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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."
ZFS + Ports, take that Ubuntu!
Cheers !
"Support for multiple IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for jails"
So this is the prisoner operating system?
I really feel for the BSD guys. Just hope they can keep users. Having choice in OS selection is great.
I think BSD needs a new, cuddly but cool mascot. how do you compete with tux? Is the cresta (remember that?) polar bear available?
> KDE updated to 4.2.2... ... which is the best reason yet to not upgrade.
Great work from the FreeBSD project but KDE 4 is a joke.
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.
...so they say.
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.
Quite frankly, unless you're convinced you need the security, Gentoo is much like a friendlier and slightly spiffier version of FreeBSD
Right from version 4 onwards Freebsd rocks. There is no stopping them.
Chris ,
Php Programmers.
Tag this story !free and !bsd.
!FreeBSD makes use of proprietary drivers and illegal software using linsux emulation to compete with other OSes. Also zfs is !bsd.
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?
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.
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})"
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
but not surprised that everyone here is blasting it. Linux fanboys have grown to embrace the MS way, I guess.
If I can't click on my little gnome wizard and have it turn the box into a bloated desktop with a single click, I'm not happy!
Pretty ironic.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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]
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.
They revamped the whole UI to make it usable? Wheee
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.