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FreeBSD 7.1 Released
Sol-Invictus writes "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE. This is the second release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.0 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights:
The ULE scheduler is now the default in GENERIC kernels for amd64 and i386 architectures. The ULE scheduler significantly improves performance on multicore systems for many workloads.
Support for using DTrace inside the kernel has been imported from OpenSolaris. DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework.
A new and much-improved NFS Lock Manager (NLM) client.
Boot loader changes allow, among other things, booting from USB devices and booting from GPT-labeled devices.
KDE updated to 3.5.10, GNOME updated to 2.22.3.
DVD-sized media for the amd64 and i386 architectures."
The next release of NinnleBSD is imminent. This will blow FreeBSD out of the water.
Is there some sort of benchmark comparing FreeBSD 7.1 with other operating systems and distributions? I would be more than happy to run it on a couple of systems that I have hanging around but the user experience needs to be at least comparable to what I'm already running (kubuntu 8.10)
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Don't fool yourself. Just because Linux is what the "cool" kids use doesn't mean FreeBSD is in anyway inferior. The linux community sure holds itself in high regard, but who has ZFS and Dtrace support? Not linux... Of course, thats because once some cool new technology comes out the ego-brained linux folk set out to make their own half-assed implementation that will never get finished. That's Linux for ya though. Runs half-assed on everything, well on nothing.
Similes are like metaphors
tag it : reportsofmydemisehavebeengreatlyexaggerated
This is one of the better parts of this release. The lack of speed/clue on putting out both CD sized and DVD iso images has been highly frustrating, telling the users to basically "roll-their-own". I've already upgraded a few systems and things appear to be going well.
Yeah mean, other than Yahoo, and HotMail before MS took them over and they got super crappy, and a whole bunch of other people? I dunno... no one I guess.
Kind of took them long enough...
FreeBSD kind of lost me with the 5 and 6 releases. I haven't tried 7, but maybe it's worth a shot again.
They would be wise to port WAPBL; it looks better than gjournal, seems to perform comparably to Softupdates (which are a data gamble), and doesn't have huge system requirements like ZFS.
A significant improvement on a crappy OS is still a crappy OS.
I respectfully disagree. At its first release Linux was probably a crappy OS but each subsequent release grew better and better until it wasn't crappy. Who knows, maybe even Windows 7 will live up to the price they ask for it?
No flame intended, but really... who uses FreeBSD anymore?
I certainly don't. But I like the idea of another free operating system for me out there. What would have happened if the courts had screwed Linux and SCO had won and successfully shut down anyone using the Linux kernel? Well, I'd tell you what I would have done: switched all my machines to FreeBSD and recompiled the packages on all the software I used for it. Luckily (and rightfully), I don't have to do this.
... if they want to continue with their operating system, I say let them! Who knows what it could become one day? I wish the FreeBSD team the best of luck and am certain I have inadvertently gained from them in some way and therefore appreciate all their hard work and efforts.
You don't mean to flame but what other reason is there for you to ask who uses FreeBSD? Leave the community alone, there are very few fanboys and annoyances about it
My work here is dung.
People who like reliable, low maintenance computer systems.
By what regards is it a crappy OS anyway?
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Here are some descriptions of new features and links to benchmarks.
Or does it STILL kill the box every time it receives a fragmented packet?
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
Longest uptime in the world, son. Take your tinkertoys and go play with the other kids downstairs, the grownups are talking here.
pics or it dident huppin, lulz
All the BSD's win for man pages that actually contain more information then "man pages are obsolete, please use the info documentation". In FreeBSD the entire core system has documentation. All of it written in the format god intended--roff.
Did you mention all the man pages are online and can be searched by version? Comes in handy when you are still using FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE.
And did you mention the fact that BSD's aren't like Linux distros? FreeBSD isn't just a pooling of libraries and code from random people, the core of FreeBSD (shell and userland tools) are all done by the same large team. FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD are *cohesive systems*, not collections.
Want my year 2009 prediction? This will be the year of the BSD's in the data-center. There is a lot going for BSD based systems, and quite frankly the only reason I can see to go back to a random collection of tools and kernel code (i.e. a Linux distrubtion) is for running code that requires vendor support (Oracle, Dell, etc...). In 2009, I predict (hope) more of these big-name vendors officially support FreeBSD and friends.
Isn't FreeBSD a good chunk of the core of the BSD layer in Apple's XNU (Darwin) kernel and some of the user-space utilities? I'm not sure if it's still true, but my understanding was that a substantial amount of code went in both directions between MacOS X and FreeBSD.
E pluribus unum
As a lover of FreeBSD, I hope the guys in charge never try to "win the desktop". They'd never win and they'd stop paying attention to the stuff that makes it so good for servers. FreeBSD, and the other BSD's for that matter, belong in the data center. I'd argue the same for Linux, but that might get me slaughtered in these parts...
I've been using a USB-based FreeBSD5 image for a project for some time now. I wonder what they're talking about with USB boot support.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
VMS much?
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
And don't be nervous about making contributions either. My first ports looked like shit, but the port guys were patient and over time I've gotten the hang of the system.
FreeBSD (and probably the other BSD's) are much easier to work on then the other guys. For starters, since you are using a *system* and not a collection of libraries, all your patches and bug-reports go to the same place. In other words, you aren't talking to "the website and the people who maintain the 'tar' utility", you are talking to "the freebsd guys". Your patch for "tar" goes to the same repository as the code for "libc".
