FreeBSD 4.9 Released

Digital Dharma writes "Excellent! FreeBSD 4.9 has been released, and if it's anything like the RC series, this will be a release to remember. You can obtain it from the usual sources, or if you're feeling generous and supportive, you can buy the cd set. Support your local Daemon!" As Jani Laaksonen writes, the new release includes "numerous security advisory fixes, kernel changes and support for the Physical Address Extensions (PAE) capability on Intel Pentium Pro and higher processors (see page(4)). This release also adds support for a few more hardware NIC cards, ipfw network protocol enhancements, userland changes, and more. Check FreeBSD 4.9 Release Notes for more information."

Panther/Darwin contributions?

Interesting - seems very close to the Panther and Darwin releases. Has this accepted any code from Apple?

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Panther/Darwin contributions?

Not really -

Here's the APSL [apple.com]

If a developer takes and uses APSL code in some other project, section 2.2 a, b, and c need to be followed for that section of code, but as long as those are followed I don't see why the code couldn't be distributed with BSD. I really don't see this as much of a big deal, though, unless you want a certain patch for a certain program - if it's an entire app, well, my copy of Linux came with Mozilla and Apache, both which have separate, non BSD, open source licenses (I have FreeBSD, as well, but built it from scratch, so no CD).

If you want a specific patch, ask the original developer to also submit it to BSD - as far as I can tell, any code submitted is still owned by the developer (but you give Apple a free, non-exclusive, everlasting license to use it, or something like that). I guess if the original developer works for Apple you won't get any help, but most other Open Source developers are happy to submit to other Open Source projects.

Re:Mod Parent UP

Actually, our company pays full time wages for at least two FreeBSD developers that I can think of, who's work goes straight to the project. Our products however we dont give away - they are a competetive advantage that we dont want to give up.

The person I originally responded to was claiming that the BSD licensed software frightened away commercial interested MORE than GPL'd software and my posting was to refute that false idea.

Just because YOU like the GPL and you like working on GPL'd products doesn't mean that that is the only valid way to do development.

Our business model works for us, and the FreeBSD community bennefits from our involvment. It really is a win-win situation for both FreeBSD and us.

If I were to release source code of any of my personal software projects, I'd do it under a BSD-style license. Software doesn't have to be business-related or business-useful, but for businesses using various types of 'free' software, BSD is certainly more attractive.

Oh, and you don't have to work on FreeBSD and do 'without-cost' development for corporations - my company PAYS me to develop BSD software. Just because you can't find paying work doesn't mean that the rest of us don't like having jobs.

Don't even get me started about all the BSD work that has found it's way into linux - the BSD license has made this possible, and easy.

Re:Panther/Darwin contributions?

Debian NetBSD/FreeBSD isn't about forking and putting NetBSD/FreeBSD under a new license. It is about putting NetBSD and FreeBSD into the "Debian scheme", with Debian installer and Debian package management. And I have to know it, since I was involved in that work for some time.

Re:Panther/Darwin contributions?

Apple's contributions are most visible in gcc 3.x.y series powerpc support and optimization, not at kernel level in FreeBSD, since Darwin mainly uses FreeBSD's userland, not kernel.

So Apple is giving back to the community, just not directly to FreeBSD.

Re:Interesting, but the real question is...

Why, yes. Yes it does.

See: /usr/ports/emulators/linux-base

or: FreeBSD Hypertext Man Pages: linux [freebsd.org]

Performance...

But... How does it compare to Linux 2.6.0-test9 performance wise?

Linux Kern 2.4 vs 2.6 vs FreeBSD

There was something on this that was already on /. You can find that here [slashdot.org] and also here [bulk.fefe.de] Granted it's the 5.x versions of FreeBSD but still got a good comparison.

I thought 5.x was the latest

I thought FreeBSD was already on 5.x or something like that. Is that the development version? Does FreeBSD use a linux-like version numbering where odd numbers are development releases?

Re:I thought 5.x was the latest

I thought FreeBSD was already on 5.x or something like that. Is that the development version? Does FreeBSD use a linux-like version numbering where odd numbers are development releases?

No, 4.9 is the latest release from the -stable branch. The 5.0 and 5.1 releases were made from the -current development branch (actually the main trunk in CVS). Eventually, probably around 5.2 or 5.3, 5.x will be branched off as 5-STABLE and development will begin on 6.x.

