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FreeBSD 4.X Lives On

Posted by timothy on from the proud-mary-keeps-on-rollin' dept.

An anonymous reader writes "In spite of FreeBSD 5.3 going to "production" status, FreeBSD is still planning at least one more full release of the mature production 4.x series. FreeBSD 4.11 Release Candidate 1 has been announced. The complete 4.11 release schedule is here. This is good news for those who can't or don't want to migrate to FreeBSD 5 yet."

72 comments

  1. Nice.. by L.J.+Hanson · · Score: 0

    Always nice to see another BSD release.

  2. Here comes the "BSD is Dead" comments by jantheman · · Score: 0, Troll

    old troll.

    move along.

    --
    -- Mod me down. I am not a karma tart. ffs,gag
    1. Re:Here comes the "BSD is Dead" comments by jantheman · · Score: 2, Funny

      gak

      just one extra letter & an inadvertant 'enter' will mess this preemptive comment up.

      here come the pedants :/

      --
      -- Mod me down. I am not a karma tart. ffs,gag
  3. Won't affect me much, but... by Just+Some+Guy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Nice work, guys. I admin a few servers that are several hundred miles away from where I live. When I swing by there next time, I'll definitely be upgrading to 5.x. In the mean time, it's nice to know that I'll still have a few new features and bugfixes to keep things reasonably current with a minimum of disruption.

    Thanks for the nice work!

    --
    Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
    1. Re:Won't affect me much, but... by ninjaz · · Score: 1

      If you try this, don't just upgrade and leave.

      There is a nasty bug that caused the server I installed FreeBSD 5.3 on (which ran FreeBSD 4.x for years, and currently runs FreeBSD 4.10 problem-free) take 2-3 hours to reboot under FreeBSD 5.3. The part where it fails is after the system is already offline, so that's 2-3 hours of solid downtime until the OS gets around to figuring out it should continue rebooting.

      I checked the mailing lists, and apparently that was an improvement, as it used to panic on reboots. Anyway, that issue and the FreeBSD 4.x EOL announcement that came through a few days later have me seriously looking at DragonFly, as it will be the one carrying the 4.x torch. According to the docs, it's a simple CVSup and rebuild from FreeBSD 4.x, too. :-)

    2. Re:Won't affect me much, but... by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      I had that problem in 5.2.1, but it was solved in 5.3. Instead of abandoning an OS you've been running for years at the drop of a hat, why not see about getting that bug fixed? Has it been logged? If not, did you log it? Has it already been fixed in -CURRENT?

      If you think DragonFly is going to be God's perfection on Earth, you're nuts.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    3. Re:Won't affect me much, but... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Yep FBSD 5.3 according to various sources is not production grade.

      There are several bugs with hardware and i/o issues. It works beautifully or very badly unlike 4.x

      You may want to read the flame war with some benchmarks stressing the new threading model int he link above?

      Not to sound trollish of course but I have been pretty disapointed in the direction of 5.x. NetBSD might be a better option in my opinion for servers.

      I wonder how the DragonFLY project is going? I am not a kernel expert or qualified to say wheterh 5.x is inferior or supperior. If I bet my job on it I would be very conservative about upgrading from what I hear from other people. Thats all.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
  4. I hope Bluetooth gets backported by DrSkwid · · Score: 1


    Last time I tried I could either have WiFi in 4.x or Bluetooth in 5.x but never the twain.

    --
    There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
  5. Actually... by setagllib · · Score: 0, Troll

    FreeBSD 4.x is dead. If you read the schedule, it's being handed over to the security officer, meaning it will ONLY get security fixes from now on. That's it. And given the dubious quality of FreeBSD 5 it means there will be a slice of time where FreeBSD servers won't know what to do - stay with the dead but solid system, or move to the living but flaky one?

    It's a real shame they decided to use that SMP model for 5.x, else it would be the best x86 OS in the world. It falls short because the locking slows things down and not many drivers are being rewritten yet (but this situation will of course improve), and there are many bugs introduced into existing [especially network] drivers.

    I'd still rather run FreeBSD 5 than Linux for a must-have-reliability server, but not for anything that needed performance. Of course I'd rather still run NetBSD 2 on such a server, but that's tangent.

    /me waits to be called Troll for mentioning 'dead' in a post

    --
    Sam ty sig.
    1. Re:Actually... by adam+mcmaster · · Score: 1

      /me waits to be called Troll for mentioning 'dead' in a post

      Troll :-P (only joking)

      there will be a slice of time where FreeBSD servers won't know what to do - stay with the dead but solid system, or move to the living but flaky one?

