FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE Status Update

Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Bruce Mah provides the latest status of what's holding up the official release of FreeBSD 4.8. We fully support FreeBSD RE's approach to fixing necessary problems before officially releasing the product."

Comments

Who's "We"?

[mattrix2k]

The engineering team supports themselves? Slashdot editors support them? All slashdot readers support them?

Re:Who's "We"?

[Kwelstr]

Who's "We"?

Well, we cansay WHO stands for World Health Organization and WE stands for US.

So we can safely state that The World Health Administration is US, also known as THE WHO (without Roger Daltrey).

Hope that made it clear :-/

Re:Who's "We"?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the royal "we", pronounced mightily from the dankest corner of the submitter's mom's basement. It is often used thusly:

"Mother, we need a new 60 watt bulb in the basement. It is dark there."

Re:Who's "We"?

[L. VeGas]

"We" are the world. "We" are the children.

Guess you haven't heard "our" song.

Re:Who's "We"?

[ergo98]

Excellent question. Honestly reading the submission I was trying to figure out the same thing, matching up quotation marks. Is the submitter suffering from MPD and his many inner demons (pardon the pun) support it? Inquiring minds would like to know who "we" is.

Re:Who's "We"?

[marklark]

Dan and the mouse in his pocket

Re:Who's "We"?

[Kwelstr]

uh... moderators, attempts at humor are NOT flamebait.

Just to let you know.

Re:Who's "We"?

[Billly Gates]

Who is we?

Womans perspective: "If you do not know then I am not going to tell you."

Last non-merged?

[mamer-retrogamer]

So will this be the last non-merged release?

Re:Last non-merged?

[KiwiSurfer]

So will this be the last non-merged release?

"non-merged release"? I don't understadnd this, and I've been a FreeBSD user for over 2 years. This sounds more like an GNU/Linux concept.

Re:Last non-merged?

[Nugget]

What does "non-merged" mean? I've been using FreeBSD since 2.2.5 and I have no idea what you're talking about.

Re:Last non-merged?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's about a story from April 1st. Use the archive.

BSD is cool

[mao che minh]

But does it run Linux?

Re:BSD is cool

[ManDude]

hmm

Re:BSD is cool

[bahwi]

Why yes, it does. =)

Re:BSD is cool

[lwbecker2]

But does it run Linux?


nope, doesn't "run Linux"... but it DOES runLinux applications.

Re:BSD is cool

[bsharitt]

No, but just as importantly it can play ogg files!

Re:BSD is cool

[DJPenguin]

I wonder if you could run "user mode linux" in linux binary compatabilty under freebsd? Hmmmm...

Re:BSD is cool

[oznet]

Or even more importantly:

Does it run VMware 3.x or the about-to-be-released 4.x?

I didn't think so. Sorry, I'll stick with Linux even though I feel many things in FreeBSD are coded better.

Seriously, now that the nVidia drivers are ported (sorta; not up to date though) the only reason I don't use FreeBSD is because of VMware. And yes, I know 2.x works, but that version is missing too many things that I need.

Re:BSD is cool

[palfreman]

No, you can't do that yet. You can run Linux applications on FreeBSD under the binary compitiblity libraries, but you can't run a whole Linux sysytem. Not enough /usr/compat/linux/ stuff apparently.

Re:BSD is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a good way to screw with your brain.

1. Install FreeBSD with Linux compatibility layer
2. Bring over a Linux binary of your favorite editor
3. Edit /etc/inetd.conf using that binary
4. Whack inetd with a HUP
5. Wonder why the ports are still open

It took me a good while to figure out that the damned thing was opening some compatibility version of the /etc/inetd.conf rather than the actual file. The worst part is that editing /etc/services DID change the real (system-level) file, so mangling stuff in there would make inetd stop listening, while changing the inetd.conf didn't.

Re:BSD is cool

[tigga]

It just tries to find files in /compat/linux and if not found goes to /.

So you had /compat/linux/etc/inetd.conf which was edited by Linux binary editor. And you didn't have /compat/linux/etc/services so it went for /etc/services.

Re:BSD is cool

[Arandir]

Tying yourself to a proprietary solution to run proprietary applications for a proprietary OS. Why dont' you just stick with Windows and be done with it?

This may sound sarcastic, but I mean it as a genuine question. You're choosing an OS based on the ability to run native Windows applications. So why not just run Windows and eliminate the middle man?

Re:BSD is cool

[oznet]

LOL. You think the only reason for running VMware is for Windows support?

As a consultant it is one of the most valuable tools I own. I can run any Linux, BSD, or Windows version I want. I keep a respository of clean installs which lets me instantly extract a clean system to test with. This lets me test installs, different system configurations, software I wouldn't normally install, etc. I can setup entire networking environments (including mixed OS's, Linux, BSD, Windows, etc.) for testing...

I could go on and on. I can't easily express how useful VMware is.

Re:BSD is cool

[Arandir]

My apologies for my erroneous assumption.

