FreeBSD 5.2 Released

James writes "Freebsd 5.2 is released. FTP mirrors. Release notes This is another step towards 5-STABLE. Many improvements in this release, including ATA and networking enhancements." Patrick Jensen also points out that this is the first stable release with AMD64 support. You can also see the official announcement if you so desire.

Comments

FreeBSD on Opterons

[Anonymous Coward]

FreeBSD was the only *nix distribution that installed cleanly on my dual Opteron with AIC7902W dual SCSI.

Gentoo, Mandrake and RedHat crashed. Couldn't test SuSE because you can't download their 64-bit Linux.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[Dilbert_]

Why can't you download that from SuSE? Do they give a reason?

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[Anonymous Coward]

RedHat 8.0 on the Dual Opteron in 32 bit.

Of course it works - I tried it too - but what is the point running a 32-bit OS?

I've heard good things about SuSE's 64-bit enterprise server-distro as well as the RedHat Enterprise Linux, but you can't download them for a testdrive. Sorry. I won't buy something that I can't try first.

AMD64 is a Tier 1 FreeBSD platform - not Beta like the Linux distros and it just worked.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[DA-MAN]

Did you stop reading after that? Perhaps you didn't get so far as to read the fact that my cluster runs in full 64 bit using Rocksclusters.Org, a rebuilt Enterprise Linux. All from source, all Free, all 64 Bit.

It's the perfect way to not only test drive RedHat Enterprise, but build a cluster in record time.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[DA-MAN]

try this link

Finding a 64 bit SuSE is easy. This is not the Enterprise Edition, but if you want Enteprise, you will have to pay first.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[Anonymous Coward]

SuSE download

I wouldn't call it easy to find if it's not even listed on their website...

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[DA-MAN]

I stand corrected re: Fedora/64 Bit.

I am not anti FreeBSD, in fact I use FreeBSD as my desktop. I have nothing but respect for FreeBSD. I just don't like people spreading bullshit about Linux neither.

Your post, if true, is not a very typical experience. I installed over a hundred of these machines, and never once had an issue, using the same scsi card.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[Anonymous Coward]

I've actually had a slightly similar situation although with a different outcome.

I recently built a dual opteron workstation using the MSI K8T800-based dual board. I am using a serial ATA hard drive connected to the onboard Via 8237 controller. I was able to intall Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 (both i386 and amd64 'modes') cleanly.

At this time, the 'best' experience I had was with i386 FreeBSD. Except for a problem with the onboard broadcom 5705 not being initialized correctly and a weird issue with my logitech cordless mx duo setup (the mouse is detected but does not seem to operate when used as a usb device), I found that everything worked as if the machine was a normal SMP workstation.

In AMD64 'mode,' I experienced the same issues with the mx duo and the broadcom chip and otherwise did not have as much success. The system did install correctly and I was able to boot multi-user and 'do things.' Kernel modules were not capable of being used at the time (I don't know if this is still the case) so all devices had to be built into the kernel. After initial install there was a problem with the compiled-in ACPI support that caused a system panic. I was able to load the system without the ACPI support and after updating source and compiling a new kernel the ACPI problem did not occur again.

As far as I know, FreeBSD cannot run anything but amd64 binaries in and64 'mode.' If it could compile/run i386 binaries and use i386 linux binaries in my mind there would be no competition between it and linux for the amd64 platform. As it seemed (early last week, things may have changed) limited to amd64-only it is not as useful as it could be. It is still under considerable development though, so it would not really be fair to condemn it for deficiencies right now.

I then tried to install a few Linux distributions, primarily because I wanted to see if the broadcom and mx duo stuff worked fine. I found that after trying Slackware 9.1 ISO, A current Mandrake Cooker ISO and a Gentoo AMD64 LiveCD, Gentoo was the only distribution that would install to the hard drive. Mandrake and Slackware did not seem to have support for the Serial ATA controller, so I was unable to install anything with those two. I did try creating custom boot disks for Slackware but I did not have success doing so, primarily because Gentoo installed correctly and without issue (other than it takes about 5x longer to install Gentoo than it does to install any other system I have ever used, even a stage3 install).

I am currently using Gentoo on this workstation because the Broadcom controller is initialized correctly and the kb/mouse (mx duo) is working correctly. Also, despite numerous ports/ebuilds/whatever not wanting to compile for amd64 I am able to get enough things to work that I can use the system for light browsing and some daily tasks.

Despite being available for several months IMO the AMD64 platform is still very, very new. I think the availability of 'cheap' 64 bit x86 hardware is not something that a lot of developers considered when writing some of their software, and as a result there is and will continue to be some teething pains, so to speak, while projects gradually begin to support this platform.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[swimmar132]

It's not available for download. Only purchase.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[brsmith4]

Would you like a joint? Chill out... I sense much pent up agression.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[PatJensen]

FreeBSD owns my MSI-based K8T Athlon 64. Every driver worked out of the box (including on-board sound, gigabit ethernet and power management)! Never have I had such luck with a BSD or Linux install. I asked Hemos to update the headline that Athlon 64/Opteron support is now in a release.

Pat

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[Anonymous Coward]

As a FreeBSD user...

It's worth noting that AMD64 support in FreeBSD began/appeared later than the initial Linux betas. I was still of the understanding it was "Beta"-grade (in the sense that even the Alpha port has always been a little 'experimental,' despite being stable), but perhaps they've stabilized it to mission-critical-and-then-some for 5.2.

This is not to say that one is 'better' than the other, but to note a difference in approach - the Linux work would seem the product of many interested parties, probably building from someone's initial patchset, following the 'bazaar' model. FreeBSD is... well, more of a mall than an outright bazaar, so you might say the AMD64 work there heeled closer to the 'cathedral' model -- someone (or a relatively small group of interested/capable developers) decided it was time to support AMD64, and the development has probably been that little bit more centralized than you'd find in the Linux scene.

Which can be good or bad; in this case, seems like we've got a nice, clean, working implementation, so it was good. In cases of religious/architectural disagreement, it does mean you have to fork (OpenBSD, DFBSD), rather than releasing a -yi (Your Initials) patchset and pretending you haven't.

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[bsd_usr]

So everything worked out of the box? Hey, that's good to know. Lately, I've been becoming more and more an MSI fan. I used to like Asus, but MSI is doing some pretty cool things. Besides, I like the color of their mainboards. Daemon red. ;)

Re:FreeBSD on Opterons

[dasunt]

I would be very surprized if NetBSD would fail to install...

NetBSD: Clean, portable code.

FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[linuxbaby]

Although they advise against using the FreeBSD 5 line in production servers, our company went ahead & did it anyway because we needed a gigabit ethernet driver that was only in FreeBSD 5 not 4.

Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now.

No problems at all. Rock-solid. Good ol' FreeBSD.

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[becauseiamgod]

Just another story that re-assures me completely switching to FreeBSD was the right choice.

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[zulux]

our company went ahead & did it anyway because we needed a gigabit ethernet driver that was only in FreeBSD 5 not 4.

The Broadcom Gigabit ethernet drivers that were needed were merged back into 4.8 and 4.9 - but 5.1 is so stable that we're not going to change anything.

(Did you buy some IBM eServer's too?)

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[Anonymous Coward]

If 5.x is suitable for production or not depends a lot on your environment really. For running some web based services, esp. when building that based on standard tools (mysql, apache etc) will work very well, and in some cases works better then on 4.x

I run all my machines on 5.x now, but am strongly considering to move one machien back to 4.x, why?

Because I need stuff like mjpegtools, mplayer and the like to compile and work without trouble. Currently they give waaay too much trouble on 5.x to be usable for me.

Stability? 4.x has crashed on me a few times in the last couple of months, 5.x hasn't so far (at least not without there being obvious reasons like cpu/memory failure due to overclocking)

In a server setup, neither has crashed on me ever, and I run quite a variety of servers on 5.x now, and used to run those on 4.x (and 3.x before that)

Matter of fact is that 4.x simply gives me fewer surprises, and as such is more usable in a production environment, 5.x provides interesting new technology and as such is more interestign as logn as I have the time to deal with the startup issues.

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[Billly Gates]

If only the ports worked at all on my workstation. :-(

4.9 works happpily here but I have had no luck building my system with any 5.x version so far.

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[scalis]

Well, I have had problems installing FreeBSD 5.1 on a few Fujitsu Laptops. I get kernel panics every time I try to use the function button to switch to an external display for instance.
That made me go back to FreeBSD 5.0 that ran without any problems since day one. It seems, however, that the source tree for 5.0 has been removed from the FTP mirrors so unless 5.2 works better than 5.1 there is no way for me to update the applications on any of the 5.0 machines. I am keeping my fingers crossed for 5.2.....

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[frodo from middle ea]

Care to post a link to your site ? he he

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[grahamlee]

Indeederoony, FreeBSD 5 is perfectly stable for production systems here, too. We use versions based on the Mach Microkernel, for Intel and for PPC. They're available here :-).

Seriously, as far as FreeBSD-derivatives go, Darwin is very nice, if only for the Mach task scheduling, IOKit, SystemStarter, NetInfo, Apple/NeXT dynamic loader, fat binary support.... Show me another system on which you can build a single version of XFree86 that works with both PowerPC and Intel systems and doesn't even need an XF86Config file :-D

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[Eraser_]

"Me, too"

I use FreeBSD on my workstation, and now 2 production servers here in this school district. They function rock solid as dns servers, and recently, a small DHCP server for roaming laptops. It took a complete failure of a motherboard to bring it down. Sure they only have 100 zones loaded, but they also are the recursive servers for the district.

Swapped out the hard drive into another computer, loaded kernel.GENERIC, and the computer boot up. Reinstalled world because I switched from Cyrix to Pentium, and I was up and running. 1 hour total downtime, most spent finding a suitable replacement and physical labor.

If FreeBSD can run stable for a year on old failing Cyrix hardware, I dont know what other kudos it needs. Oh yeah it runs fast on those dual opterons as well ;-)

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[tigga]

Sounds like you should have just used linux. They have had gigabit support for over a year.

You did not pay attention for what he said. He talked about NIC driver, not gigabit support per se. I was using gigabit with FreeBSD in 2000.

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[Just Some Guy]

4.x has crashed on me a few times in the last couple of months, 5.x hasn't so far (at least not without there being obvious reasons like cpu/memory failure due to overclocking)

Wish I could say the same. While 4.x has been rock solid, I've had some rather serious problems with 5-CURRENT. Specifically, if I enable DMA on my drive, my average uptime is 12 hours (it always crashes during the daily Amanda backups). I've been running in PIO for a few weeks, but the entire system is draggy and less responsive.

ATA DMA works perfectly on that machine under 4.x and old versions of 5.x (before the big September ATAng commit), but it doesn't work at all now. If this doesn't improve soon, I'll have to decide between buying a new server or installing Linux - and given that this is currently a hobby server that I don't want to spend a lot of money on, it'll probably be the latter.

I love FreeBSD, but the -CURRENT branch does have some instabilities on certain hardware.

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[Strog]

If you run cutting edge then expect getting cut once in a while. I just love looking at people's system that complain about stability and they have every alpha/beta/tweak etc. known to man. You can't have it both ways.

Current is for shaking out the bug and making new features. Try a release if you want to be more stable.

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[Just Some Guy]

No kidding, smart guy? I installed a development version of an OS - a version that is slated to become the next release. I used it, tested it, and submitted bug reports to give details of problems I encountered. If these problems are not fixed, then a release based on this code will be unusable by certain people.

Which part of that is inconsistent in any way with what you said? Did I cry that "FreeBSD is teh suk" because it runs poorly on my hardware? No. I just reported my problems to the developers and shared my experience with others. What would you suggest I do differently?

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[cpeterso]

Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now.

If you are using a gigabit ethernet, why are you still using Apache? Can Apache keep up with your gigabit pipe?

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[satanami69]

You should install cvsup and set the tag to RELENG_5_0 /usr/share/example/cvsup/stable-supfile

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[scalis]

Yes, that works.
The problem is that none of the availible sources to get binaries for 5.0 seem to work since the tree has been deleted (this is beginning to sound like a support issue). Kernel sources can be taken from the CD but to install FreeBSD 5.0, add openoffice, xfree86, gnome/kde, mozilla and a bunch of other outdated binaries will result in a week of non-stop compiling when running a portupgrade..... FreeBSD has a GREAT way of doing source upgrades if your system is fairly up to date but if it is not, well, it takes time.
Anyway, I put my faith in the 5.2 release!

Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here

[kkenn]

Check around, it's probably still on some mirrors.

Also, I hope you submitted a Problem Report about your problems with 5.1, but you should definitely try 5.2 (and submit/update your PR based on whether or not it works).

Not on Thinkpad X40

[fuzzybunny]

I'm running 4.9-R on my Thinkpad X40. I tried 5.2-RC2 about 2 months ago, and it was an utter nightmare. Wouldn't boot correctly, or if it did, it froze within a few minutes. Loads of errors, too.

Looks like I'll give it another try--5.x supports OpenBSD's pf and the Thinkpad wifi card (supposedly.)

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[cravey]

Well, according to this, they didn't start BUILDING RC2 until 2003/12/21. Two months ago, you probably would have built some seriously unstable code. This isn't -STABLE, it's -CURRENT. And if you'd done a upgrade from 4.x to 5.x without an intervening format, you'd have been in for some fun as well. If you'll look at the release notes, you'll also see that statfs(2) got a tweak that probably caused all sorts of problems for you if you weren't paying attention to the freeber-current list. Perhaps next time, you'll have better luck with something that's not in the MIDDLE of a development cycle?

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[Junta]

Seeing as how I can't find an x40, either it is a mistake, or you are using a model that is not even released.... Seems hardly fair if the latter is the case to expect FreeBSD to support the hardware reliably...

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[locknloll]

So this makes my initial question about FreeBSD on notebooks pretty much obsol33t... looks as if ACPI really makes sense. :)

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[Alkarismi]

Been running 5 (then 5.1) here just fine on both a thinkpad R40 and A31. No problems (ACPI whines - that's about it...), including wireless on the A31.

As I'm at various client sites around the country pretty much full time, these are my main systems. FreeBSD 5 series does it for me!

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[fuzzybunny]

I hang my head in shame, I meant an X31. Been working so much I don't even know what model I own anymore. Anyway, it wasn't getting along with ACPI. 4.9 works a charm, as I mentioned.

And the X40 exists although it's a different model.

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[Billly Gates]

.. and the newest 5.2 is not stable either.

5.0 and 5.1 both have very broken ports.

Stay with 4.9. Its still too flakey.

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[fuzzybunny]

Actually it was BETA I started playing with, then moving to RC2 when that was released.. It was a fresh netboot on a separate HD. If you'll read a few of the newsgroups, there are plenty of reports from people who've run CURRENT without any trouble in production environments (although yes, it's not advisable.) And as for "2 months", ffs, don't be such a pedant--it was a while ago, I don't keep track of these things.

What's your problem with people seeing if they can get something working? Was I bitching in any form? No harm in trying, is there?

