Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

FreeBSD 5.3 Release Candidate Released

Posted by timothy on from the now-it's-on-probation dept.

Cronopios writes "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team has just announced the availability of FreeBSD 5.3-RC1. This will likely be the only Release Candidate before the final release of 5.3, so please give it a try and report/fix any bug you find. You can read the announcement, check the schedule and the 'Known Issues' (problems that are still being worked on at this time)."

11 of 135 comments (clear)

  1. Scheduler? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    So how come they're not using the new scheduler?

    1. Re:Scheduler? by 1UnixGeek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      There appear to be bugs in the new SMP scheduler (SCHED_ULE) that no one can track down that cause mysterious crashes and lockups when a system is run under heavy load. The real issue seems to be that only a couple people in the project understand the complex kernel threading model enough to be able to find and resolve bugs, and even they don't seem to be able too most of the time ?

  2. 4x vs 5x performance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hi

    I have been following news for quite a while now and I have tested several fbsd releases form
    4.X and 5.2.1 releases from all I have noticed is that I liked 4.X very much especially the memory management, harvest performance, actually the overall performance and the widely available documentation, well that's one of the main reasons why freebsd is known to me.

    Know you guys coming close to the 5.3 -stable release alot of users are going to upgrade/switch, right, because this is what we have been waiting for. What about the performance that 4.X had? Will the performance be equal ? Will it be having better performance? Even on low end machines? And especially sinds freebsd is becoming more and more ready for desktop use, performance is a big issue on desktops.(look at Gnu/Linux for example, which I have been using for a very long time know, and all I can remember is that almost all of the releases have scheduling/latency issues. When I was using 2.2/2.4/2.6 All I have seen where low latency patches. What about freebsd?

    I'm so exited to try out the new freebsd release. Butt a couple of questions are desired first.
    As all you have noticed the above^ part, will fbsd have the same performance or better? When will this be ready 5.3.X ? Could I get some more accurate information about this? Since I'm planning to use it on my desktop.

    I have only been reading the bsd section at slashdot so I don't know much about the progress you guys are making on the feature release. Is there a offical news site for freebsd users? Like openbsd has *deadly.org.

    What about the compile flags freebsd RC is using compared to 5.3 -stable will there be a lot of changes? What about gnome packages? Will 2.8 make it in 5.3 stable (iso)?

    If those things are taking a while to be there, does fbsd have any kernel patches like linux does to improve desktop performance? For example like: http://members.optusnet.com.au/ckolivas/kernel/

    Joe

  3. FreeBSD 5.X issues by PinkFluid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Am I the only one that feels that FreeBSD 5.X has gone in the wrong direction?

    I run FreeBSD 5.X on my desktop since I don't feel it's ready to replace the production servers running happily with 4.X; and 5.X and the desktop feels very sluggish and slow in many areas compared to 4.X.

    Maybe 5.X is faster on SMP, but on uniprocessor I think it's definitely a set-back compared to 4.X.

    I feel FreeBSD 5.x is not yet ready, even it's almost 2 years late based on the original predictions(5.X-STABLE at least).

    I don't want to start a flamewar, it's just that I cannot get rid of this bad aftertaste that 5.X left me with.

    I really really hope FreeBSD improves over time - it was a fine OS. Meantime DragonFlyBSD is something to keep an eye on ... it sounds promising, although only time will tell...

    1. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by martin · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Looking at the 5.3 issues on questions@freebsd.org most people wouldn't trust 5 as stable yet, and on a uniprocessor most say 5 is slower than 4.x.

      I do note there are tentative plans for a 4.11 release, but as most of the work is concentrating on 5.x it's existence maybe a still birth.

      BTW MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) is based on 5.x rather than 4.x technology so someone's trusting enough..

      And yes 5.2.1 is definitely fast on SMP systems then 4.10.

    2. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by guroove · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't taking out the smp lines in the kernel config fix the problem of slow performance on single CPU systems? I have had 5.3-Beta on an old 433 MHz system for a few weeks now, and I have been using it as my home NAT machine. It routes packets way faster than by linksys router did, and seems to be much faster than a similar system I installed at work that runs FreeBSD 4.10-STABLE.

      --
      Someone stole my old sig.
    3. Re:FreeBSD 5.X issues by Baki · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Did you recompile the kernel without WITNESS option?
      The beta GENERIC kernels have lots of debugging which slows down a lot.

  4. Re:Very good news by gtoomey · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I've been doing the same, & the only problem I found was that I could only boot in safe mode with an nforce motherboard. KDE is looking good.

    I'll try it my wireless usb adaptor soon.

  5. How? by captnitro · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I have a question. I have a number of small systems of varying specifications (all x86) and I'd love to be in on stress-testing 5.x; I'd love to have been in on testing all the BETAS. But my daily operations in FreeBSD are limited to working in Gnome or XFCE under a few IDEs, compiling ports, doing some maintenance work on servers, playing games, reading Slashdot, etc., none of which I find particularly stressful to the system. If it was, I would be inclined to believe it was a port problem, not a system problem.

    What is the best way to stress test FreeBSD that will put it through its paces?

  6. anyon want to bet on the actual release date? by CaptainPinko · · Score: 2, Interesting
    when I first saw the schedule when it said October 17th I was betting on Halloween, but now I think it may be longer. With that many Known Issues and one marked as "errata candidate" and with that many "Needs Testing" I'm guess that either a) FreedBSD 5.3 will be released in the Beginning of December (last of the majour BSDs to release) or b) 5.3 will be called the first stable but 5.4 will really be.

    Anyone have any predictions?

    --
    Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
  7. Re:DragonFlyBSD by archen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Kernel stuff aside, does Dragonfly lean towards the 4x userland or 5x userland?