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FreeBSD 4.8 Release Delayed Until Mar 24

Posted by timothy on from the when-it's-ready-it'll-be-ready dept.

Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Murray Stokley indicates in his email that the latest FreeBSD 4.8 release will need to be postponed until March 24 in order to include suggested fixes related to the XFree86 4.3.0 port. After a complete package rebuild, they plan to release FreeBSD 4.8 RC2 first. Murray requests everyone to continue testing the XFree86 4.3.0 port to ensure a quality release."

58 comments

  1. Excellent by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It's nice to see SOMEONE taking the time to do things right. SuSE could learn a thing or two from them. I'm starting to equate them with the American automotive manufacturers of the Linux world.

  2. Stokely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not Stokley and unlike Berkeley

  3. Why so few posts by peripatetic_bum · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I know freebsd is good. I usue it I like it. I also use linux and like it a lot.
    Why is there such a difference in the number of posts when a linux release comes up versus a *BSD release.
    I would like to hear some thoughtful discussion

    --

    Sigs are dangerous coy things

    1. Re:Why so few posts by Ded+Bob · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I prefer to comment when I have something to say that I think would be useful. Most comments on SlashDot are what I would consider to be no-op's (repeats, trolls, yes-men, no-men, blah).

      What could I actually say about the short delay in release: nothing. I understand why, so I am satisfied with the decision. I sent in two fixes just last week for FreeBSD. That is probably where you'll find me. :)

    2. Re:Why so few posts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Simple. Publicity and hype.

    3. Re:Why so few posts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why, because this site does not seem to be BSD friendly. It's irritating reading BSD comments on this site having to put up with all those BSD is dieing crap. Frankly, I do have to admit I find myself coming to this site less and less because it's not worth it. I thought by now Slashdot would of put an end to all those childish post that get posted here but I think it's getting worse. For a better OS news site a suggest www.osnews.com

    4. Re:Why so few posts by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 4, Informative

      A few reasons.

      * Slashdot is a Lnux advocacy site. No problem there, but BSD advocates tend to congregate elsewhere. You want to ask questions to people who may know the answers, not Linux guys saying how it works in Linux.

      * The trolls. Every BSD pot gets the TrollBots going. Kinda funny when the story is only related to BSD (like OpenSSH) but gets irritating.

      * Personality. Though this is flamebait, but there is a fringe element of "Linux is Heaven on earth, all other OSes are blasphemy, BSD goes to Hell" that you tend to find here. Though it is a fringe element, and most BSDers ignore them, it's irritating. Best tool for the job, keep your religion for Sundays or the Sabbath or Ramadan please.

      * Popularity. Just happens that there are more Linux users than FreeBSD. A lot of this was due to the Great Dark Lawsuit, essentially Novell suing FreeBSD for licensing issues. The suit was even though FreeBSD code contained very little AT&T code (3 files I think) it was "tainted" with UNIX ideas. This was Novell being kind of jerkish, because it ignored the whole boost that BSD gave to UNIX. Berkely showed how UNIX violated BSD licensing as well and more egregiously in fact. Eventually, BSD (and FreeBSD) was allowed to continue, they removed the 3 offending files, UNIX code now included the BSD license, and life goes on. But during this time, people didn't want to use FreeBSD because of the uncertainty, and they turned to Linux. In fact, Linux says in the famous Tannenbaum exchange/flamewar that he would have used FreeBSD (or the HURD) if it was available at the time, but it wasn't, so he made Linux, and the world is a better place.

      Kind of ironic; there are a lot of parallels in the Novell/FreeBSD case vs. the SCO (Caldera)/IBM & Linux case. Possibly people will look at FreeBSD now since they're pretty much free and clear of SCO suing them because of outcome of the Great Dark Lawsuit. I think IBM wil prevail, but if people open their minds a bit and some more folks take a look at FreeBSD the world will be a better place.

    5. Re:Why so few posts by nsayer · · Score: 2, Interesting
      the Great Dark Lawsuit, essentially Novell suing FreeBSD for licensing issues. The suit was even though FreeBSD code contained very little AT&T code (3 files I think) it was "tainted" with UNIX ideas. This was Novell being kind of jerkish,

      The real story is a very interesting one, and anyone interested should do one of two things: Either read the condensed version as one of the chapters of the book Open Sources or go buy a copy of the videotape of Kirk telling the story himself (surely the best $49 I've ever spent on videotape).

  4. Easy answer of why.. by nurb432 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is manily a linux forum.. so us *bsd'ers are at a minority...

    Just the laws of averages..

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  5. 5.0 by Pierre · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I've been thinking of trying FBSD on an empty partition. I was going to install 5.0 but this mention of 4.8 has me a bit confused.

    Is it 4.X the convservative path? Is 5.0 still to new?