Plus since it is licensed as BSD, you can actually contribute modifications and not worry about the nasty side effects found in other licenses. I've never contributed to a GPL project, but I've contributed tons to BSD projects.
Bottom line, FreeBSD is a great place to get your feet wet contributing to open source stuff. Good times.
Here you go.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
But honestly, FreeBSD is a server OS. And for servers, it has pretty much any driver you need. Granted not all of it is vendor supported binaries (yet, but hopefully someday), but still, if you have a server from *big-co*, odds are good everything will work.
I think these days the code only goes one way (to Apple) but if some Apple fanboy wants to point me to their recent BSD contributions, I'd be interested in seeing them.
This poo is cold.
That is true. Unfortunately there will always be the fanboys who proclaim that OSX is BSD, which is like saying that Michael Jackson is a black man.
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/today/top.avg.html
Not only are these the stats from perennial doomsayer Netcraft, but it's a double win since the top system is for Adult links. Enjoy your pics ...
BSD ain't even pining for the fjords yet either.
I've been sticking with the 6.x branch (6.4 most recently) as it's given me extremely reliable uptime with my Squid proxy servers. FreeBSD 7.0 excited me with their SMP updates and ULE scheduler aiding in performance, however I wasn't convinced that the long standing FreeBSD stability was there after reading a number of newsgroup discussions, and due to its immaturity. Now that 7.1 has been released, I'm going to start taking it more seriously for production use.
That being said, regarding some of the comments here, FreeBSD (in my opinion) is more suited to uptime, stability, and reliability in servers than it is to offering a performance oriented desktop experience. Want a good starter project? Try to make a FreeBSD stateful firewall with transparent proxy server (pf / squid) for your home using some spare parts you have kicking around.
Most of the serious service runners are blocking queries from such service as Netcraft. Getting on the top means that some kid will start probably DDOSing you for it. It's better to just remove you from that list.
Nobody in BSD land gives a shit who does what with code. That is one of the nicest features found in BSD systems--the ecosystem is pretty much free of open-source politics.
Nobody give a shit if you wrote your patch on a windows system and mailed it to the ports maintainers using outlook. Nobody cares if Apple, Tivo, or Cisco "locks up the code". In fact, better they do. The BSD licence makes it easy for those companies to contribute because they can use FreeBSD and contribute only the parts that aren't special-sauce. Companies *want* to merge their changes in with the mainline, it is expensive to apply patches to every version of FreeBSD. The BSD licence lets paid employees of these companies send in bug-fixes and patches without ensnaring the companies IP in a legal mess. Other licences have a tendancy to be all-or-nothing--either you hold on to your bug-fixes and merge them in for every version or you release your entire codebase to the world. BSD lets you pick and choose what bits can go into the world. Very flexible.
Bottom line... if Apple wants to use BSD code, who cares. Code is code. It isn't like it has feelings.
Does anyone know of the status on Java for FreeBSD. We mainly run Java enterprise applications on our servers, and although I like FreeBSD, we have been reluctant to using it due to "official" releases not existing of Java. There are "patchsets" for 1.6 and frankly, that word scares me a lot. We are currently going with CentOS for everything.
...devote my life to Open Source. FreeBSD in particular.
No real reason why FBSD. I just remember really liking Lehey's 'FreeBSD.'
Oh well, it's back to Visual C++ for me...
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
The closest you'd get to an official java release (which I assume you mean is a binary compiled by Sun) is a binary package compiled by the FreeBSD guys. The only thing about FreeBSD packages is they usually lag behind the ports tree by several weeks.
Vendor support like what you are asking is one of the things FreeBSD and friends lack. My gut tells me that it won't be long before you'll see FreeBSD get enough mind share that companies like Sun start offering support.
A significant improvement on a crappy OS is still a crappy OS. No flame intended, but really... who uses FreeBSD anymore?
Hmmm, Apple for one
So I'll revise my statement and say this will be the year that more big-name vendors officially support FreeBSD. By "vendor" I mean hardware guys like Dell, IBM or HP, not just software vendors.
I think while it isn't discussed much, GPLv3 made a lot of vendors think twice about Linux. My gut tells me that you'll quietly see more and more vendors back BSD based systems. There won't be much fanfare about it (the BSD world is pretty chill), but it will just slowly inch forward until most servers wind up running FreeBSD or OpenBSD instead of $RANDOM_COLLECTION_OF_CODE.
Just a hunch. Times are changing, and I could be wrong...
Thanks for the link of uptimes. It does my soul good to see nary a linux box in that list. I do have to wonder though is it because it is a bad operating system, or are their admins of a new generation that do not take pride in their work? Or is it because they lack the skill? Sorry, I can't work it out. If somebody has insight, please pass it on.
The biggest strength for linux is also its biggest weakness and that is there are a lot of developers. As a result, it lacks the polish of a commercial nix. And just so you linux zealots ask me to back it up, here it is. Take a look at rusty coat hanger abortion of files that is the network configuration files. It is not inutitive nor straightforward. It looks like some coders lost their shit on shroom trip and made it up as they descended into the abyss.
Here is a clue, use a file for your network configuration, maybe 3 or 4 tops, like Solaris.
The best slashdot sig around is
Linux is for people who hate windows, FreeBSD is for people who love Nix.
