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."

Comments

Bsd is dying :P

[MrRuslan]

But the 4.X branch just won't die. Can't wait till 5.x gets ironed out.On a serious note it is good that they maintain the 4.x, It is good stuff.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[molnarcs]

It appaers that there will be a 4.11 release as well...

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[alexatrit]

I haven't had issues 5.x, really. The only nagging thing is that some of the ports don't always compile correctly. I do believe that's a known/disclosed issue. That's why I've stuck with the 4.x branch.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[cperciva]

The 5.x branch is mostly ready (indeed, I know many people running 5.2.1 without any problems); when 5.3 is released in a few months, it will be the recommended option.

The continued maintainance of the 4.x branch is largely for the benefit of those users who -- for good reasons -- are incredibly paranoid about moving to anything new. Users like large banks, for example. :-)

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[puzzled]

4.x and 5.x are different products. People who know are going to be running 4.x on servers for the next several years, no matter what happens with the 5.x train. All of my servers are 4.9 right now, I have 5.2.1 on a lappie just to get familiar with it.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[gazbo]

You're praising the FreeBSD developers for continuing to support the current stable release series? You're pretty easy to please.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[diggem]

Been running 5.1 since it first came out.

--
meyerdg@swr999:~/bin/xterms
$ uname -a
FreeBSD swr999 5.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE #2: Mon Nov 24 08
root@swr999:/usr/src/sys/i386/compile/SPECIFIC i386
--

It's been rock solid in many respects, but there have been some (not so) small details which make me want to switch back to Linux.

- Sound card doesn't work, but that may very well be my own shortfall.
- Vesa mode console is not supported on my video card, but works like a charm under linux. (this relates to a problem switching between X and console mode causing lockups in both BSD and Linux)

There are some packages which don't work for whatever reason which I find extremely useful, xxdiff for one..

I've started migrating back to Linux, but not too far away.. Debian testing is my choice these days. A bit less stable but everything works.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[Anonymous Coward]

can someone please explain to me why /.-ers say bsd is dying (i realize the parent is joking)? is it just fud or does someone actually have evidence of declining bsd use or development?

The 'bsd is dying' is FUD. I would imagine that the myth is being perpetuated by a few who for some reason couldn't get it installed. It very well could be due to their lack of ability or desire to read the documentation.

There is a big difference in the attitude of FreeBSD in that most FreeBSD users really don't care what operating system you use. If its linux that works for you best, then by all means use that. There's room for plenty of choices and everyone need not be alike and all do the same things. If we did, then that just a mono-culture of a different color.

It only takes a glance to see that the number of applications that have been ported to FreeBSD continue to grow:

http://www.freebsd.org/ports/growth/status.png

Its approaching 11,000 ported applications with new ones being added every day. If it were dying, wouldn't it stand to reason that there'd be a lack of development?

Many people choose FreeBSD because of its maturity (its been around longer than linux) and the professionalism that the project demonstrates. The solid stability and conservative nature of FreeBSD often makes it the choice for many users.

Open source is all about choice and embracing the diversity that is out there. Some of the linux (and other) zealots need to come to grips with the fact that people are all different and have different needs and goals than they do. I'm sure they could better spend their time doing bug fixes, writing documentation or new applications.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[rawg]

It's the other way around for me. I'm Migrating from Debian to FreeBSD. Mostly because Debian is so unstable/outdated. I have found that everything in FreeBSD just works. I'm running FreeBSD stable with the latest server packages. I can't do that in Debian, unless I want to configure and compile everything manually. The Ports system makes it so easy that I don't think I'll every switch back.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[molnarcs]

eermm... not insmod (and no modprobe).FreeBSD-Linux dictionary:)))

insmod = kldload - in his case, that would be kldload pcm or kldload snd_hissoundchipset - try ls /boot/kernel to see what's available
lsmod = kldstat
rmmod = kldunload

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[SillyNickName4me]

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)

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[twigles]

I'm running 4.9 on a laptop and my home router tracking the security branch. Runs great. I built a little Shuttle PC running 5.2.1 and to get my Audigy Platinum 1 sound card working I had to use an unofficial patch. And to get my Radeon 9200 video card to run I had to manually upgrade to XFree86 4.4. Don't get me wrong, both these steps were pretty easy and well documented (upgrading X consists of downloading the .tgzs and running a script while making tea), but you have to be ready to do more work than a Fedora install or something.

