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FreeBSD 7.2 Released
An anonymous reader writes "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: Support for fully transparent use of superpages for application memory; Support for multiple IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for jails; csup(1) now supports CVSMode to fetch a complete CVS repository; Gnome updated to 2.26, KDE updated to 4.2.2; Sparc64 now supports UltraSparc-III processors. For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list."
Adds another anonymous reader, "You can grab the latest version from FreeBSD from the mirrors or via BitTorrent. There is also a quick review of the new features and upgrade instructions."
Cheers !
I really feel for the BSD guys. Just hope they can keep users. Having choice in OS selection is great.
FreeBSD Jails are a kind of light-weight server partitioning scheme, in the same vein as Solaris Zones.
I think BSD needs a new, cuddly but cool mascot. how do you compete with tux? Is the cresta (remember that?) polar bear available?
ZFS + Ports, take that Ubuntu!
I dunno about ZFS, but I've recently been playing with a freebsd install (7.1 I think), and ports, while a cool idea, seems pretty creaky in practice.
My main beefs were not with the infrastructure, which seemed OK, but that the package maintenance seemed pretty spotty: many many packages (even fairly "major" ones) were pretty out-of-date, even compared to e.g. debian stable, and in many cases they were installed as monolithic chunks where a bit of judicious splitting would have been very helpful -- for example, an otherwise fairly dependency-free library that happens to come with some demo apps that drag in all of OpenGL and X (it would have been better to put the apps with their heavy dependencies in a separate package, or make their inclusion easily configurable)!
Sadly, the ports collection felt kind of like a 2nd-class add-on (and I gather, that's essentially what it is). Even though there are many packages in debian where the maintainer should probably be doing a better job, on average debian's package collection feels a lot more solid to me that what freebsd has in ports...
We live, as we dream -- alone....
Nope, there's no reiserfs support.
.sig: No such file or directory
You can usually configure most ports, try doing a "make config" on the port dir... You should be able to turn those X11/OpenGL demo apps off if the port is well written.
What i hate about binary packages, and debian suffers from this greatly, is when a feature is optional to compile in (as opposed to comprising solely of separate files as in your example).. a binary package will typically be compiled with all the options turned on, thus necessitating dependencies you may not want or use.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Obviously you have not actually used 4.2.2. Simply put it fixes the vast majority of the complaints with the 4.2.x branch.
What is the motivation of this person to post this kind of post these days. I don't get it, anyone care to explain?
It absolutely is on FreeBSD amd64, but this is mainly due to the fact that it is still lacking accelerated Nvidia support on that hardware. Terrible hardware support (I've mentioned wifi before) the makes FreeBSD an appalling desktop anyway. I'd leave it in the datacentre where it's actually an excellent choice.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
This may explain things.
Haiku / BeOS. It's one of the few operating systems out there that is markedly different. And you can even test it in Virtualbox as a virtualized machine.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I don't get it either. As if I'd want FreeBSD to be a desktop OS.
Desktop OS's are supposed to be ready for the desktop. Not FreeBSD.
More often binary packages come with the set of options that the maintainer thinks is useful. This very often means half a dozen which install dependencies that I don't want and one that I do want is missing.
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WiFi support will be slightly better in 8.0. They have support for the Intel 4965 at least. I don't enjoy compiling though, so I'll probably continue to use Archlinux.
Well, if you are building from source debian will happily support you.
apt-get source package, customize it to fit your needs, let it build a package and install that.
Not more of a hassle than using ports.
The things in ports where outdated or the binary packages? Examples? Did you updated your ports tree or used one from like 2009 q1? And as someone have already said you can set configurations for what parts you want, it's not as convenient as the use flags in Gentoo imho but at least it's there.
I may also add that my experience (which is 2-3 years old now eventually ..) is that FreeBSD had more up to date packages than Ubuntu, and well, Debian stable? Come on ..
Ubuntu refused to upgrade from memory leaking firefox 1.0.7, with ports I'm not stuck with some old shit just because. And I'm pretty sure at that time FreeBSD had newer KDE port to.
"and ports, while a cool idea, seems pretty creaky in practice"
"any many packages (even fairly "major" ones) were pretty out-of-date"
"Sadly, the ports collection felt kind of like a 2nd-class add-on"
Dude, what are you talking about ? Non of this is true!
If you tried the ports that come with 7.1-RELEASE they are several months old, this is normal, they come with the release. If you want up-to-date software you just need to update the ports collection, this is done via the csup(1) utility. Please try to get a little bit deeper into FreeBSD before talking bullshit about it!
Really? As little effort as 'cd {portdir} && make config install clean'?
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And in rare cases when you need a rare obscure feature, it will not be compiled in, leaving you to play a bit with debuild and stuff. That sucks, too.
However, binary packages are much convinient in many cases. I've been using FreeBSD with ports before, and now I'm using Gentoo with portage (which is inspired by FreeBSD's ports) and I'm happy to turn optional features as I like, but I miss a lot of things from binary distros like Debian -- speed of installation, some assurance that the package will work, less work on my part to get it working, etc. To get the source, change a few switches and create your own deb isn't such a deal if you have to do it for only several packages. I did this on Nexenta OpenSolaris installation recently, and I say it's easier than maintaining a Gentoo installation.
And the unneeded features aren't such a big deal, really. I've run Debian on slow low-end devices, and it runs fine, they take a bit more space and the memory usage somewhat grows, but on a modern system that shouldn't be a problem at all -- it is offset by the lack of ports tree, the need for installed compiler and headers, and the faster installation. Debian developers also splits some optional features as seperate packages, where it is possible. And you never know when you actually might need these optional features.
