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FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 Now Available
Dan writes "FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long announces the availability of FreeBSD 5.2 RC2 which fixes a number of bugs, specifically the one in which users experienced system panics during install and dynamic library problems in the 'fixit' environment. Scott is asking everyone to test this release over the holidays. You can download it from one of your preferred mirror sites." Update: 12/24 23:01 GMT by T : Dan writes with more info: "Scott Long has also laid out a roadmap for future FreeBSD 5.3 releases now that FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 is getting close to release quality."
That means that the next two releases on the 5 branch are going to be last times new features are added to the branch before -current forks, so it's going to require a lot of testing to ensure stability.
Why do you care?
Well, if you don't ever plan on using FreeBSD, you don't. If you do use FreeBSD, tossing this release on your hardware and making sure things like ACPI function with your motherboard are really important as NOW is the time to fix them so that they can be tuned and maintained prior to the 5.3 Release when the code is marked stable.
The major changes in FreeBSD 5 are significant. There's new locking throughout the tree, which should improve SMP performance everywhere. There's also finer grained locking in the Network stacks (thanks Sam), better ACPI (thanks John), support for AMD64 (coming slowly, thanks Peter), and the GEOM disk abstraction layer (nice work PHK), which has already been shown to be useful for things like GEOM-gate (a la nbd in Linux), is getting more mature with every release.
Performance and stability
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An HP ProLiant DL140 server, apparently.
Oh wait, you've probably got a different ad...
Perhaps this "bais" is due to the fact that Linux kernel panics are not news. However, kernel panics in BSD are so rare that when they occur they are indeed news.
And yes, before the Linux hordes flames me to death, yes I know that Linux kernel does have Opteron support and has been more or less 64-bit compatible since the DEC Alpha days.
I'm talking about the distribution. I am considering buying a dual Opteron in January but all the Linux distros seem to be betas. A quick search on Google reveals that the distros have serious problems. In particular, X doesn't work and compilers fail completely.
FreeBSD reports Opteron as tier-1 hardware, so how is it?
> bugs, specifically the one in which users
> experienced system panics during install
I wonder how they expect anyone to actually use an operating system whose installation procedure makes experienced users panic... Oh, yeah; I forgot. It's open source.
I re-iterate. -STABLE is *NOT* the most stable branch. It is not comparable to 2.4 in Linux. For more information, please see http://www.freebsd.org/handbook/current-stable.htm l (which explains the -CURRENT and -STABLE branches as well as a bit about releng.)
;))
But yes, thanks to the developers who have been working on this. And thank heavens that it's the holiday season; now I'll finally have time to work on locks in the IPv6 stack (thanks Sam and Robert
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It's dying!
OK, It's so much that it's dying .... it's that all these companies like SCO are able to keep living by forking off endless proprietaty code for themselves because the FreeBSD license allows it. Do a "strings" command on any SCO binary and you'd be amazed how much similar stuff they have to the FreeBSD equivalents. (what's even more amazing is that for all that copying you'd think they'd be able to make SCO stable)
Yes, you still have to add options DIVERT into the kernel to get IPFW to work with natd, if that's what you mean.
One of the goals for 5.3 (and indeed something that Sam has been doing some wonderful and hard work on) is cleaning up the IP stack. Getting IPFW pfil(9) ready (if I understood correctly) is also one of these goals and will mean that using any software firewall solution such as pf, IPFW or ipfilter would be a question of loading the module. At which point you wouldn't have to recompile the kernel for this functionality.
But this is a 5.3 goal and will not be present in 5.2.
Hope this was of help.
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BSD itself died, back at v4.4 when UCB stopped doing development itself. The body parts have been transplanted into computer systems all over, almost every system has some BSD code.
The current BSD's are like the children of the original, taking on the family business.
BSD is like the late, great, patriarch, whose portrait hangs on the wall, in the living room of the family mansion.
What I really wish for is private Sys V IPC and multiple IP's for jails to be available as standard features. Currently, there are some patches out there, but they seem outdated.
Allowing freedom includes allowing people to do things you don't necessarily agree with. I used to defend the GPL consistently, but I'm starting to feel like "Free as in Speech" should also include unpopular speech, and that's what the BSD license protects that the GPL does not.
...software which OpenBSD uses and redistributes must be free to all (be they people or companies), for any purpose they wish to use it, including modification, use, peeing on, or even integration into baby mulching machines or atomic bombs to be dropped on Australia.
In the words of Theo de Raadt:
As opposed to the the GPL, which exists as Stallman's attempt to redefine "Free Software" as any software that suits his political ideology.
The GPL as a strategy is fine, but to call it "freedom" is less than honest. Whose freedom is being protected by the GPL? The developers? Not really. The developers are only allowed to use the source as long as they conform to the RMS ideology that the work they do should benefit the collective and not necessarily just the individual who wrote the software. As for the users, what freedom do they gain by using GPL software over BSD licensed software? The freedom to use software that does not co-exist peacefully with others? The freedom to view the source code they don't understand or care to understand? Besides, the original BSD software always remains free as in speech and beer, even if the Hated Proprietary Software Vendor of the Week exercises their right to protect their own interests.
I'm certain that I'll be moderated as a troll, but this something that I've been pondering quite a bit lately, and I'm certainly willing to be proven wrong.