or run fdisk on a mounted filesystem, crashdumps overwriting people's disklabels, etc. etc.

Another one just came in: "PANIC in tcp_syncache.c sonewconn() line 562" about an easily-reproducible (from user mode) kernel panic. Come on people, this is worse than Windows NT ever was! (well, except the guy who could bluescreen it by printing tabs and backspaces).

So, no thanks to 5.x for me, for now.

Re:I love FreeBSD to death, but...

[FrandGunk]

The error in the sym driver you speak of is on
a SPARC based system, a very small percentage
of the FreeBSD user base. This is not an i386
issue.

Nothing to see here, move along

Re:I love FreeBSD to death, but...

[m0rten]

The tcp_syncache.c sonewconn() panic is supposedly reproducable on 4.7 too.

Re:I love FreeBSD to death, but...

[cpeterso]

The FreeBSD team is not recommending 5.0 to the general public. I have read that they plan to declare 5.1 as the "real" public release. They admit that more testing is needed.

Re:I love FreeBSD to death, but...

[sean23007]

Well, it's still something, but that information is good to know.

Re:I love FreeBSD to death, but...

[Mithy]

True, but fdisk(8) and disklabel(8) are still hosed on 5.0, so I'm keeping my (minimal) 4.7 slice around for a while until it's fixed. Okay, it isn't that important - until you want to do stuff to your disk partitions, then it's _really_ annoying.

No One Expects the SCO Inquisition... oh nevermind

[Nick Driver]

Well since SCO thinks that Linux infinges on their patents and is wanting to charge every Linux user almost $100/CPU fee it's a good thing that FreeBSD is the highly refined, free unix that it is. :-)

(A die-hard FreeBSD user since 1996)

agreed...

[niker]

I don't understand why they modded you "funny"... you really have a point but... I guess it was not understood by them. xoxo's ***

Re:No One Expects the SCO Inquisition... oh neverm

[n9fzx]

Sometimes, visibility is a bad thing... Since some folks just love to harp on the BSD license, this legal plink is an indelicate reminder that anything can be considered a legal loophole. Try to craft the ideal software license, and you'll spend the rest of your life swimming with lawyers instead of productively writing code.

(A die-hard BSD user since 1986)

Logo sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always had an interest in FreeBSD. But as trivial as this sounds, I'll never try it as long as they have that stupid L'il Devil logo.

Re:Logo sucks

[Quill_28]

Actually it is not as trivial as it sounded. Many people right or wrong feel this way, and some folks(myself included) would like it changed.

I think the guy is cute, but it turns folks off.

I doubt it would ever happen.

I do have suggestions if anyone ever wanted to hear them though. :-)

Re:Logo sucks

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

You're not from Texas are you?

I think folks have to remember that the mascot comes from the UNIX daemon, which is a headless process. Someone got cute, and didn't mean anything by it.

Re:Logo sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Gotta love the mainstream press and their hype. You'd think they'd have better things to report on than supposed satanic links. :P

Re:Logo sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh ... a Daemon predates Christian mythology. I believe its
origins are in ancient Greek lore ... Daemons were neither good nor evil toward humans. They were fairly mischeivous creatures but on the
whole were not considered 'evil.'

If we are all being honest in this here thread, I have always felt that
the Daemon keeps ingorant people away from the OS ... all it takes is a
little Google and your misgivings about Devil worship and Freebsd shall be
exorcised: Give your head a shake.

Re:Logo sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh ... a Daemon predates Christian mythology. I believe its
origins are in ancient Greek lore ... Daemons were neither good
nor evil toward humans. They were fairly mischeivous creatures
but on the whole were not considered 'evil.' This leads us to
the nto too distant past when unix had these little headless
processes that on more than one occasion sturred up trouble.

If we are all being honest in this here thread, I have always
felt that the Daemon keeps ingorant people away from the OS ... all
it takes is a little Google and your misgivings about Devil
worship and Freebsd shall be exorcised: Give your head a shake.

Re:Logo sucks

[Donholio two]

You shouldn't take offence to the logo; there's nothing satanic about it. Definition is here Traditionaly a daemon is a helping spirit working in the background for your benefit. This isn't too far a stretch from the saints catholics pray to. In the unix world, a daemon process is a program operating without the knowledge of the user which handles the minutia the user doesn't have the time, interest or skill to administer. Unfortunatly, christians have a history of interpreting anything that is not of God as being satanic and because daemons comes from greek mythology, they have been interpreted as satans minions. The logo is simply an unfortunate blend of the idea of a daemon with a face that is easily recognisable. Sorry, no prince of darkness here, only Greeks!