Other than that I'm really happy. I think the 5.x line is ready for deployment in home offices and places like that already, and the reason I wanted to start getting used to it is because development is not a binary switch - I don't see a lot of energy going into the 4.x line anymore.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[evil_one666]

In a real sense BSD is very much alive and kicking, as BSD is the codebase for Sun Solaris, AIX and MacOS, as well as the *BSDs (netBSD, freeBSD and openBSD)

The main reason that slashdotters say that BSD is dying is that open source BSD projects have not traditionally had the cooperative success that linux has. Although BSD's can be functionally superior to linux in many ways, the manner in which they are maintained has tended to create rifts, branches, and partings of ways among their respective development teams and codebases.

In other words *BSDers tend to be somewhat flamebaitable- thats why linux based slashdotters try to wind them up by shouting BSD IS DEAD at every available opportunity (Windows based slashdotters just sit on the sidelines scratching their heads and saying "whats bsd?")

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[wirelessbuzzers]

Yes. The 5.x branch is slower, though, at least on some machines (dunno about SMP ones). GEOM slows down disk accesses slightly, and the extra locks they added to get rid of Giant can seriously slow down firewalling and some other activities. So don't use it to firewall a gigabit connection.

NB this is not my experience, it comes from the -current mailing list. My -current build is slow, but it has WITNESS and other debug options and these machines don't.

It would also be nice if they could get mounted snapshots to be stable, instead of hanging the machine on shutdown and risking random deadlocks as well.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[feargal]

1. Install cvsup from the ports collection.
2. Upgrade your sources.
3. Read /usr/src/Makefile and follow the instructions for upgrade.
4. Before you install the kernel, read up on mergemaster; it upgrades your /etc to the new distribution. Be aware of what you've changed in there in case there's a new version. The obvious ones are /etc/passwd, /etc/group, /etc/hosts, and files in /etc/ssh
5. Install your kernel and reboot - your downtime will be how long you can run through mergemaster and do an installworld. Typically, it takes me about ten-fifteen minutes.

It can be daunting first time, just be prepared, like the good boy scout you never were.

Re:Bsd is dying :P

[R.Caley]

So, if I understand this correctly, the ports for 4.9 are already upgrade to 4.10?

No, the OS and the ports are separate. The OS is all maintained as one chunk, and is what you would upgrade with cvsup (or a binary upgrade from CD). The ports just get new versions when someone somewhere updates something.

Usually most installed ports will continue to work when you upgrade the OS. The FBSD peopel are reasonably conservative about that kind of thing. And the 4.X branch isn't chaging fast at this stage in its life anyway.

where does it say whether you are on 4.9 or 4.10?

$ uname -a
FreeBSD pele.r.caley.org.uk 4.8-STABLE FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE #11: Tue Dec 2 18:34:40 GMT 2003 rjc@bast.r.caley.org.uk:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/Pele i386

Is it just me

[MrRuslan]

or did all of slashdot run off to download this because its already been more that 5 minutes and no posts....scarry stuff.

I like it

[molnarcs]

I like the way they package things - one cd full of goodies (KDE 3.2.2, GNOME 2.6) and one rescue (live) cd for all releases (since 4.8 at least).

BTW - FreeBSD seems to be included on distrowatch now (good thing!) and there is even a nice review there of the 5.x branch. There are even some nice tips included in the review :)

Re:I like it

[molnarcs]

yeah, you are right in some respects - there wouldn't have been any 'surprises' if he bothered to read the handbook. Everything about slices and partitioning scheme is described in details. On the other hand, I don't think it is an unfavorable or biased review.