      Is there any reason not to "stay with" FreeBSD 4? If it's getting the job done, then security updates are all you really need. If it's not getting the job done, then you should be questioning why you were using it in the first place.

    2. Re:Actually... by setagllib · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's a mind set that 'dead' systems, however well working, will be left behind in performance and other improvements - which is true for FreeBSD 4, at least in a couple of scalability points. FreeBSD 5's network stack is a work of art, but some would argue that it doesn't make up for the system's own lack of performance.

      I'd probably still be running it if it didn't find some way to make my Realtek 8139 unstable... everything else was 'good enough' to run as a gateway, because FreeBSD has brilliant security and a hardcore network stack.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
    3. Re:Actually... by idiotnot · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Man, someone else with the same view I have. The OMGFr33BSD trolls can't see the truth. FreeBSD 5.x is a dog. There's no other way to put it. [GIANT LOCKED]

      My production stuff will remain on FBSD 4 until it gets to the point where a) I need new hardware for those particular machines, or b) I need to run new applications that refuse to work on 4.

      New stuff going in is NetBSD, or Debian where NetBSD doesn't work (like on a machine of mine where 2.0 mysteriously crashes on heavy I/O....it's fine under Linux). When DragonFly finishes their experimentation and pronounces their kernel redesign "done," I will give it a look, too.

      Still, BSD, and all the BSD's need a few things done....

      1. Stable binary updates/packages for the things in the base system without moving to the next minor version number. (e.g. a backport of a binary ssh package when there's a vuln).
      2. Removal from the base system of unnecessary elements. That Perl is not required to rebuild the system in FreeBSD and NetBSD is a good thing. Now, ditch sendmail and bind....especially sendmail. If you absolutely have to include an MTA in the base system, use Exim or Postfix.
      3. Modern filesystem. I do notice a big difference between JFS or XFS and softupdated FFS on the same hardware. Linux's filesystems are much faster than BSD now, and the gap seems to widen every day. FFS2 does nothing to change the way FFS works -- it just allows larger partition sizes. Maybe they can do something with HFS+? Convince IBM, SGI, or Namesys to release one of their FS's under a BSD license?

    4. Re:Actually... by setagllib · · Score: 3, Interesting

      As OpenBSD devs said, sendmail has had a lot more testing and those security holes have been ironed out, so technically it's more 'reliable' than postfix which is much newer. But I agree to just take out MTAs entirely.

      File systems, I wouldn't say FFS is so bad. It's very balanced; its performance is good enough in the real world, it takes very little processor and memory overhead (compared to the journalling file systems...), it survives even during sectors being mangled (ReiserFS dies because it has no superblock backups, and some others too). I wouldn't mind seeing a journalling FS in a BSD (well, there's LFS in NetBSD, which is log-structured and hence even more complete journalling), and in fact dillon has laid the foundations for such a system in DragonFly.

      I think the perfect operating system in the world would be the cleanliness of NetBSD, the security of OpenBSD, the support of Linux, the extensive functionality of FreeBSD 5 (including its devfs, hot damn), the package management system of Gentoo Portage but with less kitschy colouring, and some really cool name nobody has yet thought of. The shortcomings of any given system are small (FreeBSD lacks portability and, in 5, cleanliness; NetBSD lacks corporate support and a responsive scheduler; Linux lacks cleanliness and security and a good network stack; DragonFly lacks support and portability) and would be easy enough to fix just by convincing enough people it's worth doing. Perfect systems are within our reach, but the universe won't let it happen.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
    5. Re:Actually... by idiotnot · · Score: 1

      Haha. Sendmail has the bugs worked out? Mmmmmkay, I'll take their word for it, and keep disabling it in rc.conf before I boot the machine. :-) I tend to use Exim4 with Exiscan on machines that serve Win32 clients (spam and virus scanning), and Qmail on unix-only hosts. And Sendmail is just nasty to deal with. :-D

      LFS looks intriguing, and I think actually OSX uses LFS for its version of UFS. Still, it's not mainline for any of the BSD's. I've used XFS with Linux for awhile now, as well as with Irix, and come to appreciate it. As I said before, I think HFS+ would be an interesting choice if it's license-compatible (I haven't really dug into the APSL to see). It's been a nice stable filesystem on all the Macs I've used, and now supports case-sensitivity and journalling. The only times I've had problems with it were when hardware went bad (nasty IBM Deathstar in a machine at work...argh). It's also a nice, modern design, so it's worlds faster than linear filesystems. B-tree has only been around since 1986, and BSD still hasn't figured it out? :-)

      As for the packagers, I actually like pkgsrc quite a bit, even more than Portage. It seems to have fewer packages than FreeBSD's ports, or Portage, but I've rarely missed something. And there's normally a binary package available, too, which isn't the case with Gentoy^Ho.

