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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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.