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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."
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.
Wake up mods. That wasn't flamebait.
This guy is way out there
Torrent Mirror
The announcement should be up there by now, but it was delayed slightly because nobody knew how to start a rebuild (outside of the usual fixed schedule) of the web site.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I mainly like it for the ports system. The only things I know of that can compare with it would be Debian's apt-get and Gentoo's portage. However, I was never able to get a Debian or Gentoo system to install. YMMV
Have you encountered many problems with hardware compatibility, particularly USB, RAID, and audio?
I tried to get USB to work in 4.x, and failed, but USB support is supposed to be much better in 5.x. Audio has worked fine for me.
Have you had difficulty finding applications that will run on it?
That's the best thing about it: the ports system.
In general, will software written for Linux compile and run on FreeBSD without too much difficulty?
Well, first check if it's in the ports system. If it's well-known software, it probably is, so you're all set. Otherwise, it really depends on the software. If it's small and simple, and wasn't written with lots of Linuxisms, then it should be no problem. If it's 10^7 lines of code, and was written by people who assumed it would only be used on Linux, then you may have a long, hard road ahead.
Find free books.
Perhaps the mods should have read the entire post before moding it up. HINT: anti-slash isn't a bsd website.
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.
I would say, no, she would not benefit. I have been running FreeBSD 5.3-RC2 since before Slashdot said that it came out, and it is wonderful; my non-linux compatible WiFi card works fine with the NDIS Project Evil. But as far as I know, ACPI support still does not support CPU scaling, battery monitoring, or orher nice features, so I would recommend a recent Linux distro over FreeBSD (I was using Gentoo, but it was acting up, and I wanted to try 5.3. I have used SuSE on here as well, and it seemed okay). Of course, I could be quite wrong, as I have not looked in to how to do a lot of the ACPI stuff, but I assumed that it was not supported. So FreeBSD is awesome, but for someone who is newer, or wants more support, I would not recommend it.
Why do you prefer it over other Unix-like OS's?
Ports would be the first and most important thing. It seems easier to administer than Linux: pf is a good firewall, and the startup scripts are very logically organized. Built-in ACLs have come in handy; soft-updates and filesystem snapshots are very nice too.
Have you encountered many problems with hardware compatibility, particularly USB, RAID, and audio?
It auto-configured most stuff on my Mini-ITX box (small/low-power file/web/whatever server, and soon a jukebox too), which is rather strange hardware, including the onboard networking (Via Rhine) and on-die random number generator. I used to have a lot of trouble with spotty USB support, but it seems fixed in more recent 5.x builds. Audio did not auto-configure, but all it required was loading a module or adding it to kernel config.
A nice new trick is Project Evil, which is a binary compatibility layer for Windows wireless card drivers.
Have you had difficulty finding applications that will run on it?
No. It has a Linux ABI, so you should be able to run Linux binaries on it if necessary (or SCO, or Solaris....). Furthermore, Ports is generally quite complete. Sometimes a port will get out of date, but this is often because the maintainers are testing it.
Java was kind of annoying; the port isn't fully automated due to licensing stuff.
In general, will software written for Linux compile and run on FreeBSD without too much difficulty?
Yes. In fact, software compiled for Linux should (in theory) run without too much difficulty. This is how you get Java.
I hereby place the above post in the public domain.
Take that RIAA. There is a good use for BT. HA!
2) read http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/h andbook/current-stable.html
3) and this: http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/FreeBSD53. html
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
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.
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?
Software: most software written for linux would compile without much change on FreeBSD. In fact, that's how the ports system work. Check out freshports to see if your favourite app is included or not. You can also have binary packages, which can be installed similarly to debian packages (pkg_add -r blah is ~ apt-get install blah). If you put linux_enable="YES" into your rc.conf, you'll have linux 'emulation.' Don't worry, it's not really an emulation, linux-apps run with native speed on FreeBSD. Really. (you can try it yourself if you don't believe me, for sometimes there exists both a native freebsd and a linux version of the same program). Finding an app is as simple as cding into /usr/ports and typing "make search name=[progname]" if you know the name of the application you need or "make search key=[whatever]" to search in the short descriptions of each port. Installing that app is as simple as entering it's directory, and typing make install clean (or if you have portupgrade tool installed, you can simply say: portinstall mplayer. Details in the handbook :)
I also have slack on my puter btw (with kernel 2.6.7), and now that ULE is turned off, slack seems to be slightly faster on the desktop (KDE on both), but only if the system is heavily loaded. I think, even for someone who is new to FreeBSD, tracking -STABLE (look up what that means in the handbook is pretty safe, and hopefully they will reenable the new ULE constant time scheduler (whatever that means, I just read this fancy description on OSNEWS :o)) soon.