Re:I thought 5.x was the latest

although the source is open, the development team is not.

Uh, how exactly is the development team not open? The FreeBSD project accepts contributions from just about anyone -- I've submitted a few patches myself. The list of people with commit rights to the CVS tree is quite large and growing; contrast to the Linux kernel which is a one-man dictatorship (guess how many people have commit rights to the master repo for that).

Just In Time For Halloween

To rise up yet once again from the dead!

I wonder...

I wonder why those idiots with no more to say than "bsd is dying", "pull the plug", "bsd sux, linux rulez" are not simply filtering out BSD related posts and be done with it... they get moderated down to oblivion anyway...

I'm personally very happy with FreeBSD, thank you.
Hope SMP support (and pthreads support) will get better soon now. Can't wait for 5.x becoming -STABLE. :)

At least they didn't jump the gun this time

Wow, Slashdot posting the story of a BSD release AFTER the official release announcement and the web page being updated? Must be a first.

good for BSD

This is good for BSD and good for all of us. For those you saying that BSD lost its vigor in 1990 (lawsuit) then i wonder how the current Linux fiasco is going to impact the penguin. We are all in this together really, a strong BSD means more security for all of us. Espescially with the SCO monster running around. Who know in 5 years maybe BSD will be growing at 17%/year and linux will be on life support. Remember fame is fickle.

fork

Anybody ever hear what happened to the fork. DragonFly or something?...
-t

FrreBSD collector's box

If you buy the complete CD Set from BSDMall, you get a collector's box. That's right, a mini-coffin to hold your *BSD CDs!

Scary troll ratio

The average all posts:non-0 rated post ratio on slashdot is around 1.3. On bsd.slashdot.org it's more like 3:1 to 5:1 (there's currently a story with 40:1). What is wrong with these people? Choice is good, mmm-kay.

phew

"numerous security advisory fixes"

At first I read that as "humerous". But of course this isnt Windows we are atalking about. eyethangyoo.

Isn't it interesting

that the difference between a *BSD release and a Linux distro release is a night and day difference. When a linux distro is released everyone comes out of the wood-work, says it is the best thing since the 386 was released, praises Allah, and there would be few if any comments to the contrary. Yet, when a *BSD release comes out it becomes a religious war over which is better, and all the trolls come out of the wood-work?

110 comments and no .torrent file?!?!?!?!?!

Subject header says it all... I'll just rely on good ol' fashioned ftp then.

Re:110 comments and no .torrent file?!?!?!?!?!

I think most FreeBSD folks (whether official project members or just us users) don't bother with torrents since the most popular way to upgrade a system is via cvsup (at least that's the perception). It took a long time before ISOs were even offered since it was believed most people wouldn't be using them. It would probably take an analysis of the FTP logs after a release, showing a lot of traffic on the ISOs, before torrents would show up often.

BSD is SCO Insurance

Be nice to the FreeBSD project. In the remote event SCO wins its lawsuits, FreeBSD, especially the 5.x series, would easily be able to replace Linux.

I've switched

I've used linux for about 4 years, but i have always peeked into the BSD camp now and again.

While i like linux, and it has always done well for me, i think it's time for me to jump the fence to FreeBSD completely.

The BSDs always seem to be more mature and logical, and `cleaner'.

Maybe this isn't the best reason to drive such a decision, but i think a lot of the noise and trolling from the linux camp of late has really put me off. I know *all* linux users aren't like this, but it's really turning into something don't want to be associated with. I have a similar situation with the Apple community, and Windows, well... i just hate the OS enough.

The level of integrity that i've seen in my (albeit limited) interaction on usenet, slashdot and irc with BSD folks is impressive. There aren't any issues of acting juvenile or overly zealous.

Maybe in a while the linux camp will "grow up" some and i'll come back.

Sorry.

Is it STABLE or not?

What I find strange is this remark in the announcement:

We encourage all our users to evaluate FreeBSD 5.1 and the upcoming 5.2. Because PAE support has only been a feature in 4.X for a few months, it has not received wide-spread testing, and our most conservative users may wish to stay with FreeBSD 4.8 until they choose to migrate to 5.X.