Re:BSD is cool

[AME]

I don't typically like "me too" posts, but I feel compelled to stand up and shout my agreemennt. The ability to roll back disk changes, or to keep clean installs handy, has to be one of top three reasons I use VMWare. And setting up mixed OS networking environments must be one of the other top three.

(For those that MUST know, the other is the ability to copy-and-paste between OS's.)

Re:BSD is cool

[Anonymous Coward]

OK...If any of you get vmwaer 3.x to run in freebsd under binary emulation..Post it right here. I've been tryin gto get that to work for a month or so.......
BSD's inability to run vmware host 3.x or higher is the only thing keeping me with windows XP....yes boo boo hiss hiss...but it run great.

what's holding up the official release of FreeBSD:

[BrainGumbo]

Is that they can't seem to find the right voltage to pump into the bolts in its neck.

Re:So I guess...

[cperciva]

Well, of course. FreeBSD supported the Evil bit the day the RFC was released.

OT, but I *have* to ask this

[arvindn]

What's the point of linking to Bruce Mah's email in the article?? It doesn't give any information about him, so it's pointless. And I'd be very surprised if it doesn't have the effect of filling his inbox with both spam and other random mail he doesn't want to see. Please, this is not a troll. I've seen this done a few times, and I can't imagine why. Anyone?

Re:OT, but I *have* to ask this

[jhunsake]

There is no reason to do it. The submitter and the editors are just rude!

Re:OT, but I *have* to ask this

[moonbender]

But there is information given about him: he's a member of FreeBSD Release Engineering Team. If you've got a serious inquiry related to the postponed release date, he might be the guy to mail. And, of course, FreeBSD freaks probably can associate something with the name itself, they don't require additional information.

However, I'd agree that putting his email address there isn't incredibly helpful to anyone, because there are usually better places to mail inquiries to, like a mailing list.

Re:OT, but I *have* to ask this

[Moloch666]

Yea, if some one wants to email this guy they should at least go through the trouble of tracking down his email address. But, nope his email is basically on the frontpage of /. so he is going to get 300 emails about how *BSD is dying.

Re:OT, but I *have* to ask this

[skillet-thief]

Links are always good. Period. No matter what they link to. In any text, the more shit you have underlined, or in color, the better.

Re:OT, but I *have* to ask this

[jhunsake]

I think you are dumb!

Re:OT, but I *have* to ask this

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, is this the same Bruce Mah of the (in)famous band, Megabrööce?

Re:OT, but I *have* to ask this

[big_groo]

Actually, Hemos is the dick. He doesn't post his own email addy. In the original article, Bruce kindly asks that people don't email them because it will slow things down.

PS. This may sound rude, for which I apologize in advance: The less time that the RE team has to spend replying to various emails (particularly those that are not relevant to the immediate goal of shipping 4.8-RELEASE), the faster the release is probably going to be finished.

What does Hemos do? Posts his email address.

Nice going Hemos. Did you actually read the original article?

(This post will be modded -1 Hemosthinksitsucks)

neat

[Lxy]

I kinda like this. Basically, the release is held up because the needed files don't fit on a floppy.

Rather than just reformat the floppy as a 1.722MB, they'd rather just get everything fitting onto a 1.44MB. Kudos to you, FreeBSD team!

Re:neat

[QuietRiot]

But for all of us who need not install from a floppy, can cvsup the RELENG_4_8_0_RELEASE tag, and buildworld without waiting for the floppy issue to be resolved, am I correct?

Re:neat

[Lxy]

That's what it sounds like, but you won't have the officially blessed version of 4.8. Besides the differences in the MFS disk, it shouldn't really matter.

Re:neat

[and by]

Yes, yes you can. I'm running 4.8 right now, although I'd recommend using the RELENG_4_8 tag so that you get any patches made.

Re:neat

[t0ny]

"We fully support FreeBSD RE's approach to fixing necessary problems before officially releasing the product."

However, that doesnt stop us from making fun of a major For Profit software company for doing similiar things. This in no way makes us feel like hypocrits, strangely enough.

Re:neat

[blamanj]

Pretty funny. Kind of like the old story about how our train tracks are spaced the way they are because of the size of Roman chariot wheels.

Re:neat

[Lxy]

Which company are you referring to?

Microsoft DOESN'T test things very well before releasing, that's why we make fun of them.

Re:neat

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it even possible to reformat a floppy as 1.722MB? Do you know what you are talking about or are you just some kind of asshole?

Re:neat

[stratjakt]

Yes, it is possible, and quite common.

If you ever get a chance to try linux one day, try typing 'man fdformat'.

Re:neat

[Anonymous Coward]

Please Support D.A.M. -- Mothers Against Dyslexia

Ain't Bush Jr. dyslexic? Mothers against Bush eh? You are either anti-american or a terrorist, probably both.

Re:neat

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 95 shipped on 1.72MB floppies, so I'm not sure exactly why FBSD can't.