My current NAS is running FreeBSD 5.3, in constant use, and has: 10:31AM up 2331 days, 28 mins Kinda nice if you ask me, I also use it as a desktop environment on my laptop because it just "works" for me.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
MJ is black. Wrong metaphor.
I used to dual boot a BSD 6.0 system with linux but after it chewed up my ext2 /home directory on a couple of occasions I just stopped using it. Not worth the hassle of restoring from backup just to use an OS that offered little over Linux aside from quicker bootup/shutdown times.
Netcraft is not reliable anymore. From the site:
Why do you not report uptimes for Linux 2.6 or FreeBSD 6 ?
We only report uptimes for systems where the operating system's timer runs at 100Hz or less. Because the TCP code only uses the low 32 bits of the timer, if the timer runs at say 1000Hz, the value wraps around every 49.7 days (whereas at 100Hz it wraps after 497 days). As there are large numbers of systems which have a higher uptime than this, it is not possible to report accurate uptimes for these systems.
The Linux kernel switched to a higher internal timer rate at kernel version 2.5.26. Linux 2.4 used a rate of 100Hz. Linux 2.6 used a timer at 1000Hz (some architectures were using 1000Hz before this), until the default was changed back to 250Hz in May 2006. (An explanation of the HZ setting in Linux.)
FreeBSD versions 4 and 5 used a 100Hz timer, but FreeBSD 6 has moved to a customisable timer with a default setting of 1000Hz.
So unfortunately this means that we cannot give reliable uptime figures for many Linux and FreeBSD servers.
FreeBSD fanboyz shouldn't go mouthing off about "half-assed" considering the way since 5.x it's crappy smp and threadlocking would seize up tighter than a great-grandma on a straight brick cheese diet with lock-mgr panics. Problem persisted in 7.0, who knows if 7.1 will finally put the issues to rest?
Are you talking about this SMP?
5.0 was released in January 2003, I think 6 years of passage should have allowed you enough grumping time that you can let it go now. I think you could also take a look in your wayback machine and remember that Linux was not exactly perfect at the time either. FreeBSD 5 did have its teething problems with all of the new technologies introduced, especially KSE and the ULE scheduler, but progress has continued to be made and your unsubstantiated claim otherwise is just the pathetic grumblings of a troglodyte.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
I don't see how relevant this is to a FreeBSD (which supports a wide range of non-x86 archetectures) release.
If FreeBSD has anything to do with it, in fact there is more to desktop/server platforms than CISCs. IBM (Power architecture) and SUN (SPARC) come to mind. You can say whatever you want about current market share, but this business changes with technology, and technology can change.
I'm not concerned about an Intel monopoly on an architecture they invented. I am, however, concerned about AMD continuing to rest on its laurels and make little progress in their processors. At least IBM continues to develop novel ideas (the Cell).
No, right metaphor, because Michael Jackson is only a black man in the loosest sense of the word.
Speaking of loose, here's a better one: It's like when your mom brags about sucking black dicks while she actually fellates mulattos exclusively.
There are more important things in the world then how well an operating system does in some assholes random benchmark. If you are standardizing your servers around an operating system based solely on "speed", I question your abilities as a server dude.
I'll just name one thing, out of many, that are vastly more important than "speed". Stability. No, not "never blue-screens". I'm "does the maintainers of the system make major changes in every single release and then stop supporting older releases". Under this definition of stable, FreeBSD wins over linux hands down. Especially after the "we can't be bothered to maintain a stable branch of the linux kernel, so we will add new shit in with the old all the time". You might get a dozen exciting new bugs and security fixes when you "upgrade" between 2.6.1114492 and 2.6.1114493. In fact, this was one of the major reasons for me dumping linux in the first place. The 2.4.x kernels are the last stable linux kernels out there.
That is just one example of something more important than "passes 4*10^30 fps in WoW" benchmark.
As for security? Which is easier to audit and verify? A random pool of code and libraries distributed across hundreds of websites and maintainers, or a cohesive operating system whos entire codebase is in exactly one place?
been a freebsd user since 4.x days.
I use bsd to run my mail, antispam, dns and other public web services.
I'd LIKE to also have it be a fast samba server but for some reason, samba on bsd really SUCKS. why is that??
my similar hardware linux box runs circles all over bsd on samba. that's the last hold-out, really, in wanting to go all-bsd at home.
is there EVER going to be equiv speed on freebsd as linux has, for smb?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Well, I would take an OS running half-assed on everything than not having it run at all. Not that I'm saying that Linux runs poorly on most hardware (in fact there's been very little hardware I've had issues with), but FreeBSD has a _lot_ of hardware issues. On my primary desktop, it can't seem to see my hard disks at all... there's nothing crazy about my set up, just standard SATA2... on my spare system which is about 6 years old, all it does is start to boot, then reboots my system... the only hardware I was able to get it installed on was a 10+ year old PII... At least when a Linux distro has problems I seem to get a decent response from the community; with FreeBSD, I've never gotten any useful responses, if any responses at all to questions about installation and configuration.
I'm not sure whether you're referring to BSD "fanboys" or Apple ones. But MacOS X isn't pure BSD it *is* UNIX. It passed official UNIX certification, as did most of the BSDs. Linux, of course, isn't UNIX. So UNIX fanboys as opposed to BSD ones are happy :).