So ports have their pros and cons, I really liked them when I had to play with them, but as I'm lazy I would choose something apt-get-style now. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a nice choice if you want apt-get, FreeBSD kernel. I'm not sure if they have working ZFS and DTrace support at the moment, but it's still worth checking out.
One of the main reasons I would choose FreeBSD at the moment is ZFS. And there is very low probability that we'll see this in Linux.
Sadly, the ports collection felt kind of like a 2nd-class add-on (and I gather, that's essentially what it is). Even though there are many packages in debian where the maintainer should probably be doing a better job, on average debian's package collection feels a lot more solid to me that what freebsd has in ports...
I don't mean to slam your dick in the door, but one cannot compare ports (apples) to packages (oranges).
Now before you fire back with, "But Debian says packages are both source and binaries !", allow me to reply, "Damn you, Debian." Seriously, though -- apt-get from Debian uses either source packages (equivalent to freebsd ports) or binary packages (equivalent to freebsd packages), depending on the commands you feed to it.
Here's how FreeBSD separates source installs from binary installs:
Ports: Slower source installs compiled on your machine with make.conf optimizations for your system's architecture. Gentoo (portage/emerge) and Debian (apt-get) have Jordan Hubbard (now working for Apple on Darwin) to thank for these. Quick explanation below in the code quote:
Installation process for installing imaginary app "slashdot" (assuming you have the ports tree installed on your system):
Packages: Fast binary install that is compiled on someone else's system with their choice of "make config" options, for their architecture; usually a very generic build. These use pkg_tools to install, delete, get info for these binary packages.
Installation process for installing imaginary app "slashdot":
When i say slow and fast for install speeds, these comments are relative to two things: source install and binary install. Source compilation time for monolithic packages like firefox3, openoffice.org, xorg, gnome2, etc. take upwards or 6 hours to several days depending on the system doing the compiling. The loss in program responsiveness by using a generic binary package install may be worth it(unnoticeable) to save 3 says compile time. With computers getting faster, optimizations are less noticeable, etc., however, programs also demand more resources as time goes on, andso this may be a wash; and one STILL may want to compile certain programs for their own machine.
My main beefs were not with the infrastructure, which seemed OK, but that the package maintenance seemed pretty spotty: many many packages (even fairly "major" ones) were pretty out-of-date, even compared to e.g. debian stable
The reason for binary package apathy on FreeBSD, as I see it, is as follows. Most people that use FreeBSD don't care about binary packages beyond the base package for a RELEASE branch install from ftp or cd/dvd. For all other programs, most users will compile from source using ports and fetch new versions using portsnap, and lastly upgrade to said new versions using portupgrade. For aforementioned monolithic programs like openoffice.org, one may want to just bite the bullet and avoid a 3 day compile (which currently takes up ~12 gigs of space) including several license agreements, etc. to compile the beast, and just install a precompiled binary package from the "ooo" site.
With that said, most ports maintainers are fairly quick to release the latest version of a port, and some even maintain not only the release port of a program, but the beta. e.g. there is a firefox3(curren
and not trolling, ive had great luck with BSD subversion servers and mailservers... but ive been transitioning away from BSD in our corporate environment because of a nasty 16 group limit in the kernel, the quirkyness of ports, and mostly its inability to be deployed and managed site-wide easily (ex: redhat has cobbler, koan, satellite, and kickstart but where is BSD in all of this?)
still waiting for autofs support as well, as converting from my autofs to amd on local machines is a pain.
if i have 3500 servers i need to deploy, pxe is still not supported without a kernel hack. makes for long nites.
Good people go to bed earlier.
That "joke" is fucking dead since years.
> FreeBSD Jails are a kind of light-weight server partitioning scheme, in the same vein as Solaris Zones.
Or as Linux-VServer, or as OpenVZ.
Maybe you should try Arch? It use binary package but also has port like build system if you need to build your customized package (abs)
Aliquis confirms it: The BSD dying joke is dying...
Well no, Gentoo is Linux which is not the same thing at all.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
All of the FreeBSD ports can be compiled to binary packages, and you can easily mix and match between ports and packages. If you provide the -P flag to portupgrade / portinstall, it will use the binary package if one is available for your architecture, and fall back to building from source if not.
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Ah, but that would require effort and waste time that {he,she,it} could be using to whinge on the internet.
Oh, the irony... "Anonymous Coward: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!"
Cough, cough.
Yes, and probably with less effort if your {portdir} doesn't come with that one dependency you happen to need according to your comment a few levels up.
This may be completely contrary to what you meant, but there is a Gentoo/FreeBSD port.
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-freebsd.xml
I've been meaning to try it. Maybe after I get around to playing with FreeBSD. I need more hours in the day, dammit. this is why the universe needs to be open source!
Oh, the irony... "Anonymous Coward: If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!"
And in the same vein, they are inadequate because all instances share a kernel. A successful attack on the kernel means a successful attack on the complete system. Hence why we have actual virtualization technologies, and stuff like colinux.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It is not impossible to make it a desktop friendly, even easier than Windows operating system but you will need to give up so much stuff that it would be nothing like BSD.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/technology/unix.html
Don't get me wrong, OS X is not Cocoa on FreeBSD but it uses BSD parts enough that you can get glimpse of what kind of features to expect on next OS X. I always watch FreeBSD releases for that reason.
Generally speaking, trolls get motivated when you spare time to reply them instead of leaving to mods.
