FreeBSD 7.0 Release Now Available

cperciva writes "The first release from the new 7-STABLE branch of FreeBSD development, has been released. FreeBSD 7.0 brings with it many new features including support for ZFS, journaled filesystems, and SCTP, as well as dramatic improvements in performance and SMP scalability. In addition to being available from many FTP sites, ISO images can be downloaded via the BitTorrent tracker, or for users of earlier FreeBSD releases, FreeBSD Update can be used to perform a binary upgrade."

Comments

Re:STABLE

[morgan_greywolf]

Yeah, but OTOH --

Linux has had journaling file systems for years. In fact, it has excellent support for multiple journalled file systems -- XFS, ReiserFS, ext3, and JFS. FreeBSD is just now getting around to supporting journalled file systems. ZFS support has been available in FUSE for quite a while now and I believe is more fully featured than what is found in FreeBSD 7. Linux has also had support for SCTP for quite a while as well. Linux has support for lots more hardware, too.

So, you take your tradeoffs -- do you want cutting edge desktop features or are you more concerned with stability? If stability is the name of the game, then of course you want something as stodgy as FreeBSD. Otherwise, if you're willing to live with the occasional odd program that needs to be recompiled with the new kernel or the occasional kernel bug that pops up, then use Linux.

It's also about your requirements. That's why we have freedom of choice.

Re:Still hard to install?

[PReDiToR]

While I believe you quite rightly attained your +Insightful mod, I couldn't even start to tell you what my disk geometry is, and I'm running openSUSE, XP and (sorry) Vista on the same HDD, partitioned through Linux fdisk after XP had the whole disk, and Vista was the last thing on there. Messing around with partitions is not hard, but never have I been asked to delve into things that the BIOS presents and are ignored only to be faced with a utility querying the HDD itself and be asked if the returned information is true.

I'm not ignorant, stupid, unable to find out how to do things (except work out why this 2.6.22-17 kernel that I rolled myself with all the right things in refuses to accept my high quality 80 wire cables) when they need doing, but for serious, how is it that I have never been asked things like that under Linux?
Why is the BSD automatic detection routine so unsure of itself that it asks if you want to override it?

I'm downloading the .ISO right now to give it a fair try, so I'm not baiting anyone. I have a shell account on a server that uses FreeBSD and I find the different layout and commands interesting. Can't wait to give it a try.