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[EnigmaticSource]

5.1's ports system has done well by me... I've only had one major build problem with it (read: I installed php instead of mod_php) and it was fairly easy to remove

make deinstall; FORCE_PKGREGISTER=1 make install

It beats the hell out of portage... Nothing but problems there

[[Pleaase Excuse the Flaimbait Ramblings of this Recent FreeBSD Convert]]

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[NightSpots]

Did you submit bug reports?
Stack traces?
Anything?

If you're willing to run a release candidate, you should be willing to provide the feedback that allows the RE team to fix the errors before the final release...

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[fuzzybunny]

Actually, I seem to recall bringing it up in one of the mailing lists, getting no reply, then tracking down someone who'd had and asked about the same problem previously, finding out that he'd given up on it, and just ditching it for lack of free time.

It honestly wasn't that important to me--I was just curious to see if it'd run, since I'd read somewhere that only 5.x supported my family of wifi cards. At some point I may be motivated enough to poke around with it again and do some more detailed tracing.

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[Strog]

That's a bad troll since they all use the same ports

Re:Not on Thinkpad X40

[fuzzybunny]

Nice way to make assumptions. Buuut, I'll let myself be trolled here.

a) I didn't 'bash' an OS. I pointed out that a given version doesn't run cleanly on one particular model of a laptop, and that I'm using a prior release.

b) I've been using FreeBSD for > 5 years now. All my personal machines run on it; I have installed it at numerous customer sites. Draw your own conclusions.

c) There's no such thing as a regular 'puter'. There are different types of hardware, which aren't always supported right off the bat.

d) You're an idiot.

Cheers for the amusement.

Question

[Imperator]

I'm happy with my Linux system right now. It supports all my hardware and gives me a nice desktop. Why, beyond standard geek curiosity, should I switch to *BSD? I've used OpenBSD a bit and the ports system seemed kinda cool, though not as simple or powerful as my distribution's package manager. Where's the big advantage for me? Performance? Philosophy? In my very limited and anecdotal experience, Linux has seemed much faster than OpenBSD. I'd ideally like to try one of the free BSDs, but I'm having trouble convincing myself that there's really a point. (This is not intended as a troll. Really, I just want to know.)

Re:Question

[Bluesman]

One of the biggest selling points for me is the ease of administration with ports. The ports system is kept up to date VERY well, so it's rare to come across a port that's broken or that won't build. Also, it's really nice to be able to set compilation options so you never are searching for the "right" binary. Ports does it all for you.

Also, the documentation is fantastic. The FreeBSD handbook has everything you could possibly want to know about system administration, and all the man pages are well maintained and actually there.

As far as performance goes, I'm sure there's not much of a difference. The reason you'd want to switch is that you'd want a mature, complete system, rather than a hodgepodge of libraries and binaries. It makes it a lot easier and more enjoyable to get stuff done.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

Well ... don't. If you are happy with what you have, stay where you are.

I'm happily running FreeBSD on all my boxen. You are happily running Linux. Heck, there are even people happily running Windows.

Re:Question

[karot]

I used all 3 of these OS'es a while back in a datacentre. In those days (about 3 years ago) there was a concensus among many people that I worked with that:

OpenBSD (2.7) = More secure due to better code reviews - Good for firewalls and gateways
FreeBSD (4.8) = Better more efficient network stack - Good for webservers etc.
Linux (RH 6.2) = Good alrounder - Good choice for desktop and for a much wider choice of prebuilt applications. Also OS du jour at the time.

I would be very interested to see a good modern comparison of these OS'es, perhaps even with commercial *nix thrown into the analysis - HP/UX, AIX, Solaris and SCO for example.

I bet they still all have their strengths and weaknesses now, just like they did then.

Re:Question

[kaiwainz]

Well, since you asked nicely, I will reply nicely.

Well, I like it from the point of the view that is is developed in the tradional way. There is good QA process, good community atmosphere which concerntrates on support users rather than giving a lecter on why their particular operating system "rocks their box".

I also like the ports system and the fact that you can sync things so easily and compile everything in a nice clean mannor. Depencies are resolved via ports, updating the core is really easy and the speed, it is great. There aren't 100s of services running when using Linux and 90% of the time I am as confused as a baby in a topless bar over which to disable, enable or what ever.

Also, the cool thing is, it isn't a cool thing. You don't have Red Hat screaming, 4 month using *NIX wantabees asking stupid questions. Sure, I used Linux for 5 years but now unfortunately, with the rise and perceived ease of use, we now have a whole new group of zealots and half witts.

Oh well, back to my quiet yet stable life of MacOS 10.3.2 and FreeBSD.

Re:Question

[linuxbaby]

You're right that OpenBSD can be a little pokey and not the greatest Desktop. I went with OpenBSD first and was not thrilled - then I tried FreeBSD.

On FreeBSD the ports are kept up-to-date faster. There are SO many more ports ready-to-go. Really a surprising amount. Like anything you ever needed, just go to /usr/ports and there it is, ready to install.

No RPM hell. Just cd /usr/ports/multimedia/xmms ; make install clean. It downloads and compiles any dependencies from source. And a simple command can automatically upgrade ALL of your installs ports every night!

I find FreeBSD faster and simpler than any Linux distro I tried.

I still think OpenBSD is wonderful for making a bulletproof network-connected server or firewall, but if you haven't tried FreeBSD yet, I think it'll make a much better desktop.

Re:Question

[jhines]

If your happy with what you got, why switch?

IMHO one should find a distribution they like, and stick with it. The FLOSS situation is such that any new feature is implemented by the others pretty quickly. And one should support the folks that make the distribution.

FreeBSD has been geared more to the server market, not that it really makes a difference.

Re:Question

[bluGill]

It "feels" right. I grew up on BSD systems (okay, sunOS 4 wasn't exactly BSD, but it was closer to that than system V), so BSD feels right. I like the way it works.

The differences are subtile though. I can use either linux or BSD systems without problem, and if I don't do anything to find out which I'm using it can take a long time before I find a difference.

Traditionaly linux has supported more hardware, but sometimes that hardware wasn't so good. FreeBSD traditionally has better (faster) networking, and better support for server class hardware. (Years ago this ment if you went with SCSI you used FreeBSD, IDE you used Linux, but that was years ago) In these modern times both have good support for most hardware you are likely to find in the real world, or neither has support.

OpenBSD and NetBSD are not the same as FreeBSD. FreeBSD is faster and better suited to the desktop, though if the desktop is your goal, a lot of what you want on the desktop gets into linux first. OpenBSD is more secure, at least in their (extreemly limited) default install, I wouldn't run a firewall with anything else. Otherwise I'm not sure I'd bother with openBSD. NetBSD runs everything you are likely to care about, and it is supported. Linux may have had prots to more systems, but half those ports are broken is seems. So if you want to run that Vax in the corner, or some other strange macine netBSD is your only reasonable option. Once you run it one place it may be easier to run it everywhere. (Yes there are good reasons to run old hardware even though a typical desktop today is faster. Those who have good reason know who they are)

In summery: FreeBSD and Linux are mostly an issue of Ford vs Chevy. Some people prefer one over the other, but in reality the differences are not significant. NetBSD and OpenBSD are for specialized uses, but still worth useing for a lot of people.

Re:Question

[Alioth]

It's all about the question of the right tool for the right job.

On my network, I use Linux for the servers, but OpenBSD for the outer perimeter security. Why OpenBSD? 'pf' makes a very good firewall system, and it has some very useful features. The documentation is excellent - I could get started and understand 'pf' using only the manual pages - I didn't have to search for HOWTOs finding them often out of date. It was easy to set up a bridging firewall (I have a very small IP block allocation, and don't want to lose any to a firewall for the DMZ). The other thing is was the default OpenBSD install was very minimal - the only Linux distro I've used recently where it was practical to start from something very small and add bits where needed was Debian (guess what my servers are running now).

Re:Question

[WH]

Some of us run *BSD simply because Linux has no standardized code review process for the majority of the items in any given distribution.

I got tired of every little script kiddie trying to root my box with the exploit-of-the-week. You just don't see this type of thing in the *BSD's.

Because of the code review process, in my opinion, the systems are quite a bit more stable . The risk of using *BSD's for a production level system is less than if using Linux. Finally, in order to commit software into the *BSD's you generally can't be a two-bit hack interested in released shoddy code just to get his name out. Instead, you must really be able to contribute something..

That's why I don't use Linux.. take it or leave it.

WH

Re:Question

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

If Linux is working for you, then don't switch. There noe reason [for you] to do so.

I personally went with FreeBSd instead of Linux because the Ports system made installing things a breeze.

I've Linux have a Ports-like system, I'd use Linux too.

P.S. Yes, I know, apt-get, but the Debian installer was a nightmare at the time of learning a *nix compared to FreeBSD.

Re:Question

[Anonymous Coward]

My reasons for using FreeBSD a lot are pretty straightforward.

Overall consistency, completeness and attention to detail are important (consider the bootloader and kernel configuration, for example...).

The ability to run a stable bleeding-edge system with decent manual pages for everything and run up-to-date software versions built from source. The only Linux distribution that lets me to build and manage the latest software using a reasonable mechanism (Gentoo) is, IMHO, a bit of a mess.

It also "feels" different - e.g. compare the consistency and readability of dmesg output from kernel boot. The working devfs is nice, too.

Note that I also have reasons why I want to use Linux sometimes - ALSA, reiserfs, many games work better etc., but you were asking for reasons why you might want to use *BSD.

There is no single huge advantage for a regular user, but if you want to be able to track -current and rebuild your system often, like the ports collection, want to be able to set up IPv6 and IPsec easily out-of-the-box, value up-to-date documentation etc., it might well be worth considering.

I wonder what has "seemed" much faster in Linux compared to OpenBSD, since there are few things that result in user-visible performance differences. If this was pre-softupdates, probably the filesystem; but then it was probably ext2 on Linux, and you can't really compare that to any of the *BSDs, which have never used unsafe filesystem mounts by default (unlike Linux up until it got journaled filesystems).

Re:Question

[oohp]

I switched my servers to FreeBSD and I find it really simple to manage, update, upgrade. I'm not going into cvsup and ports tree details. It just works, it hasn't crashed once and I've had no problems with it. I also tried OpenBSD but I didn't like it as much.

Anyway, I've heard success sotries about FreeBSD on the desktop as well, but I'm currently running Linux (Slackware 9.1) on my desktop. Mostly bewcause I don't want to lose contact with Linux, not because FreeBSD wouldn't make a good desktop.

Re:Question

[Creepy13]

Then have a look at Gentoo.

Re:Question

[Florian]

> I'm happy with my Linux system right now. It supports all my hardware
> and gives me a nice desktop.

Then there's no reason for you to switch. If you would instead not be
happy with your system and find that FreeBSD runs better on your
hardware, than this would be a reason to go through the hassle of
switching your OS.

After all, the differences between a GNU/Linux and a *BSD system are
practically user-invisible on the level of the desktop interface. Both
are, as a matter of fact, state-of-the-art Unix, but may not be called
so because of trademarks and expensive certifications (which, contrary
to popular make-belief, are not owned by SCO, but by the Open Group,
formerly X/Open).

The differences mainly concern the kernel (partitioning schemes and
filesystems, hardware drivers, module handling, packet filters, sound
and multimedia subsystems). Userspace differences in the init system,
package management and base OS/distribution tools are not bigger than
those between two GNU/Linux distributions. Slackware or Gentoo users
might even find Free/Net/OpenBSD more familiar than RedHat or SuSE.
There are subtle, but sometimes crucial differences in the commandline
userland between GNU/Linux and *BSD though, unless one installs the GNU
file and text utilities on *BSD and uses them as default (which is easy
and supported by the package management of all three free BSDs). The
KDE/Gnome/XFCE desktops act in a completely transparent manner, with no
visible differences, on top of GNU/Linux and *BSD.

Generally, the Linux kernel is best suited for a desktop system because
of its more advanced sound (ALSA) and video (video4linux) subsystems,
support for a wide range of desktop hardware gadgets (Webcams, graphic
tablets and the like), filesystems (including everything from Amiga to
Acorn...) and hardware-accelerated video card drivers (DRI/DRM, although
I read similar features are on the roadmap of FreeBSD and NetBSD), and,
since kernel 2.6, kernel preemption and low-latency functions. However,
FreeBSD should come close to Linux as it is optimized for the x86-PC
architecture and is a very good performer. NetBSD is, from my own
experience of running it as a secondary OS, not as fast, but still
surprisingly good for an OS that is developed with portability (and
hence abstraction/clean interfaces vs. optimization) as its prime
objective. IMHO, it is (very) roughly comparable with Linux kernel v2.0
in terms of performance and desktop computing friendliness. Installation
of NetBSD is a bit difficult (more so than even Debian), and the
necessity of creating classical BSD disklabels for every storage media
to be mounted can be highly annoying on a desktop system (for example,
if one wants to quickly mount someone else's USB stick). OpenBSD is,
IMHO, a bad choice for a desktop system unless security and crypto
features are the main requirements. It is not a good performer at all
(and not being developed with performance as a main goal).

Kernel-wise, FreeBSD's chief advantage over Linux used to be better
responsiveness under high system load and better virtual memory
management (which both gave/give FreeBSD an edge over Linux on servers
rather than on desktops). This advantage has gradually decreased through
substantial low-level improvements in Linux 2.0, 2.4 and now 2.6, which
AFAIK has lifted quite a bit from FreeBSD's advanced VM management.
Maybe Linux 2.6 is now on par, but still I wouldn't be surprised if
FreeBSD (and also NetBSD) would be more mature in this field. (For
example, I never succeeded in bringing down my two NetBSD boxes with a
fork bomb.)

-F

Re:Question

[Orlando]

Why, beyond standard geek curiosity, should I switch to *BSD?

Because it's not Linux? Competition is good. This is not a flame. Nuff said.

Re:Question

[Bluesman]

Yeah, that's true. My experience is with FreeBSD, which is comparable to Linux. Not having used OpenBSD, I wouldn't know to compare, but I'd assume with things like Pro-police they'd take a performance hit.

If you want a BSD system that's the most comparable to Linux, however, it's hard to go wrong with FreeBSD. Being able to run Linux binaries is a decided advantage.

Re:Question

[You're All Wrong]

Mostly right, but the 'scales better' isn't totally true. It doesn't scale so well under load compared to various recent linux kernels due to its use of linear time algoriths rather than constant time or log time ones in code to do with resource management. Too many processes, or too many ports open, and both big BSDs begin to slow down rather.
2.0 and 2.2 linux had similar problems, but 2.4 began to fix them, and 2.6 has them almost all nailed now I believe. Scalability over many hosts is a different issue, of course.

I'm a linux desktop man, but my main world-facing server is FBSD 4, and I have no plans to change either of those OS choices.

YAW.

Re:Question

[Eil]

You don't have Red Hat screaming, 4 month using *NIX wantabees asking stupid questions.

I can tell you've never subscribed to questions@freebsd.org.

Sorry, but the only reason you don't see at much n00bieism around FreeBSD is only because it's not nearly as much in the public eye as Linux is.

Sure, I used Linux for 5 years but now unfortunately, with the rise and perceived ease of use, we now have a whole new group of zealots and half witts.