Damn straight. I run debian on a headless ARM box. I have no interest in X, but I do want to use multicast dns/service discovery. Apple's daemon (which I used to use) doesn't support ipv6 on linux (I need ipv6 to access my intranet because cisco's vpn borks ip4). Avahi does, but the debian package is built with dbus/glib/X dependencies. Some packages do have a -nox variant, but it seems to be an afterthought.
Huh? make config will display a menu letting you select the configure options and will automatically set the dependencies for the rest of the build. Anything in the ports tree can be installed, with any combination of configure options, with dependencies from the rest of the ports tree (or with binary packages, if you prefer).
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First of all, I'm not trolling.
Most successful open source projects have some kind of corporate backing, whether it be developers, funding or both. Linux has IBM, HP, RedHat, etc. Sun sponsors and manages a number of open source projects.
The community behind FreeBSD have put together what seems to be (I've never used it for more than a few minutes at a time) a solid server operating system whose command-line code forms part of the basis of what is IMO the best consumer operating system (OS X). From what I understand, this is due to a small but devoted group of developers.
Still, not to bemoan the FreeBSD community's efforts, but I'm wondering if there's some kind of corporate backing, seeing as I'm certain several companies use it in critical production situations.
There was nothing about this in the Wikipedia entry.
This space left intentionally blank.
. . . is a bit like driving an automobile with a manual stick transmission, while also being a bit like driving one with an automatic, and yet not exactly like the modern compromise, "manu-matic".
(Manu-matic is supposed to give the driver a sense of the control of the stick, while simultaneously incorporating the no-brainer-ness of an automatic.)
The ports system is an undeniably good idea, but only really shines if it is supported by a full-time, high-speed connection.
Running FreeBSD from a set of CD's, on the other hand, can be really frustrating in my experience; while running Ubuntu, (Open-)Suse, and even Slackware from a CD-, or DVD installation--the way most desktop users are accustomed to--is much more doable at this point.
Still, if you yearn for the feel of cranky stick-shifts and the quirks of normal aspiration--some things that would seem likely to appeal to those drawn to open-source--then put on your goggles, fire up your broadband and pop that boot-only 7.2 RELEASE CD into the tray.
Flash is for sissies anyway, no?
Sorry, couldn't resist... ;-)
Reece
I don't get it either. As if I'd want FreeBSD to be a desktop OS.
Desktop OS's are supposed to be ready for the desktop. Not FreeBSD.
That's...not altogether true. Though maybe kind of. It depends a good deal on how you view computers. If a person views computers as simply a tool, a means to do something mainly concerning the "real world" and events surrounding it, but of no interest as to the computer plus software in and of itself, then that person would probably be better-served with something with Windows installed or with an Apple system.
People who have more of an interest in, for various reasons, or fascination with, the computer and its' software and want/need to have a different system are more likely to take a different path as the features and openness that some other systems provide may not be available in the common PC/Mac machines.
Many of those peoples' needs are met by linux, then there are others that have OS needs or wants that lead them to other systems.
I suspect many are like myself that have multiple OS's installed and use whatever works best for a specific task.
(I currently have Mandriva '08, PC-BSD 7.1/Galileo, XP-ProSP3 on this box, and also an SGI Octane workstation running IRIX UNIX 6.5.30. XP for a lot of gaming and some few other tasks/software that are still Windows-only or Windows-best.)
My PC-BSD system is amazingly friendly for a FreeBSD-based desktop, maybe rivaling or even surpassing Ubuntu in some ways IMHO. The PC-BSD packaging system using click-to-install ".PBI" packages (as well as having the ports system with some cool GUI port-managers available) is getting to be quite usable by the less computer-savvy user.
The automatic updates manager is no slouch either and seems to work great with both system & .PBI-package updates with little hassle. Features/development seems to be chugging right along also, as PC-BSD now is commercially-sponsored by iXsystems a "Provider of enterprise servers for open source and corporate sponsor of PC-BSD".
I have high hopes here as so far (I've been using PC-BSD since about version 0.76RC(?) or so), as PC-BSD has gotten to be very nice and easy to use to the point where I'm more comfortable there than Mandriva's desktop system as far as a non-MS desktop system with comparable features, simplicity, and ease-of-use. Of course this is purely anecdotal, but I do think PC-BSDs' version of a FreeBSD-based desktop is worth checking out if you're interested in a non-MS/Apple/Linux-based desktop system. No, I'm not associated with PC-BSD, iXsystems, or anyone affiliated with either in any way or have any interest other than as a user.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
And in the same vein, they are inadequate because all instances share a kernel.
And are significantly faster (on our workload) and more efficient for the same reason. Since all jails pull from the same heap, you don't have to worry about under- or over-allocating RAM to an instance. You also don't have to contend with multiple kernels all trying to do bookkeeping many hundreds of times per second.
Jails obviously aren't the right tool for every job, but when they suit your needs, they're outstanding.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
But I think your expectations are a bit off. BSD has its place and eagerly accepted in various spaces but that doesn't mean "rule the world" by any stretch of the imagination. No one should feel sorry for the BSD guys because they are creating great software that is satisfying users all over the world.
FreeBSD Jails are a kind of light-weight server partitioning scheme, in the same vein as Solaris Zones.
Zones developers have explicitly stated jails as a source of inspiration.
Personally I think Solaris is the best server OS out there, and the only thing that would really make it "perfect" would be a FreeBSD Ports system (though pkgsrc is pretty close).
What about removal of packages?
One of the things I like about Debian source packages, is that they can be compiled, installed, played with, upgraded, etc and finally removed - all that without a hustle.
Impression I had that ports is just a nice front-end for "./configure && make && make install". And as usually "make uninstall" is largely missing (as only few source packages provide the functionality).
