FreeBSD 4.8 Released

Dan writes "FreeBSD's Murray Stokely announces the long awaited availability of FreeBSD 4.8, the latest FreeBSD-stable release, which has dealt with known security issues, and added initial support for Firewire, HyperThreading, and other new hardware technologies. Murray says that the new release is also the result of conservative updates to a number of software programs in the FreeBSD base system, see FreeBSD 4.8 release notes for more information."

Comments

STOP!!

[AntEater]

I was about 12% into my download of the iso files when this showed up on the front page. Everyone please wait until I'm finished. Thanks.

Re:Look it moved

[moderators_are_w*nke]

If you define the merits of an OS by its popularity, then Windows 98 must be one of the finest operating systems on the planet.

A Matter of Time

[Spencerian]

It's only a matter of time until some wacko Mac OS X users asks "when will this latest BSD update become part of the BSD subsystem of Mac OS X?"

I'm not one of those people.

Nope. No way. Uh-uh. No sirree.

Conservative updates...

[MosesJones]

The conservative updates to BSD now mean that several commands and C functions are not available because they offend conservative moral values these include, but are not limited to (a full list will not be produced for reasons of security)

finger, bash, free, enable, alias & break

Awk is no longer considered under protection and users may hunt it to extinction if they desire.

kill is of course still available to all users, with the added bonus that you may now kill other peoples processes that you believe are interfering with your own and stealing CPU time from your processes.

In addition 4.8 introduces the first stage of BSD NSA Security which ensures your security by logging everything you do with the goverment, this is an optional package at this stage but will be mandatory in 5.0.

Anyone who doesn't like these updates is a liberal communist who is undermining the American Way of Life

The BSD Conservative Coalition Commitee

Re:Conservative updates...

[arvindn]

Full list of conservative changes has now been leaked.

1. "man" pages are now called "person" pages.
2. Similarly, "hangman" is now the "person_executed_by_an_oppressive_regime."
3. To avoid casting aspersions on our feline friends, the "cat" command is now merely "domestic_quadruped."
4. To date, there has only been a UNIX command for "yes" - reflecting the male belief that women always mean yes, even when they say no. To address this imbalance, System VI adds a "no" command, along with a "-f[orce]" option which will crash the entire system if the "no" is ignored.
5. The bias of the "mail" command is obvious, and it has been replaced by the more neutral "gendre" command.
6. The "touch" command has been removed from the standard distribution due to its inappropriate use by high-level managers.
7. "compress" has been replaced by the lightweight "feather" command. Thus, old information (such as that from Dead White European Males) should be archived via "tar" and "feather".
8. The "more" command reflects the materialistic philosophy of the Reagan era. System VI uses the environmentally preferable "less" command.
9. The biodegradable "KleeNeX" displaces the environmentally unfriendly "LaTeX".

1. SHELL COMMANDS To avoid unpleasant, medieval connotations, the "kill" command has been renamed "euthanise."
2. The "nice" command was historically used by privileged users to give themselves priority over unprivileged ones, by telling them to be "nice". In System VI, the "sue" command is used by unprivileged users to get for themselves the rights enjoyed by privileged ones.
3. "history" has been completely rewritten, and is now called "herstory."
4. "quota" can now specify minimum as well as maximum usage, and will be strictly enforced.
5. The "abort()" function is now called "choice()."

1. TERMINOLOGY From now on, "rich text" will be more accurately referred to as "exploitive capitalist text".
2. The term "daemons" is a Judeo-Christian pejorative. Such processes will now be known as "spiritual guides."
3. There will no longer be a invidious distinction between "dumb" and "smart" terminals. All terminals are equally valuable.
4. Traditionally, "normal video" (as opposed to "reverse video") was white on black. This implicitly condoned European colonialism, particularly with respect to people of African descent. UNIX System VI now uses "regressive video" to refer to white on black, while "progressive video" can be any color at all over a white background.
5. For far too long, power has been concentrated in the hands of "root" and his "wheel" oligarchy. We have instituted a dictatorship of the users. All system administration functions will be handled by the People's Committee for Democratically Organizing the System (PC-DOS).
6. No longer will it be permissible for files and processes to be "owned" by users. All files and processes will own themselves, and decided how (or whether) to respond to requests from users.
7. The X Window System will henceforth be known as the NC-17 Window System.
8. And finally, UNIX itself will be renamed "PC" - for Procreatively Challenged.

Source: http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/computing/newunix.html - Policitally correct UNIX

Re:reading release notes

[Loki_1929]

"Initial firewire support, rudimental hyperthreading and SMP, sendmail and ftp updates. Where have you been people all these years?"

Not rebooting our servers every 2 weeks.