I can remember the days when a person who owned a modem and dialed around to various bulletin boards was considered cool, mature, and intellectually superior to your garden variety computer geeks. But of course when the Internet started becoming more prevalent, bulletin boards started getting cast as low-tech and amateurish. Mid-90's: anything Linux was in, everything specifically non-Unix was out. Now it's the early 2000's and FreeBSD is the new geek fashion statement. Those who are just now jumping on the FreeBSD bandwagon are thumbing their noses down at Linux users and calling them names such as "zealots" and "half witts." (While we're here, I want the gentle reader to take a moment to ask who here is the real zealot?) New FreeBSD users are citing mostly the exact same reasons for using FreeBSD over Linux that Linux users cited for choosing Linux over Windows years ago, although they are now more subtle:

• More reliable
  
• More consistent
  
• Better performance
  
• Better development process
  
• Freer license
  
• Smarter developers
  
• Smarter users
  
• etc

Trust me, it will take only a few years before the Next Big Geek Trend comes along and FreeBSD will not be the playground of the elite-wannabes. Instead, it will be relegated as a hunk of code that showed definite signs of promise but was ultimately hampered by too many "n00bs" joining the FreeBSD community thereby spoiling it for everyone. Or perhaps by an archaic, inflexible, development system or crochety old too-conservative developers. The particular excuse doesn't matter, only the fact that it will have gone out of style. The next new thing will be there to take FreeBSD's place.

Don't think for a second that I don't love FreeBSD. I use it on my computers at home and have several patches on my todo list that I'd like to work on and submit to the FreeBSD developers when time permits. But I also use Linux and Windows on a regular basis as well. And I'm not going to sit here and lie to myself and others by saying that I wasn't totally infatuated with Linux and other geek trends in the past. That, I think, is the primary difference between an advocate and a zealot.

Re:Question

[JDizzy]

Actually, your incorrect in your assertion about the most secure one of the *BSD's. It is easy to belive what you read regarding what each of the BSD's does, and is. In reality NetBSD is by fare the *most* secure of all the BSD's, bar none. FreeBSD is the Linux of the BSD, with aqll its packages/ports, and support for peripherial hardware. OpenBSD is is secure, and has code audits, and produces other nice things that find their way into everything else, but is not the most secure by default BSD.

I like to ask people like yourself, no offence intended, why OpenBSd is the most secure? Is it something you have read some place, or something you were told, or discovered yourself?

In NetBSD, the default is nothing but a small bare minimal system, with nothing turned on. Nothing is more secure than this. OpenBSD on the other hand, has lots of things turned on by default, and has turned out to be the cause of most of their problems. Contrairy to what the OpenBSD website says, they have had about 7 or 8 default bugs in their installs in the past 3 years. They like to claim *one* root eplain since inception, or whatever... they are not all that!

In reality it goes like this:
FreeBSD is the most powerfull, and linux like of the BSD's.
NetBSD is the most portable, and most secure by default.
OpenBSD wrote OpenSSH, and has the best t-shirts, and posters.
OSx is the prettiest, and the most widely deployed desktop unix.

Re:Question

[deprogram]

Stability. Responsiveness under massive load. Support for older/non-Intel hardware.

On the flipside, if you want a much larger userbase (and correspondingly, greater web and usenet support) Linux is where it's at. Linux is large, and messy, and anarchic, whereas BSD (FreeBSD, anyway, which is the most mainstream of the BSDs) tends much more towards stability and 'correctness', sometimes to the point of near-absurdity. If you're an ISP, for example, and want a system that will laugh at massive loads, and barring hardware fatalities, never crash, then get thee a copy of BSD. You'll love it, at least if you're prepared to deal with a little less user-friendliness than you're used to.

Personally, I used to run Free on my toy server (c3po.futureconsortium.com) but switched to Debian after witnessing the power of apt. Now, I run Debian on Intel/AMD servers, Mandrake or SuSE or Fedora on desktops, and BSD on Alphas or older hardware.

The BSD VM system is a work of art, for example (read this for details), and I've seen this born out in practice. Of course, Linux is still very impressive, especially on very large systems.

Re:Question

[Eraser_]

I must say I agree with this. I used linux for awhile, and one day stumbled onto a FreeBSD system. I had been using it for a month or so and found myself liking it better, so I decided to see what it was running, uname said FreeBSD 4.something and that was that. I still use Linux to this day, but sometimes I find things not where I would like them, etc. New installs get FreeBSD unless there is a pressing reason to use Linux. Everyone says crash this and uptime that, I dunno, all our Unix machines seem to stay up indefinitly until hardware failure. Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD, OS X.

We do of course have the problem with "Lets reboot the solaris servers" "what for...do we even know if it will come up?" ;-)

Can you hear me N2H2/Bess? We have been a customer for years. Give us FreeBSD!

Re:Question

[ThatDamnMurphyGuy]

> Then have a look at Gentoo.

Well, now that I've been using FBSD for a few years; no need to switch. Even if Gentoo portage is as good as it sounds.

Re:Question

[sremick]

Disclaimer: I am not anti-Linux. However, here is why I like FreeBSD..

1) PORTS. FreeBSD could win on this point alone. The ports system is AWESOME. I have never used Linux, but I hear a lot of people bitch about RPMs and "dependency hell". FreeBSD has dependencies but the ports system tracks all that. Every file, every version, every port is noted. I can just go to a directory and type "make clean install" and everything will be downloaded, built to my tastes, along with all dependencies and their dependencies and built in the proper order, then registered in the database. Daily I sync my ports tree and see what's new. If I want it, I can upgrade it (along with dependencies) safely with one command. It just doesn't get better than this. Recently, FreeBSD pass the 10,000 ports mark. There's also a nice overview of the ports system at Arstechnica.

2) Stability. FreeBSD is notoriously stable. You can pick any Netcraft report (such as here, here, here, here, or here. ) for evidence of this.

3) Consolidation. There is only one "FreeBSD". If I have 5.2 and you have 5.2, we have the same OS. There is no one "Linux". In reality, Linux is a kernel, and when you add a userland then you have a distribution. FreeBSD is kernel + userland.

4) File organization. Linux seems to lay out its file hierarchy somewhat randomly, with no consistancy of where an installed executable binary might be placed or separation of base/user. FreeBSD has polished this and adheres rigidly to a formal structure. For example, I know my base system is under /usr/bin. When I install an app, I know it'll be beneath /usr/local/bin for console apps or /usr/X11R6/bin for X apps. Base config files are in /etc, while config files for stuff installed via ports is in /usr/local/etc.

5) Community. I find the FreeBSD community to be less fanatical and instead more disciplined and polite. I feel like I'm getting help from someone wearing a suit & tie (though I doubt they really are..:) ) instead of a "LINUX RULEZ!!!" kid.

6) Documentation. FreeBSD has EXTENSIVE DOCUMENTATION, which is helped by Reason #3. There are also a number of excellent books on FreeBSD, all of which in this list I own. Sure, there are a bazillion books on Linux, but FreeBSD doesn't need so many because there's just one FreeBSD, and once you get beyond the OS, the rest is specific to the application/server and is not OS-specific.

7) Performance. FreeBSD is notorious for performing well. In fact, sometimes applications under Linux-emulation (see #8) run better than on a native Linux box. FreeBSD's TCP/IP implementation is also well-known for being very fast.

8) Linux-emulation. Most stuff for Linux is available as open-source and can be compiled natively for FreeBSD (and is probably in the ports tree), but for the few binary-only things that aren't, FreeBSD can still run them. Some of the Linux stuff I run myself include RealPlayer, Acrobat Reader (although gpdf works well too), the Flash plugin (running in a native Firebird, btw), and maybe some other things I ca

Re:Question

[scosol]

RedHat 6.2 was around 3+ years ago, FreeBSD 4.8 was certainly not.

If memory serves, 4.0 was around that time?

Re:Question

[Enucite]

Even if Gentoo portage is as good as it sounds

Don't worry, it's not anywhere near as good as it sounds. ;)
Just stick with FreeBSD, it works much better.

Re:Question

[toggaM]

The most noticeable difference between Linux (Slackware/Mandrake) and FreeBSD for me was speed. Booting/Shutdown and application running was visually noticeable. I was so impressed I bought the company! oh wait, sorry wrong product. I didn't buy the company, I just upgraded my 3 computers to FreeBSD ;-) I just bought a Mandrake Membership prior to switching over but I have no issue contributing to any *nix company for their efforts.

Re:Question

[mrmag00]

with 4.x I had never had a problem with (desktop) applications installing wrong, but with 5.x I couldn't get gnome installed correctly. the dependencies just didn't match up.

just heads up that you might have trouble with 5.x ports.

Re:Question

[ivoras]

It's about the same thing nowdays, only FreeBSD 5.x has got a lot of support for fancy-ish new-ish hardware, and FreeBSD (which was way younger than 4.8 at the time you specified) has gotten much X11/KDE/GNOME support, so it is on par with linux and every other similar system.

(There's no such thing as 'Unix GUI', if you rule MacOS X and other commercial systems out - if you install KDE, it will look and behave exactly the same on every single platform that's supported).

As for the server side, I noticed major improvement (in ATA code, mostly) when I went from FreeBSD 5.1 to 5.2BETA on a really old machine (P133), so I guess the system actually *is* getting more mature. (That same P133 machine has not had a single crash since it started running FreeBSD (5.0 at the time was the hot thing.) - it is a heavily used file server with a new ATA133 controller). There are a few maybes and insecurities around the new threading and scheduler systems, but it seems they are getting more polished by the day (notice that, despite the witnessed stability, it is still not "STABLE" by the high standards :)) ).

Re:Question

[Brandybuck]

Several reasons. First, FreeBSD is a unified system. Linux, on the other hand, is a kernel, distro supplied scripts, shells, libraries, and utilities. Not everything in the core FreeBSD is native (gcc, tar, etc), but most of it is. This has a few disadvantages, but overall it's a benefit. It even feels unified.

Second, the documentation is superb. Linux is notorious for having imcomplete documentation. Part of this is the fault of GNU, which actively discourages the writing of man pages. A while ago I was trying to get a USB thumb drive working under Linux and I couldn't find instructions anywhere. Heading online, most of the stuff I found was outdated. But under FreeBSD there is a man page for everything, down to and including individual drivers. The Handbook is comprehensive and well written. There is install documentation for everything from writing and updating ports to dual booting with Linux and Windows.

Performance. This is highly subjective, and I have not done any benchmarks. I am sure that there is stuff that Linux does better than FreeBSD, and vice versa. But from my experience, FreeBSD just seems snappier and more responsive. It boots faster. Shutdown is faster.

Finally, believe it or not, hardware support. In my experience FreeBSD supports more hardware than Linux. This didn't use to be the case, but I think the situation has reversed. Other posts in this article talk about SATA. Linux supports it, but it's a separate driver that isn't default on many current distros. Under FreeBSD SATA support is built into the ATA driver, and it's been there for a while. I've found through experience that USB support is much better on FreeBSD than on Linux. I recently purchased a new laptop, and FreeBSD supported everything on it (sans winmodem) out-of-the-box. Linux did not.

But hey! FreeBSD is Free! You can try it for yourself. Find a spare partition and try it for a week to get the feel of it. Even if you decide to stick with Linux, you'll at least get the benefit of exposure to another system.

Re:Question

[moncyb]

No RPM hell. Just cd /usr/ports/multimedia/xmms ; make install clean. It downloads and compiles any dependencies from source.

What? I know the port system uses make, but I thought the packages were binary. Indeed, looking at some on my FreeBSD Toolkit disc, they are... Are some packages source? Or do I just not know what I am talking about?

Re:Question

[rsidd]

What? I know the port system uses make, but I thought the packages were binary.

No, the ports tree is source based. To fetch and install a binary package (with dependencies automatically fetched too), simply type "pkg_add -r xmms" but binary packages may not be as up-to-date as ports.

Re:Question

[diegocgteleline.es]

Oh well. I just "apt-get install xmms". "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" updates my system. And I don't have to deal with compilations while I've speak loads ;)

Re:Question

[diegocgteleline.es]

IIRC, Freebsd 5.x is preemptible. Not sure, but I'd bet I heard that from some FBSD folk.

Re:Question

[garbagedisposal]

"Also, the cool thing is, it isn't a cool thing. You don't have Red Hat screaming, 4 month using *NIX wantabees asking stupid questions. Sure, I used Linux for 5 years but now unfortunately, with the rise and perceived ease of use, we now have a whole new group of zealots and half witts."

Ah I see, while Linux lacked a decent installer & had little documentation, you could feel superior using it.

Now that it does, you have to retreat to BSD to retain that cache of superiority?

Sounds like a great reason to avoid BSD.

Trust me no one cares.
Get a life.

Re:Question

[TheRaven64]

I like to ask people like yourself, no offence intended, why OpenBSd is the most secure? Is it something you have read some place, or something you were told, or discovered yourself?

The reason OpenBSD is more secure is the fact that it runs most services inside chroot'd jails. This means that a compromised Apache/BIND/whatever does not mean a compromised sustem. As far as I know, this is not the case with NetBSD.

Re:Question

[epiphani]

I'd also like to add to this very well written coverage - from a casual programmers perspective:

Linux has had some serious problems dealing with large FD tables in the past - meaning it runs into problems with a large numbers (>1024) of simulatanious network connections. Until the 2.4 kernels, FreeBSD was outperforming hand over fist linux in this arena. The 2.4 kernel fixed a lot of the issues with the linux poll() implementation, and made some proper allowances for larger FD tables. But the Linux network stack is, in my opinion, not really designed for high traffic applications. Without doing some decent kernel hacking, you can't really tune a linux system to deal. FreeBSD is much easier to work with in this area.

I have seen a slightly hacked 2.4 kernel handling traffic at roughly the same levels as an equivelent freebsd machine now, which has forced me to change my tune. However, its use of the processor in those conditions is rather disturbing. It will scale, but the kernel starts eating CPU time more than it should. It can reach some of the highest loads we put on it (in a live environment), but not quite as effeciently as FreeBSD.

Re:Question

[nathanh]

3) Consolidation. There is only one "FreeBSD". If I have 5.2 and you have 5.2, we have the same OS. There is no one "Linux". In reality, Linux is a kernel, and when you add a userland then you have a distribution. FreeBSD is kernel + userland.

That really is a non-argument. Rephrase it like this to see why it makes no sense:

There is only one "Debian". If I have 3.0 and you have 3.0, we have the same OS. There is no one "BSD". In reality, BSD is a shared base, and when you add a userland then you have a distribution. FreeBSD is shared base + userland.

Summary: you were comparing FreeBSD - a single distribution of BSD - with Linux. You should have compared *BSD with Linux or FreeBSD with a single Linux distribution.

4) File organization. Linux seems to lay out its file hierarchy somewhat randomly, with no consistancy of where an installed executable binary might be placed or separation of base/user.

I disagree. All the major Linux distributions follow the FHS. It is not "random". It is just different to what you prefer.

9) Driver stability. Linux may have the drivers first, but when the FreeBSD drivers come out you know they've had a lot of work and review put into them.

Shrug. I find it's about the same. There are good and bad drivers on both sides.