    1. Re:5.0 by susehat · · Score: 2, Informative

      yes. 5.0 is still new. It is mainly for your running pleasure. If you need to use FBSD on an enterprise-critical system, then you would want 4.X 5 is a totally new means of doing things, so they don't expect to have all the bugs out until about 5.2

    2. Re:5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      "Is it 4.X the convservative path? Is 5.0 still to new?"

      You've got the right idea. though it has a number of wonderful new features, 5.0 is still "half-baked". It isn't recomended for production use.

      4.8 will be the most recent release of the "stable branch" of FreeBSD development, and will provide a nicer experience and better performance than will 5.0 at this time.

      I'd give 5.x a year before it's as stable as 4.x, and by that time, life will be pretty sweet.

      -Jeremy

    3. Re:5.0 by bluGill · · Score: 4, Informative

      Many FreeBSD folks remember the 3.0 release and don't want to repeat that. In short 3.0 had some serrious flaws that send people who needed the features it had to -current (the development kernels). I personaly installed 3.0, and it didn't last long, I found all the -current kernels (though I didn't install many) more stable than 3.0. 4.0 ended up rushing out the door because many of the fixes were designed with other features of 4.0 in mind and didn't backport easially.

      Your other choice at the time was running 2.2.8, which was extreemly stable, but lacked some nice upgrades that 3.0 had. (USB for instance)

      4.0 essentially became 3.0 stable. So now they are trying to do 5.0 right. 5.0 allows a release that is considered stable, and encourages people up use it, but by doing 4.8 they get some needed updates in the 4.0 series, and provide a reminder that 5.0 isn't stable yet.

      Last, this is open source. If you are still using 2.2 and you feel a 2.2.9 is worth releaseing it might be done - if you can convince those involved that enough people are still using 2.2 to make it useful.

    4. Re:5.0 by skaeight · · Score: 1

      I'm new to *bsd, but I've been using linux for a while now, and I'm strongly considering putting freeBSD on the new computer I'm building instead of linux. I'm a computer science student and I really want to LEARN UNIX, not just point and click my way through the latest Redhat distro. Would you recommend waiting for 4.8 or would it be safe to use 5.0? I guess I'm just wondering if anyone is using 5.0 at all now, or if that's pretty much a no no. Oh and please, don't anyone tell me to RTFHB or see the Early Adopter's Guide. The linux community's willingness to work with newbies is one of the the things that keeps me there....give me a reason to switch :-)

    5. Re:5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you need it to use stick with 4.7 or 4.8 if you want to wait. 5.0 is good, but you'll reduce your headaches by using one of the 4.Xs, unless you want to contribute to the 5.0 release.

      I used both 4.7 stable and 5.0 stable and both worked equally well for me until I rebuilt the kernel in 5.0. The kablooie was likely my fault when I missed something on mergemaster, but I haven't had that problem with 4.7 yet.

      If you have specific BSD questions, try http://www.bsdforums.org.

      I do highly recommend to RTFM. The handbook is very good, and will make your experience much better.

      Don't forget to check out OpenBSD and NetBSD, as well as FreeBSD.

    6. Re:5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      4.8 is indeed the more conservative route. 5.0 offers a new and improved devfs, acpi support, and plenty of "architectural changes" that are still in the works and more of interest to programmers, companies that are planning to deploy the 5.x line in the future, and geeky "powerusers" with no life. The average casual user will probably want to stick with 4.8 for now and await 5.1 or 5.2 with great enthusiasm. As for sound, video, and pick-your-favorite driver support, the -STABLE line (i.e. 4.8) follow that stuff quite closely.

    7. Re:5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know, if you have some unused gigs on your hard drive and some kilowatt hours to waste, you can learn almost as much from breaking a perfectly good BSD or Linux install as building one from scratch :) But FreeBSD sysinstall is nice in that it's pretty enough to not scare people away but sparse enough to create serious bloat problems and flexible enough to let you tinker with things. To do everything on your own, however, requires learning a bit about the FreeBSD partitioning scheme (touched on in sysinstall), disk devices, mknod, the most important files residing in /etc, fdisk, newfs, tar, stuff like that. It helps to be able to recompile the kernel as well. Besides the obvious man pages there's hier, boot, rc.conf, etc. But I'd start with the handbook (on the website) and then "man man" and "man (section) intro".

    8. Re:5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      5.0 is stable for home/dev usage (ie: it never crashed on me). Go ahead, install this one.

      4.7 is the production one. It is true and proved. Use this is you install servers that need 24/365 avaibility. And proven stuff is generally done for 4.x, not 5.x (as nobody runs critical servers with 5.0)

      4.8 is the next release for people that cannot afford to take risk.

