FreeBSD 10.2 Released

moderators_are_w*nke writes with news that FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE is now available. Here is the download page, the release notes, and release errata. Features highlights: The resolvconf(8) utility has been updated to version 3.7.0, with improvements to protect DNS privacy. The ntp suite has been updated to version 4.2.8p3. A new rc(8) script, growfs, has been added, which will resize the root filesystem on boot if the /firstboot file exists. The Linux® compatibility version has been updated to support Centos 6 ports. Several ZFS performance and reliability improvements. GNOME has been updated to version 3.14.2. KDE has been updated to version 4.14.3.

Comments

Still no 64-bit Linux support?

[the_humeister]

Oh well. I use it for only ZFS anyway.

Re:Still no 64-bit Linux support?

[moderators_are_w*nke]

It's in -CURRENT, not sure whether it will make in to -STABLE before 11-RELEASE.

Re:Ob

[jandrese]

No, although there is a package called uselessd that provides enough systemd hooks to get Gnome running if that's your thing.

Really like FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a real pity that FreeBSD and the BSDs in general don't get more love from Slashdot. Linux seems to have stolen the thunder from the BSD camp, but in all honesty, FreeBSD rocks. It makes a far better server than Linux for the vast majority of cases. I used to run BSD servers, both FreeBSD and BSD/OS back in the day. Never, ever had an issue save for HW failures. Cannot say the same for Linux on identical HW. FreeBSD handles load that bring Linux to its knees. I've always agreed with the statement that "Linux is hacked together, while FreeBSD is engineered". In general, I think the BSDs are better written pieces of software.

Re:Really like FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, they can both "serve" various use cases pretty well. Though FreeBSD is more "service" centric than Linux's "user" centric. However FreeBSD (having come out from all of the post 4.x SMP development years) is now really beginning to invest and shine in some of Linux's traditional "user" areas and is running on things like ARM, RPi, etc.
And yes, the "hacked" versus "engineered" thing is definitely true, and it's the reason I no longer use Linux, I simply can't afford the extra time to deal with having to manage and deal with the constant churn and battles and disappearing acts in "Linux distro land".
With FreeBSD I have one product from one place... kernel, userland, filesystem, networking, ports/packages... and it's been there that way all along ever since before Linux existed.
I'm happy with that.

Re:Really like FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

OP here. Great comment, and I agree. While I think Linux makes a great desktop OS, I'm a firm believer in BSD on the server side. I've run BSD-based firewalls/proxy servers and BSD-based Web servers and I really love how simple BSD makes config files. All in one place. Linux, as you note, depending on the distro, in several places.

Right now at work, I have Linux servers in certain roles (CentOS for PBX and Debian for Web server) and the config files are Greek compared to FreeBSD and OpenBSD's simplicity.

My next home-based machine is going to be a Chromebook because that is really where Linux has shined on the desktop. Hidden behind a veil doing one thing well. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bashing Linux as a whole, but as a sysadmin, the BSDs have proven themselves to me in ways the Linux distros have not. I've often said that if I ever ran my own company, I would have BSD in the server room and Linux on the desktops. I've seen this very setup before where a friend works and everyone there seems to really like how it all works.

Re:Really like FreeBSD

[Anonymous Coward]

I ran FreeBSD servers for a few years, but when Linux got journalled filesystems, an O(1) scheduler and real threads, it just made Linux better. Plus much better hardware support.

I know FreeBSD eventually addressed much of that, but just too late.

Re:Really like FreeBSD

[walterbyrd]

Agree: BSD is a far better server than Linux. More stable, more standard, better engineered.

Also, unlike Linux, BSD is still values POSIX, and UNIX philosophy.

Re:Really like FreeBSD

[Bengie]

I didn't live through it, but based on what I've read and watched about the evolution of FreeBSD, they got set back for a long while from bogus legal issues and a resulting anemic community. It's well engineered base has allowed it to quickly catch up and is now starting to surpass Linux in *some* ways. While FreeBSD is lacking in some ways like a large driver portfolio and mind share of the popular crowd, the fundamental parts of the OS are starting to set the bar for high performance and stability. FreeBSD already has much superior documentation, but there is a new initiative to make it much better.

With a good foundation of performance, stability, consistency, documentation, near seamless integration of stuff like ZFS and Jails, it is only a matter of time before it starts to get popular as an alternative. I hear PC-BSD 11 has made some huge changes to making the desktop experience even better than it already was.

If there is anything that I've learned as a programmer it's that when something is well designed, it can change to meet a moving target of expectations without major changes. The Linux community has a whole has some ADD notion that tools are disposable and to replace them with the latest greatest tool. This is just a sign that no one put any thought into the original tool.