5) Community. I find the FreeBSD community to be less fanatical and instead more disciplined and polite.

Cough. If you can look past all the BSD snobs who turn their nose up at the "Linux proles".

IMO, they're both good. I really don't see the need for this "my grass is greener" crap. It's all better than proprietary.

Re:Question

[boelthorn]

Free/Open/NetBSD are certainly not "distributions of BSD". It is true that the Free-, Net- and OpenBSD kernels have much in common, but that is only because they inherit from a common code base. It's not like my linux distro is based on 2.4.x and mine on 2.6.x.

Re:Question

[nathanh]

Free/Open/NetBSD are certainly not "distributions of BSD". It is true that the Free-, Net- and OpenBSD kernels have much in common, but that is only because they inherit from a common code base. It's not like my linux distro is based on 2.4.x and mine on 2.6.x.

The Linux distros also inherit from a common code base. The Linux distros also have much in common. The *BSDs also bundle upstream packages just like the Linux distributions. The Linux distros also have differentiation in their user and kernel space just like the *BSDs. There's more than one Linux distro and there's more than one *BSD.

What exactly do you think the difference is? I'm not being facetious. I'm honestly curious as to this difference that you can apparently see but I cannot.

Re:Question

[warlock]

I'm not surprised that Linux seemed faster than OpenBSD. Anything would be faster than OpenBSD - It just plain sucks performance wise. I don't care what they claim about security, the fact is that it is painfully slow. It is especially lacking in the VM and UFS department in my experience, and it is nearly useless for many tasks because of this compared to, say NetBSD or FreeBSD.

It is not an uncommon mistake for Linux users to think that all BSDs are alike, more or less like Linux distributions are, but believe me, they are definitely NOT. There are very important differences among them. Try FreeBSD on i386 and you will be pleasantly surprised - I seriously doubt that you'll find it slower than Linux for the desktop too - I've been using it for over 5 years now not only at production servers but on my home & work workstations too, in addition to my tiny old and slow laptop (Libretto CT100). I've tried Linux distros a few times but never made the switch because they seem bloated, slow and confusing in comparison. I say, give it a shot, try to live with it for a month or two, chances are you'll never go back too, and if you will, well, you'd have learned a few things in the process, which never hurts.

Re:Question

[sremick]

Ok, I'll try and explain better.

With Linux, you have an active common component: the kernel. This is the common denominator across Linux distributions. The distribution will take a certain version (more or less current) of the kernel, maybe tweak it a bit, surround it with userland tools of their choice, and now you have a complete OS distribution. Meanwhile, the common component (the kernel) continues separate development by Linus and crew. A new kernel is released, and later on you see updated versions of the distributions all based upon this new common code. And so on.

The relationship between the *BSDs however is purely historical. There is no ongoing common BSD kernel that is developed separate from each project which is then shared by all. As a result, you don't tend to here a *BSD user say they run "BSD" like a RH/Debian/Gentoo/SuSE user might say they run "Linux". Instead, they name the specific BSD they use. I don't run BSD, I run FreeBSD. Saying you run "BSD" is pretty meaningless. However, saying you run "Linux" defines you better as a Gentoo/whatever user as you share an ongoing common relationship with all other Linux distributions.

Hopefully that makes more sense.

Re:Question

[denks]

good community atmosphere

4 month using *NIX wantabees asking stupid questions

Must be a great community atmosphere if anyone who wants to learn is treated as stupid and told to rtfm.

One thing I love about gentoo is the community. Newbies are not told to go and rtfm but instead shown the correct way in truly friendly community atmosphere (I believe you are confusing great community atmosphere with exclusive community atmosphere). This is not so much a comment about *bsd (I know very little about *bsd or the community around it) but more about your attitude.

Re:Question

[versus]

I really doubt I can even _install_ FreeBSD on my Libretto 50CT - I'll probably need PCMCIA CDROM drive for that. Debian unstable works like a charm though. I've installed it from windows partition.

Re:Question

[Enucite]

Go give it a try and see for yourself.

I used gentoo for over a year and a half. So, I actually was speaking from experience. :)

I guess the actual portage system isn't too bad. I think the part I don't care for is Gentoo's QA--or lack thereof. So while portage may be okay, it's not worth formatting a BSD box over; IMHO.

Re:Question

[nathanh]

With Linux, you have an active common component: the kernel. This is the common denominator across Linux distributions. The distribution will take a certain version (more or less current) of the kernel, maybe tweak it a bit, surround it with userland tools of their choice, and now you have a complete OS distribution. Meanwhile, the common component (the kernel) continues separate development by Linus and crew. A new kernel is released, and later on you see updated versions of the distributions all based upon this new common code. And so on.

The relationship between the *BSDs however is purely historical. There is no ongoing common BSD kernel that is developed separate from each project which is then shared by all. As a result, you don't tend to here a *BSD user say they run "BSD" like a RH/Debian/Gentoo/SuSE user might say they run "Linux". Instead, they name the specific BSD they use. I don't run BSD, I run FreeBSD. Saying you run "BSD" is pretty meaningless. However, saying you run "Linux" defines you better as a Gentoo/whatever user as you share an ongoing common relationship with all other Linux distributions.

OK, so your distinction is that the *BSDs have different kernels but the Linux distributions use the same kernel.

So what about RTLinux and uLinux? They're very different from the mainstream kernel and there are distributions built around at least uLinux.

Also what about the distribution specific kernels; eg, Red Hat kernels and Debian kernels carry different patchsets and different feature sets. It's not possible to drop a Red Hat kernel into a Debian system; it simply won't boot.

How would you interpret Debian/BSD? Yes, there is a version of Debian using a NetBSD kernel but standard Debian userspace. I know that's Debian but is it also NetBSD? Or just *BSD?

Also I'm still having difficulty seeing why you're placing so much emphasis on the kernel. I know that the *BSDs use common userspace packages. The userspace makes more of an impact on the "look and feel" of a system than the kernel. So why does the kernel get special treatment in deciding when a system is "unique" vs "one of many"?

I would say that FreeBSD and Gentoo share more in common than Gentoo and Red Hat. I would guess you'd disagree because they use different kernels. But I see that they share the same philosophy of "ports" and similar toolchains like GCC and EMACS. Both kernels are mostly POSIX. They use different libc but the API is similar. The same applications run on both platforms.

If I took Fedora 1 and switched out the Linux kernel, switching in the FreeBSD kernel, doing the appropriate hacks to the libc along the way, have I got FreeBSD? I'd guess you say no because there is more to FreeBSD than just the kernel. But that was my original point: FreeBSD is the whole package, just like Fedora 1 is the whole package. So comparing FreeBSD to Linux is unfair. It's like comparing Fedora 1 to the UNIX family.

I'm interested in your thoughts on this.

Re:Question

[Groganz]

As the previous poster said Ports are source based, but both are one and the same. Packages are precompiled Ports. You can make your own Packages by typing 'make package' in the Port directory, which will build and install the Port and then tar/bzip it into a redistributable binary Package.

Re:Question

[Billly Gates]

BS.

I can listen to XMMS and have 3 compiles going on with a load of 3.0 without skipping.

RedHat skipps after 2.0 under one compile.

BSD can handle loads better. I even watched my porn while my computer was at 100% utilization wihtout skipping. Try that on Linux.

Re:Question

[Billly Gates]

I am a FreeBSD user myself but disagree on Linux emulation. I can;t one and I mean one application to work!

Its a nightmare.

I used it once sucessfully to bootstrap the linux jdk1.4 to install the BSD one.

Re:Question

[sremick]

That's very strange... I've been successfully using Linux emulation since the first time I got a graphical FreeBSD desktop going (around 2.2.2 I think). Even then, I had Wordperfect for Linux, RealPlayer, and the Linux version of ICQ all working.

Have you tried posting the specifics of your problems to the freebsd-emulation mailing list?

Re:Question

[R.Caley]

I'm happy with my Linux system right now. It supports all my hardware and gives me a nice desktop. Why, beyond standard geek curiosity, should I switch to *BSD?

(altogether now)
Because the demon is cuter than the penguin!

Beyond that, probably no reason to switch. Familiarity is the single most important feature an OS can have for actual use (as opposed to play, when novelty is fun).

Used to be, not very long ago, that FBSD was a clear winner on simple performace and comfort. I was working on newish RedHat machines a couple of yeas ago which would more orless go to sleep when a large process was dumping core, sign of a really piss poor disk/VM implementation, but I believe the more recent kernels fixed that. Linux used to bethe only real option for laptops because the PCMCIA (asit then was) and power management support was so much better. Recent FBSDs have fixed that up.

OTOH, I honestly do think BSD was right and SysV was wrong on so many things that the choice of almost all linux distributions to pretend to be SysV makes them too painful to use.

And Linux documentation is so piss poor I just feel sloppy using it in any professional role. When `man hostname' gave several different ways to permanently set the hostname, none of which work on the system I typed it on, I just put linux down on clearly not for real use list.

Of course most of my experience has been with Redhat, which is just MicrosoftLite. Suse is now a tenticle of Novell. At this rate all the distributions will remove themselves from consideration before I get the spare time+machine to play with them...

Re:Question

[toggaM]

XFCE, gnome, OpenOffice, etc...you pick. As stated *I* noticed a big difference all around on *MY* computer. Been using Slackware since 1995 so it's not like I don't have an idea of Linux's capabilities chump.

Re:Question

[DashEvil]

Yeah, I played my Linux version of Quake 3 Arena under FreeBSD with it so I'm sure it's quite capable. Even got a 1fps increase! (oooh, oooh), but that could have been the drivers. Oh, and the FreeBSD nVidia drivers are (as I find) unusable, and thus this usage isn't practical

Re:Question

[trippinonbsd]

If you having problems with FreeBSD's native linux emulation then you need to consult the handbook on how to set it up (it normally can be as simple as either pkg_add -rv linux_base or cd /usr/port/emulators/linux_base && make clean install). I use it all the time and it works perfectly and transperently even in a server situation (such as hlds half life's linux binary only server). Now if only we can get this with windows binaries (there are many more technical problems with getting win32 binaries to be emulated tho).

Re:Question

[warlock]

We have a libretto 50CT at work. Installing FreeBSD to it is no different than my Libretto 100CT. Boot the two floppies, install over ftp if you have a pcmcia ethernet adapter, or just like you did with debian, you can put the files (about 50Megs for the base system, much like debian) on a fat partition and install from there. Although there must have been a way to get the files there in the first place, so you either allready have a pcmcia ethernet or a usb cdrom, in which case, i don't see why you'd want to do it from a windows partition!

Since it is quite slow though, last time I swaped the disk to a new laptop and installed there.

Re:Question

[Sleepy]

> I'm happy with my Linux system right now. It supports all my hardware and gives me a nice desktop. Why, beyond standard geek curiosity, should I switch to *BSD?

I can't answer that question without advocating a platform I am not sure of yet.

I've been running Linux for almost 9 years -- I've loved it. I still do.

I used to run my Linux box as "desktop -and- server". But these days I find my needs are being pulled in two different directions:

1) cool UNIX desktop
2) cool server
(by "cool" I mean useful, and something that works for me). It'd rather have these on different boxes, so an experiment on one does not kill the other.

Today I installed FreeBSD 5.2 on an old K63-450. I'm a total noob BSD user, but I can see myself possibly sticking with it for the server.

Why? Ever add rpm's to a Redhat system, and have it break things? Sure, it's the *packages* fault (or mine, it could be argued). But Red Hat is not interested in hosting tons of UNIX code... just what they ship. With Redhat it would be common to mix in source tarball compiles. Bye bye rpm database. It gets messy.

Of course, Debian does a much finer job QA-ing packages between another. They also provide a central repository for packages. I stopped using Debian back when I used 1 PC for my desktop -and- server needs, and the lust for the latest goodies meant I'd break my system mixing packages from unstable tree. That's my fault I know.

I don't know if Debian is slower than FreeBSD. I could try Debian again for my server. I was leaning towards using Gentoo actually, until the FreeBSD 5.2 release caught my eye.

I actually have to QA different applications on both Linux and FreeBSD anyways, and whenever I used BSD I found myself cursing it because I'd memorized Linux style switches for ps, netstat etc. I'd have to make corrections to Linux-centric Makefiles, etc. All that fun.

I see I could also run it as my desktop. I don't think that I will just because I don't see the benefit.

In short, FreeBSD I think will round out some holes in my UNIX experience, and I'm already seeing better performance on the BSD box just from basic testing.

So, I wouldn't dream of advocating BSD to anyone (especially given my inexperience!). But if you setup another server and have a few days to play with a variant OS, give it a try...

Re:too bad

[The Irish Jew]

Nothing is stopping you from installing 5.8 and making all other applcaitions use it with a simple "use.perl port". That wasn't too hard now was it?

Re:too bad

[and by]

I'm pretty sure that you can get the latest and greatest Perl distribution in the ports. As of 5.0, Perl was removed from the base installation, so it's not like you could mess anything up by installing it via ports.

Wow

[Bluesman]

This news hasn't even hit the freebsd site or bsdforums yet. I checked this morning.

I'm overdue for an upgrade, I've got 5.0 running on my main desktop machine. I just love how easy it is to administer and how well documented everything is compared to Linux.

I haven't tried the Linux 2.6 kernel yet, mostly because there's no reason for me to not use FreeBSD. X, Fvwm, and Gnome apps run flawlessly, and the ports system is fantastic.

Re:Wow

[yellowcord]

It is now... Just got the announcement from FreeBSD-Announce twenty minutes ago.

Re:too bad

[archen]

Ever hear of the ports collection? The reason perl was moved out of the base install (aside from the fact that it's pretty big nowdays) and into ports is because some people didn't like having an older version of perl around. Now you can keep perl up to date as you want it

cd /usr/ports/lang/perl5.8

make install clean

tada, you now have perl 5.8

Not quite.

[dinivin]

As of 8:53 AM EST, the annoucement page does not have it listed and the
freebsd-announce mailing list has not mentioned it.

This means that it is not yet released.

Dinivin

Re:Not quite.

[Anonymous Coward]

FOSDEM - What would you say to convince a Linux user to switch to *BSD ?

Henning Brauer - Well, I, like the majority of our developers, am not interested in religious wars. Every time _I_ have to deal with linux I am pissed by the in my eyes poor quality of the manpages, the incosistency in the system, and the often insane defaults. When I read Linux code I am scared by its often bad style, use of magic numbers, questionable hacks and obfuscation, compared to the clean code we try to use in *BSD. And often enough I am scared by a very sloppy dealing with copyright.

I've been told KDE and GNOME run on *BSD, and I even saw that for KDE, and I bet there's not much visible difference for desktop users between linux and *BSD with one of those on top.

For servers, the reduced complexity, saner defaults and better documentation in *BSD pays out quickly IMHO.

A special case are firewalls - over the last, well, it's nearly 3 years, pf developed rapidly to a fairly impressive packet filter, with a lot of surrounding applications to turn it into bigger solutions. I don't see any comparable packet filter in the free world, and I dunno about commercial ones, bout I doubt there is any.