Re:neat

[siliconwafer]

Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
Linux: Telling M$ where to go since 1991.
FreeBSD: Hey, are you guys coming, or what?

Re:neat

[Anonymous Coward]

All right, the world's finally gone mad. Someone is saying that Microsoft has been criticised for holding back a release to fix bugs, rather than just shipping and fixing the glaring bugs in Service Pack 1.

It's also been modded up. Have these people ever used a Microsoft product? Well I'd guess so, because otherwise they wouldn't be posting this nonsense in support of it.

Re:neat

[palfreman]

I don't think that correct. AFAIK, the tag is there in the CVS tree, and it will still be there after the release, by which time it will include changes to the floppy disk images, which are built with make release in /usr/src.

Re:neat

[t0ny]

and which product are you refering to? Windows 2000 is incredibly stable, and has been since it was released. Likewise for Office 2000.

This would lead one to believe that you are just spreading anti-MS FUD, rather than giving a credible opinion...

Re:neat

[LordWoody]

Whether or not you consider Office 2K stable is a point of view. From an admin point of view I find it rather irritaing that export from Great Plains to Excel only works if I give "Everybody" write access to the excel binary and the MAPI interface to Outlook is not only a moving target between patches because of bad security design, but as of SP3 randomly drops MAPI generated emails. So in this case "stable" really depends on what parts of it you use.

Does it cause blue screens of death or "crash" often? No. Does it behave as advertised all the time? Also no. That makes it "unstable" in my book.

Re:neat

[Lxy]

Windows 2000 that's on SP3, soon to be SP4?
Office 2000 that's now on SP3, soon to be SP4?
That Office and Windows?

Re:neat

[Arandir]

Rather than just reformat the floppy as a 1.722MB, they'd rather just get everything fitting onto a 1.44MB. Kudos to you, FreeBSD team!

Sure, it sounds easy. But it isn't when you look closely at the problem. You have documentation to worry about that specify 1.44MB format. You have to test all the various affected tools to make sure none are defaulting to 1.44MB format. Etc, etc. That stuff takes a significant amount of time.

Re:neat

[Arandir]

Because 1.72MB is not a standard format.

Re:neat

[t0ny]

Oh, thats right. There is only ONE version of Linux, because when they wrote it, it was perfect right off the bat. Also, Word Perfect (the buggy piece of shit) is on which version? And StarOffice has how many 'Patch Clusters'?

At least MS is nice enough to put all the patches into one SP, and not cover up the fact that the software isnt perfect by obfuscating their fixes.

And thats mighty tough talk considering the fact that Linux just had two root exploits exposed, as well as a shitload of Sendmail exploits. And ya, I know nobody smart should use Sendmail, but lots of people still do, just like nobody smart using SQL should run it without installing the latest service pack, but people still do.

So in closing, you dont know what the fuck you are talking about when you say MS stuff crashes all the time.

Re:neat

[t0ny]

show me an office product (or any product) that doesnt have annoying bugs. Also, I have no problems with Outlook 'randomly' dropping emails. In my experience, when someone claims a computer does something randomly, it means they dont know what they are talking about. Computers will product repeatable results, so you just havent done proper troubleshooting.

Also, i find it rather silly that you are claiming the whole package is flawed because you dont like the way it imports something.

What you are talking about are design flaws, not stability flaws. Do I think MS Office is perfect as an application? Absolutely not. But from a purely functional standpoint, its better than anything else, even if the ease of use sucks compared to other programs.

Re:neat

[t0ny]

Have these people ever used a Microsoft product? Well I'd guess so, because otherwise they wouldn't be posting this nonsense in support of it.

Have you used a Microsoft product? Well I'd guess not, otherwise you wouldnt be posting this nonsense slamming it.

Someone is saying that Microsoft has been criticised for holding back a release to fix bugs, rather than just shipping and fixing the glaring bugs in Service Pack 1.

Didnt they just hold up the release of *EVERYTHING* they make to fix bugs and security? Perhaps you werent paying attention in your rush to criticize all things Microsoft.

Re:neat

[Anonymous Coward]

If you get right down to it, the 1.44MB floppy is a proprietary IBM PS/2 format.

Here's the text of it from bsdforums.org

[toadf00t]

FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Bruce Mah provides the latest status of what's holding up the official release of FreeBSD 4.8. Our take: we fully support FreeBSD RE's approach to fixing necessary problems before officially releasing the product. Thanks mezz, our forums moderator for the newstip.

[Read full announcement]

Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 16:23:25 -0800
From: "Bruce A. Mah"
To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject: 4.8-RELEASE status

Hi--

A number of you have been (rightfully) wondering what's up with
the i386 4.8-RELEASE. Here's the current state:

The files that are as of this moment tagged as RELENG_4_8_0_RELEASE
can't be used to build a release because the MFSROOT kernel (that goes
on the kern.flp) overflows a the size of a 1440K floppy disk.

