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FreeBSD 5.2 Review
JigSaw writes "OSNews published a review of FreeBSD 5.2. They found the OS very solid as a server but pretty lacking as a desktop. The author finds FreeBSD very fast overall, easy to configure and that it feels integrated and mature. On the other hand, it has limited modern hardware support, small annoyances at places and that not many binary packages are available and so compilations from ports may take long time."
They found the OS very solid as a server but pretty lacking as a desktop.
They must not have liked the default sysinstall color scheme.
OSNews -- because we CAN evaluate an OS in thirty minutes or less!
--saint
Plus it's not as cool as PayYouFiveBucksBSD.
Good point. I would argue that Windows is a good desktop though. It's easy for people to navigate, do all the basic things they want, install hardware easily, etc.
Now, Linux in the hands of someone experienced could be a far better desktop, but for the masses Windows is a good desktop. Also, Windows in the hands of an experienced user is also a good desktop. I haven't really encountered problems with Win2K Pro in quite awhile. The only times I do have problems are almost 99% the application's fault, not Windows.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Yeah but the problem with Windows isn't its base. The base is rock solid. To prove that just run the OS from a clean install. You can run that thing for years without a problem. The problem is when you start adding things like Outlook, half-assed drivers from ATI or Creative, and every piece of spyware known to man. To me the biggest problem with Windows as a desktop is that it assumes that its users have even a modicum of common sense when obviously they don't. The safest desktop for a user is a locked down dummy terminal.
I was a first time Linux user who had been running Gentoo for around 3 months now.
I found user support to be fantastic, and had lots to go from using Google and accessing varying forums, but there was just stuff that I could never get to work.
Then I tried to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel.... and I gave up.
Popped in FreeBSD, installed, popped on my favorite graphic environment and apps that went with it. Using FreeBSD I had duplicated, in 2 hours, everything that took me a struggling 3 months to build with my linux distro. Going through the handbook was so easy I was shocked, and countless other sites (like freebsd diary) filled any gaps.
I know there are various Linux distros and what not, but I thought FreeBSD was supposed to be the more "advanced" OS of the two? And by advanced I mean "pain in the ass to install for an idiot long time Windows user with no *nix experience."
Now to completely discredit my experience above, why is every damn OSNews review getting posted these days? Why don't we save the reviews for the Gods of Arstechnica who understand it's not all about posting GNOME screenshots and throwing around the phrase "not ready for the desktop!!!" every other article.
-j
We still have a couple print servers around here that are running Pentium Pro's with FreeBSD 3.4 from five years ago. Yeah its probably time we replaced them, but they've been reliable.
I mean for desktop, we use Mac OS X because that what its designed for, at the end of the day its the right tool for the right job.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I hope 2004 is the year Eugenia will stop posting stupid OS reviews.
I use FreeBSD every day as a desktop, and it works great for me. At least the reviewer appreciated the integrated feel that come from a real Unix, that was planned rather than hobbled together. It's also good that they noticed how solid FreeBSD is as a server. *BSD performance under heavy loads is something that can't always be proved by benchmarks. It has to be seen to be believed.
My main dissagreement though, is his complaint about the ports system. Debians apt-get system is the only thing that comes close, but with ports I find it much easier to maintain my own changes to the source tree.
I moved to FreeBSD after bad experiences on Linux, with licensing, the ad-hoc design, and spagetti code. Now I stay with FreeBSD because of it's engineered design, and because it's nice to have a truly free system.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
So what does pkg_add -r packagename do then? I thought it downloaded the pre-compiled binary
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"The safest desktop for a user is a locked down dummy terminal."
I would think that the safest desktop is pen and paper, but that might be too many sharp objects.
What?
In 6+ years as a systems developer, very little approaches the way FreeBSD balances all considerations such as centralized development process, ported software, stability, and feature set.
.. but when it comes to running a server, its hard to argue with an OS that took well over 80 software platform upgrades (our own) without nary an OS crash.
;)
I like FreeBSD. Its never leading edge, its never trailing edge, it never supports the most hardware, it never does desktop best
Uptimes were 2+ years, 40 hits per second avg, and every freakin C bug I could throw at it.