E pluribus unum
As someone who both enjoyed discovering GNU Info (as it was about the only part of the GNU platform I could run on a 2MB Amiga 1200), and also enjoyed discovering the quality of FreeBSD's man pages, let me give another perspective:
There's absolutely no reason not to use HTML for documentation these days. There are plenty of lightweight text-mode browsers that would suffice in emergencies or during ssh sessions, but also nice desktop apps that would let new users browse them and feel at home. More importantly, it supports modern features, like links to the actual organisations online who support a particular app, or where bugs can be reported, links to email, diagrams, unicode for multilingual support, screenreader support, etc.
Yes, manpages can be nice, and coherent, quality documentation is important. GNU's horrible info browser is certainly not up to it. BUT... let's get with the times. There's no point advocating man pages in the modern world. If you want good docs, argue for good docs in modern formats, not old formats that happen to sometimes have instances of good docs.
I think these days the code only goes one way (to Apple) but if some Apple fanboy wants to point me to their recent BSD contributions, I'd be interested in seeing them.
Since all the code is downloadable from http://www.opensource.apple.com/darwinsource/, the FreeBSD team is free to take whatever they like.
I'm not sure what official contribution Apple makes these days in 7.x, but I think the entire FreeBSD 5.x release was mostly centered around what Apple brought back to FreeBSD after the first few MacOS X releases, including quite a bit of SMP work. According to Trollaxor, though, there continues to be significant bi-directional work on file system journaling, gcc modifications, and DTrace.
E pluribus unum
Benchmarks between competing free software projects? Don't be silly! Next thing, you'll be advocating some sort of sane system, like choosing the best of breed technology based stats like benchmarks, and uniting behind it! Think what kind of chaos Free Software would be in, if everyone decided that OpenGL was THE low-level graphics layer, that gstreamer was THE codec API, that Vala was THE high-level language, that Git was THE modern version control system, or that FUSE was THE place to develop filesystem stuff. Why, you'd have a straightforward stack, with very little bloat, and tons of people honing a single implementation.
Pandemonium, I tell you.
As in going into a port and "make -> make install"?
If you are go grab "portupgrade" (/usr/ports/port-utils/portupgrade, I think). Portupgrade will do the "make" crap for you and has the side-effect of doing a "make clean" when it is done. It has some other nice parts like letting you set all the config variables in one file as well has helping you do crazy gentoo-like dependency swaps.
PPS: "make portsnap" while you are at it and then put it on a cronjob. cvsup is for people who are gonna fuck with the ports tree.
There is a difference between "You guys aren't playing fair..." and "our operating system is your religion, either embrace it or go away".
If somebody like $VENDOR_X takes and takes but never contributes even minor shit like bug-fixes to kernel code, they should be called out. But unlike other, more political organizations, you will never see an Anti-$VENDOR_X clause added to a BSD license. That is the important bit.
BTW, one big peeve in BSD land is when the GPL guys will take BSD code like drivers. The GPL license will "infect" any modifications and prevent those changes from being send back to the original BSD code. Kind of a tease, don't you think?
2009 is the year of the flow chart, which will then bolster the popularity of FreeBSD by definition.
df -h
(and boy I'm posting in this thread ;-)
For those who've never used a BSD system but have used Linux, be prepared for the command line to work a little different. BSD utilities are often way more picky about the ordering of arguments.
With the GNU tools, "chmod 775 * -R" will recurse down a tree and set everything to 775. "chmod -R 775 *" will do the same thing.
In FreeBSD, only "chmod -R 775 *" will work right.
In BSD userland, the patten is almost always command [arguments] [strings of goo]. In GNU land, you can usually interchange [arguments] and [string of goo] and get the same result. Some will argue that only the BSD way is proper and the GNU way is sloppy. Whatever your feelings are, if you've gotten used to being sloppy about ordering, it will take some adjustment to get used to BSD tools.
The good news is the "proper" way will work on either set of tools.
...And it's been a night-and-day difference between administering Ubuntu and FreeBSD boxes.
The management tools and fantastic attention to integration have been a true pleasure (example: install portaudit and you'll automatically get security alerts for your installed ports daily). The documentation is excellent; see "FreeBSD Handbook" for several hundred pages of great material. Everything I've touched so far just feels so... COHERENT.
I'm basically done with Linux.
Possibly. There was a bug in directory listing for large directories where entries were deleted dating back to something like 4BSD and inherited by all of the BSDs. It was found and fixed about six months ago - it turned out the Samba guys knew about it and had a work-around in place, but the work-around made directory listings very slow.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Does it have Xen virtualization support? It would be nice to run it as a guest OS for testing on a server without using emulation.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Everything in the ports tree is essentially random crap. The only thing FreeBSD does is wrap the source code with a (really nice) build system. Ports aren't "stable" the same way the core is. That said, a lot of the big-name stuff like apache has separate ports. For example apache-1.3, apache-2 and apache-2.2 have separate ports (I think there is a port that follows the trunk too).
The difference between the BSD's and Linux's are in scope. In FreeBSD there is a whole lot more junk that is maintained by a single group then in most linuxes.
But still, you are correct in the "real applications" are all ports.
I'm so very happy for you. This is truly a great day.
I think it is fixed - give PC-BSD a try on your at home box to test it out. - pcbsd.org
AAAAAARRRRRRRGHHHH... I clicked the top site to see what it was... Magically forgetting what tgp means. I sit next to my boss at work...
