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FreeBSD 5.0 RC3 Now Ready

Posted by Hemos on from the go-out-and-get-it dept.

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!"

46 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. Look it moved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    So it can't be completely dead!

  2. You know... by sofo · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...saying *BSD is dead is dead.

  3. UDF Support by vasqzr · · Score: 3, Interesting



    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.

  4. Re:*BSD Vs. Linux by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

  5. Excellent System by martinmcc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Excellent System by marvin · · Score: 4, Interesting

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

    2. Re:Excellent System by Tyler+Eaves · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      --
      TODO: Something witty here...
    3. Re:Excellent System by Wylfing · · Score: 5, Interesting
      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).

      --
      Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
    4. Re:Excellent System by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 3, Insightful
      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.

    5. Re:Excellent System by SILIZIUMM · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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 ?

    6. Re:Excellent System by Darth+RadaR · · Score: 3, Interesting
      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.

      --
      /*drunk.. fix later*/
    7. Re:Excellent System by gyratedotorg · · Score: 3, Funny

      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).

      --
      Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
    8. Re:Excellent System by MattBurke · · Score: 3, Informative

      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

    9. Re:Excellent System by jonbelson · · Score: 3, Informative

      >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

    10. Re:Excellent System by Bishop · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

    11. Re:Excellent System by Zeio · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.]

      --
      Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
  6. Great! by Tyler+Eaves · · Score: 3, Informative

    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!

    --
    TODO: Something witty here...
  7. FreeBSD Install Process by indyracing · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:FreeBSD Install Process by lactose99 · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

      --
      Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
  8. Java integration just rocks! by Spotless+Tiger · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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?

    --
    Racists should be sent back to where they came from
    1. Re:Java integration just rocks! by jandrese · · Score: 5, Funny
      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.
      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
    2. Re:Java integration just rocks! by jayed_99 · · Score: 5, Funny
      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*

  9. Re:*BSD Vs. Linux by Test+Drive · · Score: 5, Informative
    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.

  10. Who says that? by koinu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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)

    1. Re:Who says that? by TheGreek · · Score: 3, Informative

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

  11. RCs seem to be immune to slashdotting ! by skrowl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --

    Prevent linux based DDOS's!
    http://linux.denialofservice.org/
  12. Watch out. SCO might sue you! by Newer+Guy · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:Watch out. SCO might sue you! by elbuddha · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  13. Darn! by leomekenkamp · · Score: 5, Funny

    My prediction is one day off...

    Can anyone recommend a display cleaner?

    --
    Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
    1. Re:Darn! by shlong · · Score: 3, Funny

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

      --
      Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
  14. Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades? by Tyler+Eaves · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    TODO: Something witty here...
  15. Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades? by MalHavoc · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  16. Re:A more elegant means to acquire upgrades? by koinu · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  17. I feel like such an old fogey by AssFace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    (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.

    --

    There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
    1. Re:I feel like such an old fogey by Moridineas · · Score: 3, Informative

      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.

  18. Re:*BSD Vs. Linux by big_groo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  19. Re:You can't fool us by Strog · · Score: 3, Funny

    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"

  20. 5.0 Chicken or Egg Conundrum by FrandGunk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Sig em Duke !
  21. Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE? by swb · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE? by Geekboy(Wizard) · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yea, super easy.

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

      (Check UPDATING for more precise instructions.)

    2. Re:Upgrade path from 4.x-STABLE to 5.X-STABLE? by BasharTeg · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  22. I love FreeBSD to death, but... by Hu+Phlung+Pu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...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.

    1. Re:I love FreeBSD to death, but... by FrandGunk · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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

      --
      Sig em Duke !
  23. No One Expects the SCO Inquisition... oh nevermind by Nick+Driver · · Score: 4, Funny

    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)

  24. Wait for Stable by Azoth's+Revenge · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  25. Re:The only thing keeping me back (warning: woes) by adolf · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    Kid-proof tablet..