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FreeBSD 4.8 Released
Posted by
michael
on Fri Apr 04, 2003 09:01 AM
from the freer-than-ever dept.
from the freer-than-ever dept.
Dan writes "FreeBSD's Murray Stokely announces the long awaited availability of FreeBSD 4.8, the latest FreeBSD-stable release, which has dealt with known security issues, and added initial support for Firewire, HyperThreading, and other new hardware technologies. Murray says that the new release is also the result of conservative updates to a number of software programs in the FreeBSD base system, see FreeBSD 4.8 release notes for more information."
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Running it already. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Running it already. (Score:2)
As for HT which I had some Xeons
Rus
Re:Running it already. (Score:3, Informative)
You may see a performance jump, but the real jump will be in 5.1.
STOP!! (Score:5, Funny)
I was about 12% into my download of the iso files when this showed up on the front page. Everyone please wait until I'm finished. Thanks.
Re:STOP!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Why DL an ISO image, when you can be up and running in the time that takes?
Re:STOP!! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:STOP!! (Score:2, Informative)
Slackware 9.0 and FreeBSD 4.8 released within a few weeks of each other?! Whee!
Newbie question (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Newbie question (Score:5, Informative)
4.x are "stable" and mature. Think of it like the difference between Linux kernels 2.4.x (stable) vs 2.5.x (current). Not quite a true analogy but you get the idea.
Parent
Cutting edge??? Noooooo.... (Score:2)
just to fuck them up and keep them in their place...
FreeBSD PCMCIA Support (Score:2)
I have an old 486 laptop that I would like to configure as my NAT gateway (I am currently running RedHat 6.2 on a p133, and I am looking forward to cutting my power consumption down to 27W).
I have two IBM Home & Away 14.4+Ethernet PCMCIA cards, plus an Accton EN2218.
How can I install FreeBSD on this system? I gather that support for my PCMCIA cards is nil, so I tried some others (3com, etc.), but the 5.0 installer said that "only a limited subset" of the supported PCMCIA cards are supported by the i
Re:Newbie question (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Newbie question (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I am updating my boxes to 4.8--cvsup is a wonderful tool--as we speak. It may be safer for you to start there on solid ground.
Parent
FreeBSD (Score:5, Informative)
I started using it around 8 years ago for some core services.. DNS.. SMTP.. etc. It proved to be fast and reliable even then, and those were on old PII machines.
Since then, its gotten tremendously better.. the security subsystems are great, from ip firewalling to kernel and system level protections. (The jail environment is very interesting..) I currently have DNS and mail services running on it, with a vinum disk mirror (Vinum is a logical volume manager for FreeBSD) and have basically no maintenance.
If you wanted to experiment with a BSD machine, I know that http://www.johncompanies.com/ provides virtualized FreeBSD machines pretty cheaply, or just install it on a spare partition somewhere.
My only gripe is that it tends to trail linux on user interface/user focused device drivers, and in the Java space. Otherwise, it works great for me!
(I haven't tried 4.8 yet, since I don't have any need to upgrade my servers right now, but when I get a spare test box, I'll probably give it a spin..)
Re:FreeBSD (Score:3, Interesting)
So has anyone done exhaustive performance comparisons of all the x86 OS under different kinds of loads (network connections, processes, I/O, multiple processors)?
In the days of yore FreeBSD was highly regarded for its performance in some areas and I'm wondering if that's still an accurate assessment compared to Linux, Win2K/XP, other BSDs.
Re:FreeBSD (Score:5, Informative)
For instance, there was a large comparison of Windows v. FreeBSD v. Linux, and FreeBSD came in dead last. Those who know realize that the FreeBSD box wasn't tuned (at all), and that any competant sysadmin would have made 10-20 substantial changes to the system before running that benchmark. Similarly, the Windows and Linux boxes could have probably been tuned better (the benchmark claimed that miminal changes were made, but they were important changes).
There seems to have been much more research into specifically network related code under FreeBSD, but FreeBSD 5 also has UFS2, which is also apparently a nice performance increase.
I'm of the opinion that FreeBSD is still the fastest of the major OSs (Windows, FreeBSD, Linux) for most services, although the preemptive kernel patches for linux may make linux nicer for desktop use. NetBSD is close, OpenBSD still doesn't support SMP, so you can pretty much kiss off OpenBSD on large SMP hardware.
Parent
Pimping (Score:4, Informative)
Rus
Parent
Re:Wondering about those P IIs (Score:3, Insightful)
The main point is that FreeBSD is stable and fast, and has been for quite a while.
BSD Ports (Score:4, Informative)
Re:BSD Ports (Score:2, Interesting)
OT I know .. but I could say exactly the same thing about Debian [debian.org].
I've used FreeBSD a little, but not enough to appreciate it's strengths I guess.