A significant improvement on a crappy OS is still a crappy OS. No flame intended, but really... who uses FreeBSD anymore?
I do. On my servers as well as on my workstation and my laptop. It's a solid and stable operating system that has earned its place.
Apart from that, only some some smaller companies use it.
No flame intended, but really...who critizes operating systems that are not sold by Microsoft on /. anymore?
And this new FreeBSD release can run on Dolby Surround 7.1 systems?.
Anyone who runs the Mac OS
and MacOSX is based on it too...
Apple also contributes back a lot to the project.
Google donated at least 25.000 dollars to the project in the last 3 years, so they do care for it I think (http://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/sponsors.shtml).
And many others. Cisco is in the lot too.
Are you talking about this SMP?
You probably should have read the "Update" of the link you just posted ;)
especially KSE and the ULE [...]
Oh yeah! I almost forgot the awesome M:N threading which turned out to suck donky balls :-)
Ironically, at the same time, Solaris ditched their M:N locking for an 1:1 solution.
Ingo Molnar has been right from the beginning! (just google and you'll know it).
And then there is ULE... At first he took the design from Ingo Molnar's O(1)-Scheduler, presented a paper at USENIX saying how awesome it was and after over 5 years, we finally got something stable.
Wow. Do you have a link to a description of that bug? I'm curious.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
How do you get it to freeze up? I've not had freezeups on my SMP box.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
persiankitty didn't hint to you that it might not be safe for work?
How many passed BSDs you can see on http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/xy.htm ?
The certifications go per version. No *BSD is certified Unix at this moment, at least not for Unix03 or Unix98, which matter.
Not all of that code is usable. Most is using the restrictive APSL that is not BSD compatible.
Apple do release some stuff using the BSD licence however. launchd is an example of a good piece of code other OS vendors should consider (though it could use one more turn of refactoring). They've also contributed a lot to llvm, which I think is likely to replace gcc in many systems sometime in the future.
It was covered on Slashdot. Here is a detailed write-up. Basically, the problem occurred when seeking to the second entry in a block when the first one had been deleted due to some mismatch between what the kernel did and what libc did. The bug was around 25 years old, and was fixed in May. It only occurred in a very small number of cases, but these cases were common enough for the Samba team to have encountered them and worked around them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Totally. In OSX, open the terminal and enter "offer Jesus-juice to McCauley Culkin". Then burn your MacBook.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
'... saying that Michael Jackson is a black man.'
Er, do you mean Michael Jackson, the beer and whiskey guy, or Michael Jackson, the software development methodology guy?
'Cause neither are black.
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Having had the pleasure of using various versions of Solaris & HP-UX I have to laugh at your naivety and faith in "Commercial UNIX"
Yeah, we could call them things like /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0, /etc/resolv.conf and /etc/hosts. Oh those silly Linux developers!
My point was that things are different. Personally I actually like the more sloppy approach used by the GNU utilities, even if the programmer in me disagrees.
Another thing that takes a little getting used to is the device names are different. Rather then "hdd0" and "eth1", they are named after their kernel module - maybe "ad0" and "ee0". I'm sure there is a good argument for either approach, but it is something that takes adjustment to.
I wasn't aware that the BSDs ponied up the money to certify their software. And considering that revisions also have to be certified, that's a lot to deal with. Where did you read that most of the BSDs were certified?
I've got a couple problems:
1) How do you deal with an HTML document that links to something outside the filesystem? As in, what if I'm offline?
2) You can do a hell of a lot in HTML that you cannot render on a console. What if the document you wrote uses an image or some javascript?
3) You need to make it compatible with "man". While 'info' sucked big time, one of the suckiest parts was that it fragmented the linux documentation. Whatever you propose must exist when I type "man joeblow". Failure to do so will repeat the mistake made by the 'info' dudes.
Problems 1 & 2 need to be addressed because one of the use cases for documentation is when shit hits the fan and your net doesn't work and your only access is on the console via 9600 baud RS232.
Problem 2 may not seem that important for some things (developer docs, I'd say), but for other things like shell utilities the documentation must be presentable in the same medium as the utility. I have no problem with web-based programmer docs, but I do have a problem if some jerk wants to use an image in his documentation for 'tar'.
There is another hidden issue. HTML isn't a standard anyway. Which HTML version? How strict is "strict"?
It took me over six months to figure out how to install 4.10 seven years ago, but you taught me a lot, and here I am today - nearly indispensable to my employer - because I'm the guy who "figures things out" (albeit much quicker now).
What?
But you have to admit it is kinda a tease. Here you go and modify my code and then dangle your changes in front of me and yet I can't use them. At least when you put it in your Fortune 500 breath-mint testing software I can't see your changes--out of sight, out of mind. With the GPL stuff, I can see but I can't touch :-)
Bottom line is no, I dont give a crap if you never give me a line of code in return. But I still am human and am thus subject to fuzzy, non logical things like culture and being nice to your fellow man.
But not a whine. You are free to be pedantic and interpret it as one though... others seem to relish in the opportunity.
Nice job posting AC this time so you don't lose karma from your obnoxious trolling. Bravo.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
If you're looking for non-BSD kernel contributions there are huge numbers of open source contributions Apple makes, from their CalDAV and Quicktime Streaming Server to contributions to many of the tools they use. I was just referring to changes to FreeBSD-derived sources.
