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FreeBSD 5.3 Released
cpugeniusmv writes "FreeBSD 5.3 has been released! This release marks a milestone in the FreeBSD 5.x series and the beginning of the 5-STABLE branch of releases. For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the
release notes and
errata list. Bittorrent Download."
Let's take a cue from Groklaw -- all posts about *BSD dying, Netcraft, and similar predictions under this thread, please.
Could've fooled me! Can't wait to throw this on VMWare!
That's pretty ancient.
I know, it's a mistake. 3.4.3, or 3.4.2?
Anyway, FreeBSD rules. I'm glad they waited to make 5.3 great.
freebsd rocks!
the one strange thing -- why there is now announcement on the http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/announce.html page????
BSD is an excellent operating system if your trying to lock down a network, or some other coperate enviroment.. Just look at their history with security, which is pretty convincing. So I say kudos to milestone release 5.3, I know I will be trying it. ~matt
*BSD Obituary
*BSD, 27, of Berkeley, CA died Monday, Sept. 6, 2004. Born July 3, 1976, it was the creation of a cluster of pot-smoking hippies who went to Illinois and came home with a reel of tape. Rather than smoke the tape, they uploaded it and hacked on it a little.
*BSD was known for its C shell and early TCP/IP implementation. After being banished from UC Berkeley, it was ported to the x86 platform, where it fell into the hands of heavier pot-smokers who liked to argue. Soon, the project had splintered into 12 different Balkanized projects. Until its death, there was almost constant fighting in and amongst these groups, sometimes degenerating into out-and-out fistfights.
*BSD is survived by its superior, Linux, as well as several commercial unix implementations. It may be missed by some who knew it, although most of them are said to be mere OS dilettante dabblers.
A funeral will be held at 2 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 9, at the Berkeley Chapel on the UC campus, with interment to follow via the burning of the original *BSD tapes and scattering of the ashes over the San Francisco Bay. The Rev. Lou "Buddy" Stubbs will officiate.
The family will receive friends from 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8, at the funeral home.
I, for one, welcome our new Antichrist overlord.
After perusing the BSD mailing lists and reading the ERRATA document, there appear to be too many open/unfixed issues for this release to truly be considered STABLE for widespread production use in my opionion. I'll stick with 4.X a little while longer.
I'm getting a 403 on the torrent file. I'd be happy to share my employer's weekend bandwidth for the torrent, but it needs to be fetchable!
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Just blew away my testing partition (ubuntu) and installed it it's good to see you my old FreeBSD friend.
;)
ummm although it would have been nice to see a new installer
time to fire up the old burner... has anybody managed to see if the tracker is up?
All the torrents you could want.
I've been running FreeBSD on a couple servers for a while, and with this latest release, I've been thinking about trying it on a desktop. The particular computer I have in mind is currently running Slackware 10. I have a few questions for those of you using FreeBSD on a desktop system:
Why do you prefer it over other Unix-like OS's?
Have you encountered many problems with hardware compatibility, particularly USB, RAID, and audio?
Have you had difficulty finding applications that will run on it?
In general, will software written for Linux compile and run on FreeBSD without too much difficulty?
Recent Compaq/HP laptop users can't run FreeBSD. This problem has been known since July and still not fixed in this release. FreeBSD 5.3 (all betas, RCs, and the release itself), 5.2, 5.1, 5.0, all versions of FreeBSD 4 and 3 cannot run on Compaq Presario R3000Z and similar laptops, in either i386 or AMD64 mode. When is this going to be fixed? How come the patch exists.... works perfectly.... and isn't being commited?
Tired of free ipod spam sigs? Opt ou
I shall go and tell the indestructible man that someone plans to murder him.
I see dead people :-(
So how is the PPC port coming along? I was hoping it would make it into 5.3.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
"FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE supports the i386, pc98, alpha, sparc64, amd64, and ia64 architectures and can be installed directly over the net using bootable media or copied to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for all architectures are available now."
I thought they were going to relegate Alpha to Tier 2, but I see ISO images on the servers? Thank you FreeBSD team!!!!!
Perhaps the mods should have read the entire post before moding it up. HINT: anti-slash isn't a bsd website.
It is also important to consider the injustices of slashdot's editors. This topic can be researched more on anti-slash [anti-slash.org] Is this a clever troll? Why in the world would *BSD developers mention anti-slash?
Without a proper flamewar, Anonymous was undecided on what shell to run.
Yes... looking forward to being able to be lazy and using Windows network drivers when I cannot find a BSD driver. Damn generic chipsets with no indication of chipset.
I've been a linux user for over a year, and I currently have Mandrake 10.1 installed on a Compaq Presario 2100. It's for personal use, so there's no need for the machine to be particularly secure. Everything works. Is there any reason for me to use BSD rather than Mandrake?
I'm also helping my girlfriend with Suse 9.1 on her Hewlett-Packard laptop. She has problems with ACPI, stability, and the linksys wireless card we bought for it. Is there any way she could benefit from a switch to this new BSD release?
Thanks for your input!
When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
EOM
Look somewhere else for a sig.
