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FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Reviewed
ValourX writes "Here's a full review of FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE complete with screen shots, a short comparison with GNU/Linux, and some notes on migrating to FreeBSD from Windows and GNU/Linux."
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Torrents for the two CDs and mini-install.
I think what he was trying to say is "Keeping a FreeBSD system up to date takes several steps (cvsup, buildworld, buildkernel, installkernel, mergemaster, installworld), but none of the steps are difficult".
:)
Of course, that is somewhat contradicted by the mention, three paragraphs later, of a binary update system which is simple, easy, fast, secure, and uses less bandwidth than cvsup.
For the record, FreeBSD Update does work on 5.1-RELEASE; but there aren't any binary patches being distributed because I don't have any hardware with which to build them. Donations will be gratefully received.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
But that's really the point. FreeBSD is about getting it done and getting on with your life, not pie-in-the-sky stuff that's of no use to 99.9% of the users.
TODO: Something witty here...
I'm running 4/8 after a similar experience with 5.1.
Remember, if you run 5.1, they warned you might have problems. That's why 4.8 is still recommended for production use.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
2 It cannot be used by my grandma
If your grandma can't use an iMac, then chances are Windows isn't going to be any better
It lacks a GUI of any note
GUI Installer, yes, but with X, you can choose KDE, Gnome, Windowmaker, a couple others. Or if you purchase a Mac you get Aqua, which is about a GUI as they come.
It is an assortment of fragmented OSes
Everytime I hear this I always ask, "And how many features has Linux stol...I mean borrowed from FreeBSD to make Linux more stable?"
It cannot be run on the x86 Platform
Well it seems to running on my 1.2Ghz Althon machine quite happly. Hell I even have it running on an ALPHA box here.
You have to compile everything and know C
Helps, but 99.9% of the programs you need are already in the ports tree. Typeing 'Make && make install' isn't that hard.
Support for the latest hardware is always poor
For Macintoshs, not so much of a problem. For those running Free, Open, Net, I would have to say hardware support is lacking for things like sound cards and vidcards. But consider that the main use of BSD is as a Server OS, you don't need the lattest ATI card with 1GB of vid ram to run terminal.
It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux
Well, FreeBSD has a great Linux emulator. I really havn't had much problems running Linux apps in FreeBSD
It is dying
Aren't we all...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
The good news is that now there is an official, redistributable, native Sun Java VM port, at least for FreeBSD 4 (of course, you have to download it from the FreeBSD site, not Sun's, FreeBSD isn't part of the "A" in "WORA"). It has finally passed Sun's test suite, which it didn't earlier mostly because nobody could pay Sun enough money to run it. It was too late for 5.1, and there was still a minor issue IIRC, but I'd expect it to be in 5.2.
Bottom line:
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Yes, Linux is easier to use, and Linux's multiprocessor support is better - I could go on & on about features & performance that Linux provides that FreeBSD doesn't. However, it's fallacious to claim that one is "faster" than the other across the board, though, because it isn't true - FreeBSD's IP stack is far superior, and for some of us, that actually matters more than chatting on gaim, reading email in a gui, or browsing the web.
Old news! ... and its a technical release still. THe ports are REAALL broken.
Upgrade ports then?
The ports that came with 5.1 worked fine for me though. In fact, the only thing that hasn't worked is wine, and apparently the stuff that breaks wine is fixed in CURRENT. That should mean it'll work when 5.2 rolls around.
Ok, I don't agree with the first reply to this parent, however BSD isn't for hobbyists and it is commercial, ever here of this little company called Apple? Anyway I cant really say much more then that cause I use linux and I don't use a mac so anything I say is pretty much void from here on out. -Steve
Linus wrote the kernel, unsatisfied with Minix and its licensing restrictions, and really wanting to become a tinkerer. He never really cared about userland and he took the freely available GNU tools and got his kernel running. Because a huge part (essentially all) of the early Linux userland was GNU tools, RMS felt that the FSF was justified for taking part credit for Linux. When Stallman first proposed GNU/Linux, Linus thought he was talking about Debian Linux, which was at that time the most FSF friendly distro. RMS actually meant all Linux distros. There's no real way to settle this, since most anything past this is opinon (what level of importance is the kernel experience vs. userland, is GNU/ an "advertising clause" that pissed Stallman off about BSD, the percentage of non-GNU tools and the lessening importance of the GNU command line tools, yadda yadda) and it just becomes a FlameWar. Linus is usually pragmatic about it, and he usually stays out of the whole naming mess. He even doesn't mind that there's a Linux variant that doesn't even bear the Linux name (the name escapes me) yet uses the Linux kernel. Evidently having GNU credit is vital for the safety of the world, but having credit for the kernel is somewhat less critical.
In general, the stock FreeBSD system has only one big chunk of FSF code, and that's GCC (there is a FSF soft-FPU available, but since that only is important to 386 and FPU-less 486 users, its almost never used). The userland tools are, unsurprisingly, BSD variants. There are a lot of FSF userland tools available in ports, but the base system is BSD. There's a few folks who are license zealots that talk about suporting a non-GPL compiler in some of the BSDs, but most folks see that as a pisswar and a waste of effort, especially since significant chunks of the base system in now C++ and writing an ANSI and GCC compatible compiler would be REAL hard.
There actually is a GNU/NetBSD variant, with the NetBSD kernel and a FSF/GNU userland. My personal opinion is this is just a proof of concept to show that its the userland more than the kernel that's important, somewhat of a self-congratulatory exercise with no real use. The strength of the BSD systems are that they are cohesive, with a single source. Adding a lot of GNU tools all with different releases, all requiring different downloads kind of destroys the current BSD gestalt.