That means over time system gets loaded with orphaned files.
Actually the thing which impressed me most first time I installed the Debian was that during upgrades/install of custom packages, it can also remove conflicting packages. E.g. during library migration, Debian would properly install/remove library needed by particular package version. Apps like aptitude, which can also automatically remove unused automatically installed packages, saves heck a lot of time in long run.
Ports in a way nice simple system and I like it more than e.g. Gentoo. Yet, for stable maintainable in long run system, I'd still go with Debian Stable, as it's thorough package management was more than once saving my servers from me.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
My friend, active FreeBSD user, was in part attracted to it because it was one of the few problem-free systems where one can compile newer KDE and Gnome versions. Yeah, it takes time. But it also worked.
As end-user goes, there is a very little difference between Linux and *BDS when some DE runs on top of it.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Cue variations of "linux is better", "who uses FreeBSD anyway?", "GPL FTW!", and "the installer makes me frowny face" from linux fanboys that are in no way adversely affected by the advances of other projects in 3... 2... 1...
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
The desktop user would be better off with something actually intended for desktop use.
I didn't read past the first paragraph of your post, but you're probably just rambling on about how BSD could be modified for desktop use. Short answer: No. Just no.
What about removal of packages?
Ports provide a build skeleton for creating packages. Every port comes with a list of installed files and potentially an uninstall script. You can remove them with make deinstall in the port directive or with pkg_deinstall / pkg_delete, just as you can with binary packages.
Impression I had that ports is just a nice front-end for "./configure && make && make install".
Yes, it is (and various other build systems). And providing uninstall support is part of the difference between a nice front end and a trivial front end.
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In FreeBSD, you can use /etc/make.conf to impose global controls on port building. For example, mine contains
WITHOUT_X11=YES
WITHOUT_GUI=YES
WITHOUT_NLS=YES
Then ports that would normally drag in all of X (e.g. vim and emacs) don't do it.
Do not read this post fast. It is never right to read Slashdot posts fast.
For high-profile applications like you quote it is clear that FreeBSD (as many other source based OSs) would generally provide newer version of packages.
Yet, as Debian package statistics shows, there are lots of minor applications in active used which are not really maintained anymore by their creators - essentially only Debian Developers perform maintenance on the packages.
I'm using number of such obscure, hard-to-find packages since old times. (E.g. "cons" build system). Only once stepping outside of Debian universe for a short time, I have understood how hard it is other-wise to find the applications. Some such packages do not have home pages anymore and Googling leads directly to packages.debian.org.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
One of the things I like about Debian source packages, is that they can be compiled, installed, played with, upgraded, etc and finally removed - all that without a hustle.
The cruft piling up is a problem with Linux (at least with most distributions) because practically everything is a "package". You have, say, mplayer saving its configuration files to /etc, alongside with essential system configuration files. Equivalently, you have essential system properties, such as the toolchain, in the same place, handled the same way as, say, Skype.
(And at least with pkgsrc it is entirely safe to just rm -rf /usr/pkg && rm -rf /var/db/pkg*" and start from a 100 % clean table.)
I am no fan of ports & pkgsrc, and think that Linux distributions are superior when it comes to packaging software. (After all, your typical distribution has as many people packaging software as some smaller BSDs have people writing an operating system.) BSD is about the system, not about the external additions to it.
But as much as this is a good thing, there are obvious flaws with this approach as well. Besides cruft, the often mentioned (potential) issues affecting system stability and coherency come to my mind instantly. I have often come to a conclusion that the only way to maintain a Linux distribution with huge amount of packages is indeed to reinstall it every six months. A full circle; I remember doing that with some other operating system as well...
My main beefs were not with the infrastructure, which seemed OK, but that the package maintenance seemed pretty spotty:
Could we get a less vague or subjective characterisation? The general concensus by FreeBSD users (and one shared by myself), especially those coming from a Linux background, is that the ports system Just Works(TM). As for the tools to manage installed ports or package, there's certainly plenty to choose from. By that I mean the issue, if there is one, is generally one of "preference" rather than functionality; put simply, they all work.
many many packages (even fairly "major" ones) were pretty out-of-date, even compared to e.g. debian stable
To the extent that the "many many" qualifier has any meaning, I'd really be interested in your naming just a few of these "major" ports.
and in many cases they were installed as monolithic chunks where a bit of judicious splitting would have been very helpful -- for example, an otherwise fairly dependency-free library that happens to come with some demo apps that drag in all of OpenGL and X
There's as much or as little judicious splitting as you want. A quick read through of ports(7), make.conf(5), src.conf(5), for example, would have addressed your perceived issues, as would have a quick Google search. Next thing I'll hear is that FreeBSD suffers from a lack of documentation.
Nothing personal, but I have trouble seeing something modded +5 that consists of little else than random impressions from the uniformed who are "playing around".
What about removal of packages?
This is a really basic "RTFM." It's not "make uninstall" like you wrote in your post, but "make deinstall"
Alternatively, you use the "pkg_delete" or "pkg_deinstall" command to delete any installed package. (again, to find out potential options etc, RTFM)
Very simple.
One of the things I like about Debian source packages, is that they can be compiled, installed, played with, upgraded, etc and finally removed - all that without a hustle.
Yes, those would be fundamentals of any packaging systems.
Impression I had that ports is just a nice front-end for "./configure && make && make install". And as usually "make uninstall" is largely missing (as only few source packages provide the functionality).
Your impression is somewhat correct. Again, this is something expected of ANY source packaging system. I'm not sure how else you would want it to operate?
