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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.
Well, as far as everyone who knows is concerned, no even hardened Linux has ever competed against any BSD in security. It's just impossible with Linux' development model, and the services in userland (as opposed to the mature services that the BSDs have kept for decades and hardened) are often dirty hacks that haven't had proper auditing, if indeed any.
:)
But if you want security, go OpenBSD, it's the world leader. A close second is NetBSD, which right now is much faster and more stable than FreeBSD 5 (even in many SMP cases, too). FreeBSD is okay for many users but it has slowed down tremendously, lost a lot of cleanliness too. It's a shame to see such a great system degenerate, but it happened.
In my opinion, NetBSD is a good half-way between Linux and OpenBSD. It has a lot of Linux-like performance (sometimes better, sometimes worse) and design, but security isn't far behind OpenBSD in practice. It doesn't have anywhere near as many randomization-of-kernel-data features though, which you might find handy. You can still use cgd for any storage including swap, if you're really paranoid
Sam ty sig.
You my friend, are a Troll. As an avid user of FreeBSD 4,5, 4.10, 5.1, 5.2.1, and now 5.3RC2, I can personally guarantee that you have no fucking Idea what you are talking about. Lost cleanliness, my ass! The improvements in 5.3 are awesome. The integration of BIND 9 into the base inside a chroot jail is excellent. The separation of Perl from the base also helped to clean it up. The user experience is awesome in 5.3... My Ghz athlon server has 500+ ports installed, every service you could imagine, and runs X.org with OpenGL flawlessly. I notice a distinct increase in performance and functionality after CVSUPing from 5.2.1 to 5.3 RC2. With a streamlined kernel and good old SCHED_4BSD what exactly is so "unclean"? Have you had a personal experience with 5.3 or are you just spouting mindless zealotry? Why are you on a personal quest for schism in the BSD community?
Calling anything so massively successful "crap" is just pure ignorance. Are Linux and Windows, or anything that's not NetBSD also crap? Please share.... The /. mods obviously can't get enough of your idiotic pontification.
To blog is sublime
Surprised me too. It's clearly a made-up story. Pot smokers would never get into fistfights.
The issue the grandparent is alluding to is that we've had some performance hits in early 5.x versions compared to our own 4.x branch. This is due to introducing a wider SMP model, and the necessity for locks for this. However, this is infrastructure for a overall speedup, and we are continually moving more of the code over to the higher performance model.
As far as I know (from what numbers I have seen), we're still faster than NetBSD overall in 5.x, but not in all subcases.
Apart from that, the folklore is a simplification. FreeBSD has several platforms, and we have generally had good performance, but it isn't a really specific focus. It's just something we are good at (compared to the other BSDs, and in many cases compared to Linux). We're also good at general support of software (there are over 11,000 packages for FreeBSD), documentation, etc.
FreeBSD, NetBSD, and DragonflyBSD has taken a number of different routes for optimization lately. It is not clear which of these will lead to be the best performance over time; it may be that FreeBSD will keep a lead, or it may be that one of the others will overtake us. Speed is a game everybody plays.
Eivind.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.