Most is using the restrictive APSL that is not BSD compatible.
Just barely "most". A significant amount of it is "other" which is often some derivation of BSD, GPL, or custom license. And a lot of it is, from what I've read, offered back to the originating projects under their own license. And while APSL is not BSD compatible, it is hardly "restrictive"-- it's an Open Source license that has some provisions closer to the GPL than BSD.
E pluribus unum
Nevermind, you're right. I stand corrected. According to Wikipedia, besides the official BSD UNIX, the following systems meet the UNIX certification: AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, Tru64 (formerly "Digital UNIX"), A/UX, Mac OS X 10.5 on Intel platforms,[13] and a part of z/OS.
E pluribus unum
A free, open source operating system with a huge amount of the code maintained by a single company which can provide official, professional support.
Sun has come out with two of the big things BSD is trying to import: DTrace and ZFS. I predict Crossbow will be next.
The drivers aren't quite there, nor is the massive package repository. But assuming Sun will not abandon its OS dept. or get sold off and thus fold the project, I believe Opensolaris has a bright future.
That said, as a person who has gotten into sysadmin only in the past two years, the OS that got me interested in Unix was FreeBSD 6. I still like its filesystem organization design better than the Linuxes, as well as its reputation for stability.
If only Ubuntu had based itself of FreeBSD instead of Linux... Sigh. It could be so much more powerful, and unrestricted by RMS to what software and code to use to improve itself.
What other choice did they have? All the other unix variants are proprietary.
The best way to check for fixes is to run 8.0/current. I'm using it on my laptop fulltime, and hasn't given me any problems. Won't recommend current on servers.
Good god, he was asked a question, and he answered it. It wasn't even a question about code, it was a question about funding... and he has a real point. The only way I was able to get one company I worked at to contribute ANYTHING to OpenBSD or FreeBSD was by writing up purchase requests for media and shepherding them through channels.
Also, that quote does not carry Theo's tone of voice. From my experience with him, I would guess that he was laughing all the way through that last sentence... it comes out as a rant in print but that's not how he sounds in person.
FreeBSD is the only distribution, other than Solaris, to have ported and implemented the ZFS filesystem (and no, a FUSE port doesn't count).
I've been looking forward to build a file server for personal use, and I'm eager to try out ZFS, which really puts FreeBSD high on my small list of candidates for an operating system. I'm going for consumer-grade hardware, and I'll be experimenting with stuff like using CompactFlash cards to store the OS.
OpenSolaris was my initial choice due to its higher maturity on the ZFS implementation, but I feel it's too constraining. I tried searching around for information about installing the system on flash mediums, information about wear-levelling, filesystems for flash media, and their forums and mailing lists fall short on these topics. The OpenSolaris installer doesn't even allow one to customize the installation, forcing me to install X.org, Gnome, and a ton of other stuff. No thank you, I'd very much like my file server to be command-line only, and to be smaller that your 3.1 gigabyte minimum for an installation.
As soon as I feel that FreeBSD's implementation of ZFS is stable and feature-rich enough for my needs, I'll definitely be rolling a file server with it. And I don't care if Netcraft disagrees with my decision; I really do feel BSDs deserve more and more notoriety these days.
Many who use GPL do so because they dislike proprietary software. Yet when it comes to integrating with other open source software, GPL'd code amounts to what is essentially proprietary software. Might as well ship a binary blob, it is just as useful.
so...
A freebsd guys benchmarks say freebsd is faster.
a linux guys benchmarks say linux is faster.
Any you want to trust one over the other? That's silly, if benchmarks from sources that can be biased are competing, you don't pick one over the other, you pick an independent third.
There was one in the last month - Ubuntu vs. FreeBSD vs. Solaris.
Ubuntu won the most benchmarks, followed by Solaris, followed by FreeBSD. HOWEVER, when Ubuntu lost, often, it lost badly. FreeBSD and Solaris rarely lost badly (maybe once or twice each).
For usually good/best performance, occasionally horrible performance, go Linux. For consistently good performance, stick with FreeBSD or Solaris
That being said, the latest Ubuntu must be pretty damn fast. I've tried a couple versions up to the previous version, and they were never as fast (at least for the UI on any app/WM/DM that I used) as FreeBSD 6.3, 6.4 or 7.0.
But that's the march of Progress. Still, which one is faster for you, depends on what you do with it, and hence which one you use should be up to what you do, and what you are most comfortable with.
I've had bad experiences with Linux, better performance with my tasks in FreeBSD, and better stability/maintainability with FreeBSD, so I pick FreeBSD. I know people who've had the opposite experience in all cases, and they do (and should) use Linux. The trick is - I don't tell them to use FreeBSD (just to stop telling people who haven't tried it to avoid it), they are usually telling me to use Linux.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Uhmmm, Postel's Law, users (transparently) love it, programmers (selfishly) don't ;)
easy, run cpu load up on 8-way box with pthreads or semaphores...
i found that my poor samba speeds came from the nic on the windows machine. once i'd swapped that out for a spare intel 10/100 pro i had kicking around i was getting the expected 12Mbyte/s.
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
who uses FreeBSD anymore?
Lots of people. All Juniper products' firmware is FreeBSD based, for example.
Vitriolic comments - check
GPL/BSD flamewar - check
Bashing Linux - check
Bashing RMS - check
Adoration of ZFS - check
Hardware support discussion - check
I think we have all bases covered by now.