This seems to imply that the 4.X branch is no longer -STABLE. I thought the 4.X branch was for conservative users. I don't really see how PAE can be the only reason for this since it is only an option for the kernel. Conservative users can simply choose not to turn it on, right?

Re:Is it STABLE or not?

Let's ignore, for the moment, any bikeshedding over the name STABLE and the stability of the code.

The reason for the sentences in question (I had a small part in writing them) was simply this: PAE is a fairly young (in the 4.X series) feature that touches a lot of bits in the kernel (yes, even if it's not enabled). When it was first committed, it caused a number of problems (well-documented on the mailing lists), but they seem to have been fixed. If we thought there were any major problems remaining in this area, we wouldn't have released. However it's an undeniable fact that PAE in 4.X hasn't had a lot of testing time compared to most of the rest of the kernel, and this bears a bit of consideration.

I believe that for the vast majority of users (myself included) 4.9 works just fine. (I run a mix of 4.9-STABLE and 5.1-CURRENT on various laptops, desktops, and non-critical servers.) If you're really one of the most conservative users, you probably wouldn't jump on the new release bandwagon anyways, and would spend some time evaluating 4.9 (regardless of PAE, or what anyone on the release engineering team says) before deploying it in some mission-critical environment.

LinuxFormat - late again!

Dammit, and I was just thinking about installing 4.8 on an old machine I have. I got it with the 'latest', to the U.S. at least, issue of LinuxFormat.

Now I feel compelled to download 4.9 instead of 4.8 and try and install it.

If you want it at 25KB/sec

go here: http://craig.afraid.org/site/main.pld=binaries/fre ebsd/4.9&f=1&t=0

I don't know about you guys..

<sarcasm>I think I will just wait for longhorn before I upgrade my OS again.</sarcasm>

My Mirror

If you have troubles, try this mirror...

ftp://olaf.spack.nu/pub/mirror/freebsd-iso/ [spack.nu]

Enjoy :)

Ender

" if it's anything like the RC series.."

if it's anything like the RC series, this will be a release to remember. OK, that comment sounds rather omnious. Can anyone clarify that remark?

Protesteth-ing too much

Y'know, I really do wonder why the "BSD is dead" trolls invest so much time and effort in polluting every Slashdot article that involves BSD. One would almost think they felt threatened by BSD, and were "protesteth-ing too much" a la Hamlet.

Could they be stockholders in companies that have cast their lot in with Linux? Rabid adherents of the FSF (or the FSF itself)? I'd honestly like to know what the agenda is here.

All these flames just go to show that....

...Linux is not impacting Windows at all - it is simply killing off Unix variants.

Just installed FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE and it...

...runs smooth like shit coming from a duck's ass!

FreeBSD Printing

I love FreeBSD but I still can't use it on my main PC because I can't get printing to work. AHHHHH

Re:What I know about FreeBSD

> 1. You can not play games on it.
Wrong. There are plenty of games, and what is not supported by a native version may be playable under linux emulation and/or wine with a negligible performance impact.

> 2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
Then your grandma is dumb.

> 3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
Wrong. you can use XFree86 and any window manager or desktop environment you choose.

> 4. There is no support available for it.
Wrong. There are plenty of IRC channels, email lists and even commercial support providers.

> 5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
Wrong. Even if it were not wrong this does not compare to the staggering number of Linux distributions.

> 6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
Wrong. FreeBSD was initially crafted directly from the 386BSD patchset in the early 90's. It has supported i386 from the very beginning.

> 7. You have to compile everything and know C.
Wrong. You can install packages just like linux. You can certainly compile everything if you want to, but this does not require even minimal knowledge of C.

> 8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
Wrong. It isn't always poor. Sometimes support lags behind a little, many times IHV's have poor or no FreeBSD drivers, but new hardware is certainly not ignored.

> 9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
Wrong. FreeBSD has an extensive Linux binary compatability system that allows most Linux binaries to run just fine. Word is, sometimes even faster.

> 10.It is dying.
And Wrong. FreeBSD has a large community of active developers and maintainers, along with a significant installed user base.

9 out of 10 ain't bad. Clearly a troll but I was feeling self important so I thought I'd whip it out.

Re:Security Fixes

FreeBSD releases have -p updates that are typically for Security Fixes. If you look here [freebsd.org] you'll see all the same Security Advisories that were fixed in a -p update to 4.8. They put the same information in each new release notes just to cover the fact that they were fixed since the original previous release.