November 1st, you know "Day Of The Dead" and all that.
November second is Day Of the Dead (all souls day).
If you're going to troll, at least do it with some intelligence... If not, you're just another stroke (pun intended) repeating the same warmed over hash.
2 years? i know of an OS that hasnt released a new version for 2 years and counting...
Debian!
and a few OSs that never did really release something i consider to be fully stable...
Gentoo! SuSE! Mandrake! Windoze!
stability takes a lot of time i guess.
If you aren't ready to install FreeBSD on your hard disk, you can try out FreeBSD 5 with the live FreeSBIE CD. It's currently based on FreeBSD 5.2.1.
wget "ftp://ftp3.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ISO-IMAGES-i38 6/5.3/5.3-RELEASE-i386-miniinst.iso" && echo "Wah Hoo!"
LiveCDs are an incredibly useful thing to have for an OS, especially for BSD, which has been really neglected by a lot of Linux users. They don't view it as a an easy or powerful or otherwise compelling alternative to Linux, and I really think that attitude needs to get blown away by some kickass releases and, of course, LiveCDs to actually show them what BSD'S about.--Proud user of Mac OS X since 2001
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Take that RIAA. There is a good use for BT. HA!
I'd been eagerly waiting for this release and at last, it's here! Hmm maybe this time I'll adopt freebsd as my primary OS..
Those guys must be the ones responsible for "*BSD is living" troll posts on slashdot! Get them!
Err yeah that's it.
How do I upgrade my machine from 4.10 to 5.3 stable ? I mean is there an easy way using CVSup or sysinstall which will upgrade to 5.3 smoothly ? I am a novice to freeBSD world.
Tejas Kokje
From 1988 to 1993 I was a "Sun God," meaning I adminisrated a university's computer lab and network of mostly SunOS (680x0 & SPARC) 4.0 systems, all based on BSD. Root access, god-like powers, you get the drift. About this time, Linux was just a posting in a newsgroup.
After leaving the university environment and getting a real job, I wanted to re-live the Sun environment at home, but goodness, were Sun systems ever pricy. Linux looked like a viable alternative, but FreeBSD had just released 2.0 at the time.
I went with FreeBSD.
It was a pretty easy decision: FreeBSD was the more Sun-like of the two PC Unix-like systems. Specifically, Linux used the System V style of runlevels, and Sun had jaded me against System V ever since they stopped bundling the compiler and called their OS "Solaris."
That was awhile back. Today, I've got rackmount hardware at home running a variety of operating systems. I get most of my stuff done on Linux. But FreeBSD has run, now runs, and will most likely continue to run my firewall and NAT. It doesn't do much else; but what it does, it does with efficiency and grace.
Cheers, Chuckie.
I gave BSD a try for the first time a couple months ago, and as an intermediate Linux user who favors Slackware, I felt right at home with FreeBSD 4.9. I would definitely recommend anyone who is a *nix junkie to give it a try, you might be pleasantly suprised. I know that BSD typically isn't as good with compatibility as Linux, but I haven't had any issues. Long live BSD
Why in the world would *BSD developers mention anti-slash?
I didn't. The post was a clever troll.
Cat, the other, tastier white meat.
I know he's an idiot, but he can't be that moronic can he? Can he? Anyone?
Surely this is just another example of his greed (a la Roland, Phillip, etc) and willingness to use his position at Slashdot to drive cash into his pocket by misdirecting our clicks.
Easy there, it might not be that solid. They haven't done much testing outside of x86 and even that is flaky and/or slow for a lot of hardware (including hardware every machine has).
Unless FreeBSD offers something for Alpha that NetBSD and Linux don't and you absolutely must have it, you know where to turn.
Sam ty sig.
Here's the un-edited email:
/ cu rrent/2004-11/0446.html
http://unix.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/FreeBSD
You'll notice an extra sentence in the above post that doesn't seem to belong.. Rather hypocritical attacking post editing with post editing - maybe they need to look down and see what shoe's on their foot?
My teacher was right. The world collapsed the moment the Rex Sox Won.
/. robot topics scaring the shit outta us
Look at everything that's happening since.
- New releases of *BSD variants.
- Bush re-elected
-
- Half life 2 released in about a week.
What next? Flying pigs? (Name that Simpson episode!)
Let me begin by expressing my genuine thanks at your endorsement of my post. A man of your stature will be a great help to our cause!
:) ).
Consider the following evidence against the infidels: anti-slash has recently compiled a library of injustices that precisely document the abuses of slashdot's editors. From the stupidity to the censorship, you can view and share the facts all recorded in one place.
I'd also like to take this opportunity to invite you to use the database tool. With this database of highly-moderated slashdot posts, you can repost and gain carma for future jihad operations, and suck up mod points and pollute the meta-moderation system. These disruptive activities help lower slashdot's already low signal-to-noise ratio and further discredit the editors.
Again, thank you for your consideration and may Allah grant light the fire of jihad within your soul (now that you're not busy trying to create 5-stable, you should have plenty of time for anti-slash
In Sacred Jihad,
jihadi_31337
people who don' have powerpc machine? or maybe people who don't care about pretty interface? (bsd is just fine for server, no need to buy os/x).
