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FreeBSD 5.1 Released
LogicX writes "FreeBSD 5.1 is now available. Mirrors and press release are at FreeBSD.org. Enjoy." Here are the release notes for this new version. Update: 06/09 18:15 GMT by S : Here's a BitTorrent link at scarywater.net, and another BitTorrent link from the original poster.
This release is in memory of Alan Eldridge.
Ports worked out well until they broke during an upgrade. Switching terminals was just plain wierd, coming from the more logical Linux perspective, and I only had four of them (five with X-Windows when I could get it running.) I suspect I would have had a better time of it if I had gone scavenger hunting for that magical bit of hardware that wasn't too old or too new to work, but in the end I figured screw it -- just about any distribution of Linux seemed to install properly and run efficiently, so why torture myself?
So basically I've been running with Gentoo for the last couple of years. Has FreeBSD gotten any friendlier lately?
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
Then someone should tell netcraft. . .
l
they're running it.
The site www.netcraft.com is running Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_perl/1.27 on FreeBSD.
and take a look at the uptime list.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.htm
there's one linux box and 49 *bsd boxes.
It's too bad, but I won't be able to use this release for the projects I've had on the go (closed source - sorry) that run off of FreeBSD.
For some reason, the bktr driver used for TV tuner card and some other hardware hangs seconds after activiation on FreeBSD 5.x. I'll likely have to rewrite the driver anyway at some stage to fix some issues I have with it, but this is preventing me from upgrading past FreeBSD 4.8.
The efforts required to get Darwin running for at least one of these projects is starting to look like less and less of a pain. Time will tell...
I've always wondered why embedded device makers choose Linux over FreeBSD. Does anyone know why?
I'm curious because using Linux (which is GPL'd) seems a bit risky. It seems every other week some poor embedded device company is being tarred and feathered for allegedly breaking the terms of the GPL.
Why do companies run the risk of Linux/GPL license problems when FreeBSD is available? This is not a troll, I am genuinely curious.
-Teckla
The main problem was fact that full Perl was quite bloated. Any 'limited' Perl install was then not official Perl... And yes, it was not easily manageable.
Unfortunately, once the system has been installed, I can't boot it. The kernel always crashes during the bootup phase on my ASUS A7V8X motherboard :(
Maybe it has something to do with USB2 and my CD burner (Plextor S88TU). I had similar crashes with NetBSD and old Linux kernels.
{{.sig}}
You are never far away from an up-to-date, zoomy version of your langauge of choice - simply go to the ports tree, and make install clean (or install a package, in most non-Java cases; Java admittedly requires an additional fetch/I Agree step because of Sun's licensing requirements, but it is easy - and you can make package for additional machines), but many users do not want/need these languages. Additionally, portupgrade makes it easy to update your packages without needing to update the base system.
Lead developer, http://wisptools.net
Don't much care for that either, but at least there is a reason I can follow: what version of perl with which options do you want? There are a lot of 'em...
.jar file names.
/bin/java completely as well for our WebLogic servers. It wouldn't be any different on FreeBSD. At least with Perl on FreeBSD the only reason I ever built my own was to enable debugging options; All apps could reliably be said to run on the base install.
// Must be Java 1.4.1 / 03 or better
Well, the real reasons were other then this for most really. Almost no one needs non-default perl build options (I was one of those that did, but I'm a "freak" as described by my friends). Perl has a very clean dynamic loader system as well as sane package versioning. In contrast, Java has no package versioning whatsoever and AFAIK no plans to add it, sadly. I'm thinking of something at least equal to Perl's:
use My::Class 2.3; # Compile time error if My::Class isn't version 2.3 or better.
Ditto:
use 5.006; # I need Perl v5.006 or better
Simple, but highly effective. In the Java world to maintain any sanity I must keep a copy of each 3rd party package jar per application, even if they are all "identical". Nevermind the Java world rarely even puts version numbers in their
But there are only a few Java's(tm) that are worth mentioning: 1.1, 1.2.x, 1.3.x, 1.4.x. I'm willing to pass on 1.1. And I'm willing to ask for the latest and greatest by default.