    6. Re:Actually... by Korpo · · Score: 1

      devfs is crap, and has edge cases that were not cleared. udev is better for sure. FreeBSD may have many strongpoints, but devfs isn't one of them.

    7. Re:Actually... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FreeBSD 5.x is heading in the wrong direction, its performance on the same hardware is worse than that of the 4.x branch. devfs is a bad implementation of a half-baked idea and AFAIAC it should die. The only thing that makes 5.x remotely interesting is GBDE, Geom Based Disk Encryption. Port that and PDJ's GATED to 4.x or DragonFly BSD and 5.x can die for all I care. PHK, dude, why don't you stop for a bit and think about where you're going? You're a great coder and a cool guy, but threading and SMP the way it's done in 5.x will be the death of you, it's a dead-end road. Please reconsider for the sake of FreeBSD and all of us who've been using FreeBSD since its inception.

    8. Re:Actually... by Nimrangul · · Score: 1
      Just a few minor points: Firstly I agree with the sendmail bending postfix over and add qmail as well.

      Linux doesn't have that great of support, it has some companies with for-fee support, but it doesn't have the support of hardware manufacturers. I'd rather have Windows level of support, you know, where drivers are just there.

      DragonFlyBSD actually has a company called FireFlyBSD that supports DragonFlyBSD commercially (which Matt Dillion is advisor to) and NetBSD has Wasabi.

      I don't really see any major problem with the plain cut OpenBSD ports system really, would be nice I guess to add upgrading old ports.

      Of course, I am just a crackpot that thinks there should be an annual Intersystem Hackathon where there are two seperate areas; the crazed zealots of the systems are in one area where they can fight and drink to the death and only the devs of systems and tools can go into the second area where all the devs can exchange ideas face to face. It's a crazy idea, I know. That's why everything I say needs to be taken with a shaker of salt.

      --
      I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
    9. Re:Actually... by archen · · Score: 1

      As OpenBSD devs said, sendmail has had a lot more testing and those security holes have been ironed out, so technically it's more 'reliable' than postfix which is much newer.

      Well regardless of if it's "more secure" or not, I'd say it really doesn't need to be there, and bind doesn't need to be either. Taking perl out of the base install was a win/win situation for those who didn't want it and for those who do (no more ancient perl version to contend with). FreeBSD still compels you to install Perl, but it won't fall over dead if you don't. Likewise it would be nice to make things like bind,cvs, and sendmail options - which would speed up buildworld save nothing else.

    10. Re:Actually... by Guy+Harris · · Score: 1
      and I think actually OSX uses LFS for its version of UFS

      No, OS X's UFS isn't LFS-based, it's just regular boring old FFS.

    11. Re:Actually... by setagllib · · Score: 1

      BIND and Sendmail definitely, but not CVS, at least not for NetBSD; it's simply the most sensible (and indeed only truly supported) way of fetching the system sources. Its footprint is small enough to make this worth it. Okay, so a binary package would be trivial to fetch, but this is still too much work to be worth it.

      By the same token we could strip anything that less than 50% of the population uses, since the majority benefits. It's not that simple: the minority might just be more important - developers, for instance. The majority might not even notice. How many people cry themselves to sleep every night because gdb is in the base system, but even many DEVELOPERS don't use it? I'd rather take that out than cvs - it's easily 10x larger and .1x as used/useful.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
    12. Re:Actually... by archen · · Score: 1

      Well I think you miss my point. By moving things to ports you really lose nothing, but gain flexibility. If CVS is that important (and I'm not saying it's not) then make it a port that is always installed. If you don't like it, just remove it later. The only reason I use CVS at all is to fetch the sources, and that is only on my ports building server, all other servers retrieve the ports tree through rsync. By contrast I use RCS all the time, but why in the hell is that a part of the base system? I've used Linux for quite some time, and one of the things I grew to like about BSD was the division of system and software. But they more I thought about it the more I came to realize that there is just a lot of "stuff" that is considered part of they system for no other reason than "it's always been there". I think it's time the BSDs start taking a look at becomming a bit more modular and auditing their needs vs what doesn't really need to be there.

