FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE Now Available

cperciva writes "FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE, the fourth release from the highly successful 6-STABLE branch of FreeBSD development, has been released. In addition to being available from many FTP sites, ISO images can be downloaded via the BitTorrent tracker, or for users of earlier FreeBSD releases, FreeBSD Update can be used to perform a binary upgrade."

Wait, what?

[Seumas (6865)]

I thought BSD was dying? I've been on Slashdot for a decade and I precisely recall hearing that BSD was dying a few hundred thousand times.

Re:

[mdenham (747985)]

It still is. In the same fashion any of the rest of us without a terminal illness are.

Re:Wait, what?

[jd (1658)]

You see, if it dies more than 32767 times, you get an overflow, the sign bit flips and it becomes alive again. This is the problem with using fixed-length integers. If computers were using variable-length precision, you wouldn't get this problem.

Re:

[creimer (824291)]

Thank God they're not using 64-bit integers. The reports of BSD's sudden death would never die.

Re:

[LighterShadeOfBlack (1011407)]

I thought BSD was dying?

It is dying. Just like this is the 10th consecutive Year of Linux.

Re:

[bcat24 (914105)]

No, no, no! You see, in Korea only old people use BSD!

Re:

[hey! (33014)]

Well, the most likely explanation woudl seem to be that BSD has joined the ranks of undead operating systems.

So while it cannot be said in strict truth to be "alive and kicking", it nonetheless is still "kicking", and will continue to do so until somebody can devise the operating system equivalent of a wooden stake through the heart.

That'd be something involving unresolved intellectual property rights, I suppose, although there is little chance at this late date that might happen. If vampires could only be

Re:

[turbidostato (878842)]

"I thought BSD was dying? I've been on Slashdot for a decade and I precisely recall hearing that BSD was dying a few hundred thousand times."

And yes, it is.

It's only it's diying *very* slow motion. Just like Sean Connery on The Untouchables don't you remember it? Ratatatatatatttt Weahuheawhagghhh!

Yes sirree...

[dosius (230542)]

BSD is alive and well!

-uso.

Sweet!

[brilinux (255400)]

Thanks guys! I will be sticking this on my laptop!

My desktop requires 7.0, though; I am currently running Beta 2, and I will binary upgrade when that is released. 6.3 does not support my SATA controller, and I want to mess around with ZFS as well.

Keep up the good work!

Dedicated to Itojun

[gertam (1019200)]

The release is dedicated to Dr. Jun-ichiro Hagino, known throughout the Internet community as itojun. He did lots of important work on the IPv6 protocol through the KAME project, and made many other contributions to the Internet and BSD communities.

A very niche OS

[slashuzer (580287)]

It is good to see FreeBSD keep on going, but I cannot help but feel that all BSDs, to some extent, have become a very niche, and bit of a dead-end OS. Today if someone wants to move away from windows, they can go to Linux (free) or Mac (not-free). Aside from server space, what does BSD bring to the average desktop user? Let's just say I want to move to a free OS, what exactly does FreeBSD offer that is not already available with any number of Linux distributions? And what purpose do two similar OS (Linux, BSD) serve when they pretty much appeal to the same segment of computer users. Truly, sometimes I wonder if it might not be better to have *one* OSS alternative to Windows instead of having the developer resources working on two, parallel, different-under-the-surface-but-similar-in-usage operating systems .

Re:A very niche OS

[0x000000 (841725)]

FreeBSD brings a stable OS to the desktop user. Since both userland and kernel are in the same source tree, and are developed concurrently, any changes in the kernel will be immediately reflected in the userland utilities. What does this mean? Well, if I upgrade my kernel and my world, I will know that I always have a perfectly functioning system. It takes the guess work out of upgrades.

Besides that? I find that it is more consistent. If you move from one Linux distribution to another, you need to go hunting for the configuration files, they are not in a set location as specified by man hier. I know that when I install something from the ports tree, the configuration files can always be found in /usr/local/etc/, which is a nice change from having to hunt in /var/www/httpd for Apache's configuration file and /opt/etc/ for the dhcp servers config file.

It's a distro.

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

What you've just described is exactly what any modern distro worth its salt does.

Any changes in kernel are immediately reflected in userland utilities -- check. Not "immediately" as in "the day they're released" -- more like, by the time they hit your distro's repository, they generally work together. Any "guesswork" at that point is a bug.

