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."

Comments

Dead?

[graveyardduckx]

Could've fooled me! Can't wait to throw this on VMWare!

Re:Dead?

[RLiegh]

For those of you who, like me, cannot afford vmware, might I suggest qemu?

Excellent OS

[Ambient_Developer]

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

Re:Excellent OS

[Anonymous Coward]

How does fbsd stack up against something like Debian Linux with Grsecurity kernel patch? And disregarding ACLs (which grsec does provide, and I'm pretty sure fbsd does too) because they introduce a lot more complexity that most admins don't have time/ability to deal with (case in point: I'm a coder but don't have a fulltime admin at my work, so it's not something that always gets the attention it deserves).

Re:Excellent OS

[molnarcs]

Add performance and reliability to that and you get one of the best systems there is. FreeBSD is never missing from the top 10 most reliable sites on netcraft, usually taking more places than any other OS.

In october, the 3 topmost reliable sites were all FreeBSD (4th was either Net~ or Open~ and 8th was again FreeBSD).Read More

Re:Excellent OS

[nomadic]

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 :)

How is it on the desktop? Not a flame, I'm really curious, haven't tried NetBSD in like 6 or 7 years, and for some reason I've got it into my head to try a BSD on the desktop. And NetBSD sounds cooler than FreeBSD.

Re:Excellent OS

[Ricin]

Hmm, although the gist of what you're saying is probably true, don't be too harsh on FreeBSD5 just yet. Let's see how it stabalizes. I do agree thet NetBSD is awsome in its simplicity and all, and they do have all major packages and it looked to work very well on my SMP (2xPIII-1100) box with 2-current. Great desktop response, really good. But I also get that with FreeBSD and SCHED_ULE.

pkgsrc might be smaller in numbers but in quality it just smokes ports (don't even argue)

No matter what, the *BSDs are on the run and that's just great! The OSS world very much needs the BSDs as much as it needs Apache, Sendmail, Bind, .. etc.

Re:Excellent OS

[setagllib]

Yeah, pkgsrc is very solid, I haven't had one failed compile yet, where ports would fail 1/5 or so. The few things that weren't in pkgsrc I compiled/installed by hand.

What irks me about pkgsrc is the lack of configurability. In Ports there were values you could set that would often be used to define functionality, like WITH_VORBIS and so on. pkgsrc has these but there are very few of them and they aren't always consistent between packages. Try compiling xmms without esd, for instance... is it possible without mangling everything by hand? (I'm actually asking, because I haven't found a way)

Re:Excellent OS

[setagllib]

Desktop is okay. The same software runs (I'm posting from Firefox 1.0 RC1 on a NetBSD 2.0RC4 machine I set up a couple of days ago) and it runs just as well. Responsiveness is very good in all but the highest of high load, in which case your audio might skip for a second or two (but this happens with any OS under enough disk load, and can be prevented by buffering the whole MP3 or whatever into RAM :P).

But as for hardware support, what most consider the defining point of desktop use, it's great. All hardware it does support, it supports basically to full capacity, and the range is good. Right now you'll want standard hardware though, because the NVidia driver is not officially ported (there's an unofficial port I'll have to try) and the xorg one is flaky (but I'm using it now), and there is no NDIS wrapper so standard network cards are your best choice (i.e. nForce networking might not be an option). Fetch a good Realtek and you're set for life. Sound is good, doesn't do software mixing like FreeBSD nor hardware mixing (for most at lesat) like ALSA, but quality is good.

It has good server applications too, not only because it can run on server-centric architectures really well, but more because it is very solid, secure and good at handling load (haven't tried under ultra-high load, but it survived a thrasing from stress(1)). This doesn't affect you since you since you're after desktop, but it's nice to know that it can scale up.

Worth a try, installs quickly, easy to manage and all... not like it'll take a long time or a lot of effort :)

been a while

[Pierre]

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 ;)

A few questions...

[KillerHamster]

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?

FreeBSD on Compaqs

[Black Acid]

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?

FreeBSD 5.0 for Alpha?

[cyberkahn]

"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!!!!!

Re:Future FreeBSD releases

[mtrisk]

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?

Switch?

[czarangelus]

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!

Ever since I fell from "Sun God"

[YetAnotherName]

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.

Slackware junkies should give BSD a try..

[SnowCrashed]

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

Attn: Scott Long: Consider the Jihad

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:thanks for the info

[DashEvil]

The thing to keep in mind is that NetBSD is more conservative than FreeBSD. It really depends on what you want. If you need "bleeding edge" features, stick with the latest FreeBSD release, but don't be afraid to bleed. If I didn't need my nVidia drivers (the official ones -- the version that DOESN'T suck :p) NetBSD would be an option for me on the Desktop.

Definitely worth considering too, it's an extremely solid system that I have a lot of faith in.

NetBSD faster than FreeBSD???

[Phatmanotoo]

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.

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?

Yes

[setagllib]

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.

Re:pity the fools

[Billly Gates]

I want to see some third party benchmarks. No offense but of course the NetBSD mailing lists are going to be biased towards NetBSD.

I am hoping to see Java and SMP perform better with FreeBSD 5.x and I want to see how DragonFly performs.

Re:Doesn't Matter

[dodell]

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!