Re:Security Fixes

Security fixes for FreeBSD are released as part of the RELENG branch for a particular release version. 4.9 (presumably) includes all the security fixes which were released since the 4.8 release, which were announced on the 4.8 errata page. The 4.9 errata page is here [freebsd.org]. The security fixes are usually released concurrent with any vulnerability announcement, but it's still up to users to read the handbook and patch their own systems.

Re:Troll? Care to explain your modding parent down

None of the points raised by the post in question are worth wasting any time on. The poster's understanding of what "free" means is simply flawed. Flawed? Broken.

Free doesn't mean "do it my way." Free doesn't mean "do what I say." Free means free, period. Unburdened by restriction or prohibition. Free doesn't mean you get to tell other people what to do.

A lot of people don't like freedom. A lot of people think that other people should just do what they're told and not make their own decisions. The poster in question is evidently one of these people. He thinks that people shouldn't be free to do whatever they want with free software. He thinks that people should only be allowed to do certain things, under certain circumstances.

That doesn't sound right to me.

That's where the discussion begins and ends. The poster in question is wrong in his most basic assumption, so there's no point in getting any deeper into it than that.

Re:What I know about FreeBSD

You can not play games on it.

That's true. FreeBSD is not for people who want to play games. These people need to use a PlayStation, GameCube, or Xbox.

It cannot be used by my grandma.

That's true. FreeBSD is not meant to be used in that sense at all. It's a server operating system, designed to run unattended.

It lacks a GUI of any note.

That's true. The only graphical user interfaces for FreeBSD are those based on X11--including the atrocities KDE and Gnome. These are nothing more than curiosities.

There is no support available for it.

That's true. FreeBSD is not for people who want to buy a support contract. These people need to use Solaris or AIX or IRIX or Mac OS X Server instead.

It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.

That's untrue. FreeBSD is just one operating system.

It cannot be run on the x86 platform.

That's untrue. The primary platform of FreeBSD is IA-32, which some silly people insist on calling "x86" for reasons that escape me.

You have to compile everything and know C.

That's half true. You do have to compile everything; that's what the "ports" system is. You do not have to know C, however; that's also part of the "ports" system.

Support for the latest hardware is always poor.

That's true. FreeBSD does not strive to be on the bleeding edge of anything.

It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.

That's both true and untrue. FreeBSD can interoperate with Linux. FreeBSD can also run much of the same software as Linux. But unfortunately Linux developers decided to make some decisions in their design that could best be described as dubious, so certain incompatibilities arose over time. These incompatibilities come from the Linux side of things, not the FreeBSD side. Complain to your local Linux developer.

It is dying.

That's untrue. There were more shipments of FreeBSD last year than any other UNIX operating system. That's because Mac OS X is, for all intents and purposes, FreeBSD.

Re:SO this means....

If you are talking about kernel features in FreeBSD to allow better support for USB peripherals and the like, then comparing Linux against FreeBSD is like comparing apples to oranges. If you want to talk about a server platform, FreeBSD has better kernel throughput than Linux 2.4 while from a desktop standpoint Linux offers better support. Pick the right tool for the job.

Re:Support your local Daemon

Smacktard. Go and look up "daemon" in any dictionary, although I would recommend the Concise Oxford. *Not* dictionary.com, though.

Re:MP support?!?!

From dmesg:

FreeBSD 4.8-STABLE #1: Thu Jul 31 15:39:28 BST 2003
theraven@slave:/usr/src/sys/compile/SMP
Timecount er "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz
CPU: Intel Pentium III (701.59-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x683 Stepping = 3
Features=0x383fbff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE, CX8,APIC,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR, SSE>
real memory = 536870912 (524288K bytes)
avail memory = 518139904 (505996K bytes)
Programming 24 pins in IOAPIC #0
IOAPIC #0 intpin 2 -> irq 0
FreeBSD/SMP: Multiprocessor motherboard: 2 CPUs
cpu0 (BSP): apic id: 0, version: 0x00040011, at 0xfee00000
cpu1 (AP): apic id: 1, version: 0x00040011, at 0xfee00000
io0 (APIC): apic id: 2, version: 0x00170011, at 0xfec00000

Looks like it's supporting my dual P3 quite well thanks...