This bug was masked by another problem that happened to be present on
the machines used by the RE team to build releases...namely, that they
didn't have the cvsroot-all collection in their local repositories.
To make a long story short, the $FreeBSD$ tags didn't get expanded in
the source files, thus (I am not making this up) causing the MFSROOT
kernel to be just a *little* bit smaller so that it could fit on a
floppy. I think this was the world's April Fool's joke to the RE
team.

We're currently trying to fix this by finding some other driver we can
move to a module on the mfsroot.flp image (or maybe just eliminate).
After we finish some tests, we'll need to commit whatever change is
required, re-tag the affected files, and then rebuild the base system.

I'm not in a position to comment on a timeline for these happenings.

Thanks for your continued patience!

Bruce.

PS. This may sound rude, for which I apologize in advance: The less
time that the RE team has to spend replying to various emails
(particularly those that are not relevant to the immediate goal of
shipping 4.8-RELEASE), the faster the release is probably going to be
finished.

Re:Here's the text of it from bsdforums.org

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew FreeBSD was fucked up, but this takes the cake.

It's no wonder that FreeBSD is dying.

Re:Here's the text of it from bsdforums.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, you're so right.

But then again, how's your mom, the AIDS infected crack hoe doing?

Re:Here's the text of it from bsdforums.org

[Anonymous Coward]

But then again, how's your mom, the AIDS infected crack hoe doing?

That's ho, you fucking dumbass.

Re:So I guess...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wanted to put some perl here, but slashcode decided it was too lame.

This is so cool, I didn't know AI was this good, and to think they implemented it in slashcode? Wow!

Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

It is also reported that in some situations, Linux binaries perform better on FreeBSD than they do under Linux.

Re:Yes

[Anonymous Coward]

I would guess those situations don't involve threads or more than 1 CPU.

Re:Well?

[Roofus]

Yes, it does. Any other questions you could have answered on your own within 5 minutes if you'd learn to use google.?

but he asks that no-one mails him !

[DrSkwid]

PS. This may sound rude, for which I apologize in advance: The less time that the RE team has to spend replying to various emails (particularly those that are not relevant to the immediate goal of shipping 4.8-RELEASE), the faster the release is probably going to be finished.

Thats real smart

[Anonymous Coward]

post the guy's email on the front page of slashdot. gee, i wonder how much crap he'll get now.

A floppy?

[repetty]

"The files that are as of this moment tagged as RELENG_4_8_0_RELEASE can't be used to build a release because the MFSROOT kernel (that goes on the kern.flp) overflows a the size of a 1440K floppy disk."

It's 2003 and a sparkling new Unix OS is being held up by... a floppy?

I remember floppies... I used them back in the 80's and very early 90's.

I'm glad that they are sticking by their principles on this. I just wonder if they are principles worth sticking to.

--Richard

Re:A floppy?

[questionlp]

Although floppies are antiquated, but there are still machines that will not boot off of bootable CDs and require a boot floppy (I have several Toshiba laptops that just will not boot from CD no matter what setting is used or how the ISO is burned)... but it's also useful to get a machine booted to either do a re-install or install from an FTP or an NFS server.

Anyway, most bootable CDs use floppy images (be it 1.44MB or 2.88MB) as the boot section of the CD... primarily for legacy/compatibility purposes. With that, you still have to deal with the size limitation of either 1.44MB or 2.88MB.

Re:A floppy?

[stratjakt]

The "sbootmgr" floppy image that slackware (and no doubt others) gets around this. It basically boots a software bios that can boot from a CD (like the software bioses for large HDD support on old machines)

Of course, if you have no CD drive at all you're boned. Some of us (like me) put together boxes with no CD drive, my gateway machine was done by hand from the floppy drive.

Oh well. So the premier of Night of the Assisted Living BSD has been delayed.

Re:A floppy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, most manufacturers systems with their own BIOS (alas Toshiba etc) don't follow the El Torito standard (I think only Award and AMI does infact!), so they can't actually boot from a CD where the first image file isn't 1.44Mb; despite the FACT that the El Torito standard CLEARLY STATES that it MUST support 2.88Mb images also.

So, for people to be able to boot from CD's on non-Award and AMI BIOS motherboards, the floppy image must fit in 1.44Mb.

This is why I will never buy a fricking PC again, I'm sticking with Mac's and Sun UltraSPARC machines from now.

Re:A floppy?

[Moloch666]

I love this method, it's a big "selling" point for me. Made me like Debian, they do this as well. Even though I use Gentoo, I was disapointed to find that the smallest install that had was a 40MB iso.

Re:A floppy?

[Anonymous Coward]

El Torito was never a standard, it was always a kludge.

Most bioses allow 'emulated boot partition' to be of arbitrary size (I've built a standalone mame disk that boots from a 20 meg image then reads roms from the CD).

Re:A floppy?

