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

[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

[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)

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

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

[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

[$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.

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!

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: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.

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.)

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.

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: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.)

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: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.

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.

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...