Re:Logo sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

The Christians are just pissed off that now daemons serve men instead of men serving Daemon^H^H^H^H^H^HGod. Fuck 'em.

Re:Logo sucks

[nutznboltz]

So run the system but don't display the logo.

Can't really see a logo on most of our boxes since they are servers.

Re:Logo sucks

[Arandir]

There's a better way to describe a "daemon". You know that devil and that angel that sit on your shoulder and whisper in your ears, that you see so often in comics? Those are daemons, and that comic image comes straight from ancient Greece.

p.s. I am a Christian. I no of no other Christian that gets upset over Beastie. It isn't satanic, because the Bible (as well as Torah, Koran, Book of Mormon, etc.) does not describe Satan or any demon as having red skin, horns, forked tail and wielding a pitchfork. The image of Beastie is about as representative of satanism as a green warted witch with a broomstick is representative of Wicca. I've heard *one* anecdote about someone getting upset over the image of Beastie. All that proves is that there's at least one idiot somewhere in Texas. But we knew that already, didn't we?

Re:Logo sucks

[Wouter Van Hemel]

You shouldn't take offence to the logo; there's nothing satanic about it. [...] Sorry, no prince of darkness here, only Greeks!

I can't understand this needs to be explained to an *adult*. This is hilarious. :)

Re:Logo sucks

[Scott Lockwood]

• This isn't too far a stretch from the saints catholics pray to.

Catholics don't pray to the saints, they pray to god for the intercession of the saints. There is a huge difference.

Net-Install.

[Anonymous Coward]

As everyone's said, cvsup is rsync-based, if you want to build an upgrade.

However, when it comes to binary installs (and binary upgrades), not many people realize how painless it is to do an FTP install. I suggest looking into it; it's much less load on the servers vs. downloading ISOs, since you aren't pulling crap you don't need. You should never need to burn an ISO of FreeBSD unless you have 20 boxes to install (and don't want to run your own private net-install mirror, which is a better idea), or have absolutely zip for bandwidth.

I've net-installed OpenBSD over a 56k link- it's surprisingly unpainful, though you do need a proper LAN to do it- no PPP support on the install floppy, so you need another machine serving as NAT gateway.

Re:Net-Install.

[AtrN]

As everyone's said, cvsup is rsync-based

No they didn't and no it's not. It sends deltas but that's about the end of the similarity.

Re:Net-Install.

[rplacd]

More accurately, cvsup understands rcs files and uses deltas whenever possible. When used to transfer non-rcs files, it uses rsync.
Remember -- it's a mirroring tool that just happens to be optimized for CVS.

NVIDIA graphics card

[rhanneken]

I have a graphics card that uses the NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400 chipset. I gather that XFree86 doesn't support it. There's an official NVIDIA driver for FreeBSD 4.7. Will it work with 5.0? I don't care about 3D graphics.

Re:NVIDIA graphics card

[pclminion]

I have a graphics card that uses the NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400 chipset. I gather that XFree86 doesn't support it.

XFree86 "supports" it, if you mean, it'll work with Nvidia's closed-source driver. Runs fine here...

Sorry, but I just can't get my ideological blood churning over a video driver..

Re:NVIDIA graphics card

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

Not without changes. When 5.0 is released, Nvidia will make the nessasary changes (5 line diff) and let you peeps play.

Re:NVIDIA graphics card

[KiwiSurfer]

My copy of XFree86 from the FreeBSD ports has support for your video card. AFAIK FreeBSD added some patches to the "nv" driver to make it work with the newer drivers.

(II) NV: driver for NVIDIA chipsets: RIVA128, RIVA TNT, RIVA TNT2, RIVA TNT2 Ultra, Vanta, RIVA TNT2 M64, Aladdin TNT2, GeForce 256, GeForce DDR, Quadro, GeForce2 GTS/Pro, GeForce2 Ti, GeForce2 Ultra, Quadro2 Pro, GeForce2 MX/MX 400, GeForce2 MX 100/200, GeForce4 MX 460, GeForce4 MX 440, GeForce4 MX 420, 0x0173, 0x0174, 0x0175, Quadro4 500/550 XGL, Quadro4 200/400 NVS, 0x017B, 0x017C, GeForce2 Integrated, Quadro2 MXR, GeForce2 Go, GeForce3, GeForce3 Ti 200, GeForce3 Ti 500, Quadro DDC, GeForce4 Ti 4600, GeForce4 Ti 4400, GeForce4 Ti 4200, Quadro4 900 XGL, Quadro4 750 XGL, Quadro4 700 XGL

Anyhow, the offical drivers aren't all that good. Some people have problems with it, some don't. I have problems with it, and its not only 3D/OpenGL its also really basic stuffs like VT-switching and sometimes it fucks up in 2D mode. It's a beta driver after all...

