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FreeBSD 4.9 Code Freeze
lewiz writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering have announced that the code freeze in preparation for 4.9-RELEASE (scheduled for 29th September) will begin on 25th August. Also 4.9-RC is tentatively scheduled for 12th September. A full list of dates can be found on the Release Process page."
The SCO is offering licences for the use of 0 and 1 in free bsd, at the low price of $699 per bit, with an increase to $1399 after October 15th.
*crickets chirp*
Cast:
Mr. Praline: John Cleese
Shop Owner: Michael Palin
A customer enters an operating system shop.
Mr. Praline: 'Ello, I wish to register a complaint. (The owner does not respond.)
Mr. Praline: 'Ello, Miss?
Owner: What do you mean "miss"?
Mr. Praline: I'm sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!
Owner: We're closin' for lunch.
Mr. Praline: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this operating system what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.
Owner: Oh yes, the, uh, *BSD...What's,uh...What's wrong with it?
Mr. Praline: I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
Owner: No, no, it's uh,...it's resting.
Mr. Praline: Look, matey, I know a dead operating system when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
Owner: No no it's not dead, it's, it's restin'! Remarkable OS, *BSD, idn'it, ay? Beautiful kernel!
Mr. Praline: The kernel don't enter into it. It's stone dead.
Owner: Nononono, no, no! It's resting!
Mr. Praline: All right then, if it's restin', I'll wake it up! (bashes at the keyboard) 'Ello, Mister *BSD! I've got a lovely fresh kernel update for you if you show...
(owner hits the keys)
Owner: There, it spewed some debug output to the command line!
Mr. Praline: No, it didn't, that was you hitting the keys!
Owner: I never!!
Mr. Praline: Yes, you did!
Owner: I never, never did anything...
Mr. Praline: (yelling and typing into the console repeatedly) 'ELLO COMMAND PROMPT!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o'clock cron job!
(Rips out hard drive from computer case and thumps it on the counter. Shoves it back inside the case and reboots the system - blank screen.)
Mr. Praline: Now that's what I call a dead operating system.
Owner: No, no.....No, it's stunned!
Mr. Praline: STUNNED?!?
Owner: Yeah! You stunned it, just as it was finishing an I/O task! *BSD stuns easily, major.
Mr. Praline: Um...now look...now look, mate, I've definitely 'ad enough of this. That operating system is definitely deceased, and when I purchased it not 'alf an hour ago, you assured me that its total lack of responsiveness was due to it bein' in the process of recompiling itself after a particularly comprehensive code update.
Owner: Well, it's...it's, ah...probably pining for some dilettante dabbling.
Mr. Praline: PININ' for some DILETTANTE DABBLING?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that? Look, why did it fall flat on its back the moment I started Emacs?
Owner: *BSD prefers swapping everything out to the hard drive! Remarkable variant, id'nit, squire? Lovely kernel!
Mr. Praline: Look, I took the liberty of examining the system when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been printing any text at all to the screen was because of all the WORRYING COMPILER WARNINGS encountered while it was being rebuilt.
(pause)
Owner: Well, o'course it was spitting out those warnings! If I hadn't updated the kernel with an unstable development build, you might have had your FTP server compromised, and VOOM! Bye bye to your business.
Mr. Praline: "Server"?!? Mate, this OS wouldn't "serve" if you put four million volts through it! It's bleedin' demised!
Owner: No no! It's pining!
Mr. Praline: It's not pinin'! It's passed on! This OS is no more! It has ceased to be! It's expired and gone to mee
Most of us FreeBSD fans will be far more excited when FreeBSD 5.x becomes stable, and has things like KSE enabled by default. 4.x is a aging branch with only limited whiz-bang appeal.
First thing that i like to say is that I pee for pleasure on the people that always say *BSD is dying. These people will crawl back to *BSD because soon linux is dying because of some lame ass SCO crap.
Check my site: http://pixel.pagina.nl
4.9 Release notes showing what is going in/being fixed
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Thanks to you, never. I run 5.1 and it's faster and sweeter than 4.x ever was. Fuck 4.x and long live GEOM!
It has XFree86 and I have it installed on a Pentium 120Mhz, so what I know about *you.
1) You're an idiot.
2) You need to get laid.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Fuck 4.x? You're a newb, aren't you?
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Only if by Newbie you mean 'has only been using FreeBSD for about 5 years...'
Sorry, but on my BSD machine (a modest P3-450) 5.x kills 4.x in speed, features, and usability.
