FreeBSD 5.4 Released

FreeBSD 5.4 is out. Reader KFW excerpts from the announcement: "The Release Engineering Team is happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.4-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD Stable development branch. Since FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE in November 2004 we have made many improvements in functionality, stability, performance, and device driver support for some hardware, as well as dealt with known security issues and made many bugfixes." Here are the release notes.

Comments

how...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok...So how much is FreeBSD 5.4 going to cost me?

congrats

[moz25]

Congrats to the freebsd team.

I have one (uneducated) question though: they mention a number of security fixes. How long does it generally take for a fix/patch to come out on freebsd compared to linux (or the other bsd variants)? I'm considering experimenting with it, but the relative comfort of packaging systems I'm familiar with makes it sort of hard.

Re:congrats

[Anonymous Coward]

Generally the mailing list comes out with patches much quicker than other flavors of *nix. 24 hour turn around times with patches is not uncommon for FreeBSD (They pride themselves with security)

Re:congrats

[jwthompson2]

As fast as they are fixed, which in reality ends up being comparable to Linux, just listen on the appropriate mailing lists and follow the step-by step instructions. There are also some automated utilities in the ports collection that ease security updates. The BSD ports system will take care of most of your packaging concerns as well since it is an actively updated collection, although most require compilation from source there is the binary alternative, package, which should be easy enough for most RPM folk I would imagine.

Check out this link regarding packages and ports.

Re:congrats

[cperciva]

24 hour turn around times with patches is not uncommon for FreeBSD

In all honesty... 24 hours is very unusual for us. I can think of one case where it happened recently, but that was when we rushed an advisory out in order to fit into the 5.4 release schedule.

A more typical time is 3 days, since we want to test carefully to make certain that a "security fix" never ends up breaking something else.

Remember, cvsup is your friend!

[nubbie]

Using CVSup and then Rebuilding "world"

The end is near.

[Eric(b0mb)Dennis]

Sarge was frozen.

FreeBSD has risen from the grave.

It's hailing here in northern California in may.

The end is near, put on your glasses and anti-radiation suits boys, we're in for a ride.

Torrents are your friends:

[rkrabath]

##### Disk One #####

##### Disk Two #####

Of course, in their infinate wisdom, the coders of slashdot have decided to make my life difficult with their damn lameness filters

Re:Torrents are your friends:

[acidos]

If you buy a set from BSD Mall they now come with both 2 CDs and a DVD that has all sorts of extra packages on it, for the same price that just the 2 CDs would cost you in the past.

Re:Sorry guys

[Anonymous Coward]

*sarcasm detector explodes*

Bloody Thieves!!!

[The Ancients]

Software is released that someone has obviously put a lot of time and effort into, and within five minutes of the story on /. someone's posted torrent links.

What is it with you people???

You make me sick.

Free BSD

[a3217055]

Congrats Well awaited, will install and give it a try. Sorry not top of the line hardware... But then what about Debian, Debian is like dreamer in high school. J/K But BSD is well welcomed, I run BSD on my laptop but after some stand offs it is one of the most nicest systems I have used. But I always ask this to the Linux guys at my compnay ( ps I also run linux ) why did linux get the market it has now and not BSD ? Even thought BSD has a lot of cooler things . . . PS Apple OSX is not BSD, it is a lot like your lil'sister who gets involved with the wrong type of guy in the adult industry.

Re:Free BSD

[dmaxwell]

But I always ask this to the Linux guys at my compnay ( ps I also run linux ) why did linux get the market it has now and not BSD ?

Just plain marketing for one. *BSD can and probably is better by any number of measures. "Better" doesn't always equate to "sexier".

The other reason is that GPL can be more business friendly than the BSD license. The trick here is that the GPL is picky about which businesses it is friends with. For strategic reasons, a company like IBM can open something up but place the contribution under the GPL. It is perfectly free from an end user point of view but will require re-implementation on the part of a competitor who wishes to use knowledge from the code in question. This takes nothing away from scenarios where the BSD license is more "business friendly". Personally, I find the "moral" arguments around all of this induce finger drumming. If the choices were BSD or nothing or GPL or nothing then I expect we'd see much less funding of interesting projects by business.

Re:good stuff

[dabigpaybackski]

I've thought the same thing on more than one occasion, but the time for MS to have made that decision was years ago, before they spent all that money on anti-Unix advertising.

It would be hard for them to talk their way out of the rhetorical position they're in, where (it is claimed) Unix is inferior/dead/too expensive.

It's too bad, because I think they would be in a stronger position had they gone the Apple route. Can you imagine how different things would be if they had released a Unix-based OS a couple of years ago? Unthinkable.

5.4 Dedication

[Anonymous Coward]

The FreeBSD 5.4 Release is dedicated to the memory of Cameron Grant. Cameron was an active FreeBSD Developer and principal architect of the sound driver subsystem despite his physical handicap. His is a superb example of human spirit dominating over adversity. Cameron was an inspiration to those who met him; he will be fondly remembered and sorely missed.

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/announce.html