FreeBSD is rock solid. ROCK solid. Oh, plus its dying.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Works For Me (tm)
;-)
Desktop performance is a lot better on 5.x. Things like flash and other (binary linux) plugins actually work. Do use SCHED_ULE. It helps. Mplayer does it all, media plugins largely work. many of these issues are really external from FreeBSD but its nice to see things come together. Yes, you may have to fiddle a bit.
But it can be used on the desktop and it can work very well there. Like I said, things are starting to come together. Sometimes it looks like merely cosmetics from the Linux side I guess but as desktop apps get more mature so does their portability. Or at least easier to fix in ports. More hands and brains also help. There's clearly an influx into the BSD users realm.
So yes, there is a viable *BSD desktop other than Apple's (perhaps even 3 or 4). A true *NIX head or someone willing to read some docs can have a pretty complete desktop on top of a *BSD. I get GL animated snapshots from camera/tv card snapshots in my xscreensaver. Does windows have that?
The reviewer does hit a nail on the head, "If you are after an easy-to-use desktop system that doesn't require you to learn anything new, then you better look elsewhere."
This is the arrogance/beauty of FreeBSD, it is designed/engineered/distributed as an O/S to get the job done like no other. The Bauhaus school of software design. It is an SOB to get a new user going on, but once they see the light, good luck prying it from their hands. Good things are rarely easy.
The best thing ever to happen to FreeBSD was Linux, the best thing ever to happen to Linux was FreeBSD. A good, clean, honest competition which leaves both sides stronger.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Somebody should tell this gal that 5.2 is NOT a stable release. Maybe I missed it, but she fails to mention that 5.2 is a "New Technology Release" and is not yet intended for production use.
Many of the problems that the author experienced will probably (hopefully) be resolved by the time that 5-STABLE is released.
I don't argue that there are problems in the 5-series (I still stick with 4-STABLE), but if you're going to review it, at least make it obvious that it is not a finished product.
The hardware support available in modern Linux distributions make it a very good candidate for desktop workstations. But the ability to tweak certain kernel settings to suit it to a desktop workstation (like the CK release of patches) make it an even BETTER choice for a desktop.
That said I would rather have a cohesive, well thought out OS for a server. I don't want the server to change ever. I want to have easy to read documentation when I need it in a pinch and actually have documentation that relates to the OS environment I'm in!
BSDs are far more cohesive than any Linux distro I have ever used and don't feel like a bunch of utilities slapped on top of a kernel. Man pages make sense, documentation is everywhere, and the bastard runs really freaking fast too.
On the other hand, my few adventures with *BSD on the desktop always had me banging my head in frustration.
The choice is obvious: If it supports your hardware, *BSD for the server. Linux is still the best choice for the desktop.
I haven't used apt-get, but freeBsd has a nice package system. Most people use ports and compile from source, but you can also use pkg_add with some options to fetch the binary package and install it. Portupgrade and source installs rock, unless your system is very limited.
That said, why didn't you do a apt-get to install your packages on a local network machine, and nfs export it?
I had 5.1 installed and running perfectly fine on my box, tried to format and do a fresh install of 5.2 and it won't write to the HD.
did drive scans, installed various other OSes, all fine. but freeBSD hates me now.
so i installed 5.1 again and all is good.
that's my 5.2 experience. while googling for a solution I ran across a bunch of other people with the same problem and no resolution.
Drive geometry on Seagate barracuda drives doesn't seem to play nice with the 5.2 installer.
"You worthless post!"
-Shakespeare, 2 Gentlemen of Verona, 1. 1. 147
10,000 apps, but I'll bet cash the majority are command-line utilities, not desktop applications.
Wrong, see http://www.freshports.org/categories.php
I've been using FreeBSD as a server since 1999, and as a desktop for only 6 months or so. I would have to agree that FreeBSD is not as good a desktop system as it is a server. But there are a couple reasons for that.