Well, iptables may be able to do most of what pf can do, but it does many things wrong IMHO. And the concept of formulating firewall rules in command line options to some tool is so obviously flawed that everybody is using some frontend, with makes this further confusing and complaictedm and the resulting ruelsets worse, and... well, just compare to the beauty of a well written pf.conf.

Re:Not quite.

[linusn]

It's here, anyway:
ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/5. 2-RELEASE/

Re:Not quite.

[dinivin]

Yeah right. And the FreeBSD release team reserves the right to change anything under that directory at any point prior to the official announcement. They done it in the past. And thanks to Slashdot jumping the gun back then, too, some people ended up downloading bad code.

IT IS NOT OFFICIAL TILL THE RELEASE TEAM SAYS IT IS.

Excuse my yelling, but the release team has been over this with Slashdot time and time again.

Dinivin

Re:Not quite.

[oohp]

I seriously have to agree with the iptables vs pf issue. Actually iptables vs other filters, because every single packet filter I saw (Cisco, ipfilter, ipfw, pf) and worked with was saner than iptables. I like pf the most and I hope it will be integrated in FreeBSD (maybe replace ipfilter with pf). Nevertheless, I wish someone would write a saner interface to netfilter, instead of writing useless frontends that obfuscate the ruleset and generate worse rules. But that won't happen and even if it will it won't be soon.

Re: Not quite.

[XTaran]

E.g. here with FreeBSD 4.6.

Will Slashdot ever learn? Although: Who don't want to know it first, when the release is out... :-)

Re:Not quite.

[linusn]

So, maybe it's about time to realize that information about a new
release will leak and do something about it? I don't know the reasons
for having the distribution laying around the usual place before it's
released but I'm sure there must be good ones since everybody seems
willing to go through this pain over and over again.

If it's impossible to fix this by hiding the directory, password
protecting it or something similar during "flux time" this fact should
certainly be communicated by other means than through slashdot notes.

Or at least touch "AAA - - - NOT YET RELEASED - - - EXPECT CHANGES - -
-".

And no, I didn't post the FTP URL to make anyone upset. I just wasn't
aware of this way of releasing software and I'm sure I'm not the only
one.

Re:too bad

[kaiwainz]

If one reads the previous reports, there is a good reason why they have moved Perl into the ports tree rather than keeping as part of the default installation.

recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[linuxbaby]

A little FreeBSD evangelism FWIW:

My company uses FreeBSD 5 on half of our desktop machines in the office. All the PCs for customer service and general-purpose use are all running:

• KDE 3.14 and its included apps
• the FreeBSD-native version of Opera
• the FreeBSD-native TextMaker word-processor
• Mozilla Firebird
• Everything like XMMS, Acrobat, and mplayer you know from Linux-land work just fine in FreeBSD

The fonts are anti-aliased and beautiful. I find it easier on the eyes than Windows or OS X.

It only takes us about an hour to set up a whole new ready-to-go office desktop PC for the office, using FreeBSD ports. And we LOVE that all boxes' apps are kept automatically updated every night using the portupgrade scripts.

If you're thinking of dabbling with FreeBSD as a desktop I can highly recommend it.

In fact I'm typing this on my Gateway laptop with FreeBSD 4.9 right now. Here are some FreeBSD laptop compatibility lists if you want to see if yours will work.

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[inode_buddha]

I've been considering trying BSD but I have to wonder how well does it support *older* SMP machines? I have a dual Pentium Pro box just sitting here with ISA slots. BTW the ports system looks cool, from the examples in the comments.

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[Cthefuture]

If you're thinking of dabbling with FreeBSD as a desktop I can highly recommend it .. yeah but it depends on what you need. I mean, I use Linux as my primary OS so you would think it might be easy for me to go FreeBSD.

Overall I really like FreeBSD's simple install and the ports system is pretty good although I'm not a believer in compiling everything. And the system feels very stable and nice.

However, can I run VMware 4.x (I absolutely must have this)? How are the nVidia drivers? Does the nvidia-settings program work on FreeBSD? No V4L applications will work on FreeBSD. And so on...

Those are the types of things that keep me from using FreeBSD. Unfortunately FreeBSD is to Linux as Linux is to Windows. There are some nice aspects to the underdog but there's just more support for more stuff in the other one. By that reasoning you'll probably say I should be using Windows. Fact is, I probably would be using Windows as my primary OS if I thought Microsoft was a company worth supporting in that way not to mention my security concerns.

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[Hornsby]

I've never used FreeBSD, so I'm a little confused by this post. I currently use Gentoo, and KDE alone takes about 8 hours to compile on my machine. Are you installing all this from binary or something?

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[tssm0n0]

I've been considering trying BSD but I have to wonder how well does it support *older* SMP machines? I have a dual Pentium Pro box just sitting here with ISA slots.

It supports them quite well. I got a dual pentium pro, installed FreeBSD 5.1 and it's been running like a beast ever since.

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[inode_buddha]

Great, thanks for the advice! "Runs like a beast" wouldn't surprise me; back when I had RedHat 8 on it, it kept up with my Dad's new P4 machine running WinXP. So, I'm looking forward to this! *grins*

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[moncyb]

FreeBSD and its ports system are binary based, so you don't have to compile everything--much like many Linux distros. FreeBSD doesn't work like source based distros (such as Gentoo).

As I remember, KDE/GNOME are packages on the main disk, though I haven't messed with installing them--not a big fan. Though once I did accidently install GNOME. I didn't realize the "D" meant dependency, I thought it meant deleted or something. Still a bit new to FreeBSD.

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[mrplastik]

No, You're refering to installing a PACKAGE. FreeBSD PACKAGES are binary forms of the application. I.E.: # pkg_add -r lynx.
This will download and install the binary package of lynx, thus no compiling necessary.
FreeBSD ports, however are built from source.

If you: # cd /usr/ports/www/lynx && make install clean
You're downloading lynx's source tarball and it's dependancies, then compiling it from said source(s) via ports.
Again, only packages are binary distributions of a program.

-mpf

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[mrplastik]

I wasn't talking about "building" via that method now was I? :) I was just trying to clear up what he had said, since the FreeBSD ports do not install binary packages unless explicitly told to, he was stating to the contrary.

-mpf

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[dn15]

I have been using FreeBSD on my secondary computer for a while now and I really like it. It's hard to speak for non-geeks but it makes a nice desktop for me.

I love the ports system. Don't get me wrong, Debian and Gentoo's package systems are very nice, too. But I love FreeBSD Ports for reasons I can't really explain.

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[mrplastik]

Experienced users generally favor compiling from ports for the added flexibility and control it provides. Many of us need to tweak numberous compile-time options, which of course a binary package is absolutely useless in this respect.

If you're new to FreeBSD, or you're running off that p90 still, binaries are great, otherwise you'll find building from ports to be rather pleasing. ( Unless, you're building kde or something along those lines, then binary can be advantageous :p )

There's more than 1 way to skin a cat.

-mpf

Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop

[moncyb]

Thanks for clearing things up. Sorry for the confusion, I haven't used ports enough to tell the difference between that and a package... I was just trying to explain one didn't have to spend several hours compiling just to install FreeBSD. I got lots of useful info though. Thanks. B-)

Curious

[CaptainAlbert]

I just had a sudden realisation that although I consider myself a free software enthusiast, I am ashamed to say that I know *nothing* about FreeBSD at all! Well, I remember reading about where the codebase came from, once upon a time, but that's about it. Perhaps someone could give me an executive summary to stem this clueless feeling...

Who uses it? How exactly is it licensed? How is it maintained and managed? Are there different distros as for Linux? Do any companies provide FreeBSD-based solutions, or is it just for hobbyists? What can it run on? Should *I* consider running it, and why?

I appreciate that I *could* go looking for all this information and piece the story together myself, but hell, it's easier this way. :) Zealots, do your worst!

Re:Curious

[Dave2 Wickham]

I'm not a *BSD expert (I use Linux), but anyway...

1) People who want to use it I guess; I've seen quite a few Web servers running it.
2) BSD licence. Basically do what you want with it, sell it in binary form, whatever, as long as you don't try and misrepresent the original author(s).
3) Not sure...
4) There are different BSDs, yes, e.g. FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD etc.
5) Not sure, again. Although Hotmail used to run on *BSD, FWIW
6) With NetBSD, most platforms.
7) No idea what your circumstances are...

Re:Curious

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD licensed code is marginally less restrictive than public domain. You need to keep the licenses in place in the source code. Other than that, you're pretty much free to do whatever you want with it and don't have to release code. That's why Windows and MacOS have used BSD code.

(And Microsoft's ranting about the free software is particularly funny since they have no qualms against using it in their products.)

Lots of people use it, but perhaps not as many as Linux users. Like any other Unix-based system, you have a bunch of scripts, frontends, and administration helpers. Much of the user level stuff is identical to Linux. If you use a GUI then you'd be hard pressed to tell what was running underneath without dropping into a shell.

As for differences, a couple years ago the BSD TCP/IP stack was considered "best of breed". It worked very well under load, better than Linux depending on the benchmark, and thus was used in a lot of very high load environments. Because DNA tends to flow freely between Linux and BSD camps, the differences are negligible now and Linux does perform better in some situations that FreeBSD.

There are fewer gee-whiz eye-candy apps for FreeBSD. But take this with a grain of salt. Many apps can be rebuilt on BSD with a simple "./configure; make; make install". They tend to be developed on Linux first is what I'm saying.

Now for the part that people may disagree with:
The BSD forums can (sometimes) be full of snotty, holier-than-thou, ivory-tower-sitting folks who won't deign to answer your questions. If you even mention Linux some have gotten rude. E.g., "In Linux I can do X, what's the equivalent in FreeBSD?" gets greeted with something like, "Hey stupid Linux user, this is a BSD forum. We don't do it that way." (well, at least that was my experience. Yours will be different. So don't waste any modpoints on this anonymous post.)

Re:Curious

[inkedmn]

Yahoo *still runs on it* :)

Re:Curious

[doon]

Who uses it? Lots of People (Like Yahoo!).

How exactly is it licensed It is licensed under a BSD license.

Should I consider Running it? Short answer: Yes (but I am biased)

Long Answer: It depends on your applications. FreeBSD is a rock solid Operating System, also it is distributed as an entire operating system, as opposed to GNU/Linux where you have the Linux Kernel and then what ever utils/programs $VENDOR has built around it. We run it on 20+ servers here and have been really happy with it. I run it on Multiple boxes at home also. Then again the 2 of us here are kinda FreeBSD bigots. Here is my leg to prove it so my opinion might be biased.

Depending on your application, you really should run the best Operating System for the Job. I haven't found the one perfect OS yet. For instance if you are running Java app servers you might want to look at Linux for that as it's java implementation seems to be better( but FreeBSD's is getting there quickly). The nice part is it free and you can just grab The ISO's and try it out on a spare machine.

Re:Curious

[mccalli]

Then again the 2 of us here are kinda FreeBSD bigots. Here is my leg to prove it

Now there's a sentence you don't read every day.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Curious

[CaptainAlbert]

Thank-you!

No, please don't take that the wrong way - I do actually mean it. You see, there could be (and probably are) hundreds of sites devoted to FreeBSD and I wouldn't know which one to start with. By way of analogy, I personally don't think that linux.org would be the best place to point someone who wanted to find out about Linux for the first time, because it's not exactly newbie-friendly (IMHO). In contrast, the information on the front page of freebsd.org has already answered lots of my questions. Hence, the sincere thanks.

Re:Curious

[CaptainAlbert]

Interesting, thanks.

> you have a bunch of scripts, frontends, and
> administration helpers.

So if I understand correctly, this is lots neater than Linux where there are dozens of competing bunches of scripts, frontends, and administration helpers which don't play ball together? Or is *BSD sufficiently diverse that this situation arises here, too?

> The BSD forums can (sometimes) be full of
> snotty, holier-than-thou, ivory-tower-sitting
> folks who won't deign to answer your questions.

Well that's OK, because I've been reading Slashdot for long enough to recognize them.

"Hey stupid Windows user, this is a Linux forum. We don't do it that way."

Re:Curious

[CaptainAlbert]

But my mom told me never to take operating system advice from strange tatooed people... :)

> ...it is distributed as an entire operating
> system, as opposed to GNU/Linux where you have
> the Linux Kernel and then what ever
> utils/programs $VENDOR has built around it.

I think that's the answer to something I was meaning to ask. I always got that impression whenever I read some *BSD discussions, but it's reassuring to hear someone come out and say it. It's also a compelling feature in its favour, since you don't have to tack "GNU/" on the front of it all the frickin time.

On a more serious note, what about all the GNU utilities (such as make) - does FreeBSD have its own alternatives, or do they get bundled into the distribution, or do you perhaps have to go download them yourself (surely not?)?

Re:Curious

[doon]

But my mom told me never to take operating system advice from strange tatooed people... :) Probably good advice ...

On a more serious note, what about all the GNU utilities (such as make) - does FreeBSD have its own alternatives, or do they get bundled into the distribution, or do you perhaps have to go download them yourself (surely not?)?

BSD comes with a full development enviroment, so most of the utilities you need are there, and if you need the GNU versions (some software requires GnuMake/AutoConf/etc. as opposed to the BSD versions), they are a port build away. If you install from ports, and a piece of software requires the GNU utils, it will install them as a dependancy.

Re:Curious

[PipeRain]

> Now for the part that people may disagree with:
When I first got started with FreeBSD, I would have agreed. I asked for info on disk spanning software on mailing.questions.freebsd. I got a two word answer: man vinum. It took me a while to realize that folks aren't necessarily rude, they just expect a certain level of "due diligence" on my part. I'm glad it is that way, it forces me to think more for myself and actually learn a bit about it as opposed to cutting and pasting the answers into my OS. RTFM can be a good thing (TM)

Re:Curious

[garbagedisposal]

Not bashing just stating some facts which is conveniently not mentioned.

Nice things ahve been said about BSD, but first before thinking os using it as a Desktop OS consider this : It has less device support than Linux. Think abot it!

Also you might want to consider that installing it via it's crude curses style installer gives you a box that boots to a bare bones command prompt - YOU then have to go about trying to get ALL the other stuff working.

Documentation is better than Linux but STILL leaves a lot OUT.

Be prepared to spend significant time 'learning'.

Re: Mandrake

[Quantum-Sci]

Agree.

Time is an important factor. I think the BSDs are great for internet servers, though I don't see how they're any more secure than a properly set up Mandrake system. Yes, I use Mandrake, not because I'm a n00b, but because Suse cost me at least a month of downtime over the past year. I need my systems, to get actual work done.

Though I'm glad the BSDs are there, for my purposes Linux just works.

BSD packaging systems

[Debian Troll's Best]

In a recent consulting gig, I've been tasked with looking after a few offices full of Mac OS X systems at a design company. As many of you would know, Mac OS X is based upon a FreeBSD Unix foundation, so it's capable of being useful to 'hard core' users such as ourselves, as well as presenting a typically user friendly MacOS face to designers and the like.

One thing I really like about Mac OS X is the increasing number of Unix-derived packages that are available through projects such as fink. Fink uses the venerable apt-get system, derived from Debian, to manage the installation, maintenance and upgrading of traditional Unix packages into the MacOS environment. A neat tool, no doubt.

