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FreeBSD 4.10 Released
lorand writes "After some delay (initially scheduled to be released on May 5th) the long awaited 4.10 version of FreeBSD was released today. It features a large merge of the USB code from the -CURRENT development branch, some conservative updates to a number of programs in the base system and many bugfixes. The detailed release notes can be found here. Use one of the many mirrors
if you need to get the ISOs."
feargal adds "There are no sweeping changes from 4.9, mostly a consolidation of security and bug fixes.
Looking forward, it is also the first in a new 'Errata Branch' which increases the scope of fixes applied. In the past only critical security fixes were applied to the release branch. The Errata branch will include local DoS fixes and well-tested non-security fixes."
We're not a million miles away from seeing them put 5.3 out of the door, which will then become -STABLE I believe.
Lot of nice things being sorted out in the FreeBSD kernel. I can't wait until the conversation starts about what's going into 6.x
I have numerous friends who use FreeBSD, many because of me. More are coming. My webhost uses FreeBSD and the new one I'm switching to does as well. In fact, most of the sites with the longest uptime run FreeBSD or some *BSD.
The supported hardware is broader than the list suggests, because the list is mostly by chipsets. You'll find LOTS of different products that all use the same chipset. I've found that if you're unsure, just ask... people in the community will help you figure it out. I got a video-capture card for xmas that has worked like a charm. Watching TV in a box on my desktop is nice. I've watched DVDs, had no problems with my sound, get hardware-accel 3D on my video card, network card has always worked, as well as my wireless mouse. All the rest of my hardware besides the video-capture card is the same stuff I had when I ran Windows 2000 (which I bought without knowing I'd be ditching Windows for FreeBSD) and it all worked great when I switched. The ports system kicks ass. Upgrading is a cinch. The OS is very stable. I'm happy.
I'm a[nother] Linux user, and I wanted a good reason to use FreeBSD. I've installed it twice, but after realizing that I didn't have a good reason to keep using it, as its maintenance was too time-consuming, I ended up removing it. But I still would like to use it, it feels very consistent, and the fact that it doesn't suffer from the "distributions" disease adds up to that.
Coming from a Debian background, my main complaint (and reason that I resist using it) is that, AFAIK, it doesn't have a large repository of binary packages for installation. I know about the wonders of Ports, but I feel like it is something for users with time and resources on their hands, which I do not have - I don't like the idea of having to wait sometimes hours for something to compile, so I can use it. This time could be better spent actually doing something useful with my computer, rather than it sitting there and compiling stuff.
I'm aware that Debian has two BSDs ports (NetBSD and FreeBSD), but they are far from maturity right now. For myself, I think that an automated system for installation/upgrading of software packages are a must for desktop installations, so FreeBSD is already out of the game here. For server installations, however, I could go without, although it would still be useful. So I'd like to know if there's a reliable and updated repository (i.e. packages website a la linuxpackages.net, for slackware) that FreeBSD users use to get binary packages.
Don't take this post as a troll, I'm really interested on FreeBSD and would like to have some solid reasons to use it.
I use both 4.x and 5.x
Interestingly, I currently run 5.x on my main server and 4.9 on my workstation.
I'm not running 4.9 out of conservatism or anything like that, but simply for the reason that I don't have time to bother with the current issues regarding the nvidia drivers and multi-threading.
My server runs 5.x because its rock solid and does a good job taking advantage of the smp hardware.
Once I don't have to bother with the linux-threads port to get a working form of kernel scheduling for threads with the nvidia driver or have to stick to libc_r, I'll switch back to 5.x on my workstation. (and yes, I know I'm stuck with libc_r now when using 4.9, but at least I don't have to bother keeping it that way while recompiling updates and such)
(oh, and why not use the xfree nvidia driver? because I want opengl for playing enemy territory and the like... not very important really, but good opengl support itself is important for other desktop uses)
I am a Mac OS X user too, but my servers run on freeBSD.
Why? Because freeBSD runs on very inexpensive hardware. I don't have the budget to get Xserves here, and all the Powermac G4s are tied up as workstations. Yet I have a nice PIII rackmount that was doing nothing and now is happily running our mail services with absolutely zero hassles.
My personal server is a freeBSD jail, something I cannot get for OS X at the price that I got it.
For the record, one of the things that sold me into switching from XP Pro to OS X was that freeBSD legacy, since I had been using freeBSD for years before I even saw OS X working. freeBSD is anything but primitive.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
IMHO, BSD's jail() is one of the more interesting developments in recent versions -- at least for an internet service provider.
For those of you unfamiliar, check it out. It's very much like User Mode Linux and allows running virtual servers within a larger server. Many colocation/virtual server providers (e.g. take, your, pick) use FreeBSD jails to provide low-cost root-access hosts for customers. This really has revolutionized cost effectiveness of large scale hosting!
There have been various limitations with FreeBSD jails when they first appeared. There were glitches with information leaking across jails. There's a limit to a single IP address, inability to do raw socket operations or even ping/traceroute, and some glitches with a couple system calls used by major applications like Postfix.
But my understanding is that 5.x seriously improves jail support, especially from a resource efficiency perspective. One of my BSD developer buddies also tells me that he's fixing raw socket support. Keep an eye on the jail feature...
What I like about the 4.x releases is pretty minor, but the package management on the install cd's is still gzip, whereas in the 5.x release its bzip2. Some of us choose to run FreeBSD on older computers with little ram, like 32M, and gzip decompresses almost infinately faster than bzip2. Long live the 4.x tree.