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FreeBSD 6.0 Released
Reyad Attiyat writes FreeBSD 6.0 is ready for release! New features, and there are lots, can be reviewed at the official site. One of the biggest and most anticipated features (mentioned before on Slashdot) is wireless support, which has been greatly improved upon. This includes support for a lot more cards, WAP support, and integration into the dhcpd client. This release comes only mere days off NetBSD's release and an OpenBSD release. Version 6.0 was intended to be released way back in August but due to a number of factors it had to be delayed till now. Aside from this major release the FreeBSD project has also had some major changes, including most recently a new logo and also a brand new website."
If you're upgrading a 5.x machine, the usual cvsup / build / install routine will give you a shiny new system. It's a much easier upgrade than from 4 to 5.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Anyone know if there's a torrent available?
Yes. The official release announcement (which for some reason wasn't linked in the story) has a link to the torrent files.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
The 6-STABLE branch starts with 6.0-RELEASE. The 5-STABLE branch started with 5.3-RELEASE.
From what I've seen, 6.0-RELEASE is more stable than 5.3 or 5.4.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
http://www.freebsd.org/java/ !
:o)
There are several ports, one of them being native. Google!
"Good news, everyone!"
Well, yes and no. Darwin has a mach-based "microkernel" but there's only one thread running under it - the FreeBSD kernel. So while the VM was supplied by Mach, the entire process model, network stack, filesystem code, and system calls all came from FreeBSD. The suite of userland tools that came with Darwin were all also from FreeBSD. They are, or at least were- I'm not sure how actively they merged things, but if the OP is right then they've kept up- very closely related.
-bugg
I sorta find that astounding (not that I have a 386 around myself). Oh well, the world has moved on.
6 just came out, [so] how can one possibly proclaim that the newer release is even more stable? Enough time hasnt passed yet.
Not at all. I (and many other people) have been running 6.0-BETAs since mid-July, and 6.0-RC1 since early October. This isn't just a random snapshot of HEAD; the code which became 6.0-RELEASE was frozen apart from patches approved by the release engineering team for months leading up to the release.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Is that it's hard to use.
Rubbish. It's BSD, which means it's a Unix derivative. If you're familiar with one, you're familiar with them all. There are some differences, of course, but a skilled administrator or gifted hacker could bring themselves up to speed in an afternoon. If by "hard to use", you mean "there's no pointy-clicky administrative interface" then perhaps. However, most system administrators who have to deal with production systems all day long (FreeBSD's target audience) don't want any of that anyway.
I'm not sure what kind of environment FreeBSD is deisgned for (servers, desktops?)
FreeBSD is almost entirely geared toward servers. There are various movements and projects underway to help bring FreeBSD closer to the desktop, but it's nowhere near as strong as Linux in that arena. Linux is a good general-purpose Unix-like OS, but FreeBSD is typically regarded as a more solid server.
but the fact that I don't even know that says a lot
Forgive me for being blunt, but it only says that you didn't even bother looking into it. All of what I've stated here is fairly common knowledge to those who care enough to find out for themselves. We live in the age of the Internet. If you're curious about FreeBSD or any other operating system, go read up on it, don't just sit around to hear about it.