It was, tier 2 architectures may have their ISO's generated at the Release Engineering team's disgression while tier 1 architectures *will* have their ISO's generated.
/ article s/committers-guide/article.html#ARCHS
See the following url for more info:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1
Anyone who wants a secure, stable, webserver might use it. In fact, I'd wager that there are more production servers running FreeBSD then there are running OSX. Now, on the desktop, freebsd hardly even tries, but it still makes a decent workstation for a Unix user. in fact a better one for a Unix user than OSX, but thats my opinion... I should note, I've used a lot of the major Unix-like OSs, some more heavily than others, and I have to say, OSX is not what I look for in a Unix machine. Solaris is a good OS for me (I have a Sun), Linux too, FreeBSD is great (run it on my file server), but OSX is for those that crave eye candy. I don't need that to get my work done. :)
P.S. at my old job, my desktop machine was a G3 running OSX.
Yes, except the DragonFly community/developer base are comprised entirely of flaming assholes. I'd use Linux before I'd use DragonFly again.
-Jem
What about PPC? I find it amazing that they don't have a stable PPC port. Just insane.
evil is as evil does
FreeBSD 5.3: Resurrection
Moderated.
* Why do you prefer it over other Unix-like OS's?
..)
Because it works for everything I need to do and it does so predictably. I need to know very few things to just admin my desktop.
* Have you encountered many problems with hardware compatibility, particularly USB, RAID, and audio?
No. generally hardware is very well behaved if you have normal mainstream or (in sectors) corporate hardware that "everyone has" it will work just fine in both those segments.
* Have you had difficulty finding applications that will run on it?
Not more than with Linux as virtually all Linux apps are being ported pretty quickly (and we can run them under Linux Compat as if they were running on a Linux kernel). I run a full KDE desktop with some of the extra apps (k3b. kmplayer,
* In general, will software written for Linux compile and run on FreeBSD without too much difficulty?
In general, yes. There will always be some problematic cases (usually when software is written solely for Linux) but usually they will be overcome and fixed. See also ports. Linux binaries from current Linux systems ought to run on a FreeBSD box also.
HTH
Could anyone point me in the direction of showing how to upgrade 5.3-RC2 to 5.3-Stable?
" Yes, except the DragonFly community/developer base are comprised entirely of flaming assholes."
You know, there are rather effective ointments for that.
Worth a try, installs quickly, easy to manage and all... not like it'll take a long time or a lot of effort :)
Well god knows it did last time I tried installing it. Though this was pre-CD rom drives (well, pre-affordable CD rom drives), so I had to try installing from 3.5" floppies...
And unfortunately the lack of nforce network support and software sound mixing might push me towards freeBSD, but who knows, netbsd CDs are cheap, maybe I'll try it for a bit.
That's not been my experience. It sounds more like counterintelligence than fact.
You are an ignorant moron, and have no idea what you are talking about. DragonFlyBSD is based on FreeBSD 4. This is FreeBSD 5.3, completely different. FreeBSD will never copy DragonFlyBSD's model. In fact, DragonFlyBSD directly copied, literally, FreeBSD's model. Next time do a little reading before you try to represent DragonFlyBSD.
Not so amazing. They started with x86 and built a lot of x86-centric code, and just managed to hack in support for a few other major architectures on which they could expect to run. If the code was even half as clean and logical as Net or OpenBSD it'd be easy to port, but this isn't the case.
It wouldn't be useful though. FreeBSD's real strengths are on x86 (possibly amd64/ia64, not sure on the status of those) and those strengths are diminishing as the other systems catch up, without regression. On PPC it would be just like the other systems, but so much slower (try 5.3 and see what I mean) and less matured. Why, then, would anyone want it?
Sam ty sig.
I'm not a DF developer, but from what I've seen, DF is a great place to go to get help. Matt tends to be very easy to approach about issues and tends to give any real problem personal and immediate attention.
/ kernel/20 04-11/msg00037.htmle rnel/20 04-11/msg00056.html
Compare this say to the way submitting bug reports to other groups yields dead silence.
Consider this:
The original problem report:
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive
The latest from Matt:
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/k
Mind you, this doesn't even involve an area of the project Matt has been working on.
Well... I'm sure this is a troll ("niche's variants"), but still:
/usr/ports/audio and /usr/ports/multimedia, I have a very nice workstation, thank you ;-).
I have tried it. OS X is a great desktop/workstation, but it is not the definitive Unix server. I had the pleasure of administrating on XServe running a very large and busy website, and I will take plain 'ol FreeBSD any day, hands down. Apple just tends to overcomplicate many aspects of the server, with non-standard system layout, elaborate extra configurations for standard services, making it hard to turn off services, and for Cthulhu's sake, why would a serious Unix sysadmin want a machine that always has a power-hungry graphical interface running? I'll take consistent, clear thinking and conservative architecture over "superior kung fu" any day.