(My initial impressions were raised by the firey screensaver upon the console, and the way it printed your uptime when you rebooted it!)
Re:BSD Ports (Score:4, Informative)
If you don't mind running the extremely old debian stable branch, debian works pretty well, but as soon as you need a new version of something, then you enter into a minor hell of incompatible required versions, and instead of just knowing how to use the basic apt-get commands, you're suddenly forced to fix all sorts of shit with dpkg.
FreeBSD doesn't have the equivalent to the debian stable branch for the ports collection, it's always new, and most of the software always works. That being said, if you're interested in running gnome and kde, you should try to install these off of a release tagged ports collection, as both of them have a tendancy to only FULLY compile out of ports about 90% of the time, which can be wickedly frustrating. So with FreeBSD, you might have to learn how to use the date tag, or the release tags in cvsup, to move backwards to a point in time where the whole ports collection worked (the whole thing is generally very solid right at a release).
On the whole, the FreeBSD system is probably your preferred choice if you cannot make do with 2 year old software, but if the older software is adaquate for your needs, debian's stable branch is probably your best bet.
Parent
Ports one downside (Score:3, Funny)
But it's not a skill that I miss terribly, actually, and hasn't been a problem.
Re:BSD Ports (Score:2)
Hotswap IDE (Score:4, Interesting)
What are people using for volume management on FreeBSD anyway? I really wish a Linux-like LVM was available.
Re:Hotswap IDE (Score:2)
Whether you're making a mistake or not, you should post to -stable explaining precisely how you can make your system panic, and it'll get fixed pretty quickly.
Re:Hotswap IDE (Score:2)
A Matter of Time (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not one of those people.
Nope. No way. Uh-uh. No sirree.
For the "is dying" trolls (Score:3, Funny)
Conservative updates... (Score:5, Funny)
The conservative updates to BSD now mean that several commands and C functions are not available because they offend conservative moral values these include, but are not limited to (a full list will not be produced for reasons of security)
finger, bash, free, enable, alias & break
Awk is no longer considered under protection and users may hunt it to extinction if they desire.
kill is of course still available to all users, with the added bonus that you may now kill other peoples processes that you believe are interfering with your own and stealing CPU time from your processes.
In addition 4.8 introduces the first stage of BSD NSA Security which ensures your security by logging everything you do with the goverment, this is an optional package at this stage but will be mandatory in 5.0.
Anyone who doesn't like these updates is a liberal communist who is undermining the American Way of Life
The BSD Conservative Coalition Commitee
Re:Conservative updates... (Score:5, Funny)
1. "man" pages are now called "person" pages.
2. Similarly, "hangman" is now the "person_executed_by_an_oppressive_regime."
3. To avoid casting aspersions on our feline friends, the "cat" command is now merely "domestic_quadruped."
4. To date, there has only been a UNIX command for "yes" - reflecting the male belief that women always mean yes, even when they say no. To address this imbalance, System VI adds a "no" command, along with a "-f[orce]" option which will crash the entire system if the "no" is ignored.
5. The bias of the "mail" command is obvious, and it has been replaced by the more neutral "gendre" command.
6. The "touch" command has been removed from the standard distribution due to its inappropriate use by high-level managers.
7. "compress" has been replaced by the lightweight "feather" command. Thus, old information (such as that from Dead White European Males) should be archived via "tar" and "feather".
8. The "more" command reflects the materialistic philosophy of the Reagan era. System VI uses the environmentally preferable "less" command.
9. The biodegradable "KleeNeX" displaces the environmentally unfriendly "LaTeX".
1. SHELL COMMANDS To avoid unpleasant, medieval connotations, the "kill" command has been renamed "euthanise."
2. The "nice" command was historically used by privileged users to give themselves priority over unprivileged ones, by telling them to be "nice". In System VI, the "sue" command is used by unprivileged users to get for themselves the rights enjoyed by privileged ones.
3. "history" has been completely rewritten, and is now called "herstory."
4. "quota" can now specify minimum as well as maximum usage, and will be strictly enforced.
5. The "abort()" function is now called "choice()."
1. TERMINOLOGY From now on, "rich text" will be more accurately referred to as "exploitive capitalist text".
2. The term "daemons" is a Judeo-Christian pejorative. Such processes will now be known as "spiritual guides."
3. There will no longer be a invidious distinction between "dumb" and "smart" terminals. All terminals are equally valuable.
4. Traditionally, "normal video" (as opposed to "reverse video") was white on black. This implicitly condoned European colonialism, particularly with respect to people of African descent. UNIX System VI now uses "regressive video" to refer to white on black, while "progressive video" can be any color at all over a white background.
5. For far too long, power has been concentrated in the hands of "root" and his "wheel" oligarchy. We have instituted a dictatorship of the users. All system administration functions will be handled by the People's Committee for Democratically Organizing the System (PC-DOS).