- James

Re:NVIDIA graphics card

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the official nvidia driver works fine in 5.0 (even OpenGL works like a charm!).

You'll have to change some things to make the driver compile though; comment some lines in src/nv-freebsd.h that say something like '#if __FreeBSD_version >= 500000 #error This driver does not support FreeBSD 5-/CURRENT!' and include to make it compile.

The real question is the license, not the OS..

[sp!keball]

BSD licensing means releasing your sourcecode into slavery - does anyone think M$ gives a fuck about copyrights, even if they are only asked to >mention it? Like the BSD license asks to do?
The GPL, on the other hand, at least tries to protect the sourcecode it is applied to and has a strong (because large) community behind it.

Use whatever (free as in speech) OS you want, folks, but _please_ don't put your sourcecode under the BSD license!

Re:The real question is the license, not the OS..

[tigga]

Troll, go away!

Re:The real question is the license, not the OS..

[001010011010]

No matter if that's troll-like or not - what about his arguments? Is running away a solution in this case?

Re:The real question is the license, not the OS..

[Anonymous Coward]

His arguments are worthless. Many people, myself included, believe that the BSD license is worthwhile: if you're going to release it, why only release it halfway?

I release my code, allowing everyone to do with it as they want. If companies want to use my code, fine, leave my copyright, sell the rest.

The GPL license is viral in nature, and has no real benefits over the BSD license.

Actually, the 5.0 kernel is written in elisp

[Anonymous Coward]

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 50042807 Jan 28 2001 /bsd.el

Wait for Stable

[Azoth's Revenge]

It seems some people are confusing Stable and Release branches. 5.0 Release will not be a Stable branch according to Release Engineering. The stable branch will emerge around 5.1 or 5.2.
Just something to keep in mind.

No floppy based installer?

[nurb432]

Does this include floppy boot for network installs? ( or those with non booting CDROMS ).

1gb recommended? ack! blows the old mini installs.. quite a lot of wasted space just to run a simple smb server.

Re:No floppy based installer?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, duh.

Re:No floppy based installer?

[(startx)]

ahh, I see you lack a sense of humor my son

Re:*BSD Vs. Ninnle Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope! Check this distro ...

http://www.lesbian.mine.nu/

Lesbian GNU/Linux provides more than a pure OS: it comes with more than 10000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.

It comes with a superior package management system called porn-get...

Mandrake = URPMI

[ShavenYak]

With Mandrake, you can use 'urpmi' to upgrade your system over the net. For example, if you want to upgrade your 9.0 system to Cooker (the 9.1 development version), just add it to your urpmi configuration with
urpmi.addmedia --distrib Cooker ftp://somemirror.com/path/to/Mandrake-devel/cooker /i586/

Then, do
urpmi --media Cooker --auto-select
and you're done. Well, almost done. Urpmi won't update the kernel automatically, you'll need to do an 'urpmi kernel' to get the new kernel installed.

Re:*BSD Vs. Ninnle Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

WOW! This sounds even better than Ninnle! I've always wanted to be a lesbian...if I could only get rid of this penis...men's bodies are soooo ugly! Where do you download it?

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

Now when'll linux die?

***what the f*** is going on there

[Anonymous Coward]

This thing was supposed to be dead already :-)

For Mac Users (from an idiot)

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people on /. consider mac users idiots... that's fine with me - I don't really mind... I can compile my own apps, but have no desire to modify my kernel...

I have been looking longingly at the progress that FreeBSD has made in the past year - and hope that 5.0 becomes the basis for the next Darwin release...

This comment is purely (mac)userland-selfish.... but I think it refelcts nicely on the technology and abilities of the FreeBSD team...

Way to go!

I Better Tell My Friend Right Away

[Anonymous Coward]

He's one of the 25 active BSD users in the *ENTIRE UNIVERSE*.

Viva Linux!

Re:I Better Tell My Friend Right Away

[Anonymous Coward]

> He's one of the 25 active BSD users in the >*ENTIRE UNIVERSE*.
>
>Viva Linux!

If that be the case...