He does have some very positive things about FreeBSD, like its being the fastest distro he has ever tried. Like it or not, this is my personal experience too - it just seems faster compared to my earlier linux distroes (on the desktop - my primary use of FreeBSD) on the same machine. This isn't exactly a popular opinion around here - well around anywhere, now I expect tons of quotes of synthetic benchmarks - yeah, I know about fefe, and no I DON'T HAVE ANY PROOF! - but this is how it feels, can't help it :P

Re:I like it

[n0dez]

make world
Oops, wrong window!

5.3 scheduled soon

[MancDiceman]

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

For the *BSD nay sayers

[CompWerks]

Just take a look at "Sites with longest running systems by average uptime"

I swear that I'm no BSD zealot, but that's pretty impressive.

Re:For the *BSD nay sayers

[grahamlee]

I swear that I'm no BSD zealot

Even in the face of evidence that it helps you keep it up for longer? Your server, that is. Although.. there is help for that other affliction....

Re:For the *BSD nay sayers

[secolactico]

I love FreeBSD, but could those uptimes be because some load balancer/front ends run a BSD variant? Maybe that's the uptime we are seeing, not the actual server's.

Re:For the *BSD nay sayers

[Ryan Huddleston]

I, too, was at first impressed when I saw that.

However, if you check out their FAQ here, you will see that the uptime cannot be measured that high for HP-UX, Linux or Solaris. Therefore, this really doesn't say much other than the fact that BSD's uptime counter is programmed better than other Unices.

Re:For the *BSD nay sayers

[koekepeer]

hehe, that's just because linux users are so eager to compile and install every new kernel release :P

seriously, i would be worried if a system was up so long. of course it means that the system is stable, but it also means that security patches to the kernel have not been applied for a *long* time...

i prefer a secure sytem with an uptime of 2 minutes over and insecure one with an uptime of 2 years. but hey, that's just me...

Re:For the *BSD nay sayers

[$criptah]

FreeBSD, and BSDs in general, are different from Linux in many aspects, including how releases are performed and what is included in a particular release.

BSD development is conservative. Before new additions to the base system are available as a part of STABLE (production release), they undergo severe testing; therefore, BSDs lack a great variety of flaky drivers and questionable stuff that is all arond the Linux kernel. That is pricesely why BSDs may lack some hardware support available on Linux.

BSDs are different from Linux in terms what they consider to be a base system. Linux is composed of the kernel, which is pretty useless on its own, and many extras on top of it. BSDs have a broader sense of the base system. In particular, BSD integrate kernel, libraries and some binaries together to make the base. Closer integration means more polishing; that leads to greater stability.

If you take a look at FreeBSDs kernel, you will see that it is pretty minimal even with the default configuration: it includes only the very basic stuff; the rest has to be added by users. If you go through the configuration file and comment out everything that you do not need, you will have a very tiny kernel. That can increase a chance of having longer uptimes. When I was introduced to FreeBSD I could not believe that kernel could be configured and compiled so painlessly. When Linux developers try to include an absolute enormous amount of hardware support provided by default kernels, BSD developers provide only what is needed for basic functionality; that is truly a big plus.

These are simply several exmaples of why I think FreeBSD can produce reasonably long uptimes. Some people may point you to the historical fact that, in sense, BSDs have been around much longer than Linux; there is a great deal of history and previous experiences there. Can it contribute to longer uptimes? That is something that you'll have to answer yourself.

Re:For the *BSD nay sayers

[molnarcs]

I was surprised myself by the easyness of building & configuring freebsd. Although I built kernel in linux (only a few times) I reluctant to try it out first (what, no menu? editing config file by hand?). But I needed scsi support for k3b to work (freebsd can write to ata cds directly with burncd, I think it even had direct ata cdwriter support before linux, but there is no graphical frontend to it).