    13. Re:Actually... by jaseuk · · Score: 1

      >Linux doesn't have that great of support, it has some companies with for-fee support, but it doesn't have the support of hardware manufacturers. I'd rather have Windows level of support, you know, where drivers are just there.

      Rubbish. Linux & BSDs offer true plug and play, for the most part if a piece of hardware is supported its auto-detected during boot with no driver required.

      An interesting case in point is Knoppix and Thinstation both of these distributions auto-detect really well and Thinstation is amazing for a 13MB network boot image.

      The BSDs in a roundabout way often support more hardware off the install disk due to far frequent releases (3 to 6 months or so).

      If I bought a new PC today I'd have to wait for the _next_ release of windows for all my hardware to be supported out of the box. With FreeBSD I'd be waiting 2-3 months and in all likelyhood it would be supported by the previous release anyway.

      Support for multi-media gizmos is of course excluded and I'm referring to server class hardware.

      Jason.

    14. Re:Actually... by Nimrangul · · Score: 1
      No, the open source people have to make the damned drivers themselves. Companies often make drivers and give them to Microsoft to have in the system. They don't do that for Linux operating systems or BSDs, they only give the drivers straight up to Microsoft.

      It's not like it's overly difficult to give a driver to more than one system, the makers just don't care about the other systems.

      --
      I'm sick of following my dreams - I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.
    15. Re:Actually... by andreyw · · Score: 1

      Active dislike of Sendmail for security reasons, AND a user of QMail?

      D. J. Bernstein, is that you? :-)
      http://cr.yp.to/

    16. Re:Actually... by setagllib · · Score: 1

      Okay, I got modded Troll for explaining the release cycle and the current problems in 5.x. You have got to be kidding me. Are the mods here that short-sighted?

      Fsck it, SLASHDOT IS DEAD.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
    17. Re:Actually... by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Yes

      I got modded too tellign the truth about optimizing software for the Itanium or pointing out any weakness under Linux or Unix.

      This is slashdot and my guess is a BSD elitest modded you down since this kind of story would attract them.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
    18. Re:Actually... by puzzled · · Score: 1



      I've got twenty or so FBSD boxes on the net at various locations. The one 5.3 box I have requires more attention than all the rest of the 4.9/4.10 systems out there. I love FreeBSD but I pronounce 5.x 'NOT DONE'.

      --
      I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
  6. the NewsForge / Jem Report Analysis by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Since the introduction of the FreeBSD-5 branch, FreeBSD enthusiasts have been eagerly awaiting the day when the new codebase would stabilize. After much development and four previous releases, FreeBSD-5 has finally gone stable with version 5.3. But don't mistake a stable codebase with stable software. While the development team will no longer accept major changes to the base system, FreeBSD 5.3 still has bugs and problems.

    FreeBSD is a complete Unix-like operating system entirely developed by a single large team of programmers. This is in stark contrast to GNU/Linux which, as a complete operating system, has no central, cohesive developer base and is packaged in myriad different ways by myriad different distribution projects and companies; and proprietary Unixes, which are closed-source, restrictively licensed, and work on a comparatively small number of usually proprietary hardware architectures. FreeBSD has historically been clean, fast, reliable, and scalable. It's easy to use, learn, set up, and navigate from the command line, has more than 10,000 software programs in the Ports system, runs on a wide variety of hardware, and can easily be used for either a desktop or a server.

    The transition to 5.x

    Until the release of 5.3, the most recent "production release" was the FreeBSD-4 series, which is presently at version 4.10 and has been deemed the "Legacy" release in the wake of the 5.x branch going to STABLE. FreeBSD-5 was supposed to be a grand introduction of new technology -- a revolutionary improvement to the tried and true 4.x branch -- but soon after it left the gate, it got caught up in developer politics and failed implementations of too-ambitious theories among other questionable design decisions, causing some developers to fork the FreeBSD-4 project into a separate and more focused operating system.

    The ULE (which is not an acronym; its full name is SCHED_ULE as opposed to the older SCHED_4BSD) scheduler continues to have stability and performance problems and was totally disabled instead of being made the default process scheduler in 5.3 as planned. The mix of threading subsystems still yields problems with efficiency and stability. Also, the networking subsystem may now be multithreaded and therefore faster on SMP systems, but users with some implementations of the 3Com (SysKonnect/Yukon) gigabit LAN chip are now unable to access their network at all because of new bugs that have popped up in the driver; other SysKonnect/Yukon users have problems under heavy network traffic, along with those using Intel Pro/1000 chips. Unfortunately all of our test systems use these network chips for onboard LAN; coincidentally they are two of the most popular gigabit LAN chipsets used on modern motherboards from major manufacturers. We also experienced lockups during boot if a custom-compiled kernel did not have SMP enabled on a Hyper-Threaded computer. A list of these and other errata can be found here.

