Slashdot Mirror
FreeBSD 5.2-RC1 Released
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long has uploaded ISO images and FTP install bits for FreeBSD 5.2-RC1. i386, alpha, and pc98 are available now, amd64 will be available shortly, and sparc64 will be available shortly. Please test this as much as possible so that the FreeBSD Team can release a good 5.2-RELEASE next week. Testing focus for 5.2-RELEASE relates to PCM locking and performance issues, ATA driver improvements, GPT support for sysinstall, ATAng disk corruption issues, SMP and random_harvest panic, vinum data corruption, ACPI kernel module and reported NFS failures."
Just get 4-LATEST or 5-CURRENT...
SCC makes you pay them $699 if you DON'T use Linux.
The recording industry sells all their material online, in a usable format, at a fair price
We don't, for one, welcome our new overlords.
Windows Security is not an oxymoron
All the trolls can't stop proclaiming how *BSD is so alive.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You could have run 4.X instead.
5.X is the development series at this time, one should expect problems.
Last night I was grabbing some 5.1 isos and happened to see 5.2 had just been updated to RC1 so I went ahead and grabbed them. As always another quality release from the FreeBSD team.
then go to releases/ARCH/ISO-IMAGES/5.2-RC1
Going strong, in a mature way! You know, I stay impressed with the quality of FreeBSD. As a longtime UNIX user and Linux user, FreeBSD has the professional "sheen" that I would expect from Solaris or AIX. While I enjoyed using Linux, it was the small things in FreeBSD that made me happy. Complete man pages, vs. halfway done man pages and broken info pages, or ports, or how there was a new kernel of the week (eerie similar to Microsoft). I like the fact that FreeBSD was rather set it up, update it, build your software, and forget about it. It's hard to make the 4.x series die, and the 5.x series is looking close to or already is enterprise ready. Good Luck, God Bless, and keep up the good work FreeBSD Team.
http://www.freebsd.org
No point in telling him about 4.x dude. He was a troll.
Either that or he's really stupid to be using something not production ready in a mission critical application.
Is oen better then the other? depends on what you need.
FreeBSD is very good for offering practical solutions to real world problems, based on a solid foundation. Bleedign edge technology only comes second to that.
Linux tries to push the envelope of Unix like development very succesfully, but at times forgoes the practical solution.
In the end, it doesn't matter that much. Sometimes you have to wait a bit longer in Linux before you get a practical solution for a problem, soemtimes you have to wait soem longer for FreeBSD to support a specific feature or piece of hardware.
Practical solutions?
It is things like having had 'accept filters' for a long time, that make it possible to wait for a complete http request before spendign any timeslices on the http server that needs to handle it, and thus preventing many context switches for example.
It is being able to reliably verify which uid is generating an outgoing packet in the standard ip filtering software for example.
Are those hitech/bleedign edge solutions? no, but they are practical, and provide solutions to real problems that allow you to get a lot more out of your hardware with very little investment of time and efford.
Do you need them? I don't for my workstation (tho it rubns FreeBSD, but that is more due to it being simpler to maintain a few machines with the same OS.
I do want them for my webserver and mailserver and such tho, there they improve control, security and performance quite a bit.
Maybe it is just me, but I have a slight feeling there is some redundancy in your posts, Joseph.
Good answers! Proper technical points there, as opposed to some of the zealot's answers which would put anyone off FreeBSD for life...
We look forward to AMD64 support coming soon, FreeBSD has been the most reliable OS we have ever used, next to our OpenBSD firewalls.
See my post that discusses this issue
No worries dude! Linux is dying too!
Red Hat offer 5
If you repeat a lie long enough do you hope to make it true?
Red Hat's policy for Red Hat Linux distributions is to provide maintenance for at least 12 months. No 5 year offer....just a 1 year offer.
well-designed and thoroughly tested distros like Debian and Slackware are totally rock-solid.