[Anonymous Coward]

well remember this is an antiquated version of Unix that also will not install onto an extended partition/logical partition.

I mean come on, not only will Linux quite happily install and boot off of an extended partition but even Microsoft has entered the modern era with NT/2000 being happy on a logical partition.

Re:A floppy?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've probably forgotten to enable the automatic notification of the insertion of a CD

Go to Control panel, System...

Re:A floppy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try troll.

Re:A floppy?

[dills]

Oh, they're definitely principles worth sticking to.

I don't put CD-ROMs in the servers I build. It's stupid, why would they need CD-ROMs? I just install a floppy drive, because it needs one of those regardless (hardware bios updates, emergency recovery, etc.).

I boot off the install floppies and install via FTP (takes LESS time than via CD when doing so on a T3).

The floppies are extremely important. Many shops rely on them.

Andy

Re:A floppy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

Do you guys download Freebsd or buy cd's ?

[zymano]

Download or Buy a cd for Newbies ?

Re:Do you guys download Freebsd or buy cd's ?

[josepha48]

depends on your network connection speed... now that I have dsl I download... b-4 I would buy from cheapbytes or someplace like that...

It also depends if you have a cd burner... since I have one I download the smallest cd iso for freebsd and do a very basic install and then add to that...

Re:Do you guys download Freebsd or buy cd's ?

[questionlp]

I download the ISO for CD1 (or even the mini-install ISO since I always use Ports to install software and portupgrade to maintain them) so that I can mount it as a virtual file system for internal FTP installs. I also have a FreeBSD (as well as NetBSD and OpenBSD) CD subscription to help out the respective projects.

Re:Do you guys download Freebsd or buy cd's ?

[Anonymous Coward]

They dont BUY anything.

Despite the rhetoric and apparent idealism, all the readers here are interested in is "free as in dont-want-to-pay".

Re:Do you guys download Freebsd or buy cd's ?

[Brooks Davis]

The various CD's you buy are generally identical to the ISOs you download. If you want to support the project, it is recommended you buy from one of the vendors who supports the project. I have subscriptions with both FreeBSD Mall and BSD Mall (Part of Daemonnews).

Other options are listed in the Handbook.

I definatly recommend downloading rather then buying from people like cheapbytes.

-- Brooks

Resolved already...

[oneiric]

This is good slashdot fodder, but the issue has been resolved. The awi driver (wireless prism card) is being removed from the floppy and the space problem is solved. Move along nothing to see here...

isn't bsd dead

[b17bmbr]

i thought bsd was dead. wow, what a resurrection.

Re:isn't bsd dead

[sporty]

Weren't you around 2 days ago? They are merging all the bsd's. That's why there is a delay.

(Really? No, not really :P)

Re:isn't bsd dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you mean, isn't BSDi dead?

Re:isn't bsd dead

[jhines]

BSD will stay dead, no matter how may times we gotta shoot it.

Re:isn't bsd dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha :)

You mean like, even though it's dead, you still have to keep shooting it to remain dead? Yeah, you're right, BSD is dead as ever.

BTW, how is the AIDS infected crack whore that is your mom doing?

Re:isn't bsd dead

[Anonymous Coward]

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 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

What's Holding Up Release

[Gord.ca]

Could it be problems with its merger with NetBSD & GNU/OpenBSD? I imagine that would take some time. Or are they going to have a few more releases separately?

Re:this is good news

[Electrum]

BSD is getting closer to a 5.0 release!

Yes, if by closer you mean relased two and a half months ago.

Funny reason

[Captain Rotundo]

I don't even have a floppy disk drive in my computers anymore. Why is making the file fit a floppy that important? They are pretty much obsolete at this point.

Re:Funny reason

[stratjakt]

Because everyone is not you.

There are a lot of headless 'nix based gateway boxes around with a floppy, and no CD-ROM.

I love the "i dont need it so therefore noone possibly could" attitude slashbots have.

Re:Funny reason

[Captain Rotundo]

no reason for you to ba a jackass. I didn't have the "i donm't need it so why would any one else" attitude. Hell I don't need BSD at all. I was actually curious as to why that would halt a release. Seemed odd to me.

Re:Funny reason

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Alright. Say you need a firewall right and have an old p133 lying around but the BIOS dont support booting from CD ?

Re:Funny reason

[cbv]

Why is making the file fit a floppy that important? They are pretty much obsolete at this point.

Not so.

There are, after all, machines without or with a broken CD drive. I actually do have a couple of 1U servers without one, and use the following method:

The floppies will let you boot into the install "manager" that will give you the option to install FreeBSD (not sure about the other various *BSD versions) from a _different_ machine's CD drive.

Re:Funny reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes there is a need to be a jackass you ignorant little cornholer. Learn to think before you post and you won't be flamed!

Re:Funny reason

[someonehasmyname]

It's actually pretty cool... You boot off a floppy, configure your network card to get an internet connection up, and then it downloads and installs FreeBSD. It's nice whey you're setting up a firewall/router and don't have a cdrom drive to install from.