That means over time system gets loaded with orphaned files.
I may have missed something...why are files getting orphaned?
If you're confused about what files belong to what packages in FreeBSD, try the "pkg_which" command.
Actually the thing which impressed me most first time I installed the Debian was that during upgrades/install of custom packages, it can also remove conflicting packages. E.g. during library migration, Debian would properly install/remove library needed by particular package version. Apps like aptitude, which can also automatically remove unused automatically installed packages, saves heck a lot of time in long run.
Yes, this is a weakness of the base ports system. Fortunately pretty much everyone who runs FreeBSD runs either portupgrade or portmaster. These programs essentially take the place of apt, etc, and work completely within the structure of the ports system.
I have used FreeBSD for many years and it is still my prefered server OS. However, as virtualization usage grows I think FreeBSD will take a hit for not having any virtualization, other than jails, that can use FreeBSD as the host OS.
Large companies that go with a bare metal virtualization like VMware ESX will likely not be impacted, but small to medium businesses that don't want to or can't afford bare metal virtualization will end up having to use windows or Linux to virtualize. Once you start to use another OS, the need to simplify how many OSs you keep may make some simply drop FreeBSD.
Revolves around those optional features that are compiled into the damn package, pulling in all those extra dependencies. Portage and the Use flags are very good for that. I can specify on a per package basis what optional features I want, which helps keep my system much leaner.
Another issue I've got with many other distros is the continual insistence of starting so many services at boot. To me it's reaching the point that most distros look like a damn windows installation with all the services running. Personally and Professionally, I like the Slackware/OpenBSD thinking that as little as possible starts at system boot. Let the damn Sys-Op/Admin decide what needs to run to provide the functionality the system is supposed to. In my case, the system is a desktop so the only thing that needs to be running is sound, apcupsd, cups, basic networking - ntp client and firewall. I don't even have X running at startup as I'm fairly comfortable working on the CLI having used computers since the Dos 5 days.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I have, on Kubuntu 9.04. Flashier, suckier.
The network manager widget is broken, requiring a workaround right from the start.
Icons still have that retarded mini-sidebar pop up when I hover over them.
I still have a "Desktop" folder that is not reflected by the on-screen desktop, all in the interest of satisfying Seigo's whims. (I don't mind the "folder view" concept, but disconnecting the on-screen desktop from the actual desktop folder is just poor design).
Maybe you could have read his post instead of imagining what it was and then commenting that he is wrong.
He was talking about PC-BSD, a FreeBSD-based distro designed for desktop use. Since it has many pre-built packages and a GUI front-end for ports, it is actually quite a usable desktop distro. Pretty much about as easy as Ubuntu. I normally prefer linux because of hardware compatibility, so I usually use Ubuntu as my desktop and debian or Ubuntu-server for servers, but PC-BSD is pretty nice.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
The general concensus by FreeBSD users (and one shared by myself), especially those coming from a Linux background, is that the ports system Just Works(TM)
If it Just Worked, we wouldn't need to keep an eye on UPDATING and jump through hoops when upgrading certain tricky things; e.g. perl-after-upgrade, the gnome upgrade scripts, knowing when you need to forcibly rebuild dependencies and when you can just upgrade a single package, and knowing what to do when you get it wrong and it starts doing weird things like try to install already installed packages.
Ports are a leaky abstraction; they don't try to deal with every possible situation automagically like some other packaging systems, and you do need to have some vague idea what you're doing to use them well. portupgrade and co are invaluable, but they're no apt; they can't be, because the ports system doesn't give them enough information to always do the right thing by themselves.
"
Really? As little effort as 'cd {portdir} && make config install clean'?
"
THis is not actually a little effort
Install FreeBSD or PCBSD 7.1 and then do that
to build a simple fortune cookies application
First you have to know where it is located
(for that you either need to install another package to (and you have to know that name too) or make sure you have Internet connection and go to freesbd.org ports page to search for the name
Then you have open the login shell as root,
(and you must know how to do that -- it does not automagically prompt you for a password )
Then you CD to that directory start the build
and discover that it tries to download source
code for Gnome or KDE then build it -- which
will take half a day on some machines....
welcome to the ports system
As end-user goes, there is a very little difference between Linux and *BDS when some DE runs on top of it.
Except with hardware compatibility. Many consider OpenSolaris or FreeBSD to be superior to the linux kernel as far as stability and performance, and there are distros of each to simplify administration (Nexenta and PC-BSD, respectively), but the linux kernel has always had much better compatibility for me.
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
That means over time system gets loaded with orphaned files.
I may have missed something...why are files getting orphaned?
If you're confused about what files belong to what packages in FreeBSD, try the "pkg_which" command.
The comment was to "make uninstall" (as I have seen in automake generated makefiles, or mentioned by you "make deinstall" in *BSD) bogosity.
I had this experience, notably with some man pages and generated /etc/ config files, that "make (un|de)install" will not clean everything, leaving garbage in system.
I know that Debian takes care of it and I'm happy to know now that ports take care of that too.
Fortunately pretty much everyone who runs FreeBSD runs either portupgrade or portmaster. These programs essentially take the place of apt, etc, and work completely within the structure of the ports system.