Is BSD becoming the new Apple?
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
I wish Vmware or Sun (virtual box) would start supporting freebsd 7 for client-side tools. It would make running and playing around with it a lot easier and fun.
so...
A freebsd guys benchmarks say freebsd is faster.
a linux guys benchmarks say linux is faster.
Right. The point I was supporting with the slashdot link was that FreeBSD 7 SMP performance was competitive with that of Linux, and that there have been marked improvements since FreeBSD 5, contrary to the parent's trolling. Like a Good Linux Zealot, he Deliberately Missed The Point. I could give two shits if FreeBSD or Linux performs better according to blind taste test XYZ, Bob's Admin Poll, Gartner Research, or any other "credible" source. FreeBSD is a modern unix-like operating system that is making strides in open source operating systems and software that adds benefit to the whole open source community, I don't understand why Linux zealots have to bitch and moan whenever FreeBSD gets a meager portion of the credit it deserves.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
I find it really annoying how BSD crowd is often stating that BSD comes from single repository (ergo something good) as opposed to Linux where libs come from whole variety of places (ergo something bad), repos and developers. This is simply not true.
First of all, comparing FreeBSD repository to all linux distros is false. Compare FreeBSD to _single_ distro, whichever distro. Then you'll see that the code is coming from single repository too. OpenSuSE maintains its own patches (and therefore repo) for software. Ubuntu does the same. Pretty much every distro that patches original software does maintain its own repo. Just like FreeBSD. Because, FreeBSD's repos is really not OpenBSD's right? Or NetBSD.
So if you want to compare FreeBSD to Linux, compare it to single (any) distro.
Secondly, Linux distros are not a random collection of libs as some FreeBSD fanbois would put it. Pretty much all distros use SAME software, some with more or less custom patching, mostly branding (like OpenSuse for instance). They are doing it for various reasons, but the core functionality of each package remains the same. You can use Open Office equally the same, with same result on any distro. So it is far from being a random collection of kernel + software.
It is good to hear some of the Linux distros are heading in that kind of direction. It has been a while since I've looked at the state of Linux distros (besides Ubuntu).
Quite frankly, once I made the plunge into FreeBSD, I've never really looked back. I'm a happy camper with FreeBSD on the servers and Windows on my desktop. I'll spare you which version of Windows I'm using :-)
I've been deploying FreeBSD in the last 10+ years, mostly as chief architect/CTO in startups, and here are some of the reasons I still opt for it today - currently about a dozen servers in cages serving cumulatively 200 Mbit/sec, all non-http proprietary protocols and software (we have nothing web-related,) software-based redundancy, MySQL, etc:
1. Stability.
In the last 10 years I had kernel panicked once, due to a driver problem.
This needs some discipline and patience:
- We introduce a new RELEASE only after we have been running it for at least 6 months on our test systems, and then only when it becomes cost-effective over patching the previous one.
- Everything we run is compiled from the source, to the last executable, on the target architecture (we have several.)
- We create our own automated installation media, certified for our targets, which results in half-page instructions and few CDs that a retard can install in less than an hour - from bare metal to the running server.
- We never run any GUI on servers. All access is via SSH (which is actually the only open port apart from our proprietary protocol ports) and engineers use a wild range of development/interface machines. Some even use Linux.
2. Maintenance
Usually, for each release, there are few problems that we have to solve.
Most of the time it's patching network drivers (as hardware is always ahead of the release). Search for the problem, figuring out what to do, testing the patch, incorporating it into our installation process - all of that never took more than 2-3 days. At this point I am willing to bet that 7.1 will run on all our servers with less than a week of extra work (currently we are on 7.0. 7.1 will get phased in in August or later.)
Outside kernel, there are sometimes application bugs, generally nastier than kernel problems. MySQL had one with faulty locking on multiprocessor machines, which we patched in May last year (it took about a week), and which only recently found its way to MySQL release.
All taken into account, it's usually less than 2 weeks of work and about 6 months of test run for each new release.
3. Performance
We never ran into a performance issues, simply because we add a server when average CPU/io usage goes over 20%. Our job mix appears to uniformly load CPU, network interface and disks. A server costs $4-8K and it's a non-issue for the kind of business we run. So maybe we are just lucky here. The only real issue is bitmap rendering that we do in batch once and a while (can take a week on *fast* 4-core server), but we do this once every few months.
None of us, except one strange guy, uses FreeBSD as workstation machine. It sucks to force Linux GUIs onto FreeBSD (even the weirdo runs some simple screen splitter), so I have no clue about that aspect.
4. Elite status
They used to say, "Would you rather date crowd in PC or Mac section in Frys?". Well, you get the idea.
And I find it interesting how companies can "exploit" GPL the way you describe. Especially when you get contributors to assign their copyright over to the maintainers. There is no way to "exploit" a BSD license that way.