Java tends to have pretty serious issues wrt jre/lib versioning (worse still that the Java world collectively doesn't give a damn). I could rant for ages about the broken "deprecation" design and such, but in short if you are running anything critical (basically, anything) on Java you'd do yourself a huge favor and install a JRE per-application as well as any/all 3rd party packages, completely ignoring whatever may or may not be installed in the base system. I say this from the perspective of a professional SCM; Java has one of the most unstable and problematic runtimes ever created. I personally wouldn't really care if Java was in the "base" system or not. Most of what I manage is on Solaris as it is now and we ignore
Maybe one day Java code will be able to do:
import java 1.4.1.03;
import com.whatever.* 3.4;
import com.something.Barney 2.9;
But I'm not going to hold my breath.
My
Can't it be on the distro without being installed when someone wants a minimal install?
FRA: STFU GTFO
Another, similar option but which removes the problems of high-use NFS links, is to use one "build/test" machine and use it to target installs via NFS to the /usr/local of your "client" machines.
/usr/local for a large install base for any OS, be it FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows, whatever. Diskspace is a hell of a lot cheaper/faster then running a fast enough network to deal with a single app install network mount not to mention the lovely "single point of failure" issues also associated.
If you have a huge number of machines to update, it's pretty simple to script such port upgrades either using "make install LOCALBASE=/mnt/nfs_other_usr_local", or pkg_add, or rsync. Portupgrade might likely have some tricks as well, haven't tried it myself yet. The point is, there are a dozen ways to handle mass-installs/upgrades cleanly and reliably. I would not however, recommend live network (NFS or whatever)
My
I currently use FreeBSD 4.8 on my old laptop, a 133 MHz Pentium Classic with 40 MB RAM. It's mainly a typewriter and ScummVM box, and FreeBSD 4.x is very nice, fast, and lightweight for the hardware (compared to Debian and Slack). But I love features as much as the next geek, so I'd like to know how 5.x compares to 4.x with regards to consumption of my precious RAM and disk space.
:-)
And I'd also like to know if there are any special features to drool for. Come on, just convince me to upgrade. I know I want to.
I know this was a joke, but some people may think this is true. FreeBSD (and Net and OpenBSD) are indemnified against UNIX claims from SCO or anyone else. They've already gone through their hell (daemon mascot pun intended) and came out legally unscathed, though pushed back in mindshare that they still haven't recovered from.
D. Boies
Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe
No Mr. Howard, Mr. Fine, Mr. Howard?
Oh great- some more Open Source, socialist RMS diarrea. Clean up on aisle 3! Clean up on aisle 3!
As to your claims:
There lawsuit has no legal merit whatsoever, as demonstrated repeatedly by their reticence in backing up any of their wild and absurd claims with a single shred of evidence.
You mean like this? In fact, Paul Murphy thinks that SCO has a slam dunk case. Your zealotry is blinding you of the possibility that SCO might just be right after all. And if they are right, and their code was stolen and added to the Linux kernel, don't they have a right to be pissed off?
there is nothing to prevent them from doing the same the FreeBSD, or any other project (free or proprietary).
SCO's claims about Linux are not unsubstantiated, and if they do find evidence that FreeBSD contains stolen code as well, they have every right to pursue that matter as well.
Here is some free advice: the "evil corporations" are not conspiring to take away your rights, and RMS is just a stinky whacko with bad teeth. You would do yourself much better if you climbed out of your mom's basement every once in a while to get some sun and try to talk with some girls. Hanging out with the other pasty-white, pear shaped losers is really distorting your sense of reality.
I know this was a joke, but some people may think this is true. FreeBSD (and Net and OpenBSD) are indemnified against UNIX claims from SCO or anyone else. They've already gone through their hell (daemon mascot pun intended) and came out legally unscathed, though pushed back in mindshare that they still haven't recovered from.
And this will stop SCO from sending cease & desist letters or filing lawsuits? You don't know much about the legal system, do you? They can send as many letters as they want, until someone files a restraining order against them. They can file any lawsuit they want, it doesn't matter if it has no merit if they're expecting it never to go to trial. That's exactly what the RIAA did with the RPI student. If you threaten enough you might just make some money in the process. As long as you don't let the case get to court and be thrown out...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Awww, give him a break. After a while all /. posts/stories start to look alike...