That would be the same 'totally rock-solid' Debian project which was rooted via do_bkr() - a result found in the 'thoroughly tested' Linux kernel?
> This is another fine example of overengineered
> FreeBSD rubbish given a fancy name, bandied about
> for the next 4 and a half years,
Since it results in some 15-20% less load on my rather smallish http server (486 dx4 with 32mb) it is for me a usefull feature. If it isn't for you, well, don't use it.
> their non-existant SMP scalability? Linux is
> being run right now on systems with FIVE HUNDRED
> CPUs.
So use Linux for your 500 cpu machine....
I deal with dual cpu machines on a daily basis, and there FreeBSD does extremely well..
I have seen 500+ cpu machines.. and used one, but they are extremely rare.
A very good point tho, Linux provides something that is technically advanced and pushes the barriers of Unix-like development..
FreeBSD provides a practical solution for often occuring situations that normal people deal with.
> Umm, Linux can do this in case you didn't know.
I am aware of that, but FreeBSD could do this at a time when Linux 2.0.3x was current.
It is an example of a practical implementation based on a solid framework (over engineered maybe in your world)
Linux' ip filtering took a few incarnations to get beyond it, and by now FreeBSD's ip filtering needs a bit of an overhaul.
That doesn't change the fact that it survived and provided usefull solutions based on a single design for as long as by now 3 different designs in the Linux world.
Other (over-engineered in your world probably) examples are the cam subsystem and netgraph. (scsi over ide is simply ugly compared to atapicam for using things like cdrecord with your ide cd/dvd burner) and linux does not have anything that compares to netgraph at all.
For as far as benchmarks go, again, those are nice theory, and give good indications as to where improvements can be made.
Benchmarks don't do much for predicting how a real world situation will work out unless you know very precisely what your real world situation is going to look like, and can find benchmarks that give comparisons on all the relevant points, and can balance those out.
A better way is to actually setup your real world configuration on multiple platforms and compare what works best.
Also, the page you point at, as has been discussed when it was posted on slashdot, uses a development release of FreeBSD, and while I am quite content with 5.2-CURRENT on my workstation, my servers all run 4.9, and unless you go to some length to disable all the debugging stuff in 5.2-CURRENT, 4.9 will perform quite a bit better in most situations.
This will likely change with either 5.2-RELEASE (didn't look at RC-1 to see if they were turned off by default) or at least in 5.3
A realworld benchmark?
My slow old 486 http server can handle some 60 hits/sec running FreeBSD, and just below 50 on Linux. Does that prove anything? yes, it proves that for my specific situation it is the better choice, and there it ends.
Then why do you mod it down?
Oh wait, I was right..
"If you repeat a lie long enough do you hope to make it true?"
What? Red Hat offer 5 years of support on their RHEL line of products. This isn't a lie; it's a fact, and though it pains you to admit that FreeBSD's measly 12 months is worthless in comparison, you just have to deal with it.
As for the kernel bug, yep it wasn't great, but FreeBSD has had security-related kernel bugs too. Linux's are always higher-profile.
someone has waaay too much time on their hands.
What? Red Hat offer 5 years of support on their RHEL line of products.
No, they CLAIM to offer 5 years. Actions show a different reality.
Care to defend Microsoft when they say 'In the future we'll have better security' too? Perhaps you should go work for Microsoft in thier PR department as you have a talent for denial.
As for the kernel bug, yep it wasn't great,
"Rock Solid" eh? "well-designed and thoroughly tested" eh? And when challenged the response is "yep it wasn't great".
De-Nile isn't just a river in Egypt. Seems to be the place you have a houseboat.
.... otherwise this mentally retarded deranged individual wouldn't be spending so much time trying to discredit it.
Seems like this nut runs a Windows or Linux business and feels threatened by FreeBSD!
Can't wait for FreeBSD 5.2 next week, this freak will go nuts!
