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FreeBSD 5.4 Review
gammelgul writes "Jem Matzan has written a review of the new FreeBSD 5.4 release on NewsForge. He writes about enhancements and the 64bit edition of the OS."
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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.
l
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.4R/announce.htm
This is a rather shallow review and has been discussed over at OSNews. Just read the comments and you'll finde you don't need to read the actual review.
Someone mentioned a better review here. Enjoy!
Parent, Dragonfly is pretty unusable in its current state.
Most of the entries in ports are broken and the team even insist it is only for development use.
If it can sustain its initial growth it could be a BSD contender in some time. But not just yet!
Here is the formula for the review of incemental updates to Unix-alike OSes.
1) Describe the OS, being sure to mention its Unix origins. If the OS is not Linux-based, mention Linux.
2) Comment on the weird piece of hardware by brand name in your box that made it crash
3) List the new and improved features in the kernel and the daemons. (Note: security patches are feautures too)
4) Base everything else on how easy it was to install.
Why not fork?
..what about the rest of the Holograms?
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
the box couldn't run Apache 2.0 (worker MPM) compiled with libpthread for a single day without a panic!
at some point apache child starts boimbarding kernel with syscalls (500k syscalls/second), soon, if left unattended, the box panics.
had to get back to i386 for stability.
this is all on common hardware - Intel (EM64T) Xeons, Pro/1000 (em) network. and mind you, we still use SCHED_4BSD.
conclusion? 5.x is by NO means -STABLE on amd64 yet.
One employee lost a whole project due to the OS corrupting the filesystem. ... A few days later I was looking for another job
So you were fired because you hadn't been making backups, right?
That might be funny, but only if it were true: amd64 support isn't new in 5.4.
This is sad. I too remember fondly the 4.x days. FreeBSD hasn't made the transition to these "enterprise" features like the ULE scheduler, and getting out from under the "big lock" SMP.
The 4.x series is still alive and well, but the writing is on the wall. If the FreeBSD 5.x series doesn't start fixing some of those show-stoppers, it risks becoming irrelevant.
NetBSD and OpenBSD seem to have found their niche to a certain extent. I suspect that some network equipment vendor like HP will start putting OpenBSD in switches and routers. It seems like Cisco and IOS have the most to lose from OpenBSD gaining ground.
NetBSD seems to chug away at its own pace making solid incremental gains. They tend toward evolutionary rather than revolutionary changes. When they do make more revolutionary changes, they tend to include them in small numbers, and only after a long period of vetting in the current branch.
The laundry list of improvements to FreeBSD 5.x makes me wonder if that project didn't bite off more than it could chew. That the BSD faithful are starting to raise questions about the long road to stability with FreeBSD 5.x should be a warning to other Open Source projects to stick to regular release cycles with clearly defined and narrowly scoped improvements.
I suspect that FreeBSD development may have slowed somewhat due to the "fun factor" waning. Announcing Big Gigantic Changes can be good to generate enthusiasm in a user base, but it can be oppressive to the poor developers caught doing the work. Lots of small, discrete tasks can be fun for experienced developers, and a good way to snag novices.
Despite these problems, FreeBSD has very recently been a very vibrant project. They have traditionally had a level of coordination rarely seen in any other Open Source project. I think this can work, but FreeBSD 5.x may fall into the "lessons learned" category.
Or, as I mention in my blog, Darwin may see a surge in popularity following Apple's Intel announcement.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
Real advice here: don't be a ding-dong and use a test-grade OS for a production-grade job. FreeBSD 4.x is production grade, and it has served me well for YEARS of uptime, no matter the tinkering I do to it.
Here's what you need to do:
options COMPAT_43 # Compatible with BSD 4.3 [KEEP THIS!]
options COMPAT_IA32 # Compatible with i386 binaries
options COMPAT_FREEBSD4 # Compatible with FreeBSD4
options COMPAT_LINUX32 # Compatible with i386 linux binaries
# Linux 32-bit ABI support
options LINPROCFS # Cannot be a module yet.
linprocfs
to
May this post be indexed by spiders, and archived for all to see as my Internet epitaph.
