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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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Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
FreeBSD: Are you guys coming or what?
Best Slashdot comment ever
Thank you. Google was tough to use, The FreeBSD site keeps them secret and the Internet is too difficult for me.
I would have never been able to find this if not for you....
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
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
Updating is "not simple, but it is easy"
In addition FreeBSD is not convoluted, but it is complicated. It is not slow, but it is lethargic. Lastly, it is not painful, but it is agonizing.
--- What?
Apparently some moderators have yet to upgrade to 'Sarcasm 0.94a'.
swaret --upgrade Sarcasm
Why?
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
I've never had the honour (pain?) of being directly slashdotted, but I seem to be getting an indirect slashdotting. From the link in the middle of the article (to a very handy utility in development for performing binary security updates) I'm seeing a couple visitors per second.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Ok...I can agree with the underlying concept (ease of use can mean difficult to fix). I don't see this in the portage tree however. Hell, it's all just text files. And "always fatally broken"? Huh? I've been using Gentoo since the early releases and I have not experienced the portage system being "always fatally broken". Hell, you wouldn't even be able to install gentoo if that was true.
How about a little less hyperbole and a little more specific and accurate facts? I've only known of a couple of instances where things got really messed up, and that was because of screwups in releases. And unless you were one of those people who felt the need to update everything all the time every time a new release came out you didn't even get bit by it.
I've seen APT and Portage choke on dependancies with no obvious way to fix them,
Again, huh? If you're having troubles with dependancies within portage not working then you need to get a better understanding of how portage works. You can't blame your ignorance on the tool.
and anyone who has ever tried to use a third-party RPM knows what a disaster that can be.
yes. Emphasis on /can/ be. RPM isn't unusable, but it is unusable for some purposes. And the workstation of any linux user who installs something other than what their distro releases is not it. ;-) And even then, a workstation install can be unpleasant. However, if you're running a typical internet server system redhat's setup can serve just fine. Not only do you not need the latest cutting edge releases, you don't really even want them. Works fine then as long as you stay within the lines.
FreeBSD is, if nothing else, a nice respite from the various GNU/Linux package management systems.
You know. I have nothing against BSD. I'm not an avid lover/user of BSD, but I have installed it on several occaisions and played with it. It's a nice OS. I prefer linux cause I like the faster pace and the more ...gritty...(for lack of a better term) feel to it. People are /doing/ things in linux. People from all walks and of all levels of skill. BSD doesn't (imo) seem to lend itself to that. It's always seemed to me that BSD considered itself destined for the elite, while linux was an OS for the great unwashed as well.
My impression could very well be inaccurate, as it's based mostly on things I read in mailing lists and from people I've met who /are/ avid BSD fans/users. (Few, if any, of which actually meet the "Elite" definition, but they sure felt and acted like they did. Which imo is why BSD tends to attract people like that. But I digress.)
Bottom line, both are great OSes. Why is it that this has to be us /or/ them. Why can't it be both? Is there some unwritten rule that one OS has to be cool and vibrant and the other has to be lame and dying?
I think the writer does BSD a disservice. The article makes it look like BSD defines itself by the shortcomings of some linux distributions (ignoring the fact that most of those "shortcomings" are hot air). BSD has enough positive things in and of itself that I highly doubt it needs to poke holes in linux or try to make linux look bad as a means of promoting itself.
Don't rag on linux and tell me linux sucks so I should use BSD. Tell me what's great about BSD. I already know windows and linux's shortcomings. Tell me what's great about BSD and I'll make my own comparisons, thank you very much.
</soap box>
"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
--James Madison
The supposed FreeBSD vs GNU/linux competition is one of the strangest things I've seen.
I use both. And, the reason for using one rather than the other isn't that crucial. I would be perfectly willing to use either for everything. It is just that I don't have to. So, I use FreeBSD for server stuff with standard hardware, and I use linux when I want to support more up-to-date hardware.