Oh, and another thing
>Also, the page you point at, as has been discussed
>when it was posted on slashdot, uses a development
>release of FreeBSD, and while I am quite content
>with 5.2-CURRENT on my workstation, my servers all
>run 4.9, and unless you go to some length to
>disable all the debugging stuff in 5.2-CURRENT, 4.9
>will perform quite a bit better in most situations.
The guy had turned all debugging off in FreeBSD 5. He also later benchmarked FreeBSD 4.9. It is worse.
"No, they CLAIM to offer 5 years. Actions show a different reality."
What actions? RHEL 3 was launched in October. Have they already stopped supporting it or something? Let's wait and see first -- RH have too many big customers to just stop support (and would suffer all manner of legal difficulties if so).
As said, the main point is that one can get a Linux release with 5 years of support (even for free via WhiteBoxLinux). It's very attractive to corporate types, and there's nothing like that in the FreeBSD world. But you're avoiding that issue...
"And when challenged the response is "yep it wasn't great"."
Basic reading skills are in order, methinks. I said the _bug_ wasn't a great thing to happen, not Linux as a whole. You seem really focused on that, even though it didn't affect around 99% of all Linux users. And the more you go on about it, the more you're going to be shot down by others who can categorically list equal (or worse) FreeBSD bugs.
Hell, I remember a FreeBSD bug in which removing a floppy before unmounting would cause a kernel panic. Real polished software, that...
The fact still stands: Linux is rock-solid and thoroughly tested. Bugs are inevitable, but I've never had a kernel panic in 5 years of day-to-day desktop and server use, and I know loads of others who can say the same.
FreeBSD is solid too, and it has also seen bugs pop up here and there. What's so hard to understand about this?
Why did you mod the parent down but not the grandparent?
Oh thats right, BSD moderators don't believe in fair moderation, only in pro-BSD moderation.
one more release closer to 5.x -stable
After we upgrade to 5.2 we probably won't have to reboot until we install 5.3!
What? Red Hat offer 5 years of support on their RHEL line of products. This isn't a lie; it's a fact, and though it pains you to admit that FreeBSD's measly 12 months is worthless in comparison, you just have to deal with it.
As for the kernel bug, yep it wasn't great, but FreeBSD has had security-related kernel bugs too. Linux's are always higher-profile.
Hey idiot, look at the difference.
Red Hat: Corporation who made fancy tar ball for installing software and distributes Linux in fancy tar ball, charges you several thousand dollars for support.
FreeBSD: Development Group, who out of the kindness in their heart support an older version of an OS for Free!
As for the security bugs in the kernels, FreeBSD has had far less then Linux in that department, get your facts straight.
What I would really like to see is multiple IP's and private System V IPC in jails. It doesn't look like it made it into 5.2, unfortunately....
--
OpenHosting Virtual Servers for the geeks.
Two thoughts come to mind while reading this:
1) Haven't they asked you, repeatedly, (and besides that, isn't it better etiquette...) to point to a list of mirrors instead of directly to an FTP site?
2) Just saw an ad for Slashdot personals. Heh.
Me: So, you read slashdot?
Her: Yeah.
Me: I gotta get going now, nice meeting you.
If you are upgrading to 5.2-RC1 (or -CURRENT) via cvsup/buildworld, make sure that you read UPDATING - just like I didn't :-). Of course, this applies to any time you build. However, it's especially important now or you will have a broken system.
Graham
Graham
This crutch and vacant stool have become orphans, not unlike the now dead FreeBSD. No longer will FreeBSD hobble about on its cripple's crutch. Like the empty hearth, and the vacant stool, FreeBSD lies cold and still. FreeBSD's corpse, lifeless beneath frozen earth and December snows, will see no more Christmas cheer. No, there will be no Christmas ever again for FreeBSD, for FreeBSD is dead.
Goodbye, FreeBSD. The pain of life forever stilled, sleep for all eternity in that long winter's nap. Fade gently into Earth's frozen bosom where in dreams even cripples walk and blind men see.