Nice to know that too. I'd say that apt more flexible, but if portupgrade in the end has the same effect, then it is not relevant. I tend to keep my Debian stable system using only official stable packages so flexibility of apt becomes redundant. [ N.B. In fact, for quite long time I didn't know that was possible. Only when I tried applications from unstable/testing repos the true nature of apt showed itself. ]
P.S. It's different in Ubuntu and e.g. Debian Sid, where being on bleeding edge means that binary upgrades can break things - and sometimes do. Flexible package management becomes must have feature. But this is again different in the BSD land where separation between the OS and the ports is well outlined. While Debian is generally maintained (and regarded) as a whole, in BSD maintenance is split to accommodate different development/maintenance cycles of core and of user apps.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Would somebody then explain to me why the cupsddk port cannot be configured to not depend on fltk, which is completely unnecessary? I just want to print with splix, dammit, and I don't want all those xorg-libraries and protos and what not installed just because cupsddk does not do make config. I can edit the Makefile, but the next portupgrade could just mess it up again.
Also, why does every cups update overwrite the mime.convs file? I want my raw stream after every update.
Otherwise, tip-top.
True.
I was replying in a sense that if one has already running *BSD system, putting on top a DE would provide same environment. Few users would be able to tell the difference from Linux.
BSD's relatively poor hardware compatibility is a major stumbling block right now.
Once there was a live CD called Freesbie. But I don't think it's being updated anymore. I wish there was a live CD to evaluate before committing it to the hard drive. Is anyone maintaining a live CD for any of the BSD's?
If you want up-to-date software you just need to update the ports collection, this is done via the csup(1) utility.
Better yet, portsnap fetch update.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
First you have to know where it is located
(for that you either need to install another package to (and you have to know that name too) or make sure you have Internet connection and go to freesbd.org ports page to search for the name
cd /usr/ports
make quicksearch name=packagename
You'll find the package. No need to install anything new.
Then you have open the login shell as root,
(and you must know how to do that -- it does not automagically prompt you for a password )
"apt-get install foo" doesn't hold your hand, either. Nor did rpm prompt you for a password the last time I used an RPM-based system.
Then you CD to that directory start the build
and discover that it tries to download source
code for Gnome or KDE then build it -- which
will take half a day on some machines....
welcome to the ports system
The FreeBSD maintainers aren't concerned with being trivial to use. They're more concerned with creating a powerful and flexible system.
They focus on this almost to a fault. There's a recent thread on freebsd-questions with the subject "Modern FreeBSD Installer" where a few people are complaining about how unfriendly the current installer is. There's a fairly large base of people who don't want a change to the installer because it's familiar--and once you're familiar with it, you can install the base system in about 5 minutes. But the arcane nature of the installer is such that it turns a lot of new users off from the beginning.
Keep in mind that FreeBSD is an advanced user's OS. While its documentation is really quite good, it isn't going to hold your hand once you're on the shell. Reading through the handbook ( http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ports-using.html for specific information on the ports system) before or during use will help you learn a lot about the system.
may also add that my experience (which is 2-3 years old now eventually ..) is that FreeBSD had more up to date packages than Ubuntu, and well, Debian stable? Come on ..
Unfortunately, it's completely dependent upon the port. Ports are maintained by individuals, not by the product. Sometimes you will find a port which is a little out of date, but the most popular ports are up-to-date.
I love FreeBSD and have been a dedicated user since the 90s, but sysinstall does blow chunks.
It "works" for installation, but has a weird menu system that doesn't navigate well if you try to use it any other time other than installation.
The comment was to "make uninstall" (as I have seen in automake generated makefiles, or mentioned by you "make deinstall" in *BSD) bogosity.
Oh, I see what you are talking about.
No, "make deinstall" in the port directory is a PORT command. It uninstalls the port. It is not an application specific type "make uninstall" command that may or may not work.
Like pkg_delete, "make deinstall" removes the application according to the packing list and port specific instructions.
Jails are a form of privilege separation, chroot++. Assuming someone exploits apache in a jail, they won't get the whole system, only the jail.
This approach to virtualization Operating System-Level Virtualization is sorely lacking in the Linux Kernel. I know you can patch with VServer and OpenVZ, but the more I use it the more I believe it should be built in. It has almost 0% overhead and facilitates many peoples needs for virtualization in which they often use more resource costly and complex virtualization techniques.
If the kernel version doesn't matter to you, Jails/Vserver/etc. may be a good fit. No hardware emulation, disk images, etc. BTW, Debian includes Vserver and OpenVZ patched kernels. Ubuntu does not. Don't know about others.
I *really* wish people would stop using Kubuntu, and then go off posting, thinking they knew *anything* about how well/poor KDE actually works. It's probably THE most broken and dysfunctional version of KDE shipping on a well known distribution you can find. Basically ANY other distro is better. I prefer openSUSE myself, using the recent 42 repos, others swear to Mandriva, if you want pointers. Anyhow, Kubuntu, just say "No".
Well, no. Gentoo portage can also run on FreeBSD. If you actually used the damn thing, you'd know that.
It's because your not leveraging the port system's strengths. In short your confusing the entire ports systems with pre-compiled packages. The port system was created, at least in spirit, to be a compile-from-source solution. The binary packages that are released, are released at the time of their corresponding FreeBSD release and, for the most part, aren't updated afterwords. Use the port system as it was intended and you'll find that it is in actuality much more up-to-date than Debian (no matter the version) and as minimalistic or monolithic as you want it. In short your attempting to apply what you've learned of Debian practices to FreeBSD and your obviously setting yourself up to fail.
I love the way they always say "Fubuntu Linux is sooooo popular! You should use what everyone else is using!"
Funny, Windows has more users than Linux, so why aren't they following their own advice and use Windows?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
>>First you have to know where it is located
make search name=foo
>>Then you have open the login shell as root,
Last I checked, this is the exact same process you would follow with apt. >>Then you CD to that directory start the build >>which will take half a day on some machines.. Yes that is one disadvantage of a source based system, but the advantages are too numerous to list. As a side note, PCBSD comes with KDE installed and FreeBSD has binary installations available of the newest versions of both. If binary is the way you prefer to go what is holding you back? Honestly the vast majority of your problems/concerns go back to you not RTFM. FreeBSD has excellent documentation, use it.