I'd actually be curious to know what the official stance is on your use of the GPL. While I personally dont give two shits, I wonder if the FSF guys have a opinion.
its not my windows system.
on my production (and even test) systems I use intel epro1000 chips, even integrated on the mobo on pci-e if at all possible.
my xp desktop to linux: very fast
my xp desktop to bsd: lots of pauses and wait states (you can see it on the switch leds - being dark MUCH of the time)
linux to bsd: also slow
everything to everything via nfs: lightening quick (using MS's unix 'stuff' on xp). all switches are gig-e, nothing using jumbos.
smb on freebsd is just NOT very fast. I seriously dislike having to use it and am thankful that at least the MS software download for xp enables NFS and I can mostly ignore samba now. but - its STILL a flaw that bsd, out of the box, can't even come close to linux (ootb) on samba.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I don't think this was the cause for the slowness I see with bsd/smb. this does not sound like a common thing that would be affecting my traffic.
one test case I use: on my xp box I'll mount a smb server's disk and do a cd or dvd rip across the network.
when I rip to linux, the network led is solid-on and the file completes in minutes. if my remote server is bsd, though, the dvd rip might take half an hour or so. HUGE diff.
I doubt its this dir bug that I'm hitting. I think the perf. issue is something more fundamental. it might be bsd's fault or smb's fault - but the combo has NEVER been 'high performance' to me, sad to say.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Where is the Perl 5.10 port!!!
Con Kolivas has been right from the beginning! (just google and you'll know it).
Fixed that for you.
As a Linux user, I have recently delved into FreeBSD and found the system a pleasant surprise. PC-BSD 7.1 was the actual flavor but FreeBSD none the less. I did find the KDE4.1 too unstable for production work, but a step back in time to PC-BSD 1.5 (FreeBSD 6.4) gave me a system that was somewhat better to tinker with.
Unfortunately, on several occasions I found the system would slow to a crawl and other times would ungracefully crash requiring a hard reboot. And still again for some reason the mouse curser would go berserk and lock itself to the bottom of the screen.
Personally I liked FreeBSD but had to return to my Debian Lenny system to get work done. Eventually, when I have time, I intend to give FreeBSD 7+ another go just because. Although I can see the time needed to get a production desktop system up and running, could take a week or two and I'm not sure the resulting system would be as reliable as my Lenny system.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
I'm not sure why this happened. FreeBSD developers have complained about the desktop guys only caring about Linux and creating linuxisms that made things hard.
So much for "open source", UNIX, and "portability".
Then again, most of the Linux/GPL game today is putting Sun out of business, not the freedom.
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
FreeBSD is for people who love Nix
No, FreeBSD seems to be for people who hate Linux. FreeBSd fanatics are consumed by their hatred of Linux. It's understandable, I suppose, since Linux basically stole FreeBSD's thunder
Ha well maybe they could support the rt73 wireless USB chipset without having to wait an entire evening to recompile the kernel, and even then it doesn't work!
I am a die hard Linux fan and I agree with what Linus Torvalds says about BSD. All BSD guys, users and system developers are nothing other than a bunch of Masterbading Monkeys.
A ton of servers ? The big linux numbers you see published are desktops.
I call bullshit.
On a 100Mb network, the expected maximum speed is indeed 12MB/s. However, this does not take into account the overhead for the protocol stack, this is raw Ethernet speed. With TCP/IP overhead, you'd drop down to about 10MB/s, and then you get into the SMB overhead, which is worse. No way you're getting SMB file transfers at 12MB/s on a 100Mb/s network. It's simply physically impossible.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
FreeBSD 7.1 still ships ports/lang/neko while the software never worked on FreeBSD (nor on any other *BSD). And yes, there's an open bug for ages.
Seriously, what keeps me off FreeBSD is the fact that it ships things that weren't tested. Remember when a commit to -STABLE broke Realtek drivers ? Remember when the ports tree had a completly broken pecl-APC, a critical component used by many web sites (and it lasted a long time before being fixed, waiting for an upstream update) ? That's not old, that with FreeBSD 7.0. Oh and of course the broken PHP 5.2.7 also got commited to ports.
Can't FreeBSD folks test things instead of rushing and remove unmaintained things or things that never worked and that they aren't able to fix?
{{.sig}}
I updated yesterday. Pulled down the sources and built world and kernel. All during this my system remained usable. I didn't have to upgrade any ports. After build I dropped into single user mode, installed, then rebooted. When I was back up, I noticed no differences... and that is a *good* thing! All operating systems should be like this (although with varying degrees of hands-on-ness).
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I'm particularly happy about 7.1, as it has introduced support for booting from GPT partitioned disks. At long last, the tired old MBR and BSD label system can be thrown on the trash-heap of history. Since we have mostly macs with one FreeBSD server in the house, the shift to GPT was mostly already done. Now the only media not GPT partitioned in our house is read-only media or small flash drives (SD or thumb).
Some advice for anyone considering it:
1. Don't use the 'gpt migrate' command. I did my transition by buying a new hard disk, but once it was complete and I was happy with the results, I experimented with the old drive. The migration went poorly. For one thing, you need to have enough space unallocated at the end of the disk to fit the GPT protective copy, but even then, it didn't migrate my setup properly.
2. You need to use 'gpt boot' to make a boot partition that contains the first stage loader. This also writes boot code into the MBR that loads this boot partition. This loader, in turn, will load the actual loader from the first UFS partition and from there you're off to the races. At some point, you may transition to an EFI based machine and will need to replace this boot partition with an EFI system partition, into which you will add (to be written) an EFI loader for FreeBSD. Changing this over will be made much, much easier if your boot partition and swap partition are next to each other. Transitioning will be a simple matter of deleting the swap and boot partitions, creating the EFI system partition, then creating a new swap from the remaining space.