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!

You know...

[sofo]

...saying *BSD is dead is dead.

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:*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

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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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]

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

[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

[Shanep]

Sorry Bishop, my mistake.

Moz certainly has issues with OpenBSD.

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!

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.

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!

[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!

[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:*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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

[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.

Darn!

[leomekenkamp]

My prediction is one day off...

Can anyone recommend a display cleaner?

Re:Darn!

[shlong]

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

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.

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: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:*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.

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

[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:*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: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.

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.

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"

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: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.

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. 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

[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?

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.

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)

[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.

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?

[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?

[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.

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: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:You can't fool us

[R.Caley]

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

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...

[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)

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: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:Still a few gotchas

[geniusj]

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

Cheers,
-JD-

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:*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.

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.

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: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: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: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:Still a few gotchas

[shlong]

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

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.

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

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: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.

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...

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:*BSD Vs. Linux

[__past__]

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

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: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 :)

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?