    Considering the long list of significant problems in FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE, it would seem irrational to recommend that anyone switch a production server from 4.x or any previous known-working 5.x release to 5.3. Just the same, the FreeBSD project maintains a migration guide for this purpose.

    A lost lead

    FreeBSD 5.x enjoyed an excellent head start in the fully 64-bit AMD64 operating system arena, but now trails

  7. Lives on? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, eat it, Netcraft!

  8. Niche, which isn't a bad thing by BossMC · · Score: 1

    FreeBSD 4.X still has value, albeit less than it did when it was the flagship branch. When I read the TODO list for this the other night, I saw that the tables only contained the titles. 4.11 seems like it will be good for people who want to setup a low-end do-whatever server with current packages and base system apps, while 5.X will handle everything else. My pentium 200 will be upgraded to 4.11 once it gets recommissioned.

    It's good to see that this release is coming to be, and that support for FreeBSD 4 will live for a while longer also. This way, the hardware will die before the software on it does.

    1. Re:Niche, which isn't a bad thing by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      I bought a cheapish laptop from eBay recently to do some GNUstep work on (i.e. making sure code I've developed on the Mac works cleanly on GNUstep, and tidying up the bits that don't), and put 5.3 on it. So far, I've been very impressed. I tried some of the earlier 5.x releases, but the rough edges sent me back to 4.x quite quickly. On the other hand, I will probably keep 4.x on my server for the foreseeable future - it works (and works well), and migrating from 4.x -> 4.(x+1) is a lot easier than migrating to the 5.x series.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  9. Procrastination by kirkjobsluder · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously, I'm really holding off on the jump to the 5.X series. It looks like the best migration route from 4.X to 5.X is backup-reformat-reinstall-restore. My system currently does just about everything I need (I've given up on wine as not worth the effort) and I just know that I'll miss some configuration file that took me about 6 hours to tweak into working.

    1. Re:Procrastination by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      I have to agree with you there. I recently retired my 4.1->4.9-STABLE server (yeah, it was that old) and rebuilt a new box. I tried 5.2.1, but still had lots of strange problems, system hanging, interfaces suddenly dying for no reason, etc... So back to 4-STABLE I went, my good old faithful friend...

    2. Re:Procrastination by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      Just like the 2.x to 3.x jump, and the 3.x to 4.x jump, you're going to have to do an initial install moving from 4.x to 5.x. Were you expecting any different?

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    3. Re:Procrastination by ffsnjb · · Score: 1

      3.x to 4.x wasn't too bad. mrnutty (my web box) has been running the same initial install since 3.4 and tracking stable with rebuilds for every SA and point release. (IIRC. 4.0 came out what, 4 years ago? I'm too lazy to check my changelog.)

      It saddens me that I'm going to have to do a fresh install for 5.x due to the need to increase the size of / (originally 30 MB on a 4 gig disk). I've tried a 5.3-RELEASE install with the same slice sizes, it was not happy. It does give me a reason to upgrade the drives, though.

      --
      "Why do you consent to live in ignorance and fear?" - Bad Religion
    4. Re:Procrastination by someonehasmyname · · Score: 1

      I've upgraded about 6 (production) machines from 4.10 -> 5.2.x and 5.3... Just follow the instructions near the bottom of /usr/src/UPDATING, and make sure to read the footnotes for each step.

      I've had no problems with the upgrade procedure. I did however have problems with one of the machines (5.2) crashing when it ran daily and weekly periodics.

      I had to remove the execute bit on two scripts, iirc.

      It can be done, just read the docs and perform a backup just in case.

      --
      Common sense is not so common.
    5. Re:Procrastination by setagllib · · Score: 1

      5.3-STABLE [sic] still has the interface death problem, at least it did for me. I would have kept it if not for that, despite the sluggishness it still had the composure and usability of a FreeBSD system. The other BSDs could learn from it, but then it might interfere with their designs of pure simplicity. Probably DragonFly will win there.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
  10. This is not a troll by setagllib · · Score: 1

    It just looks like one because it's big, copied-and-pasted, and has some 'buts' in it.