FreeBSD implemented Jails back in 2000. Linux got Linux Containers in 2008, but still not nearly as good as Jails. Now Docker is gaining transaction. They really are all the same things. FreeBSD is getting work done to emulate Docker with Jails because Docker is only handles a subset of what Jails can do. Do it once, do it right, stop creating so many half-assed versions of the same thing!

Re:Really like FreeBSD

[TheRaven64]

The Linux community has a whole has some ADD notion that tools are disposable and to replace them with the latest greatest tool. This is just a sign that no one put any thought into the original tool.

(FreeBSD developer, so beware that there may be some bias here:) In my observation, there's a tendency for Linux developers to identify a problem and immediately implement and ship a solution. In the FreeBSD community, there's more of a tendency to identify the problem, step back and try to find a more general solution, then implement that. This means that Linux often has the solution right now, whereas FreeBSD often lags a bit, but when the FreeBSD solution exists it's a lot more pleasant to work with (compare kqueue vs epoll + timerfd + eventfd + ..., for example).

Both approaches have upsides and downsides. I generally prefer the end result of the FreeBSD approach, but it still sucks when you're in the window (often a couple of years long) where Linux has a bad solution and FreeBSD has no solution at all.

Re:Really like FreeBSD

[TheRaven64]

I have a hard time believing this. The SMP support in Linux is far more mature than the BSDs.

The fact that you'd make such sweeping generalisations implies that you don't know what you're talking about. The BSDs, in SMP support in particular, are far from homogeneous. FreeBSD began to move away from a giant lock around the entire kernel in 5.0 (2003), about the same time as Linux. Lots of work has gone on in various subsystems to introduce fine-grained locking. Linux tends to apply RCU in a lot of places (some where it's sensible, some where it isn't), which FreeBSD can't because of the patent issues, but benchmarks have shown that RCU scalability is decidedly nonlinear in a lot of places. FreeBSD has been used for a lot of network stack scalability in the last few years. I don't know exactly how Linux compares, but you may recall a job ad at Facebook that was posted a few months ago aiming to hire people to get the Linux network stack up to the same standard within 5 years...

Painless upgrade

[rl117]

Just finished upgrading all my work and home systems and VMs, plus one clean install. Smooth painless upgrades from 10.1-RELEASE and no problems encountered, all systems running nicely. Great work, team, your efforts are much appreciated.

FreeBSD merrilin.codelibre.net 10.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE #0 r286666: Wed Aug 12 15:26:37 UTC 2015 root@releng1.nyi.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64

Re:Painless upgrade

[Bengie]

FreeBSD foundation has a server that was originally FreeBSD 5.0 32bit and has been in-place upgraded all the way up to FreeBSD 9.3 64bit, not to mention migrated through several physical servers through the years. There are still original FreeBSD 5.0 binaries that are still running and to which they no longer have the original source code.

Even when pushed beyond any sane limits, FreeBSD keeps on trucking.

WTF Dice?!!

[Thud457]

This is a BSD story, why isn't it using the slashdot red BSD theme?!! Did Coyboy Neal take it when he left?

Re:WTF Dice?!!

[KGIII]

When he left? No. He came back drunk one night and stole it, however. They say he was wearing a cowboy hat, nothing else, and covered in spaghetti sauce. Some folks say it was blood. Nobody dared taste the drippings and nobody wanted to call the cops.

PC-BSD is pretty good, too

[epine]

I had never run BSD on the desktop before, but recently I converted both my desktop and my aging T500 laptop to PC-BSD. The experience has been pretty good so far.

I especially like the boot environment upgrade process. The only thing you need to be aware of is not installing new software on your system after the ZFS clone. Otherwise the upgrade process affects you not at all until you're good and ready to boot into it, and at that point if anything goes wrong, you just roll it back and wait for next time.

Then I look at my real FreeBSD server and wish it was equally slick.

My biggest problem with PC-BSD is that Life Preserver does something with SSH that's just never worked for me. I've tried multiple clients to multiple servers. I've emulated the SSH part of the connection process at the command line, no problem. But after setting up the same connection, Life Preserver bombs out with a generic (aka useless) error message.

Mostly it just works, but when it doesn't I've found some of the error messages extremely unhelpful.

(Yes, I know how to wrapper SSH to diagnose this properly, but I just haven't found the time yet.)