Best wishes,
Bob
The problem with not calling it GNU/Linux is that it's more GNU than Linux.
True, but most distributions are also more Mozilla, X, and several other things, than they are GNU.
Should we be referring to RedHat Mozilla/XFree86/GNOME/emacs/BSD/GNU/Linux?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
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"
I am sorry, but I don't see any Dreamweaver or Photoshop running on Linux. The only major application that I have seen support Linux has been Maya.
Last printer I bought came packaged with OS X drivers, no Linux drivers packaged with them.
The number of apple units shipping is actully increasing, especially their powerbook line. The more developer confences I go to for PHP and PERL, the more iBooks and Powerbooks I see in the crowd.
So to say BSD is dead...
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
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 first thing I noticed was that when they describe the license, they talk about how Free it is, but don't mention the crucial difference between the GPL and BSD licenses: your option to not release the source when you include the code in another programs.
The next comment that caught my eye was "The installer is fairly intuitive and informative, and everything works perfectly as far as I can tell -- I've installed FreeBSD about a dozen times." If you've installed FreeBSD that many times, of course it will seem intuitive and informative. I've heard the install process is much more Debian-like than say RedHat like. More information on that would really have been helpful.
When he talked about the boot process he said: "The FreeBSD bootloader, while simple and unable to be manually configured, is one of the best I've seen." He makes a good point that this means that no reconfiguration is needed when a new bootable partition is added... but "unable to be manually configured"? Does this mean you can't set a default OS to load? You can't set a default timeout? Seems odd to me, and needs more explanation for that comment.
The potshots at Debian, Gentoo and RedHat's respective package management systems are not backed up at all, and don't match my experience in the slightest.
Finally, at the end, there's the bit about 'ee' beint better than 'vi', but no discussion about what 'ee' is or why it is better than a very standard editor that's on every Unix in the world. (I'm an emacs guy myself but I happily fall back to vi when appropriate). He also says a lot of other FreeBSD tools are better than their Linux equivalents, but without so much as a single reason why.
I'd love to hear an article on a BSD saying what the differences really are, why the author prefers one version to another, etc. This one seems, at times, to be a review, but it isn't a review from someone who seems to have given both Linux and FreeBSD a chance.
At least it was enough for me to decide that FreeBSD isn't for me. I'm lazy, I admit it. I do certain things often enough that I want them to be simple. I prefer 'make xconfig' over manually editing a file to customize my kernel. I prefer a one-step package management command to a multi-step one. Sure, I'm familliar with CVS, and it's nice to know that's what you're doing with the BSDs, but I install and remove packages often enough that if I can save a few keystrokes every time, that will add up. FreeBSD sounds like it might make a better choice for an ultra-stable server which only ever has to be upgraded. If you're doing the maintenance over SSH anyway, configuring by editing files rather than a GUI is the way to go. But for a desktop system, Linux seems to be the better choice for me.
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.
This is the first time I read this, but it kind of pisses me off (though I really am not trying to start a flamewar).
....
The BSD developers were inspired to make their code free software by the example of the GNU Project, and explicit appeals from GNU activists helped persuade them,
This is only true if you believe in the RMS/FSF conceit that only things defined by the FSF are truly free. BSD was releasing code to Universities the only places their AT&T license would let them) for many years before stallman even started at MIT. They spent the great effort to rewrite all of BSD (to get rid of AT&T encumbered code) and release it to the world. They even went to court (the Great Lawsuit, which even Linus admits he probably wouldn't have written Linux if FreeBSD wasn't stuck in legal crosshairs) to allow people to use BSD code. Just because he had a problem with the original license (ironically, because of the BSD License's advertising clause, yet he insists on GNU/Linux, a sort of GNU advertising clause) doesn't mean it wasn't free software.
I think Stallman has done a lot for computing, but as a zealot and a purist, he tends to focus only on his agenda, and tends to be a bit revisionist for things that don't follow his vision. I think this, and even the whole GNU/Linux naming thing show that.
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.