Sorry... FreeBSD all the way for my servers. Actually, at work I also use FreeBSD 5.3 (since Beta) as my desktop, and with KDE 3.3 plus a few choice packages from
DragonFlyBSD is based on FreeBSD 4. This is FreeBSD 5.3, completely different. [...] In fact, DragonFlyBSD directly copied, literally, FreeBSD's model.
Exactly. And do you know why DragonFly forked FreeBSD4 instead of FreeBSD5? No? If you'd known what you were talking about, you'd know that DragonFly forked FreeBSD4 because the dfly folks deemed that FreeBSD5 would end up being an unmaintainable pile of poo with lots of little hacks jammed into the poo to add features; i.e., what I said earlier about FreeBSD5 being unmaintainable.
FreeBSD will never copy DragonFlyBSD's model.
DragonFlyBSD is taking a course that aims to scale well to large numbers of CPUs, as well on being clean and easy to maintain. What's expected, and what has already been seen, is that the ultimate scalability isn't affecting uniprocessor performance. In other words, DragonFlyBSD is going to scale better than, match or beat the performance of, and be more maintainable than FreeBSD5. To stay in the game, FreeBSD7 may very well be a fork of DragonFly (but the world doesn't need two DragonFlyBSDs. Lots of devs might outright migrate). If you had any powers of reading comprehension, you'd have picked up on that from reading the original post. Instead, you look like the ignorant moron who has no clue what you're talking about. Next time try to do a little reading before you try to karma whore by attacking an AC post rated at -1.
For the record, I'm watching DragonFlyBSD closely so that when it's production ready, I can move my servers to it. I do not develop for dfly, so nobody walk away from this post thinking dfly users/devs are flaming assholes. They aren't.
Can you guys change the article icon? I know its only been a recent change for bsd, but come on.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
That's unnecessarily harsh. Sure, before the port to Alpha (waaay back) the code had many i386isms, int size dependencies, and byte ordering problems. But after that work was done, there's no longer any particular diffference between FreeBSD and NetBSD in this area. Also, I for one see the amd64 as the future of FreeBSD (NetBSD and Linux too), so that's one port that will definitely succeed.
Easy there, it might not be that solid. They haven't done much testing outside of x86 and even that is flaky and/or slow for a lot of hardware (including hardware every machine has).
As I understand it a pretty large amount of testing has gone into amd64 too. A decent number of developers have amd64 boxes, and that helps a lot.
Alpha support was in 4.x, but has been going down for a while now, especially in 5.x. Port build testing on pointyhat isn't even done for Alpha anymore (according to Kris the Alphas won't even boot). Fortunately , this isn't as bad as it could be, since the Alphas are going away anyway. (and you know NetBSD will always have support for them ;P )
I see a whole ton of architectures as being the future of NetBSD, and in fact, the future of any viable cross platform OS. In particular, I don't see any arch. as the 'future.' Cross-platform requirements keep programmers sharp and honest. Any single-platform focus is bad and negative.
I.e. I think an OS 'succeeds' to the degree that it builds on not just latest-greatest. Does it still build properly on the 68K and ARM? If not, why not?
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD
"FreeBSD has dramatically increased its market penetration over the last year."
--
Being able to read *other people's* source code is a nice thing, not a 'fundamental freedom'.
:-)
I applaud your idealism. I'm a fan of cross platform software for the same reasons as you.
What I meant by the amd64 comment is that plain i386 is dying and amd64 will take over the number one spot. That's all.
Yes, it's early to claim the death of i386, but it will be just a legacy operating mode of amd64 compatible mainstream chips very soon.
And why aren't you using Mac OS X?
.dmg file, or as a folder, you can run any app. If the application uses an installer, then you need an admin password. But if you have an admin password, you can take over the entire machine. You can reset root's password by using: 'sudo passwd root' on the terminal. This would be a nightmare to administer with multiple users (e.g. a work environment).
Well, let's see...
A: Mac's are extremely overpriced. Why pay double the price for half the power? $799 for a 1.25ghz / 128MB RAM system? Give me a break. (Even the x86 MHz to G4 MHz doesn't make up the speed difference.) Even with the $799 system, I can't even configure it how I like. Don't like the video card? Too bad, have to buy a new Mac.
B: Mac OS X seems to insist you do everything in a GUI, and the OS as a whole has very few configurable options. You are also locked in to using Aqua. What if I wanted KDE, or GNOME, or XFCE? Aqua was designed with novices in mind, and it really shows. You can't even see file sizes in Finder unless you right click (Haha, just kidding... hold control and click) the file and go to 'Get Info' first.
C: I can't stand all the special effects in Aqua. When you try minimizing a window, it uses all kinds of code to shrink the window (called 'Genie'). The only other option is scale. It totally lacks a 'None' mode. This is just one example, everything in that OS has too much animation and no way to turn it off. It's a waste of CPU / Video processing power for anyone who wants to get work done and not stare in awe at how pretty their OS looks.
D: It isn't very secure. Let's say you want to install applications. If the application is stuck in a
E: The keyboard combinations are horrible. I realize that there's no standard with keyboard buttons, but Mac doesn't even try. In fact, it goes out of its way to change everything. Use a Mac for a week, and you get used to Alt+Z/X/C/V, go back to Windows / Unix, and you're screwing up your copy / paste.