Does anyone who actually has a service provider/network engineering job even care about these fbsd is dead/dying lines of thought anymore? FreeBSD has been quietly running a good chunk of the net for years. If your idea of a solid OS is something to run whatever the latest eye-candy is on your desktop then good for you, go compile Gentoo until you turn blue. For me, and a lot of folks like me, if I can run a web server that never fails, a DNS farm that never fails, mail servers that never fail, etc, etc then I could care less if my iPod doesn't automount or whatever other new technology isn't supported.
Everyone pleae stop reading reviews done by this guy. They're uninformative, biased, and it's blatently obvious he's unwilling to actually learn FreeBSD beyond installing it two or three times each new release and writing a review catering to the already pre-established opinions of Linux users.
scott
"It looks like FreeBSD just tries to follow Linux, ie. make something that tries to do a bit everything without any focus."
...
/usr/ports/sysutils/aaccli
/usr/ports/sysutils/asr-utils
FreeBSD is older than Linux.
"The software is the same. Running Gnome, KDE, Firefox or Emacs on FreeBSD or on Linux doesn't change anything, it's the same source code.
The common userland apps are the same. There are minor differences like "cp -a" that doesn't work on FreeBSD, but it doesn't really make any difference, the same things can be done the same way."
What's the point in running Linux ?
"So what? Stability? Well... my vanilla Ubuntu workstation never crashed so far. Gnome sometimes did odd things, but it's Gnome, the same odd things would happen on any operating system, running it on FreeBSD won't magically fix these bugs. So what would it change to run a FreeBSD kernel instead of a Linux kernel? Looking at the FreeBSD mailing-lists, I see people who are experiencing kernel panics, hangs, corruption and other badness. Just like on Linux mailing-lists, or just like on any operating system mailing-list in fact."
FreeBSD is faster on the desktop. FreeBSD can run linux apps faster than native Linux. Let's talk about servers. What's the difference between using the two different kernels? avoid being killed with fork(), not being owned 5 types by different coding errors on the same function, not having a root exploit on the kernel every month. That's the difference.
"Security? Looking at bugtraq, when a vulnerability is found in Unix software, it usually affects every operating system, FreeBSD is never an exception."
Really? Tell me how FreeBSD would be vulnerable to a bad implementation of linux's passwd, for example.
"Linux has some things to mitigate exploitation of these vulnerabilities like SELinux and grsecurity. I don't see anything similar in FreeBSD."
Have you looked at -CURRENT ?
"Linux has kernel vulnerabilities that allow root compromises. FreeBSD has the same weakness. Looking at bugtraq archives from 2003 to 2005, there have been even more kernel vulnerabilities (at least disclosed ones, and posted on bugtraq) in FreeBSD that in any other operating system and some were even remotely exploitable through the tcp/ip stack."
keyword "FreeBSD" -->
Found: 76 Secunia Security Advisories, displaying 1-25
keyword "Linux" -->
Found: 3264 Secunia Security Advisories, displaying 1-25
outchie...
Sorry, again you're confusing. It was linux that was crasheable by bugs on the firewall they use.
"Another thing is that FreeBSD has almost no commercial support. Hardware vendors (like storage arrays) and closed-source software vendors usually support a few Linux distributions like RHES and Novell, but not much. And definitely not BSD. Well, sometimes, but it's rare compared to Linux."
$ make search key=adaptec
Port: aaccli-1.0
Path:
Info: Adaptec SCSI RAID administration tool
Maint: bms@FreeBSD.org
B-deps:
R-deps:
WWW: http://support.dell.com/
Port: asr-utils-3.04
Path:
Info: Adaptec ASR RAID Management Software
Maint: obrien@FreeBSD.org
B-deps: compat4x-i386-5.3 expat-1.95.8 fontconfig-2.2.3,1 freetype2-2.1.9 pkgconfig-0.15.0_1 xorg-libraries-6.8.2
R-deps: compat4x-i386-5.3 expat-1.95.8 fontconfig-2.2.3,1 freetype2-2.1.9 pkgconfig-0.15.0_1 xorg-libraries-6.8.2
WWW:
in my country we say: 'I ask for forgiveness and leave.'
"So what? Performance? Everytime I've seen a FreeBSD vs Linux benchmark, Linux 2.6 was faster. Sometimes not a lot, but never slower. Except a special case of routing packets using a specific framework. But not in common cases like running Apache/MySQL/PHP or on a workstation."
You've been looking at the wrong benchmarks. Linux only recently beated FreeBSD on benchmarks, by very few points, stable kernel vs d