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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."
This is a completely irrelevant milestone. DragonflyBSD is quite close to being production ready, and is already competing against FreeBSD in terms of stability and maintainability.
In five years, either FreeBSD will have adopted DragonflyBSD's model, or nobody will be using FreeBSD.
...we have just learned that it is dead-born.
I've been concerned lately with the freebsd release cycle...fbsd has been working on a stable 5 relase for over 2 years now. I was **really** glad to see the following mail from Scott Long, an freebsd core developer, regarding a new release engineering cycle for FBSD 6 and beyond. Check it out:
All,
FreeBSD 5.3 is about to be announced this weekend and will signal the
true kick-off of the 5-STABLE and 6-CURRENT series. We are very excited
about this, both because 5.3 is a good release, and because 6.0 will
give us a chance to, erm, redeem ourselves and our development process
=-)
5.x was a tremendous undertaking. SMPng, KSE, UFS2, background fsck,
ULE, ACPI, etc, etc, etc were all incredible tasks. Given that many of
these things were developed and managed by unpaid volunteers, the fact
that we made it to 5-STABLE at all is quite impressive and says a lot
about the quality and determination of all of our developers and users.
However, 4 years was quite a long time to work on it. While 4.x
remained a good work-horse, it suffered from not having needed features
and hardware support. 5.x suffered at the same time from having too
much ambition but not enough developers to efficiently carry it through.
By the middle of 2002 is was very apparent that we needed to start
focusing on getting 5.0 released. Unfortunately, we fell into the trap
of wanting to finish more features in order to feel good about 5.x. We
kept on ignoring the fact that 5.x already had a lot of good and needed
features, and that the number one goal needed to be to get it stabilized
and turned into 5-STABLE. Instead we drew up a road map document that
dictated releases based on features rather than on stability and, even
more importantly, timeliness.
It is also important to consider the injustices of slashdot's editors. This topic
can be researched more on anti-slash
There has been quite a bit of discussion about this over the past week
by the developer community. The proposal that I and Poul-Henning have
set forth is to stop gating releases, both major and minor, or features,
and instead gate them on a schedule that is both reasonable and timely.
New -STABLE branched will be made on a calendar-based time line, and
point releases on those branches will be made at regular intervals. We
are still debating the exact time line, but it will fall somewhere
between doing a new -STABLE branch every 12-18 months, and doing point
releases every 4-6 months.
While as engineers we all tend to hate timelines, this does have a lot
of positive aspects. First, it increases the predictability of the
development both for our users and for our developers. Users can plan
effectively for upgrades and testing/validation knowing that there will
be major and minor releases at fixed times of the year. Developers can
judge when to start new projects and when to focus on bug-fixing because
there will no longer be the temptation to delay a release by a month in
order to slide 'one more thing' in. This is not unlike most commercial
OS vendors, and we've received a _LOT_ of feedback that this method of
planning is desperately needed.
Second, it means that development efforts for major features will
continue to shift out of CVS and into Perforce. This already happens
quite a bit, so it's not as radical of a change as it seems. CVS HEAD
will remain the 'experimental' development branch, but large items will
not be brought into it until they are functionally complete and
integrated. HEAD may still get unstable from time to time, but it
hopefully won't turn into the collision of lots of half-done
experimental things like it has in the recent past. It also means that
if a major feature isn't done in time for a -STABLE branch-point that it
can continue to be developed outside of the CVS tree and be made ready
for the next scheduled branch po
English is an excellent language if you understand grammar and know the different between the word that refers to something that belongs to you ("your") and the contraction of "you are" ("you're"). Just look at the plethora of literature written in the past 300 years, which is pretty convincing. I say kudos to English and its proper use, and I hope Matt will be trying it. ~troll
That BSD is dying and Linux is truly the modern progressive OS..
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.
OSX is NOT FreeBSD. In fact it's not even UNIX.
"BitTorrent is an _excellent_ tool"
:)
Yeah but give me good ol ftp any day
1) Why did the BSD user cross the road? He wanted to make sure that truck really did run him over.
2) Why did the BSD user attend a LUG meeting? He got sick of the cold nights meeting up at the local cemetery.
3) What did one BSD user say to another BSD user? Nothing, the undead can't speak.
4) How many BSD users does it take to change a light bulb? It doesn't really matter because the first user will convince the rest of them that the old bulb is still working.
7. ???
8. Muh dick!!
BSD IS dying, take a look at Netcraft.
Why?
1. I can't/don't want to pay out the nose for a pretty plastic box.
2. Most Apple users are as obnoxious as the following:
a. Vegans
b. Vegetarians
c. Libertarians
d. People who choose not to own televisions, and want to make sure you know that they don't
e. Any combination of the above.
3. I am better than you.
Scott, why is it that you never never manage to make a decent release? Murray was a much better releng engineer than you've been. And, since you seem to like motorbikes as well : FUCK YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!
--
HawkinsOS, kicking Smorgrav in the ass since 2004.