FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE Review

Uh.... by DashEvil · 2004-01-22 11:40 · Score: 4, Interesting

dhclient is broken in 5.2?

Odd, because it's clearly working on the box I have beside me.

*shrugs* 5.2 seems to be a very solid release, I have no issues with it. I think that DevFS is something that should be more mainstream, it makes a lot more sense than the traditional method.

--
-If God wanted people to be better than me, he would have made them that way.

Re:Uh.... by Shurhaian · 2004-01-22 11:54 · Score: 5, Interesting

My computer is a semi-old and quite unreliable pile o' junk. That Windows hates it is no surprise(though Windows actually does support my nVidia GeForce card's 3D acceleration). I've tried Red Hat, two versions of Mandrake, and Debian.

FreeBSD is the only thing I've tried that'd keep running if I didn't poke at it. And when I did choose to poke at it, it was most tolerant of it, and - thanks in large part to the devfs system - it's FAR easier to tell what I should be poking AT. Especially for my USB card reader - attach the device, and there it is, a brand new entry, /dev/ums0. Much easier than muddling through a whole tangle of device nodes and hoping that one of them is what I'm looking for.

And for all the extra time it takes, I'm very fond of the ports tree's default-ish approach of "compile from source to suit the system". My Linux experience was fraught with library conflicts in binary packages; in FreeBSD I've hit a few snags, but they were much more easily resolved - although the process was time-consuming, it was not terribly attention-consuming.

For a supposedly dead OS, FreeBSD lives quite well indeed on my system, when the Linux distros I've tried all died in short order. If only I had the space to compile OpenOffice, I'd be set.

Now I just hope the review hasn't been /.'d by the time I get home from work(.com is blocked by the firewall, .org is not. Maybe there's a /.er on my IT staff?).

--
NB: YMMV. IANAL. Take the above with a grain of salt.

MacOS X by rsidd · 2004-01-22 11:46 · Score: 4, Interesting

From the article:

"It is questionable whether any significant portion of the old FreeBSD-specific code remains in present-day OS X Panther. So to sum up, the new release of FreeBSD means absolutely nothing to OS X development."

Apple seems to disagree:

Panther integrates features from state-of-the-art FreeBSD 5 into Darwin, the Open Source base of Mac OS X, to provide enhanced performance, compatibility and usability.

Re:MacOS X by ValourX · 2004-01-22 12:23 · Score: 3, Interesting

The OpenDarwin FAQ is where my facts came from:

Justin Walker's description of Darwin's heritage is: Mac OS X began life as a child of OpenStep 4.x. The first stage in the evolution was the move from OpenStep 4.x to Rhapsody, which was based on BSD Lite2, with a batch of NeXT-instigated changes. When we shifted to Mac OS X from Rhapsody/Mac OS X Server, we incorporated FreeBSD 3.2 changes for the networking piece. The rest of the BSD portion of the kernel remained more or less as it was. At the same time, we (i.e., Fred, with your [Darwin's] help) pulled in command and library updates. Most of these are from FreeBSD, although I'm not positive about the heritage of the pieces that are now in the system.
-Jem
Re:MacOS X by ctr2sprt · 2004-01-22 13:44 · Score: 2, Interesting

It doesn't say that in the quote he gave, nor is anyone claiming it does. OSX has about as much in common with FreeBSD as FreeBSD has with OpenBSD or NetBSD: a common ancestry and a good-sized chunk of similar code. But the time since the fork has created a lot of really dissimilar code too, so it's no longer correct to think of OSX as FreeBSD with a different GUI. Instead, it's just a BSD. That's the point he's making when he says "FreeBSD-specific."
I think it's kind of an empty comment, since by definition FreeBSD-specific code is going to be of interest to nobody but FreeBSD users, but... For whatever purpose the statement serves, it's correct.

Under VMWare by digitalhermit · 2004-01-22 11:59 · Score: 3, Interesting

I got it running under VMWare 4 on a Linux host recently. Largely uneventful except that I needed to use the Safe Mode kernel and add the following entry to the .vmx file:

monitor_control.disable_apic="TRUE"

It took a few hours to run updates and rebuild the kernel but is functional now. It seemed to take a lot longer this time than normal, but this may be because of the new GCC. Not sure.