I'm no BSD expert, but I believed that the *BSD systems came with their own packaging system, namely the 'ports' system. But therein lies the question: if Mac OS X is derived from a FreeBSD kernel, why is the premier system for managing open source software packages derived from Debian's apt-get? Would any regular BSD users care to comment? apt-get sure is convenient, but can these 'ports' make things even easier? Should BSD user mount a campaign on Apple's discussion boards to get these 'ports' included with the Developer's Package of the next release of Mac OS X? Apple is quite the innovator in ports after all, being a pioneer of both USB and FireWire. BSD ports could be another feather in their technical cap.

I look forward to the responses of the BSD community. Mac OS X, powered by FreeBSD, is a really rockin' platform!!

Re:BSD packaging systems

[Zefram]

Ports isn't really part of the operating system, it's just the package installation utility.

What Mac OS X did get from FreeBSD were basic utilities (ps, ls, etc but don't quote me), the TCP/IP stack, domain sockets, and the low level UNIX workings. They pulled this from the 5.1 tree.

I run a few servers on FreeBSD, and I have mixed feelings about ports. It's great to be able to run a script nightly to pull the latest source files for -STABLE and the ports tree and rebuild the applications that have been updated. The one thing that irks me about ports is that it's all or nothing. If you install MySQL from source, but want to install MySQL CC from ports; ports will try to install MySQL for you. Also, I don't find the configure options terribly well laid out. I'm never sure what to use (or if they'll stick on an upgrade). To illustrate, you'd go into /usr/ports/lang/php to build php and type something like this for building in OpenSSL support:

make -DWITH_OPENSSL

On my desktop FreeBSD system, I install almost everything from ports.. I don't want to be bothered configuring KDE. But, my servers I do libraries in ports applications/daemons in source.

Re:BSD packaging systems

[beattie]

Well, the Kernel is not FreeBSD's kernel... OSX uses Mach. Just the base system comes from FBSD. The utilities and stuff like that. Also, there are a lot of pieces even in that base that are modified for OSX. As for the package manager. The fact that Fink is like Apt from Debian linux doesnt matter. you could write a thing that uses ports on OSX (and actually, I think there might be a project like that). They just did it that way because that's what they wanted to do.

Re:BSD packaging systems

[dubstop]

As a developer, I use FreeBSD at work, and OSX at home. On OSX I now use darwinports, rather than Fink, after having a kernel panic caused by Fink. I don't particularly blame Fink, as it's still in beta, but as that was my first (and last so far) kernel panic in OSX, I thought that I'd give something else a try until it was more stable.

Personally, I think that darwinports is slightly easier to use than Fink, but there's not a lot of difference. The downside is that there are a lot more packages available in Fink, although the number for darwinports is increasing steadily.

My only real gripe with darwinports is that, by default, it installs packages into /opt, which is a bit too Solaris-like for me. That's easy enough to change, though.

In comparison to the ports system on FreeBSD, darwinports is easier to use. With darwinports, installing a package is as easy as 'ports install package', whereas in FreeBSD ports, you need to cd to the appropriate directory and then do a 'make install'. As a developer, I've got no problems using makefiles, but I can see how they might put off some non-developers.

Re:BSD packaging systems

[Zefram]

There's always the libraries. Installed via ports or src, the libraries are the same.

Is that asking too much from a package management system? Yes. But I'm a picky prick. :-D

Re:BSD packaging systems

[DannyO152]

It's not a major point of dispute, but I like /sw/bin = fink, /opt/local/bin = darwinports, /bin /usr/local/bin, etc. = Apple (from FreeBSD)

Re:BSD packaging systems

[diamondsw]

It should also be noted that early betas of Panther bundled DarwinPorts. That faded away in later builds, but most things that Apple has hinted at shows up eventually.

Personally, I find fink (and the wonderful FinkCommander) to be extremely easy to use, but the inclusion of any simple access to ports/apt-get/etc would be a boon to OS X users.

Re:BSD packaging systems

[phoenix_rizzen]

You're just using the wrong tools. :)

Installing a pre-compiled binary package on FreeBSD is as easy as "pkg_add -r "

Using the portupgrade suite of tools, it's as easy as "portinstall -P "

To install an app via the ports tree is as simple as "portinstall "

Re:BSD packaging systems

[dubstop]

Sounds good. Where can I get the portupgrade stuff?

Re:BSD packaging systems

[phoenix_rizzen]

/usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade

This will install the portupgrade suite of tools, plus the ruby scripting engine (since portupgrade is written in ruby -- the only reason it's not part of the base OS).

Re:BSD packaging systems

[overbom]

a different ports system is on the way -- darwinports, fink, and metapackages(?) are working together to make the one true ports/packaging system. I think the end result will someday show up at www.openpackages.org.

And darwinports was included in earlier developer previews of macosx 10.3, but later removed.

The basic reason that they used apt-get instead of FreeBSD's ports is basically this: the ports system rules for users, but sucks for developers, to paraphrase the ports system creator Jordan Hubbard, known here in the BSD section as "God."

Darwinports is his rewrite of said FreeBSD ports system.

Re:BSD packaging systems

[TheRaven64]

Speaking as an OS X and FreeBSD user:

The ports system is probably the best way of managing software installation on a *NIX system. It does not, however, fit very well with the OS X (read NeXT) way of doing things. In a traditional UNIX, programs scatter files all over the fs (or at least all over the /usr/local part of it) when you install them. Under NeXT, applications are installed in application bundles (directories with a specific layout and the .app extension). Unfortunately, things like Fink insist on trying to overlay the UNIX paradigm on top of OS X, which results in a horrible mess. A better solution would be to start rolling .app bundles of Open Source software. A good example of a program that does this right is the Jabber client Psi. The X11/*NIX build installs itself like any other *NIX app. The OS X build is a .app bundle that you just need to drag into your /Applications/ directory (or wherever else you choose to let it reside).

Re:BSD packaging systems

[nathanh]

I'm no BSD expert, but I believed that the *BSD systems came with their own packaging system, namely the 'ports' system. But therein lies the question: if Mac OS X is derived from a FreeBSD kernel,

MacOS X is not derived from the FreeBSD kernel. The kernel in MacOS X is the Mach microkernel. FreeBSD is one of the 5 personalities that MacOS X offers for applications. Many applications on MacOS X use the Cocoa personality rather than the FreeBSD personality.

I look forward to the responses of the BSD community. Mac OS X, powered by FreeBSD, is a really rockin' platform!!

This myth needs to die. Please stop spreading it around.

Re:BSD packaging systems

[dubstop]

Cheers. I'll give that a go.

Re:BSD packaging systems

[salimma]

{,/usr}/sbin -> /Systems/Applications
{,/usr}/lib -> /Systems/Libraries
{,/usr}/bin -> /Applications

Would be nice if this catch on within the rest of the Un*x world. AFAIK so far the ROX Desktop is the only non-NEXTSTEP/OSX system implementing this concept. I wonder how version dependencies would be handled though. Perhaps /Libraries/Libname/v.xx/blah?

I seem to recall an alternative to Fink that provides OSX-style .app bundles for Unix apps, but the project name escapes my mind at the moment.

FreeBSD 5 is not yet officially out

[agshekeloh]

Folks,

The mirrors are still updating. While 5.X is imminent, /. has once again jumped the gun.

In the past, we of the FreeBSD Project have started distributing an image to our mirrors and then recalled it when a last-minute bug is discovered. IIRC, at least once /. has pre-announced the release and people got bad code.

Please do not grab this image thinking that it's FreeBSD 5.2! It won't be out until Scott Long says that it ready and available, and he has the right to nix this image up until the time he makes that announcement.

mwlucas at the obvious domain name

Re:Suggestion

[thogard]

The world doesn't need two sets of free *nix clones. The world needs ONE great *nix clone.

No, the world needs many *nix clones. It helps move things and sometimes things move in the wrong direction (i.e. IBM/DEC's answer to SysV). OpenBSD pushes the security in ways that the bloatware distros can't but the bloatware helps get more people comfortable with the *nix systems.

I would like to see a distory using the Linux kernel and most of the BSD tools just to see how it would evlolve.

PowerPC

[smeeze]

anyone know how well PowerPC is supported?

Re:PowerPC

[BSDstef]

The PowerPC port is at the early stages of development:
http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc .html

Stephane
------
Life isn't fair, but the root password helps.

Re:PowerPC

[DominiqueChanet]

if i'm not mistaken, there isn't any support for powerpc. in an interview about a year ago, the freebsd core team went on record saying "if you want a stable and usable bsd system on powerpc, use MacOS X".

Re:PowerPC

[oohp]

Why not use Darwin or NetBSD instead? Granted, MacOS X is nice but you can also use the free alternatives. An not all PowerPC based computers are Macs.

Re:the thrill is gone

[Daengbo]

So: Why didn't you put your name on it?

No point in discussing this with Apple

[jocknerd]

Finks has no association with Apple. There is a ports in the works. Its called DarwinPorts.
Doesn't have nearly as many packages as Fink does however.

Still not stable

[Billly Gates]

Look here to see what other work needs to be done.

They claim 5.3 will be the stable version but I will not upgrade. I am sticking with 4.9 for now.

Re:Still not stable

[Zefram]

That list is lagging a bit behind the actual development. IIRC, the Giant locking has been finished for 3 months at least on i386, yet this doc lists it as not started. I think they're much farther along than this implies.

Re:Still not stable

[Groganz]

Not done != not stable

PCMCIA support

[Kazymyr]

Does anyone know if they have fixed PCMCIA support during the install? It used to work fine in the 4.x series, then it got broken in the 5.x series. I have tried it a month ago, and it was still broken.

Basically, if you need PCMCIA support during the install, you're SOL. For instance if you want to do a network install over a PCMCIA NIC. Like I said, since 5.x the installer doesn't even try to detect PCMCIA devices anymore.

Re:PCMCIA support

[Kazymyr]

What NIC was that? How did you get it recognized? The 5.1 installer refuses to configure any PCMCIA devices here.

Link to stories relating to Perl and FreeBSD

[kaiwainz]

http://daily.daemonnews.org/view_story.php3?story_ id=2872 http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/178

FTP2 traffic

[gtrubetskoy]

As always, it's fun to watch the traffic on the server when a new release comes out:

here

Re:too bad

[Billly Gates]

I thought FreeBSD did not have perl at all because of the 5.8 vs 5.6 debate.

Both versions are in the ports collection for that reason.

Its been a long time

[PhraudulentOne]

Wow, now I *know* its been a long time since I've been a FreeBSD user. The last time I downloaded the OS, it came in 230k chunks (nice for that 14.4 modem) and was version 2.5. Maybe i'll give the 5.2 version a go, I'm sure there has been a few improvements ;)

Re:Suggestion

[danidude]

No, the world needs many *nix clones.

Yes, the world needs diversity. Just like the nature... I mean, if all computers runs the exact same OS we will find it very handy, but a plague that takes that OS down will take down ALL your machines, for example.

I see people complaining about MS monopoly and domination and yet the same people wants evebody to run {linux,BSD,whatever} just like they do.

I like the liberty to choose from many possibilities.

SMP improvements as well...

[kirt]

prior to 5.2, i was having weird make errors when running an SMP kernel on Hyperthreaded Xeons. basically, during any sort of heavy make, the make would error out with a segmentation fault. this was using a GENERIC kernel with only the two SMP options enabled. the same system running a non-SMP GENERIC kernel would work fine. in addition, while running full load (setiathome for example) the two processors would peak at 50% load. now with the new SMP code, they both top out at 100% and otherwise act like a true dual processor machine. one last bit is that SMP is now enabled in the GENERIC kernel right from the start, probably in anticipation of large amounts of HT p4's and Xeons.

Re:too bad

[LizardKing]

Too bad it still has perl 5.6 while almost every other operating system (including the other two BSDs) have switched to 5.8

NetBSD has not switched. The default Perl is still 5.6 because of portablilty issues in 5.8 from what I understand.

Chris

Porting to the PPC ...

[Sonic McTails]

FreeBSD currently doesn't run on the PPC platform, which prevents me from using it on my iBook, but NetBSD, which (as far as I know) is simlar to FreeBSD has a working PPC port. So this is what I'm wondering, why not just use the NetBSD bootloader to load the FreeBSD kernel. It can easily be compiled for the ELF format, and OpenFirmware on macs know how to load that type of kernel. I'm not a expert when it comes to these things, so could someone please explain why no one has tryed using the FreeBSD kernel with the NetBSD bootloader (or loading it raw into OpenFirmware) ?

Re:Porting to the PPC ...

[beattie]

Are you sure it doesnt work at all?
http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/ppc.html

Re:Porting to the PPC ...

[tirloni]

It's not as simple as teaching a bootloader how to load the kernel or people would already have done that. There is low-level code to deal with the specific architecture features that isn't *that* easy to write and debug. Plus additional hardware is needed and most important, people.

Re:Porting to the PPC ...

[Leimy]

Oh it works all right. I have it on my TiBook G4 667. But its not an official platform.

The networking and multi-user work too. If you are really interested in trying this then you should join the appropriate mailing list and give us a holler. We'll try to help if we can :).

Re:10 things which we know about FreeBSD

[BSDstef]

1. You can not play games on it.
You can play Linux games on it (ok, no games)

2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
If your grandma is able to use Gnome or KDE, she can use FreeBSD.

3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
see above.

4. There is no support available for it.
There are a lot of places on the net were you can get help from the community. And some companies provide commercial support for FreeBSD.

5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
FreeBSD is a complete OS by itself, it's an evolution of 4.4BSD.

6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
Of course it runs on x86.

7. You have to compile everything and know C.
Thanks to the ports collection, you just have to type "make" to get something compiled for you.

8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
Support for the latest hardware is sometimes poor indeed.

9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
FreeBSD has a complete Linux compatibility layer which allows to run Linux binaries.

10. It is dying.
Well, some people like to repeat that every month since 1993!

Stephane
------
Life isn't fair, but the root password helps.

Re:Suggestion

[Billly Gates]

Agreed.

I feel fustrated by the limits of Linux's crypted /etc, inet, dependancy hell, and cutting edgeness.

I am a FreeBSD user in case your wondering. I would switch back to Windows or perhaps stick with Debian without it.

I need per 5.6 not 5.8. Same is true with apache 1.3x. All the distro's chose to bundle things that break code and all my documentation. Perl 5.8 is not source compatible with 5.6 for example. The perl mongers are full of it and I have seen it first hand.

Anyway only Windows met this need until I tried FreeBSD. THe ports are really great.

However not all apps are in the ports and automake is not as portable as one would hope. Many Linux apps will not simple recompile on a FreeBSD box, hence why the ports exist.

More is better.

I wish I could switch

[Baki]

Currently running slackware 9, would love to switch to FreeBSD. But I absolutely need vmware. I know version 3 has been ported, but vmware GSX has not and I'm not sure how well vmware version 3 runs.

Re:I wish I could switch

[rainer_d]

If you need VMWare, you need to continue to run Linux (or Windoze).

VMWare on FreeBSD is a nightmare, IMHO.