6. No longer will it be permissible for files and processes to be "owned" by users. All files and processes will own themselves, and decided how (or whether) to respond to requests from users.
7. The X Window System will henceforth be known as the NC-17 Window System.
8. And finally, UNIX itself will be renamed "PC" - for Procreatively Challenged.
Source: http://paul.merton.ox.ac.uk/computing/newunix.htm
Parent
Re:Conservative updates... (Score:3, Interesting)
RMS doesn't like wheel all that much neither. [gnu.org]
Re:Conservative updates... (Score:2)
FreeBSD, the *BSDs, the *i*xes, etc (Score:3, Funny)
It's not said often enough (and certainly not by OS bigots like me) that this phenomenon of open source / free software is one of the brigtest examples of the human drive to form communities based on respect and contribution.
I wrote a couple articles for Dæmon News a while back on the topic of BSD and Linux, and they've grown dated. Perhaps it's time to write a Linux-free article about BSD. There's some interesting stuff that I see going on from angles like Perl and GNOME where these projects have become far more *BSD-aware in recent years (more so than just having a stable port to the platform), and I'm wondering if the future of free operating systems is beginning to shift back to the BSDs (as it was when I first started using UNIX and UNIX-like systems in the late 80s).
Good job on the release, folks!. May your bugs be few and your releases often.
PS: Hmmm, as I just said on the SpamAssassin mailing list, perhaps it's time I stop posting *right* after my first coffee of the morning
Just put into production (Score:3, Informative)
Of course we have the ports tree which I think it the second best package managment, after apt on debian. Also I'm now running jails and they are stable and everything seems to just work. Which is nice.
Overall lets give a big hand to the FreeBSD team.
Rus
Firewire... New?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Umm... firewire isn't exactly new. What's taking them so long to get more than "initial" support? And what does THAT mean?
Re:Firewire... New?? (Score:2)
Re:Firewire... New?? (Score:4, Informative)
Using that logic, what server needs Gnome 2.2, or KDE 3.1, or XFree86 4.3.0 ? Where on freebsd.org does it say that FreeBSD is not designed to be a desktop OS ?
In fact, the FreeBSD FAQ has this [freebsd.org] to say:
Oh, and this [freebsd.org]:
I'm curious, where on the freebsd.org site did you see that FreeBSD was not designed to be a desktop OS ?
Parent
BitTorrent? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been thinking of trying FreeBSD, and I definately will grab it if it's torrented.
ftp2 server traffic graph (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What about.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about.. (Score:3, Insightful)
about 3 pages of muck.
Motif failed. It never caught on. Dare I say it helped windows get the desktops.
I view KDE (based on QT which has both GPL or "pay us" licenses if you want proprietary) and Gnome as the answer by kids who grew up with GUIs (I grew up with vt52s and vt100s) who perhaps thought: Hey, unix doesn't have to suck to use.
I've run huge networks on Motif desktops and it was a bitch. Too
Re:Look it moved (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Simple... (Score:3, Informative)
Not everyone uses XP, there're still updates to Windows 98, Me, and 2000 Workstation.
Just because the numbers are higher or the release is newer doesn't mean everyone flocked to it and upgraded immediately.
Most are predicting that 5.1 or even 5.2 will make 5.0 good to go for primetime. Until then, there are plenty still using the 4.x tree.
--
Adam
Re:Simple... (Score:2)
going on 121 days of uptime..the machine only goes down to install new hardware (last time it was some fans cause the drives were overheating)
i don't have time to down it for an os change.. that will happen when the box is retired.
Who is saing use 5.0? (Score:2)
True the numbering is a bit confusing, but it IS clearly spelled out by the team.
Re:trouble (Score:2, Informative)
Re:reading release notes (Score:5, Funny)
Not rebooting our servers every 2 weeks.
Parent
Re:reading release notes (Score:2, Informative)
You're practising for the Being-Wrong event at the next Olympics, aren't you?
First, bit of pedantry, I'm a Linux user and I didn't so much as smirk reading the release notes. Nope, no laughing.
Next, the SMP's hardly rudimentary. I've been using it for several years. It's the Hyperthreading support that is new. Which isn't unreasonable, given I believe the last -RELEASE of FreeBSD pre-dated availability of the Pentium IV 3.06GHz. In fact, I'm very sure Linux didn't have HTT support in the late 90's.
So, th
Re:Hmmmm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Not 15 years, since the tech's not that old. Considering Apple invented the technology, it's reasonable that they had an implementation fairly quickly. FireWire is actually an Apple trademark, the generic term is IEEE1394.
Re:Linux vs. Freebsd - Desktop? (Score:3, Informative)
In my experience, I can't tell the difference on the *desktop* between FreeBSD and Slackware, with both built from scratch with the same CFLAGs.