The author of sysinstall is jkh, a.k.a. Jordan K. Hubbard, who now works at Apple. You can blame him for the mess that is sysinstall.
If a courageous coder feels like witnessing the horrific creation that is sysinstall's code, here's something I've personally investigated only to give up simply because the hackery pissed me off too much to bother fixing it:
Figure out how to change the colour scheme so that yellow text isn't on a gray background (very hard to read on some laptops). Dig around the code -- you'll find it, after much cursing. And when you do, you'll say out loud "who wrote this pile of sh... oh, right..."
I think every src commit bit FreeBSD member will openly admit that sysinstall is a travesty.
That said, the DragonflyBSD guys have re-written sysinstall in Lua, which makes things a hell of a lot easier (and smaller). I'm surprised not a single GSoC contributor bothered to merge the two.
True, but portage is very much inspired by FreeBSD's ports, so the 'experience' is pretty similar.
True. Just as few users would be able to really tell the difference between windows 98 and NT 4 from the just the desktop environment. The underlying OS is completely different, but the user space looks very similar. This is a problem in pushing linux for desktop machines, in that most users really don't know or care about the differences between kernels. If Ubuntu decided to switch to nexenta instead of debian as its base, many would not realize there was a change to an OpenSolaris kernel. The DE would be the same, the package manager would be the same, but all of the underlying things that the average user does not know about would be completely different. Different kernel, different file system, possibly a different shell (bash is available but IIRC zsh is the default).
Said, "It's just like dice but it's got more sides And it tells me who lives and who dies"
It's sort of like where Linux was five years ago. If you didn't buy your hardware with reference to the OS that was going to be running on it, you had problems. I've got a brand new state of the art system, which I built for FreeBSD. It's awesome. KDE runs snappier and smoother than it does under KDE on my work system. NVidia sucks, yes, but that is why you avoid NVidia hardware. Don't blame FreeBSD for NVidia's suckiness. Don't blame FreeBSD for hardware with closed specs and proprietary drivers.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Nvidia works fine here on amd64 on Windows, Linux, Solaris and MacOS X. It's only FreeBSD that appears to have the problem with 64bit - I don't think you can blame Nvidia for that.
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
I'm losing a bunch of my mods applied to reply to this, but I must correct you. For everyone pointing to the lack of nvidia on freebsd x86_64 above, i apologize. you had informative mods until this joker started typing.
Icons still have that retarded mini-sidebar pop up when I hover over them.
Lock the widgets. They only popup when everything is unlocked. While locked, they cannot be moved, added, or removed.
I still have a "Desktop" folder that is not reflected by the on-screen desktop, all in the interest of satisfying Seigo's whims.
Set your desktop to 'folder view' and point it to your Desktop folder, and you have the old style. The 'disconnect' actually allows more flexibility. The only difference is the mapping is now user editable rather than hard coded. I also don't know what this bit about Seigo is from. Nobody is forcing you to use that feature.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
For now, Kubuntu is the only mainstream distro with 4.2 in stable. Fedora 11, OpenSuSE 11.2 etc are not released yet.
Are there any others with 4.2 in stable?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Yes, you can.
http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests
Why would these need to be satisfied for nvidia, but noone else? Because nvidia did things a specific way and will not bend.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
"I have often come to a conclusion that the only way to maintain a Linux distribution with huge amount of packages is indeed to reinstall it every six months."
You are awfully wrong then, sir. I won't say that there are not distributions where the wisest strategy could be reinstall every some months (or following a major release) but I certainly can say this is not true for some other distributions. The one I'm using has been upgraded since about 2001 while not a single piece of this current computer is the same than at the beginning and my computer is not an exception: for systems I'm responsible they are usually upgraded for as long as the hardware is in service (I'm using Debian, for those curious enough).
I also like how the ports tree sits on the disk makes it easy to browse via standard commands like "ls", "cd", etc. I don't know if such a thing exists with apt systems; from my limited experience with apt, it seems like a 3rd party tool is needed like synaptic to display the packages in a database file. Furthermore, the bsd ports system's search is really good, and commands like "whereis package_name", where package_name is a package, like "vi" will show you the location in the ports tree and you make just cd to that dir and do your make. It feels too me more like it's the "unix" way where everything is a file.
RMS, is that really you?!?
Of course not! You'd think RMS would forget the "GNU/" prefix in "using linsux emulation".
Have you filed bug reports or contacted the maintainer? I've done this a couple of times when I've had problems with ports and they've been fixed very quickly.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Wait a few days after the release. The ports tree is frozen prior to the release (yes, this is stupid, irritating, and should be done in a branch) which means that fixes / updates will not be committed until after the freeze is lifted, which happens after the release.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I'm not trolling, but you forgot to add that every other post will start with the words "I'm not trolling, but..."
[FUCK BETA]
Maybe you could have read his post instead of imagining what it was and then commenting that he is wrong.
What, and sully such a longstanding /. tradition?
Besides, that also means that one would actually have to think and respond to certain facts and logical arguments put forth by another person. Such tedium!
He was talking about PC-BSD, a FreeBSD-based distro designed for desktop use. Since it has many pre-built packages and a GUI front-end for ports, it is actually quite a usable desktop distro. Pretty much about as easy as Ubuntu. I normally prefer linux because of hardware compatibility, so I usually use Ubuntu as my desktop and debian or Ubuntu-server for servers, but PC-BSD is pretty nice.