Rainer

Re: Mandrake

[Bluesman]

>I think the BSDs are great for internet servers, though I don't see how they're any more secure than a properly set up Mandrake system.

You couldn't be more right. The difference, at least to me, is that FreeBSD is much easier to configure properly because the documentation and ports system are so good.

With regard to OpenBSD however, there are many security enhancements that put its security far ahead of the rest. But it is rather paranoid for simple applications, and probably not worth the performance/ease of use hit.

Re:FreeBSD problems

[Guardian Hacker]

It's nice to see this post time and time again. I used to have problems similar to this, but they've been fixed... at least for me.

Moreover, what's cheaper than free and more stable than FreeBSD, which is hailed as being among the most stable OSs out there.

DMA

[beattie]

Looks like someone needs to turn on DMA.

Linux 2.6.1 vs. FreeBSD 5.2

[Space_Soldier]

I'd like to see pros and cons, also benchmarks of Linux 2.6.1 vs. FreeBSD 5.2. Also the best linux distribution using the 2.6.1 kernel (or a few of the most popular since this is different from person to person) vs. FreeBSD 5.2, from downloading to installation to general use as a server/workstation, configurint etc.

Re:Linux 2.6.1 vs. FreeBSD 5.2

[ultrabot]

I'd like to see pros and cons, also benchmarks of Linux 2.6.1 vs. FreeBSD 5.2.

There was a benchmark somewhere a while ago b/w Linux 2.6.0-test* and FreeBSD 5.* (I think it was even linked to at /.). I seem to remember Linux winning FreeBSD in performance, emerging as the fastest Open Source operating system. OpenBSD was the slowest OS by significant margin.

FreeBSD 5.* was still better than Linux 2.4.*, though. But the comparison is not fair, since Linux 2.4.* is a production kernel while FreeBSD 5.* isn't. Apparently the superior performance of FreeBSD is a myth, at least to some extent.

Re:Linux 2.6.1 vs. FreeBSD 5.2

[Ded Bob]

I believe 5.x still has a lot of debugging code still enabled in the kernel. I do not recall if it was disabled for the test.

Re:Linux 2.6.1 vs. FreeBSD 5.2

[TilJ]

You're probably talking about this benchmark.

Some comments from his conclusion include:

FreeBSD 5.1 has very impressive performance and scalability. I foolishly assumed all BSDs to play in the same league performance-wise, because they all share a lot of code and can incorporate each other's code freely. I was wrong. FreeBSD has by far the best performance of the BSDs and it comes close to Linux 2.6. If you run another BSD on x86, you should switch to FreeBSD!

and

Linux 2.4 is not too bad, but it scales badly for mmap and fork.

I personally believe that it's fair to compare FreeBSD 5.X to Linux 2.4.X because a complete operating system based on -CURRENT has been available for download for a year now (FreeBSD 5.0), leading it substantial stability. It'll be some time before RedHat ships with 2.6.X by default.

As the -CURRENT branch will become the -STABLE branch in the next few months (shortly before 5.3 is released) and this will create 6.X (the new -CURRENT), the timing is fairly close to when distributions that include kernel 2.6.X start to appear.

Re:Linux 2.6.1 vs. FreeBSD 5.2

[diegocgteleline.es]

It was.

BTW; The guy who did them has updated them. According with the new results, Netbsd *beats* freebsd 5.x: http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/

Re:Linux 2.6.1 vs. FreeBSD 5.2

[Ded Bob]

I guess it is yes and no. :)

On Oct 19, he stated:

1. Did he disable debugging in FreeBSD 5?
2. Yes.

On Oct 22, he stated:
Conclusion: FreeBSD 5 is faster and more scalable. If what people have been claiming is true, that FreeBSD 5 is unoptimized and has lots of debug code, we have a lot to look forward to once FreeBSD 5 becomes stable.

Live CD

[Trejus]

Since I haven't seen this mentioned yet...

What's the possibilty of having a FreeBSD LiveCD? As far as I can tell, there is no technical restriction, since if I remember correctly, a lot of floppy-based routers use netBSD.

FreeBSD gets lots of praise from it's users, but my only real experience with it is that a couple of my friends tried it (about 3 years ago) and found it impossible to install. However, it seems like an it would be worth a try, but I don't really want to sacrifice my Linux partition. Plus, I'm not all that interested in going through another lengthy install process since I'm pretty happy with Slackware.

Of course, since supporters mostly seem to admire the ports system, there maybe little difference for the end-user between Linux and FreeBSD LiveCD's.

And please, no jokes about a "dead" operating system being distributed on a live CD.

Re:Live CD

[phoenix_rizzen]

CD2 as distributed by the FreeBSD project is a bootable, live filesystem CD-ROM. Granted, it only gets you to a shell prompt, but it includes everything that comes with a standard install of FreeBSD, and makes a great rescue tool.

There are a couple of third-party LiveCD projects underway, although the only one I can recall the name of is Freesbie.

Re:Live CD

[Brandybuck]

I think he was referring to Knoppix like systems, where the live CD boots you up into a full multi-user X11 environment.
There are such projects under way, and Freesbie is one of them. There's one project I heard about that will let you create a custom live CD. I haven't tried any yet, but I've been meaning to.

Re:too bad

[phoenix_rizzen]

Yes, there is no perl in the base OS anymore. But, the perl 5.6 port is installed as part of the standard OS install.

Removing or upgrading that is as easy as removing or upgrading any other port.

Commercial versus open packaging.

[emil]

Look, I'm only familiar with RPM.

However, it would seem to me that what is needed is a packaging system that accomodates both binary distributions and source in a way that resolves dependencies.

There should be a hard line drawn between the source and binary environments.

The packaging system must encompass the entire Base Operating System (granted that most UNIX distributions transfer a "mini-system" at some point in the install). For example, patching the Base Operating System on OpenBSD is entirely different than applying updated packages. This inconsistency would be unacceptable for a major commercial user; the interface must be consistent.

Assuming that such a consistent packaging format could be developed, it should then be the goal to convert one of the old school UNIX players (HP and SGI might be the most receptive - there were rumors that Tru64 was going to RPM some time back; Solaris never changes anything in userland).

Until one of these packaging formats manages to win over a major UNIX player, the strife will continue.

Things I Know About FreeBSD

[$criptah]

1. Unlike most of the Linux distros, you can upgrade the system from the source. You can get the latest source code via CVS and completely update the whole system to the latest version or use it in order to fix bug fixes. It works really well if you want to stay updated on crucial bugs.

2. Unlike most of the Linux distros, it has a good software management system, ports. You can update them via CVS as a part of your cron job, thus you can get the latest version of software anytime you want to install something.

3. Kernel configuration does not involve clicking on tons of buttons. Also, the default kernel configuration does not come with tons of stuff enabled. When I create a custom kernel, I have to add certain lines for my personal configuration and hardly disable anything beyond simple stuff.

4. So far, I have used Mandrake, RedHat, Slackware, Debian and FreeBSD. From my experience FreeBSD was the easiest system to install and manage for server/production environment. I do not care about a nice looking penguin or games, I want my computer to do work. If I wanted to play, I'd use Windows.

NO RELEASE YET!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is NO RELEASE until someone from Release Engineering Team will say this in freebsd-announce@freebsd.org list with PGP signed message.

FreeBSD 5.2 is NOT released!

FreeBSD as a Desktop?

[Houn]

I'll admit, I tried out FreeBSD 5 shortly after it's initial release, and was fairly impressed with it. Solid, Stable, Ports rock. I ended up leaving it though, because at the time I was all about WineX...

Anyway, my question is this: How is FreeBSD as a desktop system? I no longer care much for WineX, and am far more interested in how well things like TV Tuners, Digital Cameras, USB/Firewire/CoolNiftyGadgets are handled by it. I was always under the impression that the *BSDs tended to be more conservative than the various Linux distros (Woody excluded ;), so I'm curious if anyone has any experience using it as a full-blown multimedia desktop OS.

I'll soon be building a Media Box w/ Tuner, DVD Burner, and USB gamepads for my TV, and a new Workstation with a Scanner, Digital Cam hook-up, etc.

Should I give FreeBSD another shot? ;)

Re:FreeBSD as a Desktop?

[sremick]

Anyway, my question is this: How is FreeBSD as a desktop system?

Good! It's been my primary desktop at home for over a year now.

I no longer care much for WineX, and am far more interested in how well things like TV Tuners

Got a WinTV card for xmas, works great!

Digital Cameras

Haven't done this yet but will soon, have done some research though. At the very lest, you could get a separate media-reader and use it that way (which would be fastest). But there are programs like digikam and gtkam which provide a direct link.

USB

I have a USB mouse (Logitech) and laser printer (Laserjet 1012).

Firewire

Dunno, never used it.

Hope this helps!

Re:FreeBSD as a Desktop?

[molnarcs]

You definitely should. I was a RedHa (7.3) then mandrake (9.0, 9.1) then Debian (woody, updated to testing) guy until tried freebsd 5.1. Stayed with it since then, and I will. I use it as a desktop OS, and it works perfectly. Since sremick answered most of your questions, some notes on digital cameras:

Check out this thread: http://www.freebsdforums.org/forums/showthread.php ?s=&threadid=12015 - and join that forum :) It is one of the friendliest forums I ever been to. Join it if you wish to try freebsd :)

Another advice: freebsd folks spend a great deal of effort (money, resources, time) in writing the best *nix documentation out there. This is true across the entire distribution. The man pages are superb and cleaner than those I find in linux, and there are more of them (almost every .conf file has a man page, as well as general things - try man ports). Also, you will find sample configuration files for almost every package (base system + ports) in /usr/share/examples. For instance, /etc/make.conf will have a sample in /usr/share/examples/etc/make.conf. And finally, their handbook is comprehensive and easy to follow. Although installing and running freebsd is no more difficult than debian/slack/gentoo, the best advice I can give is to read the handbook before starting installation.

I've been in love with FreeBSD since the moment I tried it (I installed it because when I pulled shorewall from sarge, it erased my /etc/network in debian. I friend recommended bsd. Before putting it on a server, I decided to try out on my desktop/test machine. A week later I removed my linux partition, and been using it as my desktop since then :) And now about some quirk (it is only fair to mention some disadvantages compared to linux):
1) Java - it works, but it is 'difficult' to install. By difficult I mean: you have to download some files manually, portinstall jdk14 won't work out of the box). When you get used to freebsd's package management/ports (yes, you have both, with automatic dependency resolution) you consider this as annoying :)
2) Flash - no native flash for freebsd, and again, you have to install linux-flash manually. It works in mozilla/firebird (both native and linux version) but not in konqi. A better solution is on the way though.

If you can live with these, you will love freebsd, especially if you want to get the latest and greatest progs. I find (I know, since my roommate uses it) that freebsd ports are slightly more up to date than portage in gentoo (which is no minor accomplishment). For example, gimp 2.0pre was added the day it was released.

Re:FreeBSD as a Desktop?

[molnarcs]

sorry, link above is: cameras

Re:FreeBSD as a Desktop?

[Brandybuck]

Haven't done this yet but will soon, have done some research though.

Digital cameras work great. In short, if they'll work under Linux they'll work under FreeBSD. It supports all UMass compatible cameras out-of-the-box. Just plug it in and copy/drag the photos out of it. Non-UMass cameras will need gphoto, just like under Linux.

Cameras that aren't supported by USB mass storage or gphoto probably won't work. But these are getting pretty rare now.

The coolest things about FreeBSD

[HenryKoren]

It takes about 5 minutes to install.

You can instantly download a pre-compiled binary of the latest version of pretty much anything by issuing the following command:

pkg_add -r [NAME]

You can instantly upgrade any software to the very latest version by installing sysutils/portupgrade and then typing

portupgrade [NAME]

Its so stable Apple used it as the foundation for OS X.

IMHO, hardware support is dramatically better in release 5 compared to release 4.5

If you havn't tried it yet you don't know what your missing.

Check out the FreeBSD Forums

Re:The coolest things about FreeBSD

[metalix]

I like being able to vcsup all the kernel and system sources to stay current with the latest bug fixes. The ability cries for a cron job, which I do once per week. Versions are able to be upgraded to a new release (with the exception of 4.x->5.x jump) which is great. Typically Linux "upgrades" are so-so with some features left out. (Red Hat likes to do that)

I've also seen setups where one powerful machine will build all the custom kernels and system binaries nightly for various computers on a network, such that if a security hole is discovered all systems can be updated within (literally) a few minutes.

This ability along with ports collection is the reason to run FreeBSD as a server. Not to mention rival performance and security.

I will agree though, hardware support and installation of it are ugly and I wouldn't use FreeBSD as a desktop, or suggest it for a unix newbie. Also, the ports collection is often a few versions behind. (I haven't tried portupgrade, I will have to).

Luckily there are often "don't install this, stupid" messages for ports that have security compromises. (such as the current port for the Firebird database)

I wish the linux distros would get on a simular cvsup system sources bandwagon. The updates are getting easier to automate (like red hat's up2date) but it's still not quite there.

Re:The coolest things about FreeBSD

[Groganz]

5 minutes!? Damn! My best is about 8 minutes, maybe I need a faster CDROM. I guess I don't get much practice, afterall why would you need to reinstall ;)

Great But Disk Is Slow

[idfubar]

As a UCB EECS graduate, I can truly appreciate FreeBSD.

As a hardware nerd, though, I was a little disappointed at the empirical results the OS turned in for my disk array (RAID5, 4x200GB, 16kB block size, 8:16:32:256K stripe size) - burst and sustained transfer is much faster under Windows. Have a look at the results: IDE Hardware Raid On FreeBSD

sparc64 and local sun console install

[Prinz Madde]

I actually just recently tried out FreeBSD (5.1-RELEASE, to be exact), because I wanted to do something with my Sun ultrasparc 5 besides having it sit there and look sexy. OpenBSD was not an option, as I cannot boot the ultra5 from floppy (even says so in the README somewhere), and I was way too lazy to build a boot CD ala NetBSD's instructions, so FreeBSD it was - I wanted to use the box and see something new besides Linux and Win2k (and OS X in my dreams on the 12" PB).

In hindsight, I have to say it's great, it simply *works*. I am running apache2 on it and soon will switch my internal IMAP server (just for home, two users, collecting from various accounts via fetchmail and providing the results to internal IMAP clients) to that box. Maybe nfs/samba file server will be next so I can retire the Mandrake 7.2 installation on my current file server. :/
Of course, the machine is slow, a cd /usr/ports ; make distro clean takes about three days, but who is counting. :)

However, to finally get to the point (yes, I am bored today), installation was a bitch, to say the least, none of the terminal emulations the installer suggests is usable on the sun console. Usenet searches suggested a serial terminal (yeah, didn't have that under the kitchen sink), or a nullmodem to another box. I decided to do a "blind" install, took a couple of attemots, but somehow it worked and the rest is history - did everything through ssh from my desktop linux box.

I skimmed the release notes on 5.2, but could not find any mentioning of the sun console finally being a usuable install option, even though in my (previously mentioned) usenet archive search I came across mentionings of someone wanting to fix this. Does anyone know where it stands?