Viva Windows?

shut up troll...

Re:I Better Tell My Friend Right Away

[Anonymous Coward]

i just get amazed how they find this spots on the web...

came on, is bsd.slashdot.org linked already on IE by default?

Audigy support?

[azaze1]

The only thing preventing me from going back to freebsd as my primary *nix based OS is lack of support for my sound card, an SB Audigy Gamer. Does anyone know if/when they plan on supporting the Audigy?

Re:Audigy support?

[Anonymous Coward]

These guys make some drivers http://www.opensound.com/. I have an audigy platinum and it works on 4.7 fine with those drivers

is nvidia support already on rc3? :/

[Anonymous Coward]

is nvidia support already on rc3?
i think ill keep 4.7 and wait a little more... :P

screen01urt.jpg
theallseeingeye_1.png
screen01ut2k3.png

freebsd preembible kernel?

[nnd]

anyone know if freebsd's kernel has some equivalent to the linux preemptible kernel patch?

Re:freebsd preembible kernel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since 3.x, RTFM

Re:A Quicker Way To Upgrade...

[Arandir]

Here's a quicker way to upgrade from what other people are suggesting:

Run /stand/sysinstall as normal. In the options screen, change the release name as appropriate (like to 4.8-RELEASE, etc). Then do a ftp install for the base system, and configure->packages for other stuff. This only works for RELEASE, not -current or -stable.

Simple.

Removable media mounting?

[salimma]

I tried FreeBSD 4.7 for a while - still have it installed actually - and could not get around the problem of user-mountable removable media.

I suppose I could suid the relevant binaries (mount.iso9660 AFAIR), but is there a cleaner solution?

Thanks...

Re:Removable media mounting?

[Anonymous Coward]

sudo mount /floppy

Any more pathetic posters out there?

Re:Removable media mounting?

[deep13]

set
vfs.usermount=1

in /etc/sysctl.conf

Never crashed

[jbolden]

I'm just going to pick on you because of the never crashed comment. I've had Linux, BSD, OSX, Solaris, SunOS, AIX, OS/2, Win2000, WinNT... all crash on me. The only OSes I've never seen crash are VMS and Z-OS. I use Windows 2000 all the time. It crashes; it crashes a lot less than Win95/98/ME but that's far short of never.

Now I have serious trouble believing you've never had a crash and your everyday workstation box.

Re:Never crashed

[mrm677]

Believe it. Maybe because its a Dell machine. My home-built Athlon machine also runs Win2k but it does indeed crash occasionally (once a month or so). My Dell is a P3 866 MHz. It is used heavily for games, photoshop work, and standard office-type stuff. In my 2 years of having it, it seriously has never ever crashed. Applications yes have crashed. The OS has never froze or blue-screened and gets rebooted only a few times a year (vacations)

I've run Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Solaris and HP-UX. I've seen a Linux kernel panic and a HP-UX panic. I've never seen Solaris or a BSD crash. I'm sure it depends on how hard you stress a machine though.

Re:Never crashed

[jbolden]

Well I own a Dell.

As for Solaris I can tell you two of the crashes, both suprised me.
On one we had a process chew up all of /var and, well the system went down. I was suprised that will bring the system down, I guess (but don't know) having no var left errors that were going to go to the syslog and....
The other was a memory overload. A perl bug which resulted in an entire postscript file (300k pages of output) going through a complex patern match instead of just the file's first 12 lines. Chewed up all the swap space and crashed the system; again a real shock I would have figured the OS would have stomped on the process before it got that out of hand.

As for BSD I wasn't close enough to the cause of the problem to know the details :-)

Re:Never crashed

[Shanep]

The OS has never froze or blue-screened and gets rebooted only a few times a year (vacations)

I reboot my Windows 2000 Pro machine every day, only because I don't need it on when I'm sleeping. Just today, a potential client called me and I clicked start to open up notepad to jot details down... start would not respond, I could not alt-tab to another instance of notepad that was already running, etc. Luckily I had paper and a texta at hand...

Ctrl-Alt-Del did respond, Netscape was the culprit. What I would like to know, is how a misbehaving Netscape can wreak such havoc in Win2000. You would expect this (and worse) in a Win9x based OS, but not 2000.

PS, the law firm I was last contracting for used Dells exclusively. The Win2k machines did not crash often, but did crash. And I mean blue screens, not explorer.exe freezing.

I hope you're not attributing home built machines as being less stable? Because in my 12 years as PC/network tech, I've had the most trouble with brand names like Dell, Gateway, DEC, NEC, Compaq, etc, etc.