The beer-ware license :) by pointwood · 2004-01-22 12:10 · Score: 4, Interesting

Quote: You'd be hard pressed to find a license less restrictive than the BSD License.

Well, the beerware license as taken from Poul-Henning Kamp's website is nice and short:

"THE BEER-WARE LICENSE" (Revision 42):
<phk@FreeBSD.ORG> wrote this file. As long as you retain this notice you can do whatever you want with this stuff. If we meet some day, and you think this stuff is worth it, you can buy me a beer in return Poul-Henning Kamp

Very few people should be choosing 5.x by Anonymous Coward · 2004-01-22 12:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

A lot of people pick FreeBSD 5.* as their introduction to the OS. These same people also choose apache 2.x.

As a FreeBSD user who still has 3.x machines in production, I am hesitant to deploy 5.x. Why would I give up the rock solid stability of 4.9 for an unknown?

I also run 4.x as a desktop. Opera, firebird, mplayer, gaim, xpdf, blah blah all work just fine from ports.

I tried to install mrtg in a jail from the tarball last night until i saw the dependency list. Thank jeebus for ports.

Oh yea, speaking of FreeBSD's killer app, jail. Thanks Poul-Henning Kamp.

I could go on and on. Asterix might be the only reason i would run linux right now.

l8r

Is it dead yet? Guess not. by bsd_usr · 2004-01-22 13:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

[4:41pm] blah@bsd (/usr/ports) # uname -a
FreeBSD bsd.ircla.intexcorp.com 5.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE #0: Thu Jan 16 22:16:53 GMT 2003 root@hollin.btc.adaptec.com:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/G ENERIC i386
[4:48pm] blah@bsd (/usr/ports) # uptime
4:49PM up 112 days, 1:57, 2 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
[4:49pm] blah@bsd (/usr/ports) #

Hmmm, is it dead yet? It's been over 100 days and all. Guess not.

Yeah, this is a box that I mess around with at work. I don't run anything serious on it, but I do have a few userull utilities to help me diagnose network problems.

This machine, as you can see, is 5.0-RELEASE and it's like the Energizer Bunny. I goes on, and on, and on, and on, and on...

My uptime is actually kinda small due to a power outage some one hundred and twelve days ago. I think the longest uptime I've had on a FreeBSD box was over 200 days and I accidentally unplugged it.

Yeah, I know uptime doesn't mean much but it's nice to know it's been that stable and the hardware has been stable too. It's running on an old Compaq Prosignia 200 box. Runs great.

I don't know if I ever plan to upgrade this box since it's not externally accessible on the Internet and I really don't use it for production use. Besides, if it ain't broke why fix it. Right?

FreeBSD to OS X by bsDaemon · 2004-01-22 13:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

I started out on FreeBSD 2.2.8 when I was 12 years old. I then started running Linux with RedHat 5.0 when it was brand new, went to Slackware, to RedHat 5.2, then to Slackware and FreeBSD 3.0 dualboot. At FreeBSD 3.3 I went fully to FreeBSD and kept on using it (with upgrading) until i bought the new iBook G4 when it came out this past fall.
Honestly, while I sometimes still pine (no pun intended) for the days when I had 15 Eterms running and all kinds of Vim and BitchX windows open. Hell, I ran EVERYTHING in terminals -- honestly, I didn't even need to run X. I love OS X 10.3.2 so much, I wouldn't even concider running a PC ever again. Hell, no other OS can even come close to the usability and functionality, atleast for me.

First Impressions by iNiTiUM · 2004-01-22 16:14 · Score: 2, Interesting

I recently began using 5.x on a workstation in preperation for upgrading my router/doesitall server from 4.9 to 5.x. Overall it seems very stable, all the apps I've installed have gone in without a hitch. This includes many apps from the ports collection, some added via 'pkg_add -vr (pkgname)', and some handbuilt from source. The new DevFS setup is amazing and the new /etc/rc.d setup is just as killer as NetBSD's setup.