But 4.x kicks it ass in stability, which is why it's the stable branch, which is why 'fuck 4.x' was a very newbish thing to say.
Don't even TRY to claim that 5.x is more stable than 4.x. heh.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Did I claim that 5.x is more stable? In any event, I have never had FreeBSD crash. 4.x or 5.x. In terms of feature sets, though, 5.x kills 4.x with ease. I for one look towards the future instead of wollowing in the past.
"Did I claim that 5.x is more stable? In any event, I have never had FreeBSD crash. 4.x or 5.x. In terms of feature sets, though, 5.x kills 4.x with ease. I for one look towards the future instead of wollowing in the past."
No, but you insinutated that FreeBSD 4.x was without merit with your 'fuck 4.x' comment.
In any case, it's not wollowing in the past, what about people that don't need any of the new features? I prefer stability of a new feature set that I don't 'need'. I personally can't wait for the stable branch of 5.x, but until that, I'm happy with 4.x.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
I have used 4.x happily for years. If you misintrepret me that's hardly my problem. At the same time, 5.1 is beautiful, stable (if not STABLE) and UFS2+S absolutely blows away UFS or UFS+S.
My point is that, as much as Dragonfly BSD sounds fun, and I'm sure that it'll actually run someday, I'll use official FreeBSD. At least that way I'll have a working ports. And, a bugs forum that actually exists. And, a system that runs now.
Why even use FBSD 4.x if you have no need for new features? 4.4 BSD Lite is just fine!
2) I said features that I 'don't need'. I'm pretty sure 4.4 BSD Lite doesn't have my onboard NIC drivers, or the latest security patchs.
I think this argument is kind of redundant as we both have our reasons for using what we use, each are equally valid, and the only reason we are arguing is because I misinterpretted something you said. So on that note, I will stop.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Even if you don't think you need the increased feature set of 5.x, you could probably find a use for it. Who doesn't like a faster filesystem? I am not attacking you as an individual, but just curious why you might eschew a better mousetrap just because yours catches mice already?
How many times I have I told you, Don't respond to idiot BSD trolls.
Though you are probably right.
I was wondering, can any of the people who seem to be badmouthing FreeBSD all the time code? If so, have you contributed at least a line of code to making your much beloved Linux better? If so... Wait a minute, I'm talking to myself now.
Seriously though, if you are not contributing in any way, but still think that just being a fan makes you superior to other teams and their fans, you should think about this: the game is not about you, you're just observers and if your team should cease to exist, you wouldn't know what to do with a football to save your life. So put your scarf on, cheer like a good sport, but leave the criticism to those who actually play the game.
My main interest in FreeBSD is rock hard stability.
There is nothing worse than your desktop crashing, it's horrible. This is why Linux is an unacceptable choice to me in terms of a *nix desktop. Even crashing at the end of a 13 day uptime is unacceptable because it points at flaws in the system that can manifest themself at a time of their choosing; I don't like that. Well, there are other reasons I choose FreeBSD over Linux, but those aren't important. My main point is that, I want a reliable desktop OS, and I'm going to trust the FreeBSD team on this. When they say 5.x is stable, then it's stable, and I'll use it. I'm actually waiting on it pretty hard too, I love DevFS, faster filesystem is great, etc, etc, but none of it is worth sacrificing stability for me. I mean, it'll all be there for me when 5.2 (which is the stable release, or close to it, no?) is out, and I'm looking forward to that. No reason to rush things when, like I said, there is nothing in 5.x that I NEED.
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.
Rather they are a balanced point of view, based on my personal experience.
:(
Now please run along and drink your hot chocolate...
Damn he is right about point 2 though
Only fags use 5.1.
Now there is something that Linux can't claim. An operating system *SO* easy to use, that cigarettes can use it.
If a mindless cig can use FreeBSD 5.1, is Joe SixPack far behind?
Set your minimum score setting to 1. End of problem. Anyone who can't be arsed to log in and can't write anything interesting enough to get a moderation point from someone is no loss.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
I read somewhere they will continue untill 4.12:
4.9, 4.10, 4.11 and 4.12 = VERY STABLE
The 5.X branch should become 'just' STABLE by then.
more like what you don't really know..
iF yOu WAnT to C YOUr iP agaIn gAThEr tWO MilLIon dOLLArS IN Non - cONsEcuTivE TweNtY's AnD AWaiT FuRThER iNstrUctIoN
OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of BSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.
so where do they come up with these "numbers"
not everyone who uses *BSD posts to usenet either..
iF yOu WAnT to C YOUr iP agaIn gAThEr tWO MilLIon dOLLArS IN Non - cONsEcuTivE TweNtY's AnD AWaiT FuRThER iNstrUctIoN
That's interesting. A recent Netcraft survey showed that there were thousands of FreeBSD IPs. Over 40000 alone at Yahoo. Extrapolated, every single person who even visits Yahoo is a FreeBSD user...
Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy, and taste good with ketchup.
I'm interested in trying out FreeBSD or any of the other BSD operating systems. My one main concern is backups. There are a whole slew of backup solutions for Linux, mainly LVM and filesystem snapshots comes to mind. LVM also allows you take incremental snapshots which is a big plus for me. I heard in #freebsd on irc.freenode.net that FreeBSD 5 has filesystem snapshots but no incremental =(
And another thing. Are there any plans in the future of the FreeBSD project where binary updates will be officially supported instead of doing make world whenever security patches need to be applied? I've heard that the argument used against any binary updates is security and how trojans could be slipped in. Couldn't this be avoided if each binary update tarball was signed using the FreeBSD release engineer's gpg key?
The 'trolling' of Slashdork has gone on for years.
/. management do something? Does a response have to travel to all parts of the /. system? Does the response have to use zombie machines posting variations of a 'Linux is dead, the smell is the SCO lawsuit' type post for a week to flood the system for the management to shutdown the SAME posts about BSD that have gone on for over a year? Does a 'linux is dying' meme have to go to Linux mailing lists, other boards etc? At some point the snipping here will spread.
The only place where is has been allowed to continue w/o any visable attempts to stop it has been WRT the BSD topic.
What will it take to have
Ignoring the posts hasn't worked...has it? You've noticed the bad behavior - what can be done to correct the behavior?
I can't understand a word of what you wrote. And somebody modded you up?
Simple us poor suckers that keep a zero threshold need some temporary protection against the idiots that are doing a number on the bsd posts. It is getting to be a pain in the ass that the good people who contribute to good old bsd have to put up with more than a fair share of bullshit. If you do not agree with that then use hot mail and suffer the consequences when MS tries to migrate the server to 2003 again. Freebsd, and other bsd varients and the community that write for it are GOD DAMN important to OSS, linux and the future of internet communication. OSX for Apple would not exist without it and Microsoft would have squat left to reverse engineer, or clone. Just think MS would then have to be innovative, a f'in impossibility!
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
I'm pretty sure that it has been decided that 4.10 will be the end of the road. Also, as the version minor increases, the difference between it an the previous version decreases. That is, by the time we had a 4.11/4.12, the unified diff would probably be only a hundred lines long...
Saying "good old BSD" was a very big mistake.
404: Parent Post punctuation not found.
Ok, since I'm something of a neophyte, I'm going to show my ignorance and ask, what are the big differences between *BSD and linux. I know they're related. I've been under the impression that they share a relatively wide variety of software. With BSD being thought of as more stable, and linux a little more flashy with some of the software, like wine x, available for it.
Please disabuse me.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
PAE-physical address extensions, ported over from 5-CURRENT. I wonder if they're going to put out a version 4.10, because PAE doesn't yet work on all the drivers in current much less all that many drivers in 4-STABLE.
It was my understanding that UFS2 only brought about features which enabled much larger file systems. Can you please link to information regarding the performance of UFS2 versus UFS?
scott
Troll. Seen it before.
Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
Parent has nothing to do with topic
Get over it, Craig. For all practical purposes, FreeBSD is already dead. It is a dead man walking.
Please find a new and original template, as the one you have been using is getting a bit tired.
The over use of this template may have made this variable troll rather funny some time ago (circa 1998-99), but it has become so overused that it no longer has the strength of parody that once made it seem humorous, and it has been ages since anyone has been taken in by the "Holy War" troll (except in the manner that I am now, but I don't believe that a criticism of your trolling style can legitimately be considered a response to the troll).
Unless you've discovered a new plateau for the Trolling artform that I am too simple to understand, this troll has fallen to a great low in terms of respectability, and one who habitually uses this should consider refreshing thier knowledge of trolling art history beginning with the great cross cultural classic known as "Pull My Finger".
Read, L
You see, trolls know their stuff is old when they do this.
What they enjoy is when stupid users (such as yourself) come out and try to defend themselves.
Yes, if there were a God then I would thank her. I would thank her that I don't have to go through my short life imprisoned inside of a mind with a viewpoint anything remotely resembling yours.