So I had the handbook open on one desktop, going through the text file on a terminal, following the book point by point, commenting out unnecessary stuff, putting in some lines - than after 5 minutes, I noticed that I can't scroll down any further. I said: what? First I thought I edited the wrong file. I checked the handbook ... and saw that the next page is a different chapter. Even then, I was a bit bewildered: that was it?? Yes.

Many folks would think that by using FreeBSD one can earn geek points, cause it sounds more 'difficult' - this is not the case. If you see someone feeling cool cause he uses freebsd, you can be sure he is bluffing. FreeBSD is easy! Of course, it caters to those who are not antagonistic towards the command line, but anyone who used slackware or debian would easily learn FreeBSD - if he or she is willing to read. Their handbook (see it on their homepage) is the best OS documentation I ever read, their man pages are superb, and configuration is much easier than any linux was for me. In other words: it is a great learning platform, thanks to the great documentation and the consistency and cleanness of the system. Forget about synthetic benchmarks and bsd vs. linux flamefests. FreeBSD is fun, and is an excellent desktop system, and ports just works (no freaking use-flags, its the job of port maintainers to provide lean and mean yet rich experience with the ports - now almost 11000!).

Re:For the *BSD nay sayers

[Billly Gates]

I have used Linux since 98 and FreeBSD since 2002.

Yes, there is a certain feel and polish to the BSD's that are reminiscent of Unix. Linux in recent years has gone down the tubes in terms of beta and alpha level packages thrown in distros.

I am typing this from SuSE 9.1 right now because I dont have time to tinker with everything to set it up FreeBSD as a workstation.

But dont take make my word on it. Try it and use the FreeBSD handbook?

It feels certainly more stable and the /etc is a godsend under BSD.

No complicated psuedo files in /etc symlinked to god knows where that are written in Bash like in Linux. Just simple RC files that have things like #uncomment this line to enable this.

That makes my life 10x easier to administrate.

I also can tweak gcc by using /etc/defaults/make.conf.

If only it had the right fonts, universal menu's and codecs by default it would be awesome.

As a SuSE user there is no way in hell would I trust it to a server. I have crashed the distro many times and have seen 2 kernel panics in just the week since I owned it. Xine is very buggy too. All the characters sometime turn grey and only red shows when I play a video now?? wtf?

Also I can't play a certain mp3 with xmms without it crashing and its now impossible to run off the opengl spectrum analyzer without crashing xmms again. I just discovered during the course of writing this message.

God Linux is a piece of crap. I may have to reboot to get it to work again. Hmmm now which os does that remind you of?

At least Windows2k and WindowsXP are now fairly stable. More then Linux as of today in my opinion. Boy, have times chages.

It pains me to say that.

One more FreeBSD 4.X release

[krut]

From 4.10-Release Announcement:
The current plans are for one more FreeBSD 4.X release which will be FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE. It is expected the upcoming FreeBSD 5.3 release will have reached the maturity level most users will be able to migrate to 5.X.

So probably no more new-feature-development in 4.X. Just keeping it stable.

Here's looking to 4.11 !!

[green pizza]

Hopefully there'll be a 4.11 soon.... anything .10 looks so bizzare. FreeBSD 4.10 reminds me of IRIX 6.5.10. They almost look like typos!

Question

[kaoshin]

I'd like to get FreeBSD going on my laptop but I've had trouble with the cardbus ethernet adapters. Can anyone recommend a 16 Bit PCMCIA ethernet for use with FreeBSD? Too bad there are no sites like Linux-Laptop for BSD. As far as BSD dying, spend some time dealing with various non-responsive Linux package maintainers and then say who is dead.

Paradox

[kensai]

BSD is dying, yet they keep on releasing new stuff. Does that mean that BSD is the zombie OS? :P

Re:Paradox

[r7]

>BSD is dying, yet they keep on releasing new stuff.

And we keep on using it. There's no better platform for avoiding library skew (dll-hell, rpm dependencies, ...) Even apt-get doesn't compare with /usr/ports.