      If you go the 4.7 route, after installation, you can choose tracking 4.7 (in which case, you'll have an _extremely_ stable machine, with only security fixes and bug-fixes applied), or you can choose tracking 4, in which case, you will be automatically upgraded to 4.8.

      Do yourself a favor. Try freebsd. It is ruely a solid, professional, document and coherent environment.

    9. Re:5.0 by Beetjebrak · · Score: 5, Informative

      FreeBSD has a very solid and well documented filesystem hierarchy. Also it has a very easy init sequence, which is also well documentented. FreeBSD installs without any bloat, if you want it to.. or it installs with a full working X desktop.. if you want that.

      Another big plus for (Free)BSD is the ports collection. This is a collection of directories that contain scripts from which you can automatically download and compile thousands of applications. By setting options in make.conf you can optimize these ports-builds for your system's processor, making them highly efficient. Much like Gentoo's Portage system on the Linux side of the world.

      For me, the mail "selling" point for FreeBSD is it's rock solid stability. I've had servers fry harddrives and _STILL_ continue to work while actual smoke was coming out of the case. I received an email from my server that there was a hardware failure and that it had stopped the failed drive. I simply swapped out the defective drive. Downtime: 10 minutes (since the drives weren't hot-swappable). In the course of over a year and a half there were probably 10 reboots due to security patches to the kernel and that was it. Before I ran FreeBSD I used SuSE Linux which crashed sometimes, and before that I evaluated Win2K Advanced Server but that had much too high a price tag for me.. and also caused data loss during the 120 days trial. (it was not a beta!)

      Also, please DO read the handbook. It's a very good piece of documentation and gets you started much quicker than the community can. Also, the community will most likely not be very helpful in answering questions that are plain and easy to find in the handbook. The handbook covers everything from filesystem setup and user administration to setting up robust RAID arrays and secure VPN tunnels all using tools from the OS itself.

      I can also reccommend the book "FreeBSD Unleashed" by Michael Urban and Brian Tiemann. It's more or less an extended version of the handbook in printed form. When I bought it, it came with version 4.4 but that's easily upgraded.

      FreeBSD would seem to me the best starting place to learn UNIX because of its very clearly defined procedures and its option to install just the bare-bones minimum, unlike RedHat (which is aimed to replace Win2K on corporate desktops mostly.. I think).

      good luck!

      --
      Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
    10. Re:5.0 by rinsoblue · · Score: 2, Informative

      I have been using 5.0 as a desktop workstation since the day it was released.

      I have never had a problem with it. Everything I have tried has been fine. KDE, sound, graphics, all OK.

      This not mean it can be used as an important server though. I have not tried that.

      Follow the advice of the other replier and you will be in for a pleasant learning experience.

    11. Re:5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was a computer science student and I currently only use Macs and FreeBSD. In some ways, FreeBSD just seems to make more sense (at least to me). It's like you get the feeling that at some point in the process, someone stood back and said, "ok ok, what the fuck are we doing here? let's straighten this out." so you end up with things like a clearly documented init process and the ports tree, which totally kicks ass.

      The downsides are with less people working on it in general, you won't be able to play with toy-ish things as much. No special linux ports of proprietary software are going to come out freebsd, there's no DB2 freebsd port, the support for video and some other multimedia things like TV cards is even worse on freebsd than on linux.

      In general though, for like a useable desktop or a machine to keep in your closet as a firewall/nat/router/mailserver/cvs/fileserver, I think it's a lot easier and saner to use than linux. When I used linux, I always felt like I was just fucking around with things until I got them to sort of work and then I stopped questioning it. With FreeBSD, it's easier to know what you are doing, how to do it, and why it works, without following some length HOWTO (at least, for a retard like me. I'm sure serious linux users have no problems with it. But I used to have a box with both, and freebsd was way easier for me to get my head around.)

      Give it a try, it's hard for me to explain what I mean but I think you'll detect the difference even in installation. Whether you will like this difference I can't say, but I do.

    12. Re:5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I second the notion that you should read the handbook. The FreeBSD handbook is probably the best piece of documentation for an open source project I have ever seen.

    13. Re:5.0 by Groganz · · Score: 1

      the support for video and some other multimedia things like TV cards is even worse on freebsd than on linux.

      The Brooktree TV chipset support is pretty freakin' good IMHO. I have Windows PCs if I want to play games. (Which leads me to add that I find FreeBSD users appear to be less bigotted towards Windows than Linux users in general).

    14. Re:5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you still want to learn UNIX, but enjoy the benefits of better hardware compatibility and the popularity of Linux, you should run Debian.

      It's a much better OS for learning than, say, Redhat. Great help on the mailing lists with very knowledgeable people. Having a nice Debian system working, and learning it, is a great feeling!