    It's mostly true. Some things are a bit pessimal (I personally HAVE booted a non-SMP kernel on a hyperthreading machine) but everything about AMD64, network cards, and dubious quality is true. If FreeBSD 5 manages to clean up and escape from the tangled web of crap it's in, it will be great, but so far 5.3-STABLE hasn't made as much progress as you would expect from the long time it's been out. A similar thing is STILL happening in Linux 2.6 on 'less popular' architectures (SGI MIPS...) where it won't even boot, but this is normal for a system with its ideals - for a BSD it's virtually inexcusable to ship a release with many known showstoppers.

    --
    Sam ty sig.
    1. Re:This is not a troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah it is normal because arch maintainers sometimes can't / don't want to keep up with the rapid speed of development on newer kernels.

      It is not a showstopper. If it was, then we'd be still stuck at 2.4.

      But Linux has many many more architectures to worry about than FreeBSD, so this is an apples to oranges comparison. FreeBSD's "tier-1" architectures amount to i386, sparc64, amd64 (although sparc64 and amd64 are both of dubious quality in 5.3).

    2. Re:This is not a troll by setagllib · · Score: 1

      All true, but a showstopper for any sufficiently frequent hardware configuration (in the case of Linux 2.6 on any Indy/Indigo/etc, EVERY instance of a certain machine class) is still a showstopper. Even so, the chances made to 2.6 should NOT have been so hackish as to break existing simple functionality so severely; NetBSD 2 had changes just as large made to its kernel, but runs on all the same machines it did before, in fact more. FreeBSD seems to be breaking its ports if they weren't already broken, so besides x86 it's essentially useless - and its use is mostly on x86 anyway where its NDIS wrapper and nvidia drivers are useful (AFAIK there is no x86_64 nvidia driver for FreeBSD, but I haven't actually looked either). For any other arch, NetBSD and Linux (and often OpenBSD) beat it hands down in every aspect that really matters.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
    3. Re:This is not a troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All true, but a showstopper for any sufficiently frequent hardware configuration (in the case of Linux 2.6 on any Indy/Indigo/etc, EVERY instance of a certain machine class) is still a showstopper. Even so, the chances made to 2.6 should NOT have been so hackish as to break existing simple functionality so severely

      The difference between Linux and NetBSD is that Linux is not so nostalgic about old architectuers (or in less need of bragging rights). I mean there has been a Linux port to VAX around for ever, but do you see it included in the tree? No. Would its only use be for bragging rights and slowing down real development? Yes.

      If you've got a 10 year old MIPS box that doesn't work with 2.6, use 2.4, it is still actively maintained, and chances are you don't really need anything that is in 2.6.

      Linux 2.6 is pretty careful not to break the more actively maintained architectures i386, x86_64, ia64, ppc64, s390, arm, parisc, sh64, m32r and more.

      I'd say even your MIPS architecture would be pretty well up to date on today's relevant embedded platforms too.

    4. Re:This is not a troll by setagllib · · Score: 1

      See, that's the kind of thinking that leads to cruft and redundancy. NetBSD is so clean BECAUSE it cares about every port; when you run a new design or algorithm on a machine that takes a few days to start vi, you notice if there's a big real-world performance difference. If there is a bug on a driver that only surfaces when run on a certain architecture or bus, you notice and fix it. Linux has lots of redundant drivers and hacks, its portability is limited to pretending everything is x86. There are too many hacks and exceptions to keep it clean.

      In 2.6, there was an effort to clean things up, and this meant the hacks were broken. But they were not replaced with solutions. NetBSD is about solutions. It's portable in the true sense of the word, not just in that it runs on 'relevant' architectures. Porting to ppc64, and so on, would be done quickly if the hardware was available; and rumor has it this will soon be the case. Just watch.

      The one thing that worries me about NetBSD is that 3.0 is planned to have Solaris-like SMP, which is what killed FreeBSD 5. Now, NetBSD 2 got Scheduler Activations right where Solaris failed, and it might somehow fluke and get the SMP right too; but in all seriousness an LWKT implementation would be much simpler and, if DFly is any example, much better. All we can do is sit back and watch.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
    5. Re:This is not a troll by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      See, that's the kind of thinking that leads to cruft and redundancy. NetBSD is so clean BECAUSE it cares about every port; when you run a new design or algorithm on a machine that takes a few days to start vi, you notice if there's a big real-world performance difference.

      Heh. Seriously, Linux is just as focused on performance as NetBSD, and it is obviously better to do performance profiling on fast, modern machines, because of their different performance characteristics.

      So to turn your 'vi' example on its head, if you lose 10% performance due to some kernel algorithm, when running on a supercomputer at NASA, this is like losing 100 CPUs.

      If there is a bug on a driver that only surfaces when run on a certain architecture or bus, you notice and fix it.