*BSD is dying
*SCO is lying
Bill Gates got a pieing
Soundex means trouble flying
RIAA is trying
ESR is whining
Hawkings brilliance is blinding
Survival in downturn means minding
Employers are spying
Employees are skying
Google is finding
Job market is diving
Hiku is rhyming
Key to success is timing
All your base are mining
On what is the cowboy dining
India's programmers are pining
Sysadmin is grinding
Cryptography is splining
Science says dark clouds have lining
Slashdotters without girlfrieds are crying
Motherboards are frying
KDE and Gnome are tying
Hackers exploit servers due to binding
My computer so old it takes winding
As the release notes state, FreeBSD 5.1 includes the latest stable releases of GNOME and KDE, 2.2.1 and 3.1.2 respectively.
Getting FreeBSD 5.1 would be a great way to easily get the latest stable versions of these desktop environments as they were intended to be (without all the distribution-specific customizations made by Red Hat, SuSE, and so on).
Granted, you could also use Gentoo current or Debian unstable, but FreeBSD 5.1 is likely to be more stable (in the sense of not frequently changing) and you can get it on CD.
I made the mistake of replacing the MBR that freebsd installs with that of grub from my gentoo install and realized after that it looks like grub 0.93 from gentoo cannot read or mount the UFS2 filesystem from my 5.1-RELEASE install. How can I fix this/boot back into freebsd now? And does anyone know if installing grub from freebsd's ports will support UFS2? Or am I just going to have to reinstall fbsd with UFS1. -Robert
Just tried out the new SCHED_ULE scheduler and so far it is awesome on my SMP machine. XFree86 uses half the CPU it used to and it was very smooth running other apps whilst rebuilding the kernel with -j6, eg. FXTV.
I been using NetBSD on my laptop and on some servers lately and its so fat satisfied all my expectations except a few exception.
/proc filesystem the OpenOffice crashed without explanation. There was only one way to determine what caused the crash and that is to do trace of the program. Why would i not have /proc filesystem because i like the simple philosopy of BSD that if its not needed dont put it there.
The port/package system is great and it works perfectly 99% of the time. The 1% of the time it does not work is because the package is not up to date or the build fails for some reason or the package conflicts with another package. When this happens there is no automatic fix you have to usualy modify the Makefile yourself or email the maintener and wait for fixes to be made.
What i also love and cant live without in package system is that it installs things in expected places and sets up and postinstallation steps specific to the OS that need to be done that otherwise would have to be done in a time consuming maner by hand.
What i dont like about the ports/package system is that its not intuative when custom modification need to be made. Its pretty much automatic as far as installing what is offered by the package but if one needs special config options or special needs then there is no uniform config file to modify and you never know where in the Makefile the change you need can be baried.
I cant speak for FreeBSD since i have not used it but i am sure alot of the general things apply to them also.
Let me give an expample in Netbsd where packages dont live up to their expectation and that is when dealing with packages with intall systems that dont fit the standard open source build system. NetBSD is not to blame here but the companies who release this software.
Example 1. OpenOffice.
First there is only Linux Binaries because the source can not realy be build for the new version of OpenOffice. Ok this is not a huge problem since Linux emulation is pretty easy to set up. What realy upset me is that since i didnt have the
Example 2.
Sun Java SDK
This is another broken and annoying thing to install. First you need to download binaries yourself. Then you have to also enable Linux Emulation. Then you can install but it will be unstable for some reason. Version 1.3 runs stables but Version 1.4 causes strange lockups. Again this is Sun to blame for not making it easy to adopt their software to BSD.
Overall the install systems is clean. It seems that Gentoo linux has developed a install system similar to this and i hope to explore it.
Next thing that i love about Netbsd is its clean rc.d system. Basicaly not runlevel nonesence and very uniform implementation of all the start scrips. The package software also provides an start scrip.
Last thing i love about NetBSD is that its inovative. Yes maybe not at a frantic pace like Linux or a faced pace FreeBSD but its not sitting around idly either. New exciting features to come in next version like scheduler activations.
Ok i had enough to say for now.
Has NVIDIA released 5.x drivers yet?
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.