Re:Funny reason

[palfreman]

My firewall has no floppy or CDROM. Nah nah ni nah na... May be I should see if I can get its 400MB disks out next. I already know at least one of them is failing.

Re:Funny reason

[FroMan]

My CD drive is actually SCSI and the card doesn't support booting from SCSI, so I only have floppy as an option to boot from. I can't see why the world doesn't see things like I do, I mean doesn't everyone have the same setup I have?

Re:Funny reason

[anthony_dipierro]

As mentioned by others, many server machines don't have a CD-ROM, but do have a floppy drive. Perhaps more importantly, many people don't have a CD-R writer, but do have a floppy drive.

Re:Funny reason

[jamwt]

Why is making the file fit a floppy that important? They are pretty much obsolete at this point.

With a floppy/ftp install, I get only the parts of FreeBSD I explicitly need. What good are ISOs filled with packages I don't use? After I have the OS up, everything else gets added via ports--so the tarballs are fetched over the internet. This means that because of kern.flp and mfsroot.flp, most of the servers I build don't even need a CD-ROM drive. It's really just one more thing to spend money on, suck power, and potential break.

Re:Funny reason

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a lot of headless gateway boxes with neither floppys or cdroms either. PXE is your friend.

Re:this is good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Win2K was NT 5, XP is 6

Re:So I guess...

[someonehasmyname]

Mod this up, not down. It was funny. Read the article he linked to.

Re:this is good news

[_Laban_]

Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corporation

Sounds as if they need better compression

[Brett Glass]

It seems to me that this problem could be solved with better data compression on the floppy. Right now, they're using gzip, which is many, many years old. Perhaps if they moved to something modern (and non-GPLed, in keeping with the BSD philosophy) such as bzip, it'd fit.

Re:Sounds as if they need better compression

[Geekboy(Wizard)]

bzip may make smaller files, but takes more cpu power and more memory than gzip. That is why they don't change.

Re:Sounds as if they need better compression

[anthony_dipierro]

It's kind of useless to have more tightly compressed data if your decompression software is much bigger, at least for a situation like this one where both have to fit on the floppy.

Re:Sounds as if they need better compression

[jcast]

What does GPL have to do with this? gzip isn't GPL.

wait a second...

[dubbreak]

I thought freeBSD had joined forces with netBSD and openBSD....

ah my dreams are foiled.. pf in a bsd distro that people "support"

Re:wait a second...

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

ah my dreams are foiled.. pf in a bsd distro that people "support"

Soon maybe

Whoa, Dude!

[4of12]

We fully support FreeBSD RE's approach to fixing necessary problems before officially releasing the product.

I mean, like, aren't you going on a limb there expressing your opinion?

You're just not afraid of controversy!

Re:Floppy installation

[TeknoHog]

When you're doing a network install of Linux or BSD, you need to boot the machine somehow. Using a floppy is nicer than burning a CD just for that purpose. Not every machine has a bootable CD drive anyway. And when you're doing some bleeding edge testing, you may need a boot floppy to fix your system.

If you're installing the same OS on several machines, it might be better to burn a whole CD of the OS. But it's kind of pointless to do for one machine, if you can do it directly over the net.

The floppy may be obsolete for YOU, but for many others it's still quite useful. Many arguments against floppies are only about file transfer, they often forget the ability to boot. E.g. USB keychains are not so universally bootable.

but it's already available....?

[Nomad128]

This despite that 4.8 is available on ftp.freebsd.org??

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/ 4. 8-RELEASE

Re:but it's already available....?

[Openadvocate]

yes I noticed that too yesterday, so I downloaded it just to beat the crowd. :D I'll just do a MD5 on it to see if it's the right one.

Re:but it's already available....?

[palfreman]

As I see it, until the actual release is announced, some or all of those isos are going to have non-working floppy images on them, or not be 4.8-RELEASE at all. I cvsuped one machine a couple of days ago and I still got 4.8RC instead.

Re:Floppy installation

[Strog]

I just installed 4.7 using a couple floppies and NFS.

I often download the 2.88mb image and burn it to a CD. You don't have to burn the "whole" OS to make a bootable CD. I use both methods depending on the machine and what is handy.

Re:this is good news

[bsd_usr]

Maybe I'm biting on troll bait, but you do realize that FreeBSD 5.0 has been released right?

confused

[Jupiter9]

Wait a second.... I'm confused. Didn't they just release 5.0 a few months ago?

Re:confused

[Just Some Guy]

In an almost exact parallel, there are versions of the Linux 2.4.x kernel that are newer than versions of the Linux 2.5.x kernel.

In other words, 5.0 is not production-ready, although it is a complete release. It's still being actively debugged and stabilized in preperation for 5.1, which will probably be the first in the series that I'd put on a production server. The 4.x line is incredibly stable and still being actively maintained in the mean time.