Consistency is also a feature of the distribution, not the OS. Gentoo might have stuff in a different place than Ubuntu, but Ubuntu has everything in the same place as Ub

Re:

[turbidostato (878842)]

"The problem is, people switch distros quite regularly over the years. For a while Redhat was the defacto, or one derived from Debian, or Gentoo, or Ubuntu."

Yeah, well:

I've been on Debian since 2000, and Debian has always been "like Debian" just like you feel "FreeBSD has always felt like FreeBSD".

On the other hand, people switch from FreeBSD to NetBSD to OpenBSD to DragonFly, etc. regularly over the years. And you know what? Those changes have indeed quirks just like if you go from Debian to Red Hat or t

Re:

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

The problem is, people switch distros quite regularly over the years. For a while Redhat was the defacto, or one derived from Debian, or Gentoo, or Ubuntu. Every few years the most recommended distro changes, which means different system layouts.

Recommended by whom?

RedHat has been RedHat for forever. Unless you are an enterprise user, recently, your RedHat was renamed to Fedora.

Debian has been Debian forever. If you really want to, you can try Ubuntu, but it's not going to be much different than Debian -

Re:

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

All of your arguments are perfectly valid. The technical ones I can't confirm or deny, but I assume you're not making them up, so they're valid.

But all of your remarks are still based on the assumption that FreeBSD is an OS -- an alternative to Linux. I see it as just another quirky L/Unix distro.

That batteries do not come included doesn't exclude it from being a distro; Gentoo, for the longest time, came with a tarball. That's it. Ok, yes, there was a livecd, but you could use any livecd to install that ta

Re:A very niche OS

[geek (5680)]

I used to be a diehard FreeBSD fan. Used it on all my servers and my desktop. I'd still use it before Linux on a server but on the desktop there just is no comparison to something like Ubuntu. The last time I installed FreeBSD on my laptop I felt I had gone back in time 10 years to 1998. Everything I wanted seemed to be a linux emulation too. That's just how I felt anyway. I love FreeBSD and always will, but they don't seem to have the focus on usability for the desktop that distros like Ubuntu have.

Re:

[setagllib (753300)]

That's what PC-BSD is for. All of the FreeBSD 6 foundation you love, but with Ubuntu-like usability layered on top with minimal fuss. I have not tried it myself, but all reviews I've read are highly positive. And it's not just an Ubuntu clone either, with some innovation in integrating a new packaging system into the OS.

Re:

[geek (5680)]

Thanks for the tip. I'm going to give it a shot and see how it goes. Much appreciated.

Re:

[KlaymenDK (713149)]

Go ahead and try PC-BSD; but like anything else in this game, it's not the only one in town. If you don't like it, you might also want to try DesktopBSD.

PC-BSD has these nice ready-built binaries for installing, where DesktopBSD relies more directly on the ports (through a nice gui, with portsnap).

Re:

[turbidostato (878842)]

"FreeBSD brings a stable OS to the desktop user. Since both userland and kernel are in the same source tree, and are developed concurrently, any changes in the kernel will be immediately reflected in the userland utilities"

Is it either KDE or Gnome on the main tree nowadays (or Enligthment or fluxbox, for that matter). If not, your argument is absolutly moot for any desktop user, you see.

And even then, since the window/desktop manager is all a desktop user is going/wanting to see, there's no real differenc

Re:

[Brandybuck (704397)]

It is very much like Slackware or Arch. (Actually closer to Arch). You get a basic bare bones system, and Xorg is installed on top of that. I have never had any problems upgrading Xorg, even when it moved from /usr/X11R6 to /usr/local.

Once you have it setup it's extremely easy to maintain. You still need to edit some configuration files here and there. If you don't want to do some very lightweight sysadmin duties, then it probably isn't for you. You may want to try PC-BSD or DesktopBSD instead.

Re:

[dknj (441802)]

FreeBSD is like solaris with better driver support and a robust third-party package library. If you know how to use it, its fucking solid. If you're new to the game, you will feel lost unless you pickup a good book

A very nice OS

[KlaymenDK (713149)]

If you want a ready-to-run BSD-based OS, try DesktopBSD. :) Its GUI is just about on a level with Kubuntu; at least there's nothing I miss.