Even high end, expensive server lines have given me grief. The brand names tend to have the most strange quirks.

Re:Never crashed

[Gordonjcp]

I have to say, I've only seen a couple of Linux kernel panics, and that was purely down to stupidity on my part. Something like this...

"Kernel panic: cannot mount root fs"
Hm, pish. Now what? (looks down at PC, spots the open removable drive bay) Ah. I'll get my car keys.

Re:Never crashed

[SuiteSisterMary]

Solaris is a great OS, because it assumes that you know exactly what you're doing, and lets you do it.

Oh, and ensure that your /tmp directory NEVER fills up.

Re:No One Expects the SCO Inquisition... oh neverm

[jbolden]

I wouldn't be so sure. Somebody was speculating things like the patent on the SetUID bit; last I checked BSD had those too.

Cool license plate

[jbolden]

Hey I remember this program from the Compaq days. Two tips (assuming things haven't changed):

a) The servers were rather stripped so you weren't really showing off too much. You need to put some cool stuff on the servers which shows off what they can do. What is the person trying out True-64 going to see that's going to impressive them?

b) After the test drive you guys sent me a VMS license plate one day FEDEX. I appreciated it but a $3 gift that cost $18 to send.... Anyway go with a nice looking Polo shirt and cheaper shipping. IBM did that when I downloaded a .pdf from them and well the shirt gets worn a lot more than the license plate gets used....

Just two friendly pieces of advice (not sure if they still apply or not).

Re:Why do people always choose "Expert-Installatio

[Arandir]

says the user who was allowed to choose both KDE and Gnome, and then noticed X was configured for neither.

Why in the world should XFree86 be "configured" for a specific desktop? There is an option in the installer to choose a default desktop. Why didn't you choose one, instead of expecting FreeBSD to make the decision for you?

Contrary to most Linux distros, FreeBSD ships XFree86, KDE, GNOME, and every other package "as is" straight from their respective projects. The only changes made are platform specific. You don't get Bluecurve, because neither KDE or GNOME ship with Bluecurve.

Re:No One Expects the SCO Inquisition... oh neverm

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but BSD's indemnified from any patent issues arising from SystemV as part of their settlement years ago.

*BSD's safe.

mysql on freebsd 5.0

[alphafoo]

How far along has threading come on FreeBSD 5? MySQL suffers on FreeBSD due to this, and although I have heard promises of better things to come in 5, I haven't heard anything concrete.

What I want

[porkface]

Java really does suck on FreeBSD as of 4.7. I feel like someone who's behind the times by saying I want Java to be great on BSD, but that is my sole wish for FreeBSD 5.

Just the other day I wrote the simplest tool in Java and it crashed the VM. And since I'd settled on the Linux version of the JVM being the best choice, I couldn't exactly submit a bug to anyone.

Re:*BSD Vs. Linux red with vermillion crimson lies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but FreeBSD works.

Don't you even try to fuckin tell me Gentoo Genital-too runs properly. I have tried that piece of shit every release. If you think that shit is better than FreeBSD you are on crack. I'd rather run RedHat 7.1 than deal with that college kid brewed pile of batshit.

And BSD ports, well sheesh, Wally, I've never seen them not work for the shit I need. bash2, ncftp3, wget, portupgrade, cvsup [oh, CVSup, what a wonder FreeBSD inspired thing ], lsof, rsync, sudo, vim.

Funny, and XFree 4.2.1 works perfect in FBSD as I speak. What a fuckin ass. What, you want XFree CVS snapshots to run? Asswipe.

I personally have not seen a release version on a port not work in FreeBSD. You dumb ass.

Re:Look it's alive (and kicking).

[Penguinoflight]

We all already know that Slashdot will be switching to FreeBSD 5.0 as soon as it comes out, which was stated quite a while ago. I will definatly give it a shot, I dont like the way big linux distributions work, and Slackware isn't supported any more. Plus FreeBSD just has a awesome kernel, and the base system is BAD. Put that together with improved drivers, a great tcp/ip stack (hey they invented tcp/ip), and you've got a awesome OS.

You can call me partial, yeah, I have friends that use FreeBSD, but I really think this will be a big release for FreeBSD, and probably separate it from the whole "dead" BSD group.

A-ha!

[salimma]

Thanks :)

32bit Cardbus support

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, they finally got 32bit cardbus support as well. Now i can get rid of that nasty netbsd off my laptop.