Re:confused

[Anonymous Coward]

5.2 is slated to the be the first production ready in the 5.x series (according to RE) unfortunately. You might want to wait until then.

Re:confused

[Just Some Guy]

Ahhh, thanks for the tip. I've been happily tending my 4.7-STABLE servers, so I'm in no great hurry to upgrade anyway. 5.x has some spiffy features (Background fscks? Yeah!), but 4.x is so darn stable that I can wait until the kinks are ironed out.

Re:confused

[Jupiter9]

Ahhh, that makes sense.

Re:confused

[Billly Gates]

5.0 may have a few kinks like my Microsoft USB keyboard not working in the release that needs to be fixed. A production server can not go offline. However I would like to add that I find FreeBSD generally more mature and stable then Linux during recent releases. In Linux a new kernel may come out but a few kinks are usually left in. In FreeBSD they are usually ironed out.

Re:confused

[Cro Magnon]

My understanding is that FBSD 5.0 is a lot like Linux 2.4.0. The developers decided it was good enough to release, but you still need a big can of Raid!

Rethinking sysinstall

[swb]

Sysinstall is functional, but it's kind of creaky as an installer IMHO. There's a bunch of functionality that seems to belong more inside of an installed and running system (such as a lot of the configuration bits) than in an installer.

If you're going to require all your installation tools to fit on a floppy, then an installer should have just the tools necessary to get the install files onto a system such that the system can be booted and then used. While it might be nice to have a bunch of post-install configuration options available, the technical constraints of boot media make this kind of prohibitive.

Perhaps one idea might be a meta-installer that installs the installation files onto the computer, and then reboots into a bigger environment where you can do more extensive system configuration and package management as well as providing a richer, more user-friendly tool. I hate to say this, but as annoyingly slow as Win2k's installer is, they use a very similar kind of bootstrap installation.

The other idea is to merge the two-stage install with a single stage install on a CD and just give up on the floppy.

I'm sure none of these ideas are terribly original, but they seem that way relative to sysinstall. I've only used FreeBSD over the past 3 years, so I have no idea what the Linux distros do. Do they do anything interesting with multistage installations?

Re:Rethinking sysinstall

[jo42]

> have no idea what the Linux distros do.

Linux distros have become bloatware so frickin' bloated, that some require up to 4 (or more!) CDs to install - makes XP and ilk look small and efficient...

Still Homosexual After All These Years

[Anonymous Coward]

The release is delayed because it is just not gay enough. They are adding more comments about "man love" and "felching" so reaches the MGT (minimum gayness threshold). RELEASE-4.8-FUDGEPACKING will be out real soon now!

Re:Still Homosexual After All These Years

[Anonymous Coward]

I did a head count and almost all of the top 5 FreeBSD guys are gay. What does that tell you?

Maybe that's why they fight with each other like squealing schoolgirls.

5.0 is not "stable", 4.8 is

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't be using 5.0 in serious production systems. It works well, but it is more or less a pre-release version.

Re:5.0 is not "stable", 4.8 is

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, way to change the subject to win an argument. No one even mentioned production use.

Let me make an executive summary for you:
Incorrect info: 5.0 is not out.
Correction: 5.0 is out.
You: 5.0 is not production ready, its pre-release.

It is not production ready, and its not a pre-release. There is an official 5_0_RELENG tag, so there has been a 5.0 release. Its not perfect but at least its not as bad as every Linux distribution I have tried.

Re:Well?

[yomegaman]

"Mites crawl up, tights fall down"

so sayeth Del on Deltron 3030, which I sentence you to go out and buy right now. Seriously, do it, it's a great CD.

I Don't Need No Stinkin' Floppies!

[Gracchus]

CVSup is Heaven, portupgrade is Nirvana....."Luke, the Source is with you!"

Re:I Don't Need No Stinkin' Floppies!

[Anonymous Coward]

True. Maybe. My whishlist for *BSD is an easy way to upgrade the installation without compiling anything. I use FreeBSD 4.7 on my old, slow laptop (133 MHz Pentium Classic), and it works very well. I like it. I tried Debian and Slack, both being quite bloated and slow compared to FreeBSD, but Debian is so easy to upgrade! CVSup and port-upgrade are fine if you got the hardware, but on a slow laptop? No thanks! I think I may try upgrading on my desktop and distribute it to the laptop by NFS, but it seams to be a bit of a hassle.

Any recommendations?

What cool games are available on *BSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can ya play quake 3 for example?

Err... ?

[dnaumov]

What's up with posting FreeBSD committer's email addresses on the front page of /. ?

Slackware vs FreeBSD?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you prefer for desktop (and server) and why?

RedHat vs Slackware vs FreeBSD only

Many sites such as www.n0dez.com seems to prefer Red Hat Linux 8.0 for both servers and desktop OSes.

***Is it FreeBSD free like Debian?***

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, I'm a newbie and I would like to know if FreeBSD is like Debian (volunteer org, no business behind). I'm using Slackware and like it a lot. I prefer Slack to Mandrake and Debian. RedHat is OK. Thanx.

