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."

Comments

BSD is dead?

[eric2hill]

Looks like BSD lives to die another day :)

Variants.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a Dead-CD version of FreeBSD that I can boot on my machine, just to try out?

Real improvement over 5.x

[Just Some Guy]

I've been comfortable enough with the release candidates to upgrade my production servers from 5.x to 6 a while back. I really have nothing but good to say about it: it's faster, more stable, and more worthy of the FreeBSD name than 5 ever seemed to be.

Congratulations, Release Engineering team! You've turned out a great product.

And as a side note, we've seen big releases from each of the major BSDs within the last week. Dying, my foot.

Re:Real improvement over 5.x

[Anonymous Coward]

Please don't take this as criticism, because it's not meant in that spirit, but I really wish we'd stop even acknowledging the whole "dying" joke. The problem is, I've run into one stupid manager who, amazingly, bought it. Yes, oh yes, he was stupid, but somehow he got the job and I wish that I could say that he's the only guy I've ever met who was in a position he shouldn't have had.

Of course BSD isn't dying. Either that, or it's the longest death in history. Some Linux-based asswads -- and please understand that I'm not equating Linux usage with being an asswad, heck, I use Linux every day and I wouldn't want to incriminate myself; no, I'm just specifying asswads who somehow have found Linux -- just can't shut up. They're like the annoying nerd in the back of the room who has found an expert mix of geekness and insufferable rudeness that, for some reason, he mistakes for wit. Think "Malvin" in WarGames, and you get the idea. They're the guys who think they're experts because they've managed to install Debian and, oh, Gnome maybe, but they only use Synaptic for package management and they're afraid of cron even though they talk about how they use it all the time, even for personal tasks(!).

God.

They're *dying* to appear knowledgable, so they perpetuate this dying joke without ever really knowing what situations the BSDs are best suited for or the philosophies behind them. I mean, the BSD Web sites, have you seen them? That have all that *text*, I mean, God, you have to read and stuff.

FreeBSD has its issues, I'm aware of them. But I've used it for many, many moons now, and honestly, it rocks my world as a server system. I might use something else, but I'd have to have a really, really good reason. My mail servers run on fairly close-to-stock OpenBSD systems, and they're rock solid. Package management and upgrades are a breeze.

Bottom line, the BSDs make my job easy.

Re:Torrent?

[Just Some Guy]

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.

Re:Torrent?

[cperciva]

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.

Re:how does this affect OS X?

[Overly Critical Guy]

Darwin eventually syncs with FreeBSD, which ends up in major OS X releases. You can be sure OS X Leopard will be synced with 6.0, as Panther was synced up to 5.0.

Re:6-STABLE?

[cperciva]

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.

Oh man ....

[gstoddart]

I just burned my 5.4 discs so I could upgrade from 4.8 two days ago.

Bah.

FreeBSD Java(TM) Project

[KlaymenDK]

http://www.freebsd.org/java/ !

There are several ports, one of them being native. Google! :o)

Re:how does this affect OS X?

[bugg]

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.

I386 Support Removed?

[HighOrbit]

From the Kernel Changes part of the release notes:

Support for 80386 processors (the I386_CPU kernel configuration option) has been removed. Users running this class of CPU should use FreeBSD 5.X or earlier.

I sorta find that astounding (not that I have a 386 around myself). Oh well, the world has moved on.

Vast performance improvements.

[CyricZ]

Earlier today a client came to me, requesting that a FreeBSD 6.0 demo box be set up as a potential replacement for their current OpenBSD mail server. Indeed, 6.0 may be the release we have all been waiting for. The performance is vastly improved, and the stability is fantastic.

We found that the server was able to process about 60% more mail when running FreeBSD 6.0, as compared to OpenBSD. That's not to suggest that OpenBSD is bad, but performance wise, FreeBSD has taken the lead. And that was without significant tuning, and running a GENERIC kernel.

I'm not certain yet if it is improvements in the network stack, the filesystem subsystem, or in the scheduling. It may be a combination of all three. Some more time will be needed to determine exactly where the benefits are coming from.

Re:Vast performance improvements.

[Just Some Guy]

That's not to suggest that OpenBSD is bad, but performance wise, FreeBSD has taken the lead.

Erm, has OpenBSD ever had the lead in performance? I really doubt it; that's not what it was designed for. All of those little niceties like ultra-paranoid memory protection, cryptographically random process IDs, etc. take resources. Basically, it's tuned for security and correctness with a nod toward performance, while FreeBSD emphasizes raw performance over watertight security.

That doesn't mean that FreeBSD has bad security, or that OpenBSD doesn't incorporate performance enhancements when they can safely do so. All of the BSDs are heavily cross-pollinated, and the best ideas tend to get broad support from all of them.

Still, it's pretty reasonable to say that OpenBSD is more secure and FreeBSD is faster. I wouldn't be the least surprised that FreeBSD can process more email or web hits, especially when you through SMP or HTT systems into the mix.

Re:6-STABLE?

[cperciva]

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.

Re:how does this affect OS X?

[Eil]

Actually, userland for OS X is primarily netbsd derived, not freebsd.

Wrong. The page you linked to mentions all 3 BSDs exactly once, never specifying which one in particular the userland was primarily derived from.

I'm more inclined to believe the following, straight from news articles and Apple's own documentation:

"Going forward, [Darwin] will track a stable version of FreeBSD, which is the more popular and traditionally x86-only version that claims about a million users worldwide..." (source)

"The Darwin kernel is based on FreeBSD and Mach 3.0 technologies..." (source)

"...the BSD portion of Mac OS X is primarily derived from FreeBSD..." source)

"Above the Mach layer, the BSD layer provides "OS personality" APIs and services. The BSD layer is based on the BSD kernel, primarily FreeBSD." (source)

"We should note, however, that apart from a few architectural differences (such as our use of the Mach kernel), we try to keep Darwin as compatible as possible with FreeBSD (our BSD reference platform)." (source)

"Integrated with Mach is a customized version of the BSD operating system (currently FreeBSD 5)." (source)

In fact, practically the only references I can find to NetBSD in Apple's Developer Connection are to the HISTORY sections in some of the man pages. Apple may have borrowed some from NetBSD, but the main BSD player in OS X is clearly FreeBSD.

Re:Live-CD?

[misleb]

What do you think you are going to learn from a Live CD of FreeBSD? Whether or not it supports your hardware? I assume you've run Linux or some kind of unix variant. It'll have a shell and maybe a desktop like KDE or GNOME. What's to see? You can get that on just about any Unixy system. IMO, you don't really know what an OS or distribution is like until you have to actually manage a box.

Unless, of course, you've never run a unix-like system before. Then by all means, try Freesbie.

-matthew

Re:From what I have heard of FreeBSD

[Eil]

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.