Re:PC-BSD is pretty good, too

[michaelmath]

I tried OpenBSD on a new Dell laptop. I thought I would end up writing over it, but I experimented and found that it is awesome. Everything I want is working: encrypted home partition, sound (hd-intel), 3d hardware accelerated graphics (intel card), suspend, wifi internet (with a tiny dongle), my wireless mouse, touchpad. all of my favorite applications are in ports and chromium is working fine. After all that I ended up keeping Openbsd as my desktop. It feels much cleaner, I like how everything is organized. Of course it can't use as many devices as linux. YMMV

Re:Ob

[Anonymous Coward]

I know parent was marked Funny, but uselessd is a very real thing: http://uselessd.darknedgy.net/

FreeBSD on the Desktop.

[srobert]

A lot of people say FreeBSD is best on the server, while Linux is best on the desktop. But I was a long time Linux user and started playing around with FreeBSD a few years ago. It turns out, that IF your hardware is compatible with it, and IF you know what you're doing, then FreeBSD is also best on the desktop.

Re:FreeBSD on the Desktop.

[kyubre]

In short, FreeBSD/PC-BSD is to the Linux desktop user experience what RHEL is to Linux in general

I've been running PC-BSD as my primary desktop OS for about 5 years now. I say desktop, but I mostly use some variation of T-Series thinkpad as "my desktop". In the for what its worth, I also have several server class machines running RHEL compatible, Arch, and of course plain FreeBSD (which PC-BSD is mostly a specialization of).

I also find PC-BSD/FreeBSD to be the best desktop experience but with caveats.

To those familiar with the Linux ecosystems, Comparing the FreeBSD/PC-BSD Desktop to Linux is almost exactly like comparing Redhat to Arch Linux (perhaps the Ubuntu's as well). Distro's like Arch tend to have the latest greatest of everything, and everything "mostly" works. You can tweak and fiddle with it to your hearts content, and their is no "standard" configuration. A RHEL distro by contrast, is chosen for its consistency and POLA features (Principles of Least Astonishment). There is a clear definition of how everything on a RHEL distro is supposed to work and it will be maintained to those standards.

FreeBSD/PC-BSD is very similar. There are very clear definitions of the entire stack from userland to kernel with each major release. It is very actively supported to those definitions and expectations, as well as fairly strict adherence to POSIX definitions where available.

The user land apps may not be the latest greatest, but they are generally stable (I hate that Thunderbird is still stuck at v31!). The one noticeable exception is web browsers and their flash support. Both FireFox and Chromium seem to leak resources when running Flash heavy web sites and I must routinely pkill them after several of hours of heavy use (dozens of active tabs open for hours). Thankfully, Flash is dying a long over due death of its own making.

With the exception of browsers and flash support mentioned, everything else just works and tends to be rock solid with very few POLA violations even between major version numbered updates. Add to that the most excellent ZFS support on PC-BSD (and associated incremental snapshoting/backup options it enables), I can say that I have never once lost a byte of data unintentionally through every update and release since FreeBSD 8.2. I've also not suffered a single crash ever that was not due to an out of memory condition caused by Chromium and its messed up Flash NaCL/PNaCL support.

Re:FreeBSD on the Desktop.

[srobert]

Consistency. When you learn to do something in FreeBSD, chances are that what you learned will remain relevant for a long time. Some Linux distros seem to impose change for it's own sake.
I like the simplicity of many OS related configurations being done through only a few (plain text) files such as rc.conf and sysctl.conf.
There is a clear separation of the base of the FreeBSD operating system from the end user applications, which is reflected in the file system layout. For example OS related configuration files (in plain text) are in /etc, while end user software configuration is reliably in /usr/local/etc. This makes it very easy to administer software updates. If things do get broken, (as they do with all OSes), it's easy to locate what went where.
The documentation, such as the FreeBSD Handbook, is very good, complete and comprehensible to me, whereas help for Linux related problems is becoming more fragmented. "If Slackware, do this, if Debian do that, for Arch, do something else".
I tend to like to do these things from the bottom up. When I was in Linux, I built Linux from Scratch several times. Every application that was installed from source had a unique and complex build command described in the LFS book. With FreeBSD, the command is pretty much the same for all the software in the ports tree to build it from source, e.g. "cd /usr/ports/www/firefox" then "make install", or "cd /usr/ports/shells/bash" then "make install". There are tools like portmaster to make it even simpler than that.
PC-BSD and GhostBSD are pretty good. DesktopBSD is now obsolete I think. But I prefer to work from the bottom up, so one good resource to approach it this way is https://cooltrainer.org/a-free...

Re: FreeBSD on the Desktop.

[oddtodd]

Spot on, I tried to tell walter this in a different forum and it didn't register, apparently.
Hi Walter! Funny Cin U here