We do have fewer and fewer machines running FreeBSD though, because of poor support for Java/Tomcat, lack of iSCSI, and decrepit NFS. Ever try to setup an NFS-IMAP server with 100MB+ quotas and maildir? Can't do it in FreeBSD :-(

R7

Re:Paradox

[molnarcs]

They have a fine sense of humour too ... OpenBSD's deadly.org was renamed to undeadly.org :)))

Conservative updates?

[What'sInAName]

some conservative updates to a number of programs in the base system

But I'm a liberal, you insensitive clod!

Re:Wonky Version Numbering?

[ttrafford]

Am I reading this right? They went from 4.9 to 4.10?

Seems like they should go from 4.9 to 4.91.

Only if that was a decimal point, there.

Re:Long awaited uh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take a look here if you'd like a more detailed reason as to why someone might want to use BSD over Linux.

Re:Long awaited uh?

[alexatrit]

Obvious troll for "who uses" ... ftp.cdrom.com, anyone? Anyways, I've never have issues with device support, except in the VERY early releases of 5.x. I've loaded FreeBSD on hundreds of machines of various manufacture, without a hiccup. If anything, they support too much, to the point where I'd cut all of the excess from the kernel after installation. IDE access times? You're kidding, right? If you want extraordinarily fast access times and throughputs, why are you using IDE drives to begin with. Technical arguments aside, Beastie is so much cooler than Tux. And if you don't like that, I'll have him stab you with the trident.

Re:Long awaited uh?

[latroM]

So why-oh-why would anybody chose FreeBSD, since it's basically GNU/Linux without the Linux portion, with the FreeBSD kernel instead, with some Linux compatibility bits, minus the performance and hardware support? and please don't tell me it's good for routers, NetBSD or OpenBSD are better for that.

The thing you are describing is of course Debian GNU/kFreeBSD: http://www.debian.org/ports/freebsd/gnu-libc-based :). FreeBSD has its own libc (GNU/Linux has GNU's glibc) and most of the userland is BSD although the C compiler and some programs are GNU. I guess that some people like the development method of FreeBSD and that it provides a complete OS which isn't the case in GNU/Linux land. Linux is only a kernel. FreeBSD is an OS.

Re:Long awaited uh?

[jazzer]

Also, most of the userland packages you can find for FreeBSD can also be found on Linux. In fact, most of these packages are originally Linux packages. Many programs need Linux-specific features, like /dev/rtc, so FreeBSD provides an emulation layer...that isn't complete and doesn't work well. Etc etc...

I haven't used FreeBSD in a couple of years, however the Linux compatibility ran perfectly then. I have a hard time picturing it got worse.

So why-oh-why would anybody chose FreeBSD, since it's basically GNU/Linux without the Linux portion, with the FreeBSD kernel instead, with some Linux compatibility bits, minus the performance and hardware support? and please don't tell me it's good for routers, NetBSD or OpenBSD are better for that.

Actually, I always found FreeBSD when I used along side Linux to be more stable and performance was at least as good. Remember, competition is a good thing. Yes, the hardware support isn't quite as good, but ask a Windows user is Linux's hardware support is good. Right now I'm using Linux, but it's comments like this that make me want to switch away. I'm sorry, but Linux is not the holy grail.

One Step Ahead Of Time

[$criptah]

No, I am not talking about FreeBSD. I am talking about me deciding to perform a 'cvsup' on RELENG_4 last night. Little did I know that I was getting the newest release.

Re:Long awaited uh?

[sremick]

I've been using FreeBSD off and on since 2.2.2 or so. I officially replaced my primary home desktop with it over a year and an half ago. But even before that, and to this day, I run it for several servers I maintain.

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.

Re:Wonky Version Numbering?

[smcv]

Version "numbers" aren't conventionally decimal numbers, at least in the Unix world; instead, you split the version up at the dots and compare succesive components, so 4.10 comes between 4.9 and 4.11, 4.100 is the version after 4.99, and so on. As a number, 4.10 would usually denote "four point one zero", but as a version number it's "four point ten" (or even "four dot ten", I suppose).