Re:***Is it FreeBSD free like Debian?***

[Anonymous Coward]

To answer your question: Is FreeBSD like Debian?

No, it is not like Debian. The major difference is:

• Debian is mainstream, and growing by leaps and bounds.
• FreeBSD is dying. It won't be around this time next year.

Hope this helps.

Re:***Is it FreeBSD free like Debian?***

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for you response.
However, what I meant is ... if FreeBSD is a company or volunteer org like Debian)

Re:Developer lashes out: What Killed FreeBSD

[skaeight]

why does someone post this for every freaking BSD post? Ok we get it already...FREEBSD IS NOT DEAD. I love linux, but I really want to give freebsd a go on an old machine I have. I'm just sick of seening these posts.

Re:It's official

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut up, Kathleen.

What is the difference?

[nemeosis]

I always wondered, but what is the difference between FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD? What are the pros/cons? What are the strengths/weaknesses of each distribution?

Anyone care to take a stab at this?

Re:What is the difference?

[Quill_28]

Common question, my fairly uneducated answer.

OpenBSD: extremely secure, seems to be ideal for firewalls, etc.

FreeBSD: extremely stable, great for servers and like.

NetBSD: extremely portable, runs on tons of different processors(50+ ?)

FreeBSD seems to be the most widely used of the BSD's.

simple solution: 1.68 meg floppies

[Anonymous Coward]

these are 1.44 meg floppies formatted with 21 sectors per track instead of 18. the gap between sectors is smaller, and the sector interleave is usually different -- no other differences. just as reliable as 1.44 meg floppies, in my experience.

except for the first disk, the Win95 install floppies were 1.68 meg floppies ("DMF" disks)

you can use 'superformat' to make these disks under Linux

OPENBSD KICKS ASS.

[Anonymous Coward]

NetBSD = Hummer, goes anywhere
FreeBSD = Muscle Car, hauls ass
OpenBSD = Tank, I'd feel safe in one

Really, FreeBSD has the fastest TCP/IP protocol stack in any non-embedded operating system. OpenBSD is still very fast, and the most frickin secure OS on the entire planet--even default installs. They have had only one remote root exploit flaw in the OS in the past seven years, and it's an OS frequently used for firewalling. It's packet filter, pf, now supports round-robin load balancing. It kicks ass. NetBSD will run on almost any platform you can think of, but no real highlights. My fav: OpenBSD. A 3.3 release is scheduled for May 1.

Officially released.

[MavEtJu]

Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 21:43:09 -0800
From: Murray Stokely
To: announce@FreeBSD.org
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 4.8 Now Available

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE, the
latest release of the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE in October 2002, we have made conservative updates
to a number of software programs in the base system, dealt with known
security issues, and added initial support for Firewire,
HyperThreading, and other new hardware technologies.

[...]
Enjoy!

Murray Stokely
(For the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----

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aLZzPDweEFXkcoVMgviWcU8=
=Jw+z
- ----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
__________________________________ _____________
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http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/fr eebsd- announce
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-announce-unsubscribe@freebsd.org"

Hard times for *BSD

[Anonymous Coward]

So why now? Why did *BSD fail? Once you get past the fact that *BSD is fragmented between a myriad of incompatible kernels, there is the historical record of failure and of failed operating systems. *BSD experienced moderate success about 15 years ago in academic circles. Since then it has been in steady decline. We all know *BSD keeps losing market share but why? Is it the problematic personalities of many of the key players? Or is it larger than their troubled personalities?

The record is clear on one thing: no operating system has ever come back from the grave. Efforts to resuscitate *BSD are one step away from spiritualists wishing to communicate with the dead. As the situation grows more desperate for the adherents of this doomed OS, the sorrow takes hold. An unremitting gloom hangs like a death shroud over a once hopeful *BSD community. The hope is gone; a mournful nostalgia has settled in. Now is the end time for *BSD.

And a few hours later...

[Arandir]

It's a few hours later. Well, maybe more like ten to twelve. FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE is official.

Much ado about nothing.

why don't we run a poll for that?

[slaida1]

something like "Do you install freebsd using floppies?" How many you think would check "yes, I don't have any other ways to do it."?

There are a lot of everything in this world, surprise surprise. Like headless 'nix based gateway boxes around without floppy

I love the "bloat/cripple OSses and other software because someone somewhere might need the features" attitude you have.

Me, I'm waiting for the day freeBSD either succesfully detects and configures X automagically for my videocard (radeon8500) or dies. Mandrake does it, RedHat does it but freeBSD won't, why?

HEY DUMFUKS

[Anonymous Coward]

YOU MITE WANNA CHEK YUR FACTS HUH!?!? OR HAVE YOU BIN HANGNIG ROUND THAT THEO DUMRAAT AGAIN?!?!?

Reason:Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
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