FreeBSD 5.1 Review and BSD Roundup

securitas writes "Both eWEEK's review of FreeBSD 5.1 and ExtremeTech's BSD overview and roundup (single page) will be of interest to BSDers and anyone else who wants to explore their open source OS options. The review of FreeBSD 5.1 says it lacks the stability of v4.8 but adds features that some may find useful (for example, more processor architectures are supported) so it shouldn't be considered for critical deployments yet. And the BSD round-up speaks for itself."

Comments

Re:I'm not sure I get the analogy

[vandel405]

And that a bunch of other OS's use it's code, that's what's meant by the children part.

the article itself is sort of flamebait by itself.

[ketamine-bp]

the article is way too pro-BSD to be said, and is comparing apple (linux, kernel sense) with oranges (BSD, distribution-sense).

Though being a BSD-user (OpenBSD server & MacOSX desktop), I feel uneasy to read all those, esp. the 'linux-copy-bsd' phrase.

Too true

[siskbc]

I tried FreeBSD, heard it was cool, and I'm used to Slackware so I'm not afraid of any install. So I got it installed fine, but none of the commercial apps I use were supported. Vmware 3 is only supported by 5.0, despite vmware 3 being a couple of years old. Matlab seems to be unsupported.

So bottom line is, I really liked a lot of BSD's features, but unfortunately an OS without programs is useless. The ports guys do a great job, but can't make up for lack of vendor support. ;(

Re:Too true

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, look at the date of that post you link to. 1998? Sure, back then FreeBSD outperformed Linux in many areas, but those days are gone, unless you are using the 2.0 kernel or something..

No commercial gain from GPLed code?

[spray_john]

When code is licensed under the GNU General Public License or GPL (as is Linux), the license effectively eliminates any financial rewards anyone -- whether an individual or a corporation -- might hope to gain from improving upon it.

Oops! It looks like IBM and Redhat were just charities after all...

But seriously, does this stink of someone that's lapped up the FUD to anyone else?

Re:I've always hated you and your comments, usotsu

[usotsuki]

Ah, Slashdot, land of the ad hominem and home of the trollbait...

*sigh*

I don't have anything to do with BSD other than my experiments porting OpenBSD tools to DOS (!), but my crystal ball shows FreeBSD holding its own...

I like the BSD license better than the GPV anyway. I started work a couple years ago on a project called RMF-DOS (Reduced Memory Footprint DOS), which never got off the ground, but I did it because I felt the world needed a BSD-licensed DOS clone suited for embedded systems and ancient 8086 boxen. I still believe in it. I just haven't had any way to write a kernel for it.

BSD's philosophy is why it endears itself to the hearts of companies better than Linux (this is not intended as a troll or a flamebait), and also, it is why it is not as well-known as the more radical GNU projects and the Linux kernel.

As long as there's a use for it - and as long as there is BSD code in MacOS X - BSD is very much alive.

Good. Now mod me down into oblivion again.

-uso.

Who Owns UNIX?

[jooon]

Those were the days. In the chapter "Who Owns UNIX?" they never once mention SCO.

Re:Awesome

[bathmatt]

Your point may be true aobut the BSD license, it is not about *BSD in generl. Rhe OS is not just the kernel. That has been RMS's point for a long time. compilers, editors, libraries, those make up the OS, not just the kernel. Many of those are GPL'ed.

Re:Lacking stability?!

[dubious9]

Yeah, but it's like saying granite is soft compared to dimond. They wouldn't release it if it didn't have them same famous stability, but rather they're acknowledging that no recently released product is as stable as its tried and true predecesor.

Huh?

[jandrese]

In the Extremetech review:

Around the same time, Linux surfaced. Based on the Minix kernel written by computer science professor Andrew Tannenbaum, and unencumbered by the spectre of a lawsuit, Linux began to gain momentum and became the best known freely redistributable UNIX-like operating system.

That's news to me.

Re:FreeBSD should support more NICs than ARCHes

[forged]

You obviously haven't been visiting a IBM facility lately. Call me troll or flamebait, but I was on assignment there for a couple of weeks and I was told to make sure to bring a PCMCIA token-ring card for my laptop, to get any sort of connectivity (which of course I did).

The funny thing there was that the token-ring network was so slow that the 56K modem integrated to my laptop was actually faster for accessing my email..... However the several hundreds employees still working there didn't have much of a choice. Remember, token-ring was very expensive and state-of-the-art 10 years ago.

The facility is now being migrated to a switched network deploying fast-ethernet, but planning and implementation will take months because the installed token-ring base is so huge.

Re:But the license is the key...

[ffsnjb]

Troll. You obviously don't understand the concept of free software: software that anyone can use, including Microsoft. I'm sure the BSD community is just tickled pink knowing that they write software that even MS thinks is great. Now, if only we could get rid of all the viral (your term, not mine) GNU software from FreeBSD. That there is my dream. If only I had the time to write a compiler...

X problems

[jbolden]

1) I had a very common system (Inspiron 8000 which sold millions). I couldn't find a 5.0 configuration file which allowed me to use X (Nvidia driver incompatable). Even in the mid 1990s I could always get Linux X to run 640x480 on a machine.

2) Slight errors in syntax when using ports results in ports trying to compile everything. Good system which needs a better safety.

3) The configuration system doesn't allow for small changes easily (like getting rid of an IP).

Linux now has: autohardware detection, good drivers, sample configs for virtually every system, lots and lots and lots of documentation.

How is BSD "friendlier"?

Re:Reports of BSD death are premature!

[ratfynk]

I cannot for the life of me see how Freebsd is messy. Sure you can screw things up but the man pages are great. It is easy to move things, change config, etc etc. If you are just interested in running X and not really learning to use a shell then mandrake9 fits the bill. Just remember there can be dependancy diffs between mdkrpm and rpm and debs. I much prefer to compile stuff from source and read the dependancy requirements first. To this end Slackware and Freebsd are the best, even though they have app-get and ports, it is very easy to find the right paths, when you try out a new app that is only available .tgz Changing things in ./configure, or commenting out functions, or changing dependancy paths are essential Linux skills.

Sure effectively using make, chown, chroot, and shells etc in Freebsd and Slackware is a big learning curve. The upside is it makes you much more aware of how things work, and a better GNU/bee.

Re:FreeBSD = top quality

[tigga]

I'll say that a modern Linux distro includes over 27,000 programs;

Could you please list them?
FreeBSD has list for 8866 ports.
Debian has 8710 packages - that means it's no modern, right?