I'm not sure what you mean, please explain yourself further.
Read, L
Yes, this is a very complex issue. Please read my detailed guide here
FreeBSD Frozen: Does that mean it is finally dead ;-)
Oh well, looking forward to the 5.2 release, however, it is good to see that 4.x series are continuing to be developed as the temptation by some uname groups to focus more on the sexy/cool version rather than the boring maintainance work that is required.
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
Ghod.
This guy HAS to be a member of GNAA, crapflooding like that. O_o
-uso.
Searched the web for linux is dying.
Results 1 - 10 of about 126,000. Search took 0.19 seconds.
So it looks as if Linux is dying about 10 times as much. Now let's look at this one:
Searched the web for windows is dying.
Results 1 - 10 of about 377,000. Search took 0.24 seconds.
Sorry BSD, but Linux and Windows are both dying a lot more than you.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It still happens because its still goddamn funny.. and people still respond. Cheap entertainment: toss back a few pints and start reading BSD threads - you will laugh yourself out of your chair from the sheer silliness.
Now I'm off to search the newsgroups for a good flame fest to read.
It's not interesting how many "users". What's interesting is the number of installed boxes. FreeBSD, in particular, is likely to be used in server markets where hundreds of machines might be managed by one person. Compare and contrast with desktop markets, where some Linux distros go and Windows is definately king, and you find more of a 1-3 computers per person ratio.
Of course, no one really knows any of the above numbers with any reliability, so we should all just make up new ones anyway!
[Ed. note: in the following text, former FreeBSD developer Mike Smith gives his reasons for abandoning FreeBSD]
When I stood for election to the FreeBSD core team nearly two years ago, many of you will recall that it was after a long series of debates during which I maintained that too much organisation, too many rules and too much formality would be a bad thing for the project.
Today, as I read the latest discussions on the future of the FreeBSD project, I see the same problem; a few new faces and many of the old going over the same tired arguments and suggesting variations on the same worthless schemes. Frankly I'm sick of it.
FreeBSD used to be fun. It used to be about doing things the right way. It used to be something that you could sink your teeth into when the mundane chores of programming for a living got you down. It was something cool and exciting; a way to spend your spare time on an endeavour you loved that was at the same time wholesome and worthwhile.
It's not anymore. It's about bylaws and committees and reports and milestones, telling others what to do and doing what you're told. It's about who can rant the longest or shout the loudest or mislead the most people into a bloc in order to legitimise doing what they think is best. Individuals notwithstanding, the project as a whole has lost track of where it's going, and has instead become obsessed with process and mechanics.
So I'm leaving core. I don't want to feel like I should be "doing something" about a project that has lost interest in having something done for it. I don't have the energy to fight what has clearly become a losing battle; I have a life to live and a job to keep, and I won't achieve any of the goals I personally consider worthwhile if I remain obligated to care for the project.
Discussion
I'm sure that I've offended some people already; I'm sure that by the time I'm done here, I'll have offended more. If you feel a need to play to the crowd in your replies rather than make a sincere effort to address the problems I'm discussing here, please do us the courtesy of playing your politics openly.
From a technical perspective, the project faces a set of challenges that significantly outstrips our ability to deliver. Some of the resources that we need to address these challenges are tied up in the fruitless metadiscussions that have raged since we made the mistake of electing officers. Others have left in disgust, or been driven out by the culture of abuse and distraction that has grown up since then. More may well remain available to recruitment, but while the project is busy infighting our chances for successful outreach are sorely diminished.
There's no simple solution to this. For the project to move forward, one or the other of the warring philosophies must win out; either the project returns to its laid-back roots and gets on with the work, or it transforms into a super-organised engineering project and executes a brilliant plan to deliver what, ultimately, we all know we want.
Whatever path is chosen, whatever balance is struck, the choosing and the striking are the important parts. The current indecision and endless conflict are incompatible with any sort of progress.
Trying to dissect the above is far beyond the scope of any parting shot, no matter how distended. All I can really ask of you all is to let go of the minutiae for a moment and take a look at the big picture. What is the ultimate goal here? How can we get there with as little overhead as possible? How would you like to be treated by your fellow travellers?
Shouts
To the Slashdot "BSD is dying" crowd - big deal. Death is part of the cycle; take a look at your soft, pallid bodies and consider that right this very moment, parts of you are dying. See? It's not so bad.
To the bulk of the FreeBSD committerbase and the developer community at large - keep your eyes on the real goals. It