It looks less strange in a version numbering scheme with three or more components (Linux 2.4.26, Perl 5.8.1, Apache 1.3.20) where it's obvious that you're not dealing with decimal numbers. It's also consistent with the way sections are numbered in many textbooks, RFCs, W3C standards, etc. (chapter 1 section 2 would be headed "1.2", its subsection 20 would be headed "1.2.20".)

Most projects' second (minor) version number never reaches 10, since there's a new major release at least once every 10 minor releases (e.g. Apache 1.3 followed by 2.0, or Debian 2.2 followed by 3.0).

(A few projects do use decimal numbers: Perl used to, so the version before Perl 5.6.0 was something like Perl 5.00503, which would be Perl 5.5.3 in the new system.)

Re:Long awaited uh?

[Octorian]

Also, I find that if you like being able to manually configure your system (text files and all), FreeBSD is actually a lot easier to fully understand and use than most Linux distros.

FreeBSD-laptop

[n0dez]

Wrong!

This is the most popular FreeBSD-Laptop site. gerda.univie.ac.at/freebsd-laptops/

This is a great resource if your laptop is old. www.cse.ucsc.edu/~dkulp/fbsd/laptop.html

Here you can read an article about FreeBSD on laptops. www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/lapto p/article.html

If you need more FreeBSD resources, then visit www.n0dez.com/freebsd/

If you've got a 32-bit PCMCIA card on your laptop, use FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE. The 5.x branch supports 32-bit PCMCIA cards. In fact, I'm running FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE on an old laptop without a hitch.

A reason to use FreeBSD

[cronot]

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.

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[TheRaven64]

FreeBSD has binary packages. Every port is built into a package (you can do this yourself with make package, but they are also on the main ftp site and some mirrors). The packages are often a day or two behind the source releases (since it takes time to build them all), but they are there. If you use the portupgrade utility then specifying the -P option will instruct it to install from packages if they exist, or ports if they don't. -PP will instruct it to only use packages. If you are not, then you can use pkg_add to install packages.

I assume that you are not using portupgrade, since you say that FreeBSD doesn't have an automatic update system. Give it a look, it's well worth it.

I haven't used FreeBSD on a workstation since I got a Mac, but it's a great server OS.

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[molnarcs]

I'm sure there is, though I didn't check it for I use ports. But yes, pkg_* knows which version you have installed, knows if there is an update - well, you can install portupgrade too for more automatic stuff. portupgrade -a would upgrade every port. If you want to use packages in combination with ports, portupgrade -P does the trick. Portupgrade -PP (or portinstall -PP in case of new stuff) will use packages only.

There are also free binary security updates for freebsd - one of the developers (and ./ user with the nick cpercive) provides them.

Also, you can specify a remote site when adding packages. The fruitsalad project provides fresh binary kde packages. I think you would install it with pkg_add -r url_to_their_ftp_repository. Someone (who was also a deb user) asked me for an incentive to try out freebsd. I told him this: if you are 100% satisfied and not curious about it, don't try it. Otherwise, I think its a great OS and it is very rewarding (and convenient) - so go ahead! Also, the community is very friendly and helpful (and before I switched, I came from mandrakeusers and pclinuxonline, so you might guess that I had high standards :)) - www.bsdforums.org is invaluable if you want help :)

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[dokebi]

Someone else pointed out Packages so I'll try to enumerate things I like about FreeBSD:

1. Stability. The -stable branch (right now 4.x series) is ROCK SOLID. Even with a saturated CPU load, it is responsive and doesn't crash. It rivals commercial unix for stability in high-load environments. I think one can get linux to do this using a very stable kernel (ie, not the latest) or distributions (debian stable). The -current branch is less stable. I've had two kernel panics with it in the last year.

