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.

FreeBSD

[elemur]

To those who run linux (or other OSs) exclusively, you really should give FreeBSD a try.

I started using it around 8 years ago for some core services.. DNS.. SMTP.. etc. It proved to be fast and reliable even then, and those were on old PII machines.

Since then, its gotten tremendously better.. the security subsystems are great, from ip firewalling to kernel and system level protections. (The jail environment is very interesting..) I currently have DNS and mail services running on it, with a vinum disk mirror (Vinum is a logical volume manager for FreeBSD) and have basically no maintenance.

If you wanted to experiment with a BSD machine, I know that http://www.johncompanies.com/ provides virtualized FreeBSD machines pretty cheaply, or just install it on a spare partition somewhere.

My only gripe is that it tends to trail linux on user interface/user focused device drivers, and in the Java space. Otherwise, it works great for me!

(I haven't tried 4.8 yet, since I don't have any need to upgrade my servers right now, but when I get a spare test box, I'll probably give it a spin..)

Re:FreeBSD

[b0r1s]

The problem with exhaustive testing of OSs is that to get the best performance out of most of them, they require someone relatively knowledgable.

For instance, there was a large comparison of Windows v. FreeBSD v. Linux, and FreeBSD came in dead last. Those who know realize that the FreeBSD box wasn't tuned (at all), and that any competant sysadmin would have made 10-20 substantial changes to the system before running that benchmark. Similarly, the Windows and Linux boxes could have probably been tuned better (the benchmark claimed that miminal changes were made, but they were important changes).

There seems to have been much more research into specifically network related code under FreeBSD, but FreeBSD 5 also has UFS2, which is also apparently a nice performance increase.

I'm of the opinion that FreeBSD is still the fastest of the major OSs (Windows, FreeBSD, Linux) for most services, although the preemptive kernel patches for linux may make linux nicer for desktop use. NetBSD is close, OpenBSD still doesn't support SMP, so you can pretty much kiss off OpenBSD on large SMP hardware.

BSD Ports

[vcbumg2]

I use linux for dev and the bsd's for everything else. If you are sick of rpm HELL give freebsd a try and see what a OSS OS that is managed from the ground up looks like not just the kernel. Redhat might come with bells and whistles but with a little more time I can make FBSD sing and dance with half the bloat!!! Codeman

Re:Newbie question

[DJPenguin]

5.0 is full of loads of features, and is considered "cutting edge".

4.x are "stable" and mature. Think of it like the difference between Linux kernels 2.4.x (stable) vs 2.5.x (current). Not quite a true analogy but you get the idea.

Re:Newbie question

[Ded Bob]

There are several branches of FreeBSD. The two active ones are v4 and v5. v5 is new and not ready for production as stated by FreeBSD. Somewhere they warn not to use it for production at this time. v4 is much more stable. If you are learning FreeBSD, it will not hurt to try out either of them.

Personally, I am updating my boxes to 4.8--cvsup is a wonderful tool--as we speak. It may be safer for you to start there on solid ground.

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

Firewire... New??

[TrollBridge]

"...and added initial support for Firewire, HyperThreading, and other new hardware technologies."

Umm... firewire isn't exactly new. What's taking them so long to get more than "initial" support? And what does THAT mean?

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.