Hardware compatibility: FreeBSD supports standard pc hardware. There are accelerated binary native nvidia drivers for freebsd. USB support is excellent (my USB mouse worked out of the box, just read the installation messages carefully - you have to say no to mouse configuration if you have an usb mouse) ... except for USB 2.0. So USB 2.0 devices work in 1.1 compatibility mode. Discussion, however, is already started for fixing USB 2.0 support (EHCI driver), and I'm sure it will be ready soon. I also have a tv card (PlayTV MPEG2, an el cheapo card) which works nicely under FreeBSD and with mencoder (and FreeBSD's own native tv app, fxtv). In fact, I have much clearer picture than on windows, thanks to better filters in mplayer I think. This is the command I use to get the best quality btw:
I was in the same boat. I'd been running Slackware since 8.0 on a Pentium 133 home server, and recently switched to a BSD - NetBSD.
Installation went smoothly. The installer rivaled Slackware's and was easier to tweak to minimize the amount of stuff being installed.
The documentation is good, and I had a custom kernel built within an hour or two.
I haven't used FreeBSD, but if it's anything like NetBSD it's a good alternative to Slackware.
You'll be modded -1 Troll because you lack a sense of humour.
Most people know that MacOS X is not FreeBSD, and that it's based on NeXtStep, with the entire userland (almost) out of the FreeBSD 5.xx branch (10.4 anyways) (not just "some", a good bit)
Lighten up, it's the weekend
Error 407 - No creative sig found
Best approach is to upgrade via source.
/usr/src/UPDATING, slightly abridged because this is will be a small upgrade):
pkg_add -r cvsup-without-gui
edit the example cvsup file:
so that:
*default release=cvs tag=.
becomes
*default release=cvs tag=RELENG_5_3
Then, do the following (quoted from
make buildworld
make buildkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_HERE
make installkernel KERNCONF=YOUR_KERNEL_HERE
make installworld
You can omit the KERNCONF business if you just want to use the GENERIC kernel.
wait... only *NetBSD* changed logos. FreeBSD is still Lassiter's "Beastie" (yes, John Lassiter of Pixar fame designed "Beastie")
"Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
The FreeBSD handbook on htp://www.freebsd.org/ is excellent. It walks you through the steps to do a binary upgrade, or a source upgrade of your OS. Personaly, the way I find easiest is to just drop in the install CD, run sysinstall, and choose "upgrade". I always have a current CD anyways, so I don't mind burning a copy of the release when it comes out. Cheers.
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'.
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.
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.
The OSX kernel is a merge between Mach and FreeBSD. This is why Darwin 7.x has all the cool features that the FreeBSD 5.x kernel has but most other unixes lack, like kqueue. The OSX kernel includes lots and lots of FreeBSD kernel code. The shared code is not just limited to userland.
::shudder::
Tangent-Rant: I am sad that Linux produces a new event waiting interface with every minor version but none of them come anywhere near being as complete as kqueue. In Linux, if you want to wait on file descriptors and signals at the same time without a race condition, your only option involves longjmp()ing out of signal handlers.
Post next time not as an AC.
1. Vinum was released working in 5.0, broken in 5.1, fixed temporarily around patch level 9 of 5.1 and broken since.
2. 5.3 has been released with broken vinum and a half working replacement called gvinum which "may cause system panic on boot". That is quoting from the errata.
3. I have a few systems with vinum around and I am extremely pissed off after recovering them from extreme filesystem corruption three times - twice in 5.1 and once in 5.2.
Does that answer your question?
Oh, and next time when you call someone an arsehole post non-anonymously (or read the fucking release errata before posting).
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
Neverwinter Nights runs fine under Linux emu, fully accelerated with the Nvidia binary driver.
Only time its been noticably slower than on windows was when I left a make buildworld running in the background.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
A few things that might simplify life:
:P
-Use RELENG_5, not RELENG_5_3. The latter is just errata/security fixes, the former is the true 'stable' branch for 5.x. It is going to get a lot more attention and MFC's.
-'make world kernel' works just as well, since you don't need to be paranoid about library changes this late in the release cycle.
-You can set KERNCONF=foo in make.conf to never have to type it on the command line. Same goes for every make variable you find yourself passing - this especially applies to Ports-specific variables that you want assumed during portupgrade/portinstall and when seeking dependencies.
Some things (especially the last bit) aren't covered in the handbook because they're meant to be simple enough for many to work out, but then again most don't
Happy BSD use! And try the others, too.
Sam ty sig.
Again, instead of bitching and making groundless general statements (i.e. Trolling. You say "every bench shows it to be so": I wonder which one, since FreeBSD 5.3 has been released 2 days ago...), why don't you take a *real* tour of the FreeBSD mailing lists, expose *your* problem(s) (providing all the required details, not a vague/generalizing post like the one you linked...), and then come back here and we discuss the answer they give you? That would make a lot more sense. IMHO.
Won't know until you find out. I don't see why not though. As for internet sharing, FreeBSD's is probably the easiest, because ipfw+natd is very hard to get wrong. Just read the docs and you'll be on your way.
Sam ty sig.