F: The system has inherently stupid design ideas. Examples include: Maximizing a window only maximizes it vertically, you get to drag it to fully maximize it. You can only drag the bottom right corner, which is often covered by the dock with the default settings. Another example is when you close applications. You would think the X would mean 'Close', right? Nope. You have to right click (again, I kid) the button on the taskbar and click close after closing the application first. It was explained to me that this is the 'right' way, and that all the other OSes just 'got it wrong'. Ah, my bad. And yet another stupid move is the way the menu bars for each app is only displayed at the top. It's like if all of windows was run inside an MDI. This makes for miserably poor multi-tasking. What if you minimize Firefox and click on your desktop? The only way to get a new window open is to click on firefox in the dock (the actual application icon that normally launches it initially, but in this case it would remain open), then go through the menu to create a new window.
G: Price. Mac OS X costs well over $100 a copy, and they release new copies yearly (? - not sure of the exact frequency), and they expect you to purchase each copy. FreeBSD is, well, free.
H: Design. I hate the design. The keyboard and mouse that comes with eMacs are the most painfully uncomfortable things I have ever used. The mouse has only one button, not even a scroll wheel. What is this, 1996? And it is literally painful to use for more than 4 hours, with how hard the button is to click. The keyboard has ZERO space after the edges of the keys, thusly there's no place to rest your hands at. Hello, carpal tunnel.
I could go on. Ultimately though, different systems for different people. Apple aren't the genius UI designers they seem to think they are. And with their OS, it's their way or nothing.
im wonderin is my pc-dvd creative (mk5000) is compatible with freebsd?
im thinking about switching to a bsd for quite a moment...
sharing my internet connection (adsl on the win2k/win2k3 side) gonna be easy?
This seems to be only some kind of half-troll, so it probably wouldn't be a total waste of time responding to this one.
A. I bought my current computer, 12" PB, because (at least when I bought it) it was by far the cheapest in its category (lightweight, full-featured laptops).
B. You're not locked into Aqua. I, for example, use FVWM in daily basis. I've tried Gnome on OSX too.
C. If a shrinking animation is a problem for you, then it is. It's not a problem for me.
D. It is very simple to lock down OSX to restrict people from running arbitrary programs. The root password thing was a joke, wasn't it? Or are you seriously suggesting that the first thing that anyone administrating a multiuser OSX system wouldn't be to enable root account, change its password and disable sudoing for users?
E. For some reason I've never had such problem. For me it's not a major mental hurdle to remember that instead of Control, most shortucts use Command.
F. OSX has no 'maximize window' button. The button you are most probably referring to is the 'zoom' button. It switches between user-defined window size and the size it takes to wholly display the window's contents (if possible). In other words, it tries to make the scrollbars go away and stop there. If you minimize a Firefox window, it appears as a miniature version in the Dock, next to the trashcan. You can bring it back with one click. So you're not actually talking about minimizing?
G. It doesn't matter if they expect you to purchase a new copy each year. You don't have to. They don't just suddenly stop supporting their older versions, either.
H. You don't like them, you replace them with something you like. Also, resting ones hands on the keyboard is like saying 'die already' to ones wrists.
This is good news indeed.
A lot of ISPs and hosting companies will probably start upgrading their FreeBSD 4.x SMP servers next year.
Anyone know how well FreeBSD's jail() holds up against Virtuozzo?
You must be thinking of FreeBSD developers like Poul-Henning Kamp and Dag-Erling Smorgrav. The latter is the most annoying and arrogant asshole I've ever met.
Now mod me down, why should I care.
HawkinsOS, kicking Smorgrav in the ass since 2004.
I stopped using FreeBSD as a firewall since OpenBSD started using pf, and not going back. Still use 5.3 on my desktop, but this will be changing very soon. My experience with FreeBSD 5 has been pretty bad. A lot of stuff either doesn't work as advertised or is plain broken. As soon as the huge VFS work is stable on DragonFly I'll be jumping ship.
DragonFlyBSD, what FreeBSD could have been, but never will.
I'm no UNIX expert, I can get KDE to work fairly easily, I can get the sound to work, I can play videos (Totem Player - AVIs,VOBs,FLI ...), I can record music (Audacity - WAV,MP3,OGG ...) as well as the basic things like Web, Email.
I do have a problem with the packages. Some like, OpenOffice, are easy to install but others depend on dozens of other packages, which still don't work after you have got them all - I wish they would create an extra package with everything you need in it.
As much as I would like to see FreeBSD as easy to install as Linux, I have learned quite a lot from my efforts so far. If I ever get back to low-level coding again I would feel more confident on BSD that on Linux (I started on DOS). As for compatability, FreeBSD seems to work on just about anything with a clock-pulse but Linux (Mandrake 10.1) has not been able to drive a fairly new, standard network card (VIA Rhine) but FreeBSD did - and its BSD that now resides on that machine.
My deepest, darkest fear is that Linux will go the way of Windows - driven by marketing & legal objectives not user needs. On that dark day I suspect it will be *BSD that will save us.