Why *NOT* to use FreeBSD:

[scosol]

I've used and liked FreeBSD since back in the 2.1.5 days. (~1994 IIRC)

Of all the reasons listed, it is the simplicity and order and coherency of everything that works for me. It's very standardized, and things just seem to be done in a way that "makes sense".

So- why not use it?
There really is only one reason: bleeding-edge hardware support.

For server systems this is not an issue, but for desktops (particularly laptops) it raises its ugly head.

I will say that the 5.x series makes a lot of improvements in the "general laptop functionality" area, but even still- hardware support *does* lag behind Linux.

It is for that reason (and *only* that reason) that for my FOB P2040, FreeBSD (4.x at the time) just was not an option. Stuff like sound/tvout/suspend/spindown and IIRC even the particular USB controller wasn't supported. It's been a long time now but I remember installing it and just finding it unworkable at all on a machine that new at the time.

Anyway- food for thought.

OpenBSD has no ACLs!

[wirelessbuzzers]

With regard to OpenBSD however, there are many security enhancements that put its security far ahead of the rest.

Yes, except for access control lists. There are no ACLs in OpenBSD! As a result, you have to run more programs as root, which is definitely a security problem.

They should have better warnings about it...

[Christopher B. Brown]

"If the FreeBSD team could get away with it, they would probably use warnings like "Contains live plague bacteria. Beware the Rabid Hippopotami. May cause nausea and vomiting."

-- Michael Lucas, re: FreeBSD-CURRENT

Ask the opposite...

[Kjella]

...why would you *not* want to go to BSD (on the desktop, at least).

Well, if I got to sum it up in one line "Because it's far more fringe than Linux is". As a Linux desktop user, I'm sure you know the drawbacks of not being mainstream.

I don't mind being in a minority, but it basicly comes down to that. Linux is starting to get on the radar, BSD just isn't... It might not be dying, but it's hardly booming either. Linux is getting the hardware support, and if the point is to run Linux binaries, why not run the original?

Kjella

Re:My personal experience in the FreeBSD world

[JDizzy]

Are you talking about the first time Matt's commit bit was revoked, or the second time?

I would agree that Matts arguments about biting off more than you can chew is valid. However, I'd say that the current dirrection FreeBSD is headign is a technically logical place to be going, and that any incremental steps in that dirrection only dellay things.

Regarding luigi-ware in the base, I'd agree that sudden bursts of interesting activity is nice, but the months of inatention afterwards is anoying. But adding PF is just yet another network firewall kit, and we already got enought of that bloat.

Re:too bad

[Brandybuck]

Not to bash Perl or anything, but I think that these incompatibilities between minor version numbers is a Perl weakness. Having to use perl 6.x instead of 5.x I could understand. But having to use perl 5.8 instead of 5.6 is silly. The 5 means it's the same major version.

But in any case, just update your perl through ports and you're done. Easy.

Can't disagree with you here...

[StarKruzr]

"FreeBSD also shines on older hardware compared to Linux (exempting Slackware or build your own.)"

I don't know about AlphaLinux, but I can tell you that installing FreeBSD on my Digital AlphaServer 1000 was almost suspiciously easy. It autopartitioned my drives, detected all my hardware, and in general just asked me how I wanted the network configured and what software packages I wanted, then took care of the entire thing itself. I really wasn't expecting that on such old, esoteric hardware.

NOW it's released

[elvstone]

See:

Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 13:25:30 -0700 (MST)
From: Scott Long
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 5.2 Released!

It is once again my great privilege and pleasure to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE. Building upon the success of FreeBSD 5.1, this release includes:

* Full Tier-1 support for single and multiprocessor AMD Athlon64 and Opteron systems.
* Dynamically linked root partition for a smaller installation footprint and better integration with the Name Service Switch subsystem.
* New and improved driver support for IDE, SATA, and 802.11a/b/g devices, and significantly better integration with the ACPI power management subsystem.
* Client support for the Network File System version 4 protocol.
* Experimental first-stage support for multithreaded filtering and forwarding of IP traffic. This also provides the foundation for a fully multi-threaded network stack in the next release of FreeBSD.
* In-box support for the latest Gnome 2.4 and KDE 3.1 desktops.

Parent is a troll

[nacturation]

While speaking of the software ports collection, Debian Troll's Best wrote...

Apple is quite the innovator in ports after all, being a pioneer of both USB and FireWire.

The Debian Troll gets the mods (yet again!) by trolling about hardware ports such as USB and Firewire. Yet another good troll ... where did you steal this one from?

Night of the living dead.

[mrplastik]

You must have nothing better to do then troll slashdot, which is fine. It's still more a waste of time then listening to a Captain and Tennille album.

Your link to the SysAdmin story is wonderfully entertaining, but you failed to realize those guys couldn't tune a FreeBSD, or any other *BSD box to save their life. FreeBSD ships with extremely small settings, and requires quite a bit of kernel tweaking via sysctl variables, and loader defaults (or recompile) for proper useage of memory, disk, and network performance on a high load, or high traffic system. (Such as SysAdmin is benchmarking in said test)

Quote from SysAdmin Magazine:
On FreeBSD: Append to /etc/sysctl (or you can use sysctl -w to add these):
kern.maxfiles=65536
kern.maxfilesperproc=32768

The above are their "kernel tweaks", which I must say, is short of absolute hilarity. (All the fbsd admins are probably laughing with me too at these meager attempts to "tweak", by SysAdmin Magazine. This is just short of attempting to put a band-aid over a gash the size of your fist, and expecting the bleeding to stop.)

If you publish technical benchmarks, and state that your company is knowledgable and competent (Which I seriously question here.) atleast have the common courtesy to have someone experienced enough to tweak the server (as any large institution/corp/etc would, or like me, have a default sysctl.conf/loader.rc specifically for large load servers) Anyone who's ever admin'd a server with 15,000+ concurrent connections knows, a default FreeBSD box will "fall over and die" without tweaking. (More specifically, you'll fill up your mbufs, or exhaust your sockets, long before smashing the kernel to death.) After tweaking, it will easily do it with minimal load (dependant upon which services, obviously) as my servers are living proof of, along with Yahoo, and many, many others. FreeBSD's default kernel values are at very low, "safe" values, which in many areas will lead to much slower, degraded performance from what it is capable. (TCP Window Scaling is extremely low out of the box for just one small, yet very important example, and you'll see further ahead, this will easily lead to deathly slow socket connections, and such.)

The theory for this is, it should lead to a much more stable overall machine, albeit I've never had any of my tweaked machines reboot.
Quote from SysAdmin article:
FreeBSD performance decreased somewhat when more than 1500 connections were added.

I don't doubt this, as default FreeBSD install will have very minimal settings for max connections, max allocated sockets, max files per process, low fd's, again, low tcp window scaling, and more which for brevity I'll exclude.
To say FreeBSD performs worse than Linux, and Solaris, AND, Win... Absolutely laughable. I'm sorry, I've been in the UNIX/Networking field (traversing more medias than I wish to list) for over 12 years, I've run the entire gambit, and still do, so I find that statement highly offensive, because it's plain wrong.

To Sys Admin Magazine: Learn how to tweak a FreeBSD kernel, then run the test. We as the readers have an obligation to expect absolute technical perfection from those publishing these types of articles. Apples to Oranges.

More NetCraft fodder:
Seven of the top nine sites run on FreeBSD. The exceptions are Datapipe, which is doing a fine job of promoting the reliability of Windows 2003, and German hosting company komplex.net which runs on Linux.
Posted by mhp at 08:54 AM UTC on Jan 11, 2004

Had you ever contemplated the fact that FreeBSD, nor any other *BSD's success does NOT rely on how many people use it? We really couldn't care less. We'd love more userbase, and more contributors, who wouldn't? The fact that we have less users than Windows, or Linux, or OS X, is totally irrelevant to us.

A proj

Wow...

[utlemming]

If this discussion was reversed, with the FreeBSD people saying the things that are being said by GNU/Linux people in a Linux announcment people would be moderated down fast. I am a FreeBSD fan and as I speak I am installing 5.2. But I can say that I have tried several GNU/Linux installations. In fact I have used Redhat, SuSE, College, Mandrake, Gentoo, Lycoris, and Slackware; I have a dedicated machine to testing, deploying and toying with OpenSource OS'es. After having tried those distributions I was able to determine what I liked the best. Now, having said that my main beef with the GNU/Linux people is that some of them have not taken the time to check out the system. I have taken the time to check out even the different branches of the BSD's and I like FreeBSD the best and I have my reasons.

In fairness to the BSD world, before people open their mouths and start to rant and rave about how BSD sucks and Linux is the best, and vice-versa, people should take the time to test them. Obviously if FreeBSD is now to 5.2 and has active development then it is not dying. Both Linux and the *BSD's have strong points and a week point. But there is no sense making this a religious war. Use whatever OS is best for the job whether that is Mac, Linux, Windows, or a BSD.

Just because I am using FreeBSD and Windows today does not mean that I will stay FreeBSD and Windows. I may switch to FreeBSD and Linux or Linux and Windows.

Re:cdbaby

[linuxbaby]

No we switched everything to FreeBSD. Though OpenBSD was my first love, when the site started getting really popular we needed better performance and SMP from our MySQL servers. FreeBSD blew it away, performance-wise.

5.2

[AhBeeDoi]

Nice, I've been meaning to give FreeBSD a try. My spare box has a hacked up AMD T-Bird that I tried (unsuccessfully) overclocking. Damn, the OCing never goes as smoothly as indicated in those articles. :^)

Kinda weird acting although I did install Solaris 9 x86 on it. Maybe some of that weirdness is Solaris choking on this weirded out CPU and mobo that isn't on Sun's (short) HCL.

Re:Where did this BSD is dead / dying thing start?

[mrplastik]

Honestly, I wish there was some other reason, but it's the most clear and concise explaination.

I don't watch TechTV, (infact, I utterly despise it) yet I remember the offmyserver.com postings about it, and if memory serves, all this seems to have started up around that time? Perhaps I'm mistaken, as I don't frequent /. ;) So to your comment I say, Amen.

-mpf

Viva le BSD.

[mrplastik]

Current Uptimes
I see lots of trolls posting NetCraft stats, so here's yet some more to entertain their lonely lives.

Dead you say? It must be so, look how long these machines have been up, it certainly time for something new.
Gander at which OS's dominate the list. This certainly doesn't mean anything, now does it?

For a dead guy, BSD sure has a lot of kick left in them. For those of you that're behind, plans are already being made for the 6.x branch of FreeBSD. That sure sounds like a dying OS, now doesn't it?

I've got no beef with Linux. I run Linux, and multiple BSDs, and have for over a decade. I've got a beef with trolls making false statements and any moderators that bump their post to informative.

*chuckle*

We're far from through.

-mpf

Re:Arrogance

[mrplastik]

I've been running FreeBSD and Linux for over a decade, and I don't bash Linux, especially not to this depth. I've made comments on how it could improve, that's not bashing. I run it. I prefer FreeBSD as a server and desktop, but that's ME. To each his own. Something about running xf86, and having such a tiny OS footprint, is a very beautiful thing.

Trolls are posting absolutely hilarious things, which can't go unchecked. I think the funniest thing I've seen was: "It has no GUI!" There have been so many funny things said by them however, I can't keep track. Some of these Linux zealots have really gone off the deep end, to the point where it's just funny.
(Which is the only reason I started participating in these threads, or hopped on /. :) )

It really proves how clueless so many of them are, as most of the time they're talking out their ass, and it shows.

-mpf

Re:My personal experience in the FreeBSD world

[SimianOverlord]

I find your views fascinating, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

So many comments on ports ...

[the real darkskye]

I'll add mine here
The biggest advantage to the FreeBSD ports vs. FreeBSD packages I've seen (and most activly use) is that whenever you compile any port from source it uses your global make.conf settings, as such all my ports are compiled with -O2 -mcpu=athlon-xp for those few less bytes and picosecond execution time.

Just my 2c while I buildworld to 5.2 and then portupgrade -aRrF ;)

Re:I'll take, FreeBSD release notes for 800, pleas

[NynexNinja]

FTP imposes a lower threshold connection limit than HTTP. FTP requires lots of chatter on the wire to be able to just receive a file. So, to say that one is not superior to the other is just wrong. HTTP is better suited for the transfer of files *inherently* because of its low overhead.

Re:Arrogance

[mrplastik]

Actually, their new scheduler (SCHED_ULE) for example was copied almost verbatim from Linux's O(1) scheduler. Sure, change words around and claim its only vaguely based on Linux, but believe me as someone who has read both sources - its a blatant rip off.

Wrong. Linux ripped the ULE from FreeBSD. Proof Here NOT the other way around.

I'm QUITE sure the code you read on your Linux box is very nearly identical to that of the code in FreeBSD, BECAUSE IT WAS RIPPED FROM FREEBSD BY Francesco Sportolari.

Jeffrey Roberson wrote FreeBSD's ULE, and I'M QUITE sure he'd be rather bothered by your accusations. ULE was designed as an improvement for SMP based systems, yet FreeBSD's scheduler is, and has been 0(1). Perhaps read This sometime. Also ULE is *NOT* the default scheduler, it's still SCHED_4BSD, atleast up until 5.1.(I don't run any 5.2 boxes, my only 5.x boxes are non-production)

Be sure you get your facts straight before you go off making false accusations against FreeBSD, and it's extremely talented and hard-working developers.

I love Linux for what it's accomplished, and I love *BSD for the same reason.
My personal preferance is FreeBSD, trying to change that is like trying to tell me that Chocolate Ice Cream is better than Vanilla.

-mpf

and quit marking me off-topic, I'm not! :)

Re:I'll take, FreeBSD release notes for 800, pleas

[mrplastik]

FTP imposes a lower threshold connection limit than HTTP.
This is solely based upon individual's configurations.

The excess "overhead" of the FTP protocol introduces trivial amounts of added traffic, especially in today's high bandwidth internet. This is a moot point, and one that should be discussed elsewhere, however I'll atleast respond.

If you don't live under a rock, you know mark-up language adds tags obviously. In turn which adds to the size of the file. The following are the i386 Release notes for 5.2-RELEASE:
58K RELNOTES.HTM
30K RELNOTES.TXT

As you can see, the HTML file is much larger - nearly DOUBLE, which will surely result in MORE traffic. I'm sure there's not 28k of extra over the wire traffic due grabbing this file via FTP as opposed to HTTP. Even if there were say ~30k overhead due to the ftp session, (Which I *know* grabbing this 1 file, would not generate that kind of traffic) then they balance out as equal in the end. (Obviously interpreting hypertext will cause "more" cpu load than opening a plain text file)

I agree with you on a whole that serving content is usually better left to the tender loving care of an HTTP server. That's for many reasons, which aren't all specifically protocol based.

End result, I don't know what you were smoking that lead you to beleive you could only get FreeBSD's release notes via FTP, nor how that would tie into FreeBSD's viability as an Operating System.

-mpf

Re:Arrogance

[be-fan]

Actually, you're wrong. ULE is based on the O(1) scheduler, but has some extra stuff for interactivity. The page you pointed to was a patch to O(1) to add this extra interactivity stuff.