      Running Linux on POWER4 and POWER5 actually showed up problems because of their insanely aggressive out of order write retirement and read prefetching. There can be windows of thousands of instructions where a read bypasses a write, for example.

      The massive parallelism of the 512 CPU Altix systems also showed up synchronisation bugs, and of course scalability inefficiency.

      Linux has lots of redundant drivers and hacks, its portability is limited to pretending everything is x86. There are too many hacks and exceptions to keep it clean.

      Please elaborate - none of the core code anywhere is i386 specific. How is NetBSD any better?

      And If limited portability includes being more portable that NetBSD (more CPU architectures, non MMU based architectures, etc)...

      In 2.6, there was an effort to clean things up, and this meant the hacks were broken. But they were not replaced with solutions. NetBSD is about solutions. It's portable in the true sense of the word, not just in that it runs on 'relevant' architectures.

      In 2.6, some platforms may be lagging behind. It is not because there is unportable or unclean hacks put into the code, but simply that they didn't get updated when things change.

      I'm not sure what you mean by solutions, and 'portable in the true sense of the word'. Can you explain?

      Porting to ppc64, and so on, would be done quickly if the hardware was available; and rumor has it this will soon be the case. Just watch.

      I find that very hard to believe. The string "G4 mac" on ebay yielded a 400MHz G4 with 256MB RAM for $40 AU.

      Hey they probably wouldn't even need to pay for it, if they just asked I'm sure someone would donate one for them, or buy them a couple.

      Compared with the trouble of keeping an ancient VAX working (and having to actually use one for anything), a G4 would be no problem.

      The one thing that worries me about NetBSD is that 3.0 is planned to have Solaris-like SMP, which is what killed FreeBSD 5. Now, NetBSD 2 got Scheduler Activations right where Solaris failed,

      Well, I haven't seen any numbers coming out of the NetBSD camp yet... but I'll believe it when I see it.

      and it might somehow fluke and get the SMP right too; but in all seriousness an LWKT implementation would be much simpler and, if DFly is any example, much better. All we can do is sit back and watch.

      I don't think DFBSD has proven itself at all. A lot of it _sounds_ good, but so did microkernels.

      Not to say that DFBSD will go the way of microkernels, but if I were an established project looking for a low-risk SMP route, and my choices were Solaris model or DFBSD model.... well...

    6. Re:This is not a troll by setagllib · · Score: 1

      http://www.feyrer.de/NetBSD/portability/portabilit y.html

      I can't really say much for/against the rest of it, without quoting lots of sources even on Slash itself... poke around.

      A clean design doesn't have to lag behind. How long has Linux 2.6 been out? Over a year. They still haven't made respectable progress in bringing these 'lagging ports' up to date, even though the source itself can be worked over in one sitting by someone who knows what to do. Either they don't care or, as I suggested, their hack designs aren't possible any more, and it would require actually thinking about a design before writing it down.

      My favorite example of Linux designs sucking is epoll compared to kqueue. I could go on for hours, but just read their manual pages and try to implement a server using both (have it respond to write, read and disconnection events for each client socket). You'll work it out very quickly.

      --
      Sam ty sig.
  11. Re:*BSD is dying by setagllib · · Score: 1, Troll

    It is now official. setagllib confirms: You're a tool

    One more crippling foot kicked your dumb ass because you never learned to shut up around people stronger than you. Coming on the heels of a recent peer survey which plainly states that you are going blind from beating off to your mother too much, this news serves to reinforce what we've known along.

    You don't have to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict your middle mouse button's future. The printoff is on the wall: Your button is worn out from too much damn copying and pasting. As many of us are already aware, you're an assbandit without even as many testicles as required to post with a name or with any original content.

    Fact: Slash needs a regexp-based troll filter with automated banning

    --
    Sam ty sig.
  12. A sensible reply to this troll article: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    .. is here.

  13. If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Viol8 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There used to be a shop where you could actually buy FreeBSD. Now thats closed down there is no where to get it. I won't order over the net after once my card got duped and another time when something never showed up and I spent days arguing the toss with the supplier, and I can't download it as I have a 56K modem and no burner anyway. So basically even though I would like to get hold of a new version I'm screwed. I can't see why they can't increase their distribution channels somewhat...

    1. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by geminidomino · · Score: 1

      Contact me off-list (my email is available at my URL above) and let me know your address and what version you want. I'll burn it and send it to you gratis.

    2. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Viol8 · · Score: 1

      Thanks for the offer, much appreciated, but I'm a bit reluctant to give out my address to complete strangers. I hope you understand, no offence.