In summery, FreeBSD works quite well as a desktop OS but you will need to work at it.
Hope this helps - PJB
Art Makers Just an excuse to show photos of naked women !!
*BSD, 27, of Berkeley, CA died Monday, Sept. 6, 2004. Born July 3, 1976...
Obviously the reporter must be using the superior OS mentioned in his post where not even such basic calculations can be done right. I highly recommend the reporter give FreeBSD a try.
This just in: the said evaluates to 28 on Linux as well, so this must mean the reporter is an idiot. Q.E.D.
Yup, longjmp()ing out of signal handlers sucks. We finally gave up on SIGALRM+longjmp() as a timeout mechanism for IP address to host name lookups in Ethereal, because, in additiona to not being able to use it on Windows (which is where the timeout problem is worst, thanks to inverse NetBIOS-over-TCP lookups), we also can't use it in OS X (because you can longjmp() out of the middle of a send of a Mach message to lookupd, leaving the code to talk to lookupd in an inconsistent state, causing the next lookup attempt to crash) and in at least some versions of some Linux distributions (because gethostbyaddr(), at least with some versions of glibc, appears to grab a mutex that doesn't get released if you longjmp() out of it, so the next call hangs forever trying to grab the mutex).
Traditional folklore said OpenBSD is focused on security, NetBSD on portability, and FreeBSD on performance (on x86). How can NetBSD be faster than FreeBSD now? Heck, if NetBSD is about correctness and portability, and on top of that they manage to beat FreeBSD in terms of speed, then there's something really really wrong with FreeBSD.
So I guess my real question is, is it really true that NetBSD is surpassing FreeBSD at heir own game?
Repeat for effect: Yes.
FreeBSD always achieved performance through best-case-everywhere optimization and scalability of algorithms for everything. Out of nowhere NetBSD beat it in scalability after two weeks' work (everyone knows this now). NetBSD had always focused on making things simple, portable, solid and logical. This kept it slower (much slower) for a long time, but now in 2.0 it's made huge headway with Scheduler Activations (even known to be faster than NPTL!). This makes a huge difference on its own, and the refined hardware support and everything has really topped it off.
I couldn't believe it myself, but every bench and 'sitting and using' observation proved NetBSD 2.0RC4 to be many times faster than FreeBSD 5.3, and about on par with Linux (but a notch behind in some synthetic tests). Disk access especially - everyone who has bonnie'd a FreeBSD 5.x system and compared this to another OS already knows what I'm talking about.
FreeBSD's model for complicating things in the quest for universal performance has now defeated itself, entirely owing to the terrible SMP model which has tangled it all. NetBSD on the other hand has made things much higher performing without complicating it, and so it does work faster in practice and not just in theory, and it works solidly and just as well on all platforms it supports. OpenBSD still needs a good threading system but in other respects it's not far behind, especially given its amazing security and quality-of-release record.
Before anyone labels me for trolling against FreeBSD, try it yourself, in benches as well as interactive usages, and compare it to NetBSD and Linux. Won't take long to see a pattern emerge.
Sam ty sig.
What sort of "everything" are you thinking of here? I certainly don't do my compiles in a GUI - and, heck, I even move stuff to and from the desktop using mv> from a Terminal window.
Apple didn't change anything - Command+Z/C/X/V existed (Command, not Alt), as far as I know, before Ctrl+Z/X/C/V; I think it dates back to the original Mac (although it might've been called Apple rather than Command). Microsoft may have changed it, as PC's didn't have an Apple or Command key, and they had other uses for the Alt key.
I certainly don't care for that; I don't know whether there's a rationale for it or not.
Actually, the X does mean "Close", as in "Close the window" - the Windows desktop, and many UN*X+X11 window managers, also implement a window button (often with an "X") whose effect is to close the window. You're probably getting bitten by the fact that closing the last window in an application doesn't cause the application to exit (unlike what usually happens on Windows and UN*X+X11) - and that opening a new document with an application doesn't cause a new process to be created if there's already a process running that application, it just causes that process to be told to open the new document. No, I don't know why that's the convention, and it makes it a bit more of a pain to write applications, as they have to support multiple documents, and thus might not be able to keep global information about the document, as they could if each document has a separate process.
The argument in favor of it is that it's easier to move the mouse cursor to the menu bar, as you don't have to aim for an arbitrary vertical position on the screen - but you still have to get the horizontal position right.
...or moving the mouse over the Dock icon for the application and using Command+N.
At least some of the UI design decisions to which you're objecting might be holdovers from pre-OS X Mac OS, dating back to the original version of the OS, which had no multitasking. That might be a reason for the single menu bar; I don't know whether the "one process for all documents" idea comes from classic Mac OS or from NeXTStEP, however.
Yes, I know, I didn't close the <tt>. Try:
What sort of "everything" are you thinking of here? I certainly don't do my compiles in a GUI - and, heck, I even move stuff to and from the desktop using mv from a Terminal window.
