FreeBSD 4.9 Released

Digital Dharma writes "Excellent! FreeBSD 4.9 has been released, and if it's anything like the RC series, this will be a release to remember. You can obtain it from the usual sources, or if you're feeling generous and supportive, you can buy the cd set. Support your local Daemon!" As Jani Laaksonen writes, the new release includes "numerous security advisory fixes, kernel changes and support for the Physical Address Extensions (PAE) capability on Intel Pentium Pro and higher processors (see page(4)). This release also adds support for a few more hardware NIC cards, ipfw network protocol enhancements, userland changes, and more. Check FreeBSD 4.9 Release Notes for more information."

Comments

Re:I thought 5.x was the latest

[quantum bit]

I thought FreeBSD was already on 5.x or something like that. Is that the development version? Does FreeBSD use a linux-like version numbering where odd numbers are development releases?

No, 4.9 is the latest release from the -stable branch. The 5.0 and 5.1 releases were made from the -current development branch (actually the main trunk in CVS). Eventually, probably around 5.2 or 5.3, 5.x will be branched off as 5-STABLE and development will begin on 6.x.

Isn't it interesting

[utlemming]

that the difference between a *BSD release and a Linux distro release is a night and day difference. When a linux distro is released everyone comes out of the wood-work, says it is the best thing since the 386 was released, praises Allah, and there would be few if any comments to the contrary. Yet, when a *BSD release comes out it becomes a religious war over which is better, and all the trolls come out of the wood-work?

BSD is SCO Insurance

[Anonymous Coward]

Be nice to the FreeBSD project. In the remote event SCO wins its lawsuits, FreeBSD, especially the 5.x series, would easily be able to replace Linux.

Re:Is it STABLE or not?

[bmah]

Let's ignore, for the moment, any bikeshedding over the name STABLE and the stability of the code.

The reason for the sentences in question (I had a small part in writing them) was simply this: PAE is a fairly young (in the 4.X series) feature that touches a lot of bits in the kernel (yes, even if it's not enabled). When it was first committed, it caused a number of problems (well-documented on the mailing lists), but they seem to have been fixed. If we thought there were any major problems remaining in this area, we wouldn't have released. However it's an undeniable fact that PAE in 4.X hasn't had a lot of testing time compared to most of the rest of the kernel, and this bears a bit of consideration.

I believe that for the vast majority of users (myself included) 4.9 works just fine. (I run a mix of 4.9-STABLE and 5.1-CURRENT on various laptops, desktops, and non-critical servers.) If you're really one of the most conservative users, you probably wouldn't jump on the new release bandwagon anyways, and would spend some time evaluating 4.9 (regardless of PAE, or what anyone on the release engineering team says) before deploying it in some mission-critical environment.

Re:Mod Parent UP

[minektur]

Actually, our company pays full time wages for at least two FreeBSD developers that I can think of, who's work goes straight to the project. Our products however we dont give away - they are a competetive advantage that we dont want to give up.

The person I originally responded to was claiming that the BSD licensed software frightened away commercial interested MORE than GPL'd software and my posting was to refute that false idea.

Just because YOU like the GPL and you like working on GPL'd products doesn't mean that that is the only valid way to do development.

Our business model works for us, and the FreeBSD community bennefits from our involvment. It really is a win-win situation for both FreeBSD and us.

If I were to release source code of any of my personal software projects, I'd do it under a BSD-style license. Software doesn't have to be business-related or business-useful, but for businesses using various types of 'free' software, BSD is certainly more attractive.

Oh, and you don't have to work on FreeBSD and do 'without-cost' development for corporations - my company PAYS me to develop BSD software. Just because you can't find paying work doesn't mean that the rest of us don't like having jobs.

Don't even get me started about all the BSD work that has found it's way into linux - the BSD license has made this possible, and easy.