The only issue I've manage to run into, is that CPU Usage is not reported in top, systat, vmstat, GKRellm, or anywhere! This could be because its a SMP machine, but I'm not sure why that would make a difference unless theres still a few lumps in the SMPng code.

Still, it runs amazingly well. Currently using Enlightenment DR16/Gnome Desktop, Mozilla 1.6, OpenOffice (check the OpenOffice downloads page if you don't have enough room to build, they have .tbz packages), cups, and a slew of other apps.
So, until NetBSD gets its SMP code to a releaseable point, it appears this is the BSD for me!

PS: Any takers on the CPU Usage reporting issue?

--
When encryption is outlawed, ou++1!@(93j++js-d9298yIUH(*Y24JKB!~

Oh, Ye of Little Faith by vga_init · 2004-01-22 16:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

This post attempts to discuss the stability issues of the FreeBSD New Technology release and make some sense out of the situation as there seems to be varied opinions flying around.

I have used the New Technology release extensively and also have a good deal of experience with Ye Olde Technology release. ;) The reason for this is because, at the time I adopted FreeBSD as my main OS 5.1 had just barely been released (I was a bit hesistant to try 5.0, but the extra .1 gave me added confidence). I had been using older versions prior to that, but only casually, and I never really hunkered down with them.

There are different criteria for what is stable. Being a home user, I consider 5.x to be "stable" in the relative sense that I've never observed a system crash or failure of any kind after successful installation. I concede that I have experienced some issues with some pieces of hardware which proceeded to run 4.x just fine, but once the system is installed and configured satisfactorily there have been no problems. So, in other words, "it's good enough for me." Technically it's "unstable," but I guess I enjoy living life on the edge (or not).

People must understand that criteria for stability in the *BSD crowd is top notch. Harboring claims of being some of the most stable systems of their kind, the BSDs have an aweful lot to live up to, and are usually very good about not dissapointing their users. When a BSD system is certified as "stable", is it ever! What the BSD crowd considers "unstable" some other software communities might think just the opposite. I suspect the cause of this is that BSD finds a happy home on server systems, and even the slightest possibility of something going wrong can cost somebody big. So, even the most miniscule amount of instability is instability none the less, and the BSD communities are modest enough not to try to claim anything different.

I personally have a sever of sorts running at school that is loaded with an installation of 5.1-RELEASE. It's a modest machine--one of the school's low-end desktops with no more than a Pentium III and less than 100mb of memory--but it get's it's fair share of work; it works as a local file server (simple ftpd configuration), a web server (apache 2.something), and a vnc server (this is because I encourage the kids to play with the machine and get friendly with a *nix system since all they've ever known is Windows). The load is never too bad, even when three kids are running three vnc sessions, each with xfce4, firebird, and usually gaim running (and, you must understand, for a machine of its calibur this is a lot to handle). What I'm trying to say is that the machine does have it's fair share of work. Granted, it doesn't do nearly as much as a proper server should, but it also does a bit more than what I normally would do on my machine at home all by myself. Point in case is that the system has never done wrong, and though I can't keep it up as much as I'd like (staff shuts all machines off during the weekends), it runs for about a good week at a time--maybe two if I get lucky.

I'm guessing that won't impress many people, but I sure think it's lovely (guess I'm easy to please). For me 5.1 is getting the job done, and though I wouldn't encourage it for large-scale corporate use to do mission-critical work (who would?), I encourage home users not to be shy and give it a go! Oftentimes I think that people get turned off by instability claims, which are, just for the intents and purposes of a hobbyist user such as myself, a tad exaggerated, and miss out.

To me 5.2 can only be a step forward; if 5.1 was good for me then a good bet stands that 5.2 will be just as good, if not better. There are no gaurentees that this newer release will actually be more stable (there is always the posibility of new bugs being introduced), but known bugs discovered in the previous version are certainly going to be address. Also, I remember reading that hardware support has been expand

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