    3. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by SirGeek · · Score: 1

      You don't have a CompuUSA, Fry's or Best Buy nearby ? I've actually seen them there ( granted its usually a version or so behind ).

      --
      UPS Sucks
    4. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by TilJ · · Score: 1

      Has it occurred to you that the reason you're having a hard time getting a copy of FreeBSD is that you're making it hard for yourself?

      Won't use a credit card, won't accept a free offer to send you a copy, don't appear to have any local friends with a burner and a high-speed connection. Ye gods, man, what do you want -- a blind-folded magic privacy fairy to drop it off with a five dollar sign taped to it for your trouble?

      I suggest looking at buying a copy of a FreeBSD book that includes a CD at a local bookstore. Pay cash and wear a disguise. That way they'll never get your address. "freebsd book cd" picks up a couple of likely hits on google.

      --
      "The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
    5. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      there are ways to order it without the credit card
      http://www.bsdmall.com/info.html

    6. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Viol8 · · Score: 1

      "I suggest looking at buying a copy of a FreeBSD book that includes a CD at a local bookstore. Pay cash and wear a disguise. That way they'll never get your address. "freebsd book cd" picks up a couple of likely hits on google."

      The books are all out of date. I want a current release , not one from 12 months or more back. Plus you only ever get the base OS with the books, not all the extra stuff. Yes I'm making it hard for myself , but with good reason.

    7. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Viol8 · · Score: 1

      No unfortunately. I don't live in the USA.

    8. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by 0racle · · Score: 1

      only ever get the base OS
      You should get the complete CD disk 1 that you would from anywhere, CD 2 is a live CD so thats not as important.

      out of date
      Its called ports, and CVSup

      Yes I'm making it hard for myself , but with good reason
      Not unless your on the run from the law, in which case I don't think too many people would be quick to help you at all.

      --
      "I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
    9. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by welsh+git · · Score: 1

      > and I can't download it as I have a 56K modem and no burner anyway.

      I downloaded 5.1 when I was on a 56K modem - hardly major, and then cvsupped to 5.2, 5.2.1, and 5.3 all via modem, keeping all 900odd ports uptodate too.

      --
      Sig out of date
    10. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by TilJ · · Score: 1

      Who cares if it's out of date?

      I mean, really, you've already said you don't have the bandwidth to download it in the first place. It follows, then, that you don't have the bandwidth to track -stable or -current and keep properly up to date either.

      That's how FreeBSD works: you CVSup the current source of the operating system itself as well as the ports tree. While individual changes are small, there's a *lot* of "churn" in (for the example) the ports tree. If you're concerned about staying up to date, you won't be happy with the binary packages on the CD, you'll want to use the ports tree to download the current version of an application and compile it yourself.

      For things like QT and KDE and Mozilla, you've looking at tens to hundreds of megabytes of data. Every time there's a minor version bump.

      So that's obviously not feasible for you. I don't think you have a choice: you're going to be out of date. And if you're going to be out of date, why care if it's 6 months or 12 months?

      --
      "The purpose of argument is to change the nature of truth." -- Bene Gesserit Precept
    11. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      I saw 5.2.1 at Fry's last weekend. Quite current, considering my newness of 5.3.

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    12. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by archen · · Score: 1

      I was going to post the same thing but I've had no problems with BSD Mall. I typically forward the cost of one purchase for each customer I install a FreeBSD server onsite.

      That aside, they had some sort of cool looking new covers for their media - one was a chess knight and one was a firehydrant (have no clue what that represents), but now it looks like it's changed back to the more boring white cover with the daemon. Anyone know what that's about?

    13. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It won't hurt I promise, I'll use butter.

    14. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by MarcQuadra · · Score: 1

      And on the seventh day, he rested; after he disconnected.

      --
      "Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
    15. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      wget and wait a weekend. And stop whining.

    16. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Viol8 · · Score: 1

      You try and cvsup a 12 month old dist. on a dial up line.

    17. Re:If only BSD was easier to get hold of by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1
      CompUSA sells the booked set with the new handbook or www.cheapbytes.com and order it.

      --
      http://saveie6.com/
  14. Same old FUD, by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that has been disproved countless times...

  15. Another option by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you trust Amazon.com with your CC info, do a search in books for FreeBSD. Many of those come with CDs.

  16. DragonFlyBSD by chrysalis · · Score: 1

    I really don't see any reason to stick with FreeBSD, especially FreeBSD 4, instead of switching to DragonFlyBSD.

    --
    {{.sig}}