Apple didn't change anything - Command+Z/C/X/V existed (Command, not Alt), as far as I know, before Ctrl+Z/X/C/V; I think it dates back to the original Mac (although it might've been called Apple rather than Command). Microsoft may have changed it, as PC's didn't have an Apple or Command key, and they had other uses for the Alt key.
I certainly don't care for that OS X behavior; I don't know whether there's a rationale for it or not.
Actually, the X does mean "Close", as in "Close the window" - the Windows desktop, and many UN*X+X11 window managers, also implement a window button (often with an "X") whose effect is to close the window. You're probably getting bitten by the fact that closing the last window in an application doesn't cause the application to exit (unlike what usually happens on Windows and UN*X+X11) - and that opening a new document with an application doesn't cause a new process to be created if there's already a process running that application, it just causes that process to be told to open the new document. No, I don't know why that's the convention, and it makes it a bit more of a pain to write applications, as they have to support multiple documents, and thus might not be able to keep global information about the document, as they could if each document has a separate process.
The argument in favor of it is that it's easier to move the mouse cursor to the menu bar, as you don't have to aim for an arbitrary vertical position on the screen - but you still have to get the horizontal position right.
...or moving the mouse over the Dock icon for the application and using Command+N.
At least some of the UI design decisions to which you're objecting might be holdovers from pre-OS X Mac OS, dating back to the original version of the OS, which had no multitasking. That might be a reason for the single menu bar; I don't know whether the "one process for all documents" idea comes from classic Mac OS or from NeXTStEP, however.
OK, the simple place to start in assessing your claims was to google for "NPTL Scheduler Activations".
l
The first link that comes up has an interesting disclaimer at the top:
http://people.redhat.com/drepper/glibcthreads.htm
I could continue my investigation by googling for "Ulrich Drepper", but I'm sure that would only lead to more interesting disclaimers.
applying a patch takes a great deal of time to review... how bout you get some respect?
Matt Dillon seems a decent fellow. It's the others that border on psychotic. I wrote this review of DragonFly a few months ago and at least two people associated with the project more or less stalked me because they didn't like the article. I don't care what people post in the comment section, but, um, sending me threats via email? Putting up anti-Jem websites that obviously took a significant amount of time to create? Posting garbage to the forums on my site (which did not even carry the review)? Isn't that taking it a bit too far?
DragonFlyBSD: the OS of lunatics.
-Jem
Mr. Hawkins,
I'm one of your several Fortune 100 customers.
I know you enjoy trolling on slashdot, but we kinda need some assistance here.
We deemed you trustworthy enough to make our Fortune 100 company migrate to your OS - a decision that has been very easy for us to make, since you're such a reliable person and such a skillful programmer - but enough is enough.
We paid you a lot of money. I have no doubt that *your* HawkinsOS is worth every penny, and that these BSD alternatives are just pieces of junk since they don't have your "patches", but now it's time to come back to work.
Sincerely,
Mr. Joe Moron
HawkinsOS user
Fortune 100 company CEO
Fuck off you stinking piece of shit, asshole!
DragonFlyBSD pwnz j00!
That said, I want a unix handheld in a clamshell formfactor. NetBSD seems to be the OS of choice for me to use: see http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/bsd/2003/06/05/Big_Sca ry_Daemons.html.
Any recommendations for a ~$100-$150 device to use? I want at lease 640x240 display, 802.11 in either CF or PCMCIA, ability to use a Microdrive, and some decent battery life.
I have found Jornada 728, IBM Z50, or NEC MobilePro 780/800 on eBay seem to be close. Any other suggestions?
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Ah, yes... Disagree with someone's post? Just accuse them of being a troll, because God knows it adds more merit to your argument. Do have any idea what the term 'troll' even means? I suggest you look it up.
And some of us just posted constructive criticism and told you how you could have improved your experience with DragonFly, could have written a better review, and gave suggestions for future articles. You can hold this grudge against all of the users / developers of DragonFly, but you're the one who will end up looking like a lunatic.
I for one, never did or said anything adverse, and you still call me an asshole and lunatic, simply because I use and develop DragonFly BSD.
*claps hands* Great logic!
www.sitetronics.com/wordpress
unless you enjoy switching for the sake of switching.
Hell, I have windows 98 on a laptop that I have no intention of switching OSs on just because I enjoy a working laptop more than I enjoy my favorite OS (FreeBSD, then NetBSD).
Besides, I can't get FreeBSD to see the CDROM during the install....maybe 5.3 will see it.
But as a computer professional, I have to say keep Mandrake on the Presario and advise you to do as I say and not as I do (I break alot of things).
I wasn't trying to troll, they are honest points about my experiences with OSX.
A: The laptop argument is probably correct, I have only priced desktops. If they can make laptops so cheap, why don't they make an entry level desktop, for say... $400? They'd get a hell of a lot more people to try out their systems that way. $799 entry level is just too much for most people. Also, a 12" screen would kill my eyes. But that's just me.
B: I don't know of a way to get rid of Aqua. It certainly isn't very direct. But I stand corrected nonetheless.
C: Yeah.
D: How would one disable sudo?