Not only a GUI front-end for ports, but also an entire package system using ".PBI" packages (sort of like ".deb" packages in Debian Linux, only with less dependency-hell) for click-to-install behavior closely resembling that of Windows software installation packages. You can use both systems to install and remove software along with all the various CLI port-managers, not either-or, so another bonus.
I must also say that the PC-BSD system installer works great and is far faster and friendlier/informative/easier to use than the Windows system installer. PC-BSD (and FreeBSD itself) has made tremendous progress as far as hardware compatibility/drivers/kernel modules and supports most anything Ubuntu does. There's also Java and Flash Player support, so one can browse/watch YouTube videos and use most webpage-embedded Java apps.
If you're tired of Ubuntu and/or want or need a desktop OS with the features, software, security, and power of a more Unix-like system than Linux then PC-BSD may be for you.
Definitely worth trying, IMHO.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
All VMs share a hypervisor. A successful attack on the hypervisor... well, you get the picture...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
So... I give up functionality in order not to have my icons constantly (and distractingly) remind me that I can rotate and resize them. Yep, that's the Nu KDE spirit: Why merely break something, when you can penalize users for fixing it?
If the visual-element-heretofore-known-as-Desktop were renamed, the scheme would make sense. As it stands, though, I have a desktop. On which I cannot see the contents of the desktop folder without a folder view. And if I put something on that desktop, it doesn't go into the desktop folder, and vice-versa. That's not revolutionary, it's just poor design.
Forgot to address this: Yes, I can set the desktop to work "the old way". I can tweak the default settings till I end up with a fairly familiar environment...Which doesn't in any way make the overloaded, inconsistent initial experience any more justified.
KDE has been my DE of choice since I first got into Linux full-time, three years ago. But never before (not even in Windows...) had I felt so much like I was fighting the DE, as I have with KDE4.
What I don't understand about *BSD is why it isn't getting the kind of uptake in embedded systems that Linux is. It's technically as good, and comes with a lot less licensing risk. There is a lot less variation in interpretation of the BSD license than there is of GPL.
You don't run the risk of obeying, but still getting massively bitched at for not obeying the "spirit" of the license (think Tivo).
You don't have to worry with BSD about exactly how the code you wrote interfaces to the BSD code--no metaphysical discussion over whether a dynamically loaded kernel module is different from a dynamically loaded user space application from a licensing point of view.
No issues with using BSD code in a device that requires a subscription to work. According to the FSF, you can't use GPL code in a device that requires a subscription to operate. That raises some alarms for Linux use in cell phones, and in cable boxes and DVRs that are tied to specific cable or satellite companies.
I would expect the above risks, and others I haven't listed, even if in some cases remote, would be scary enough to the cell phone companies, the set-top box makers, the router makers, and so on, to create quite a bit of demand for an embedded *BSD.
Which mailing list did you post to?
If you posted it to something like "freebsd-kernel" then i can totally understand the bollocking you got.
But, again - FreeBSD (core) is not X.org. Contact the port/package maintainer and see whats up.
Just because you're incapable of obtaining support due to using incorrect channels, doesn't mean freebsd is crap. Disclaimer: I've been using it for 9 years.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
They revamped the whole UI to make it usable? Wheee
Yes you can blame NVidia. They're the ones who wrote the driver.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
That's because it's so different. I've not used a Mac since the Color Classic II, but I've used most PC DEs around since the mid 90s, and I have to say that KDE4 is just plain different.
Learn it, give it time, and it becomes normal to you. Just like a new pair of shoes.
That said, I'm sure there are people out there who just won't like it. Perhaps you are one of those.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Unlike Debian or even OpenBSD, ports in FreeBSD don't receive much testing.
Some ports haven't been updated for a while, some even never worked at all, but they are still in the tree for ages. For instance lang/neko never worked on FreeBSD. It compiles, but it was obviously never tested as creating a basic thread is enough to make it crash. Oh and it still has a knob to compile it with MySQL 4.x library (yes, 4.x ...).
{{.sig}}
Dude, if you're trying to use sysinstall from single-user mode, just type "export TERM=cons25".
Exporting TERM and PATH are the first things I do when I boot into single-user.
Common sense is not so common.
Dependencies are automatically downloaded and compiled before the port you're trying to install will build. You type "make install clean" and it'll build and install all the necessary components.
Common sense is not so common.
pkg_info will print a list of all the installed ports on a FreeBSD system.
"pkg_delete package_from_list" will uninstall a package and you can specify options to delete unnecessary dependencies as well.
Common sense is not so common.
I'm usually slack about removing ports (I either play on test systems or I just want a program gone) so I just dig it out of pkg_list and then pkg_delete the one I'm getting rid of. Purists probably hate me but there it is, I do things that work for me, and work for any of the clients I need to install things on, not what people tell me I should do.
Me failed English...
FreeBSD over Linux. If my comments seem odd, this may explain...
Arch has. But there is nothing called "Stable" in Arch :)
Arch has. But there is nothing called "Stable" in Arch :)
I'm not sure I would call Arch mainstream. I lump it in the same pile as Slackware/Slamd64 (being a user of those myself, this is not an insult at all)
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Security, infinitely superior overall design, the ability to run rings around Linux in benchmarks, and still the only truly decent form of package management in existence.
I nearly forgot the single biggest fringe benefits; freedom from the megalomaniacal, cultic aspirations of Richard Stallman or his drone army, and a license that you truly *can* do whatever you want with.
What's not to love? ;)