Re:

[MyDixieWrecked (548719)]

I don't consider your post to be flamebait... it seems like an honest question.

Aside from server space, what does BSD bring to the average desktop user?

Personally, I don't consider BSD to be a desktop OS, although I have known people to use it. What it is, though, is a OS that gives you consistency across flavours and distributions. You can go from one BSD box to another and feel confident you know where config files are kept and how the filesystem is laid out. With Linux, there's some guesswork involved, a

Re:

[hedwards (940851)]

I prefer FreeBSD as my everyday computing environment, last time I loaded up Linux I was infuriated by the spotty driver support and performance issues. To be fair, these days I've heard that most of those problems have been fixed, but I also prefer knowing that the code my computer is running doesn't contain hacks to make things work the way they should. I'm not sure that I'd be able to say that if I were running Linux.

But beyond that there are viewpoints represented, is it more important to have support f

Re:

[turbidostato (878842)]

"The desktop support for at least FreeBSD, and I'm not familiar enough with the other ones to say"

Your main point is fool then. You talk about consistency but then you say you talk about *exactly* FreeBSD and you can't talk about other flavours (because you *know* they are different enough not to be able to honestly talk about them). Well, then I have news for you: *any* Linux distribution is as consistent to itself from version to version as FreeBSD is to itself. And differences among Linux distribution

Shark attacks

[SanityInAnarchy (655584)]

If you can call this [xkcd.com] a feature, then sure. (Be sure to read the alternate text, too.)

Re:

[larry bagina (561269)]

1) *BSD isn't encumbered by politics (or at leat the same set of politics). ZFS will be a part of FreeBSD while goldilocks and the 3 hippies argue over whether it's too FREE or not FREE enough.

2) They don't appeal to the same segment of computer users. "Linux is for people that hate windows. BSD is for people that love UNIX". If you look at the commandline utilites, BSD distros maintain them, they're consistent, and the man pages are up to date. Linux distros are a hodgepodge from various sources.

Re:

[RT Alec (608475)]

I have been using FreeBSD 7 (started with the betas, now at RC1, using cvsup), with my entire music and photo collection on a set of drives mirrored with ZFS. I had to tweak samba slightly, but otherwise it has been smooth sailing. My server has less than the recommended ram for ZFS, but the box has been working just fine for months.

I have 4 workstations (WinXP, Win2000, Mac, Ubuntu) simultaneously connected, and I can make snapshots of the live file systems while in use (>1 second for 100GB). I can al

Re:A very niche OS

[jcgf (688310)]

FreeBSD has the advantage of not being for bitches. [linuxisforbitches.com]

That's the main reason I use it ;)

Re:

[QuickFox (311231)]

On the contrary, the license is better.

Re:

[baadger (764884)]

Show me the source and prove it.

Re:

[toadlife (301863)]

There is no need too have the source. All that's needed is a little bit of knowledge about the history of NT and BSD, and a bit of common sense.

You wanna know what parts of NT were amde using BSD code? grep the binaries and dlls for "regents". ping, ftp, rsh, and rcp, finger and probably some other networking tools that I forgot is what you will get. Since the license permits it's use, I don't see why Microsoft would admit to using BSD code in a few low level network utilities but not in other areas. And wh

Re:

[toadlife (301863)]

So you are saying that ping, telnet and ftp a "large part" of the NT code base?

Looking forward to 7.0

[0x000000 (841725)]

I am personally looking forward to 7.0 as it will bring many speed improvements and enhancements. There have been some tests done to compare FreeBSD 7 performance to FreeBSD 6, and the gains are impressive.

FreeBSD 6.3 for me and my servers will be the last update to the series before switching over to the new hopefully soon to be released 7.0. My suggestion for anyone planning on trying FreeBSD out after having heard about this new release, grab whatever the latest RC disc is of 7.0 and play with that. There is practically no difference between the two, when it comes to userland and will make it easier to stay up to date by already being being on the right branch.

I definitely need to check out freebsd-update. See if it can be used in our systems to keep them up to date, with less down time than using the rebuild world and kernel steps that we take currently.

Re:Looking forward to 7.0

[kace (557434)]

There have been some tests done to compare FreeBSD 7 performance to FreeBSD 6, and the gains are impressive.