E: I have to use both PCs and Macs on a daily basis, and it gets hard swapping back and forth. I would love it if either OS (bsd OR mac) would let me swap out the keys to copy/paste. Alas, neither do.
F: Well that explains it. But to me, a maximize button is very, very important. It's the way I've done things since I started using computers and I am not willing to change. Again, Macs give you no options to revert that functionality to a maximize button.
G: Yes, if you don't purchase new copies, you don't get any of the new features and apps. I was mostly pointing out that BSD doesn't charge you for this.
H: This was a critique about Apple's design ideals. They aren't as hot as they think they are. The eMac is the only machine I've ever used that came with nearly unusable keyboards / mice with the base system before. Pretty much everyone at my job complains about the keyboards and mice. The IT dept. will not let us bring in our own to swap them out without a doctor's note stating a need to do such. I'm tempted to go get one.
Anyway, again. I'm only pointing out what annoys me. Some people might like the way all the Apple things works. That's great for them. But this is why I personally will not be using a Mac, when I have my PC + FreeBSD.
sharp zaurus + http://pdaxrom.org/
*way* overexceeded all expectations.
can do anything a linux desktop can.
I want a clamshell and except for the price, Zaurus would be perfect. SL-C7xx and SL-C8xx are still in the +$500 price range.
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Nearly 2.5 Million Active Sites running FreeBSD :)
FreeBSD, Stealth-Growth Open Source Project
maybe the troll has different sources?..
This still sounds like the async i/o vs ordered meta commits, aka softupdates.
FreeBSD uses softupdates which writes the metadata in order, and then write it sync or async i/o.. doesn't matter, and par or better with Linux 2.4.
It's sorta like journaling, and it's been there fr quite at long time, since 2.x at least. Google softupdates.
The base default install used to have softupdates off and plain sync i/o is of course slower, but it's hell a lot safer than async i/o until you switch to journaled async i/o. And then, you're back to ordered metadata commits, or softupdates again.
A. As noted in Consumer Reports (and myriad other places before that), a modern Mac has a lower TCO than an equivalent PC - more reliable OS, vastly decreased security issues, etc.
B: Here you expose the fact that you are a complete idiot and zealot. First, in Mac OS X you have a Bash shell at your fingertips whenever you want it. And, yes, you can reconfigure applications and various system options from the command line even though it is rarely neccessary to do so. Second, Apple distributes a "click to install" version of XFree86, thus allowing you to run X applications. I believe that you indeed can run KDE and/or Gnome, although I'm not sure what the point would be. If you need KDE or Gnome, just run Linux, FreeBSD, etc. on an X86
C: Aqua runs all effects in the GPU, not the CPU, retard. At least the freaking marketing copy before you share your moronic opinions with the rest of us.
D: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!! This is a joke, right? You have obviously never administered multiuser UNIX environment. Everything you mention applies equally to ANY UNIX OS, idiot.
E: Ummmm.... OK. Like you said, there is no "standard" for Cut/Copy/Paste. The way Mac does it makes more sense on their keyboard as it is actually *easier* to hit these key combinations than it would be on a PC. Unlike Windows, you'll find that just about everything in the Mac experience has been well thought out and there is usually a compelling reason for each decision.
F: Maximizing a window is simply more intelligent that what you are used to. Then again, you are obviously not very intelligent so I'm not surprised you missed it. I'll spell it out for you: When you maximize a window under OS X, it doesn't fill the screen IF THERE IS LESS THAN THE SCREEN'S WIDTH OF HORIZONTAL CONTENT IN THE WINDOW. In other words, there is no need to hide your entire desktop if the full contents of a window can be displayed in the current window width, or any width less than the full screen dimensions. On web pages, this often results in a window maximizing to full height while the width remains the same or grows only a small amount. So, this is smart behavior - something that is apparently quite alien to you. Regarding the 'X' button - that is a WINDOW CONTROL button, retard (just like maximize, restore, minimize) - so why should it shut down the application? If that application is, say, PhotoShop, I would rather not have to wait for it to start up over and over during my session. As far as I can tell, the reason Microsoft adopted their "close the application" behavior is becuase their OS's do not handle multiple running applications nearly as well as Mac OS X. Your other comments make it obvious that you've only spent a few hours with a Mac (and your head way up your ass).
G: If you don't like it, don't buy it. But in the meantime, shut the fuck up about something that you don't begin to understand.
G: Awwww, poor baby - he hates the design. Boo fuckin' hoo - whatever, you sissy. I use a Mac because it is a superior machine in every aspect to a Windows PC, let's me get my work done far, far faster than Gnome or KDE and runs mainstream apps like Microsoft Word and Excel, Macromedia apps and Adobe apps (all of which I happen to need from time to time). If you can get by with OpenOffice and the Gimp, then rock on, little buddy - I wouldn't slam your platform at all. What the hell is wrong with people like you who have to lamely attempt to bash a superior OS? Is it jealousy, fear, or do you actually have nothing better to do with your time? Apple *are* genius UI designers. The rest of the computer industry recognizes this by constantly adopting their ideas and UI standards. You are obviously stupid, so I would expect you to understand.