2. Saner release cycle. With RedHat and others constantly upping their version numbers, it is nice to see branches supported for long periods. 3.x got security updates for a long time, and I know 4.x will too after 5.x becomes stable

3. Saner Design. Unlike Linux, each release of FreeBSD dictate kernel+base system. Other packages are installed afterwards. Due to this, upgrades are a snap, as each cvsup, makeworld gives you a new release of FreeBSD but leaves your apps alone. Maybe to some people this is bad (KDE not being upgraded), but for servers this is ideal.

4. Part of No, 3, but oh well. Saner directory structure. Maybe I'm old school, but I *like* having all the base system (bin utils, etc) in /usr/bin and installed packages in /usr/local/bin. So when I do a system upgrade, only /usr/bin is updated. Linux's behavior of putting everything in /usr/bin drives me nuts.

5. Documentation. man will give everything you want, but there is also the Handbook, which in my opinion is only rivaled by Gentoo's. It is well written, clear, and easy to find.

So you can see where FreeBSD is geared towards--servers. As such, it is great to set-up, maintain, and run services on it, but it also has downsides, like lack of hardware support (can't have flaky hardware and drivers ruining uptimes). I suggest you try FreeBSD for your server needs, but stick to Linux for more general use, especially if there is no driver support for your favorite hardware.

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[raytracer]

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.

First of all, if you are happy running Debian or whatever, why bother seeking other alternatives? If your time is as precious as you say, then why are you considering other alternatives? Honestly, if you can't think of a reason to use FreeBSD, then you probably don't need to run FreeBSD.

You are right, FreeBSD relies on the ports system and building from source to a greater degree than your typical Linux system. I usually cvsup the kernel about once a month and rebuild the world and kernel. It virtually always works exactly as advertised, and maybe takes ten minutes of my attention. I'm have modest desktop requirements (I don't use Gnome or KDE, in large part because they have large numbers of requirements and are frequently updated with little effect on my overall productivity). I mostly keep up to date on Python, Apache and a few assorted Python modules. The rest, I simply don't worry about keeping up to date on.

Finallly, f you are really in the mood for binary packages, you should learn about "pkg_add -r".

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[platipusrc]

While there are easy ways to install packages (pkg_add -r, as mentioned in another post), I can't really see a reason not to upgrade from source. Take a look at /etc/defaults/make.conf, copy it to /etc/make.conf and make whatever changes you need. Then install the sysutils/portupgrade package. Add a couple lines like so to your new make.conf:

SUP_UPDATE="yes"
PORTSSUPFILE="/somewhere/ports -supfile"

then copy /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile to your "somewhere" dir and change the server listed in that file to one of the cvs mirrors.

Now, to update, all you need to do is something like:
cd /usr/ports && make update && portupgrade -ak

That will update all packages from source using your compiler options. Your system will still be usable while that's going on.

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[Billly Gates]

I just downgraded my workstation with FreeBSD to SuSE Linux.

Its already driving me crazy but I have nice fonts, codecs for xine, and a whole bunch of other stuff taken care of out of the box.

Already I have discoverd 6 bugs and xine on SuSE 9.1 does strange stuff and core dumps ALOT. That does not happen under FreeBSD.

Of course I dont have the codecs on FreeBSD either. :-)

So its a tug of war.

No way in hell would I trust this release of SuSE on a server. Sadly older redhats and kernels were quite stable. Remember redhat 5.2 with kernel 2.0? In those days I would trust Linux as a server.

Lets hope the situation improves. Debian I trust for a server but thats about it.

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[Patrick Dung]

FreeBSD is unique and special.
These features attracts me:

- Native IPSEC support. The IPSEC support has been tightly integrated into the kernel and the base utilities.

- Random IP ID. Make the increment of ID field in IP packets to be randomize instead of 1.

- Shadow Process. Users except root view their own process.

All the above featues are included in the source/cvs without downloading any patch, a big plus.

There are also many other features or pros of FreeBSD. To name a few:
BSD's secure level, sealth firewall, stable TCP/IP stack and VM, random ephemeral port allocation (ported from OpenBSD) and ......