See these slides [freebsd.org] by Kris Kennaway for more details on that.

Re:

[baadger (764884)]

While the results are great, and I love FreeBSD, it is important to put these results into perspective.

If you look on pages 17 and 18 you can see Linux 2.6.22 compared very well to FreeBSD 7.0 on the PostgreSQL and MySQL transaction tests. In fact it says "2.6.22 is still 15% slower than FreeBSD 7.0".

Personally I would like to see the results against 2.6.24 when it ships, now the new CFS scheduler has had a tiny bit more development.

I know its so tempting

[Bill, Shooter of Bul (629286)]

I fear however that most of the apps like those in the LAMP stack are being optimized for Linux. The threading situation on BSD used to be a nightmare. I agree 7.0 looks awesome. I'm amazed and grateful for all the developers that kept hope alive. I'll find a use for it somewhere.

Re:

[jimstapleton (999106)]

I'm using 7.0RC1 on my notebook. It's perfectly stable and works quite well.

What the hell is going on with FreeBSD?

[geminidomino (614729)]

This isn't a troll, it's an actual real question.

I've been using FreeBSD since 3-point-*mumble*. I'm running 6-STABLE on my home server, but since about 5-point-something (maybe zero) I've noticed an irritating trend in the install process... The packages seem to be placed on the cds... oddly. When I try to install the OS, I get a message that bash3 requires some library on disc 2 so switch discs... then chugs along until something on disc 2 requires a package on disc 1... Back and forth half a dozen times

Re:

[kace (557434)]

So I take it that 2008 will be the Year of the BSD Desktop?

I'm thinking yes and hell yes. PC-BSD is going to be carried in Fry's and Microcenter (for starters).

And, whenever one is choosing an OS, even for the desktop, you've got consider what sort [pcbsdbabe.com] of crowd [pcbsdgirl.com] you'll be getting mixed up with.

"Unleash your desktop with PC-BSD! [spreadbsd.org]"

Re:

[RLiegh (247921)]

No...BSD is better engineered because it's .... (wait for it) .... engineered . Linux is just a kernel with a bunch of separately developed utilities strung together -no real coordination, no real direction.

Re:better engineered?

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

You misunderstand engineering. Here's an example. How do you get the CPU speed from the kernel? In all of the BSD family there is a single sysctl that you call and it gives you the answer, irrespective of the architecture. On Linux, the answer is in /proc/cpuinfo. This is a plain-text file, so you need to read it and parse it. It gets better though; the format of this file is different on different architectures; write code to parse it on x86, and it won't work on PowerPC. The main job of the kernel is to present programmers with an abstraction so that they don't have to know about the underlying architecture, and Linux fails miserably at this.

Re:

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

The existence of such quirks (I admit I hadn't dealt with that, and that it is annoying- perhaps you could work up a patch for it?) in Linux (or BSD) does not prove either of our points.

Working on a patch is impossible due to the development philosophy of Linux. In *BSD, there is one codebase. If you add a feature, it must be tested on all Teir-1 platforms and it must define an interface that is accessible on all others and any architecture-neutral code must be factored out and put where it can be shared by all of the others. In Linux, everyone maintains their own fork, and things are moved between them in a very haphazard way. Features in the PowerPC or SPARC or x86 tree might never

Re:

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

You can patch bugs, but you can't patch bad engineering. If you apply a patch which fixes this specific example - the different, incompatible, syntax of /proc/cpuinfo between platforms - then it won't fix the underlying cause, and the next time someone adds something to /proc/cpuinfo they will do it in the same haphazard fashion and you will be right back where you started.

Re:

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

You are missing the point. You can fix specific instances of a mistake trivially with open source. Hell, I could write you a patch for the PowerPC Linux kernel that would make the format of /proc/cpu compatible with the x86 version in about half an hour. Fixing this would not cause more mistakes, but it would also not fix the root cause of the original problem, which is the lack of overall design and direction in the Linux kernel.

The fix for this problem would be a better set of rules for inclusion of

Re:

[empaler (130732)]

A fix is available [userscripts.org].

Re:

[empaler (130732)]

You mean "planned" or "expected. What really annoys me is that they haven't updated their plans to reflect their new expected release (and no, I'm not going to go trawling through their mailing lists to find out)