"Linux" Application - KDE, MPlayer, Mozilla, XMMS, etc etc are more geared towards running on Linux. The developers are on Linux as are most of the userbase. When one of the Linux geared projects is ported to FreeBSD, there are usually many patches that need to be applied to make it run better. However, Samba (last I tried it), Apache, MySQL, PHP... all compile without a hitch.
Driver support. I can't use either of my web cams with FreeBSD, because there are just no drivers available. The people developing FreeBSD don't have the time to keep up with the latest wacky devices. If something is standard compliant (like my Nikon 995), it will just WORK. My nVidia (mostly because I use nVidia's binary drivers) crashes once a week, and I can't get out of X without locking my system up. However, I can use just about any RAID card in my server.
I mostly use FreeBSD as a desktop because it's the same system that my servers run. I keep my CVS repository on this machine, and I keep FreeBSD's source tree on this box, NFS from the servers and update when they need it. It makes my life easier from an administrative point of view, but it's definitely not geared towards being a Windows 9?xp? killer.
What about MEEPT?!?!
Sadly, I took one glance at the screenshot in the upper-right hand corner, and knew I would be reading a Eugenia article.
/. posters. FreeBSD 5.2 is rock solid, as any Unix, Linux, box would be. Every port in the ports tree has a pkd_add to go along with it. That's 10,000 precompiles binary ready to download. They all install, deinstall, with near zero user interaction.
She continues to base a useable desktop by how many windows she can open at once. Skip the article, and read the reviews from the
In short, use FreeBSD.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
5.2 is twice as good as 2.6!!!
And they say BSD is dying...ha! Guess we showed them.
Constitutionally Correct
It's called Mac OS X.
Rot-13 my address to e-mail me.
"So I hurry back to little earth / For another life another birth"
I wouldn't say that Linux is more stable or anything, but don't pretend that BSD is perfect. Even OpenBSD has its little idiosyncrasies, and it's supposed to have had more code review than any other open source Unix(-like OS).
Windows NT does certainly have plenty of security issues, but in general, it is a fairly reliable operating system. While in some ways it has gone downhill in that regard since NT 3.51 (though it's gotten better since 4.0, FWIW) because of decisions made to improve the speed of the system, NT is built on a solid architecture. The problem with NT is not the design of the foundation so much as the implementation, and the fact that PC hardware is, for the most part, utter crap, and it makes a commitment to supporting (nearly) all of it in a way that enables hardware developers to publish closed drivers and yet still have them work and deliver good performance, and not be tied to an individual version of the kernel. You can service pack NT and end up with upgraded hal and kernel, and still use many of the same drivers across NT 5.0 and 5.1's assorted builds.
Obviously NT is not without flaws, but they are not (in general) as great as you suggest, especially given what they are trying to do with it. And clearly, Windows is improving dramatically. I expect XP sp2 to help a great deal. And, as Microsoft implements more of the non-core functionality of the OS in .NET, it should ease transitions from one version to another, because they will be depending on a fixed API rather than juggling things around so heavily with each new version, mostly because the applications will not be coupled so closely to the OS itself.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You can find it here: FreeBSD HandBook
Instead of doing this:
using the installer, I typed /bin/bash as the shell
I could edit the passwd files
It took me over an hour trying to find on Google clues
I had to create links for /dev/dvd and /dev/cdrw
I also had to edit rc.conf to enable Samba
Further remarks:
The ports system does come with preconfigured applications, this is what I really like about FreeBSD. I don't need long time to setup things.
Instead VLC (which is a really buggy thing), better use mplayer.
ext2fs has an evil license (GPL), that's why it is not default.
I am happy with my X11-speed on 5.2R, I have 2700fps using glxgears on my P3-500.
Ports is the best thing about FreeBSD. Talking differently is typical for Linux users.
I consider FreeBSD as the best desktop ever, but I don't use Gnome2 (does not mean, I don't like it), I rather use Xfce4, which looks good and is lightweight.
I actually think that you need less experience to install FreeBSD. I recently tried to install Debian, but it failed to find my Intel Ethernet Express Pro 100, because Debian is using ancient kernels. Such things and all networking (including PPPoE) works out-of-the-box on FreeBSD.