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[R.Caley]

...rather than it sitting there and compiling stuff.

You are allowed to go and do something else while it compiles this is not Windows!

The basic choice is between waiting for it to download, and getting a generic package which may or may not work with the libraries you have to hand etc (consider RedHat RPM hell) and waiting for it to compile and getting something which should use what you have or get what it needs.

I think that an automated system for installation/upgrading of software packages are a must for desktop installations

# portupgrade -r -R -F mozilla

Then close that window and get on with some work.

Re:A reason to use FreeBSD

[R.Caley]

- Shadow Process. Users except root view their own process.

Redhat, at least, does this, I know because one of our client's machines got this behaviour when it was upgraded.

It is also evil beyond belief and whoever thought of it should be lynched, but that is a religious issue.

Re:Long awaited uh?

[TheRaven64]

FreeBSD stable did have USB support before Linux stable did

Linux has a stable branch now?

(Sorry, couldn't resist. Feel free to mod troll.)

Re:Long awaited uh?

[molnarcs]

Nice explanation, I just wanted to add something: it is so very convenient that the OS and ports are clearly separated. My roommate didn't update his gentoo box for two months, and after a massive update a week or two ago, now nothing compiles (I think it was glibc...). Anyway, that can happen in FreeBSD too (well, not glibc exactly, but something can go wrong, like in any OS - so this is not a linux vs freebsd thing). But thanks to a separate src tree, there is a one command solution for every serious problem!

I ruined my system by deleting stuff from /usr/lib - and nothing would compile. I could reinstall stuff from the CD but that would be a forced downgrade and its just too unconvenient. But thanks to the fact that the entire OS (the 'world' - which is different from gentoo's world: world is the OS in freebsd land, and ports are programs installed on top of the os) build is self contained in /usr/obj, even though I didn't even have a working gcc, I could repair the system with one command: make installworld and a reboot. Oh yes, its a good idea to keep /usr/obj - because you have an OS reinstall one command away, and you don't have to fumble with config files, reinstalling ports, etc...

BSD 4.1?

[twenex]

Personally I can't wait until the 4.1 NET release to get TCP/IP networking, although I understand that BSD 4.2 will be the real killer release.

Re:Long awaited uh?

[molnarcs]

funny ... bsd terminology is so pervasive. I have hard time speaking in terms of extended and logical partitions, for slices make more sense now. I also found myself referring to linux 2.4.x as their stable branch (without any intention to suggest that 2.6.x is not stable). OTOH it wasn't very easy at first to see how all those branches and releases work - now it is linux that confuses me (Is there a 2.7.x 'branch' yet? - I can't wait for their console driver to be fixed :P).

Re:Why bother with this junk when Mac OS X is here

[pvera]

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.

FreeBSD jails

[bigberk]

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...

bzip2 vs gzip

[theapodan]

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.

Re:Wonky Version Numbering?

[DashEvil]

So what is Linux 2.4.20 to you?

Not really like UML

[don.g]

FreeBSD jails can be used for virtual hosting; UML can be used for it too. But for various types of kernel debugging, experimentation with network setups and the like, the ability to run a kernel as a user process is really useful. It's just a pity that (last I checked) the UML ports to operating systems other than Linux hadn't got very far :-(

Re:four-dot-ten naming schemes

[MavEtJu]

Maybe I'm just old school, but reading 4.10 as different from 4.1, and also as *greater* than 4.7 just fucks with my logical mind.

Why bother with this nonsense when it flys in the face of the earliest of floating-point mathematics?

The dot in the version number has nothing to do with the mathematical dot, just like the dot at the end of this line doesn't.

Also, following your reasoning you will have great difficulties with the concept for minor revision numbers like 2.2.7 and 5.2.1...

For what it is worth, if you're doing version comparisons and are treating the numbers as mathematical values, your algorithm is broken by design. The right way is to split the version number by the dots (so you get a 4 and a 10) and compare them with the other splitted versions.

Edwin