  6. hrmmm... by aunchaki · · Score: 1

    This is manily a linux forum.. so us *bsd'ers are at a minority...

    I agree that BSDers (like myself) are in the minority, but I'm not so sure about Slashdot being "mainly a linux forum." Of course, I could be wrong...

    1. Re:hrmmm... by saintlupus · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      I agree that BSDers (like myself) are in the minority, but I'm not so sure about Slashdot being "mainly a linux forum."

      I agree. I don't think there's a whole lot of actual linux users on here -- although I do think there are a lot of kids posting from the Windows XP box that has a long-dormant Red Hat partition on it somewhere.

      --saint

    2. Re:hrmmm... by Openadvocate · · Score: 1

      True, if you look at many of the posts and how they are moderated it seems like it, or maybe it is just a few and all the other is just following the "theme".
      Anyhow, you just need to surf a few gamesite forums(for as long as you can stand it) and then come back here. You get the feeling there is a bit less posters with raging hormones here.

      --
      my sig
  7. This time around... by cperciva · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can we wait until *after* the release before announcing it?

    Remember, that means wait until you get a PGP-signed email from Murray Stokely before you post a story.

    --
    Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
    1. Re:This time around... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would take all the fun out of poking around to see if it was acutually released and unnecessarily pounding the servers.

    2. Re:This time around... by MavEtJu · · Score: 1

      Can we wait until *after* the release before announcing it?

      Naaaah. And the text of this article is wrong too, it should have been "FreeBSD 4.8 will released at March 24th, you can find it at your local mirrors."

      --
      bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
    3. Re:This time around... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Nah, so far the editors have proven to be true jerks on this issue. Murray has emailed them directly asking them to repect the release process. Three times in a row, they have posted an article as soon as the files appear on the main FreeBSD.org ftp server, and before the mirrors have had a chance in he&& of getting it.
      Does the releng team really need to hide the files on the ftp server just because the ./ editors are behaving like little children that want to be first in line?

  8. Re:BSD IS DING! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you sure about point 5?

  9. Re:5.0 -- FreeBSD book by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nice and factual advocacy (sp?). One thing though, IMHO, Greg Lehey's FreeBSD book is really a lot better. I found "Unleashed" rather disappointing. The new 4th edition of Greg's "The complete FreeBSD" will be out in April and should cover 5.0.

    Cheers,

    --Dan

  10. Less bullshit !!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In my opinion, it's just because BSD users generally know what they are talking about vs. a lot of people flaming for whatever reason in the Linux advocacy AND the news are generally telling "don't worry, everything is under control, just wait a few days and it will come out ok" vs. "oh my god you know the last word of Linus about bla bla bla"

    In general, i think that there is a lot of bla bla bla and high fly bullshit on slashdot (I mean on the reader's side) and I often laugh with consternation reading replies ... with consequences that only sometimes I read replies to BSD related news and never post any.

    I really don't care about what venom flamers spit and really don't care about giving them my opinion ...

    Best regards.

  11. I'm glad I used FreeBSD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I learned FreeBSD at the time when Sendmail for NT was failing on me. I was desperate (customers were screaming!), and my collegue suggested FreeBSD+Qmail, which I did. Learning curve was not fun (and I am a documentation idiot). But I survived the learning curve and have since been slowly 'upgrading' my W2K servers to FreeBSD.

    Having used Slackware, Red Hat and Mandrake before. I would say that FreeBSD gives commercial robustness and administrative ease. Guess what? I have not even installed XWindows yet (but then, I am a documentation idiot)!

    When I get my new job, I will definately try to continue my expertise on this great operating system.

  12. *BSD is dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

    One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

    You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

    FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

    Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

    OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is absolutely consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

    Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

    All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

    Fact: *BSD is dying

  13. avoid FBSD 5.0 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    I have been running 4.X for years without many problems. I recently installed FBSD 5.0, and within 30 minutes experienced all the following:
    • The console was simply not updating after the kernel loaded bootup was complete.
    • Various sensible combinations in make.conf for rebuilding the world simply caused the build to fail (e.g. obscure base system software requiring C++).
    • Kernel panic when trying to use the Alcatel Speedtouch: and this simply works via ugen rather than installing as a kernel mode driver.
    • And upon reboot from that panic, a whole directory hierarchy has just disappeared: I wonder if it had anything to do with "background fsck" which it claims to be running last thing on bootup.
    I'd submit PRs but I know perfectly well how FBSD development works: the patronage "get your friends doing the jobs" method, especially for PR processing, which means a bunch of illiterate monkeys randomly misunderstand and close 99% of useful PRs. Hell, I have a friend who got chummy with some freebsd core and was put in charge of this when he hadn't written a line of C in his life (guess the name! go on!).

    Bah, I really should go back to Linux one of these days.