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FreeBSD 5.3-BETA7 Released; 5.3-RELEASE Soon

hugo_pt writes "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is proud to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-BETA7. This is the seventh and final BETA of the 5.3 release cycle. Fixes and enhancements made since BETA6: fix timekeeping on sparc64 and alpha that would result in the day of the week being stored incorrectly in NVRAM; add support to the fxp driver for the ICH6 chipset; fix the panic on detach problem with USB hubs; import BIND 9.3.0, this completely replaces the old BIND 8.x nameserver in the base system; fix panic when allocating swap on a busy system; fix loader crash when using the 'lsdev' command.... You can read the release announcement, and download the beta ISO." (ISO 1, ISO 2)

12 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Close to FreeBSD 5.3 by the+real+darkskye · · Score: 5, Informative

    FreeBSD 5.3 supports Project Evil, ala NDIS support.
    It can take binary windows drivers for a majority of networking hardware and use them to run the device.

    Information on Project Evil can be found at http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndis&apro pos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current&format =html

    --
    Music is everybody's possession.
    It's only publishers who think that people own it.
    Fuck Beta
    ~John Lenno
  2. Re:Close to FreeBSD 5.3 by JQuick · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Newer supported devices" is uselessly vague, as you are aware. Adding the words "wireless one" is more detailed, but not as you state, "more precise".

    Wireless could still mean almost anything. IRDA, 802.11*, bluetooth, heck you might be talking about anything from a mouse or a keyboard to an interface to an amateur packet radio band (via short wave). As a result, though I would like to provide an answer, I cannot. I can only make it easier for you to find it on your own.

    FreeBSD supports a wide range of devices. Note however that FreeBSD strive for quality over quantity, and that your particular hardware may not be well supported yet, if supported at all. You should look at the hardware support page for the release you want to run. (version and host architecture)

    For FreeeBSD 5.x on intel that page is:

    http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/5-STABLE/hardwar e/ i386/index.html

    It list all the hardware specific release notes for the i386 architecture, including motherboard, processors, and devices.

    The device page covering everything from mice to raid controllers is:
    http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/5-STABLE/hard ware/ i386/support.html

    Does it support strange and obscure devices?
    Yes.
    Does it support your strange and obscure device?
    I don't know, take a look and see. Good luck, I hope you give it a try. It's a very nice environment.

  3. Re:Close to FreeBSD 5.3 by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Informative

    The FreeBSD hardware support lists are not always particularly accurate. I own a wireless card and a sound card, neither of which is listed as being supported by the hardware list, but both listed by the drivers' man pages (and both work). If you can't find the device you're looking for in the hardware list, take a look at the man pages of similar devices (linked to from the hardware compatibility list pages).

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  4. Re:Keep in mind by Homology · · Score: 4, Informative
    The only issues i've ever had with FreeBSD in the past is that i'm wined and dined with some of the more `current' or special features that are easily available in Linux- Things in the past like AA fonts for X11, games like quakeforge (kinda buggy on fbsd), mozilla-firebird, vmware, libSDL, etc... No effort to make it go, just apt-get install it and it works.

    All of the *BSD has this, with the exception that OpenBSD does not accept non-free binary drivers.

    I'm typing this on an older laptop (PII 30MHz) with XFCE4 as desktop, using mozilla-firebird as web-browser. And yes, the AA actually works fine (this is part of XFree86).

    Actually, I'm surprised that so many are not aware that most applications used on Linux works just fine on any *BSD.

  5. Re:Close to FreeBSD 5.3 by VVelox · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is also a NDIS wrapper in 5.x. This allows NDIS drivers from windows to be used. Here are the links to the man pages. http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndis&apro pos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current&format =html http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndiscvt&s ektion=8&apropos=0&manpath=FreeBSD+6.0-current

  6. Re:Surprised by phoenix_rizzen · · Score: 2, Informative

    Read /usr/src/UPDATING included with the latest BETAs, and the HEADS UP thread about it on the -current mailing list. Everything you need to know is in those two places.

  7. Re:Surprised by molnarcs · · Score: 3, Informative
  8. Re:Still not ready to go gold by hugo_pt · · Score: 2, Informative

    The SMP bug is gone, the only left is the data corruption using gvinum.

  9. Re:Close to FreeBSD 5.3 by simonln · · Score: 4, Informative
    The FreeBSD hardware support lists are not always particularly accurate. I own a wireless card and a sound card, neither of which is listed as being supported by the hardware list, but both listed by the drivers' man pages (and both work).

    Actually that has changed with FreeBSD 5.3. Now (most of) the Hardware Notes are generated from the manual pages, so the Hardware Notes for FreeBSD 5.3 should be much more accurate then for previous releases.

    The i386 Hardware Notes for 5.3(-BETA) can be found at http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/5-STABLE/hardware/ i386/article.html

  10. Re:Post BitTorrent in summary for RELEASE! by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 2, Informative

    For whomever decides to submit the article for the RELEASE of 5.3 would you please post a torrent?
    THis is a little less necessary for FreeBSD. A majority (though of course not all) people who would use Beta 7 would be people actively tracking 5.3 sequence, meaning they'd be much more likely using cvsup, not downloading full isos. A smaller subset of people would need the ISO, thinking that it will be out of date in a very short period of time, and if they're going to go through the trouble of downloading full isos, then burn them, they'd just wait for 5.3-RELEASE. I for one installed 4.8 off of floppies, now up to 4.10 through cvsup.

  11. Is this a "Feed the troll" contest? by ulib · · Score: 3, Informative

    Do you really think this mindless fool is representing DragonFlyBSD? Or he knows what he's talking about when he speaks against top notch FreeBSD developers? Come on...

    The truth is, /. should not allow AC posters. It only gives trolls like this the opportunity to pollute the pleasant & technical BSD discussions with this kind of crap.

    What's more disgusting, I think this moron, who's defaming both FreeBSD & DragonFlyBSD developers at the same time, has an agenda. I bet he's the good-old GNU zealot we all know, throwing sh*t at BSD as usual - it has happened for a looong time on this board.

    Maybe you're right, he's really starting with a new "campaign". Because the old one, you know, wasn't really that successful. :-D

  12. Re:Keep in mind by rsidd · · Score: 3, Informative
    Ask Brett Glass how has he been treated all these years in return for his FreeBSD advocacy.

    What Brett Glass does is not advocacy. And what you people are doing for DFly is not advocacy either. It annoys people and sends them somewhere else. Nobody likes whiny paranoid high-pitched idiots, and it's high time you realised it.