There are a few more lines in dmesg talking about SMP support, but I think that snippet gives you everything you need to know.

Re:Does anyone out there...

I run several FreeBSD servers, and am very happy with them. Install was simpler, and adding software (that is in ports) is a snap. So is keeping up with patches. I am not sure that I would want to run it as a desktop OS (MacOS X), but as a server I am very happy with it.

There is a reason that a lot of the big servers run BSD's...

Re:YES!

Hell yes it would! That would make getting people to use free software that much easier!

That was the obvious response to that I was expecting. But I think you're wrong. Microsoft's buggy software doesn't seem to cause joe user to use free software. At least not with the free software we have today. Joe user is used to all the Windows problems, one more buggy implementation isn't going to open his eyes to the world of free software. Not only joe user, but the corporate world seems to not mind using buggy software for their desktop machines. I'd rather Microsoft not have control of the desktop market, but since they do, I'd rather their software be as stable and bugfree as possible. If MS took BSD and wrote a good closed-source OS using it, I'd be ok with that, as long as the end result was a good product.

Would it be better if OS X didn't exist at all? Sure. Why do I care if more closed source proprietary software exists?

You don't, so license your software under the GPL. Other people do care that closed source proprietary software exists. And of course, people who think OS X completely blows away any free OS, care about its existance. I'm not going to argue that, as I haven't used OS X enough to form an opinion. But if it indeed blows away free OSes, I'm glad it exists and don't mind the GUI being closed-source.

In any case, the BSD license gives more freedom than the GPL. However, the GPL restricts freedom in a way that enforces openness. Which is better? I don't know. But this statement is blatantly false:

FreeBSD is *not* free guys! It never was! At least not in the true sense of the word.

Re:Security Fixes

So does this mean that the FreeBST team isn't patching security issues as they are reported, and are instead fixing them over the period of (presumably) scheduled release iterations?

No. The patches are incorporated at the same time when advisories are released. I'm assuming they list them in the release notes just to imply that since you're using 4.9 you don't have to worry about all the security issues which were discovered in 4.8

If this is the case, why isn't the /. community all over them like they are Microsoft?

See above.

Re:Is it Free ??

Read that page again. First of all, it uses FreeBSD 5.1, which is the -CURRENT release, as opposed to 4.9, which is the -STABLE release. Second, and most importantly, it doesn't appear that FreeBSD sucks except to someone who didn't read a single word of that study. Try again, and you'll see that FreeBSD is among the best in most categories. The one that surprised me was OpenBSD's lack of performance in this study. I didn't have that experience at all when I used to run it.

Re:Security Fixes

Something else to consider is that, unlike most Linux distributions, FreeBSD isn't riddled with security vulnerabilities. FreeBSD does have it's share of holes, but they are few and far between, and usually patched very quickly.

Re:Troll? Care to explain your modding parent down

When I say that the GPL is free, I really mean is that the code itself is protected by a garuantee that it shall remain open and freely available to every recipient of that code. It does not however, garuantee any freedom to the reciepient itself.
The BSD "free" is a different "free" to the GPL and applies to two different things. Hence the confusion and silly statements that "The [GPL|BSD] is [more|less] free than the [GPL|BSD]"

That is exactly what I said:

"The BSD license is free in a different way than GPL software. It is free in a way that actually allows more freedom than the GPL."

I didn't say that the BSD license is more free than the GPL, I said it allows more freedom [to the recipient].

Re:Does anyone out there...

i REALLY wanted out of microsoft.
i have tried switching from win2k to linux and found it confusing,xxx tools for the same job and for me a confusing file layout.
installing Freebsd was/is a breeze even for a mouse clickin fool like me,i downloaded a couple of floppies,set up my nic and pointed it at a ftp site.
the file layout was explained well and seemed logical to me..
The manual is good.the package system with its dependancy checking is lovely.
it has linux binary compatibility
there is ALOT less random noise on freebsd mailing lists and forums in my (limited) view.
to sum up i found it easier to use/install than mandrake or redhat

Re:Wow, those guys sure are behind the times!

Good thing they [freebsd.org] have version 5.1 [freebsd.org] available. Now they just have to add the two together.

Of course, Apple just released Panther [apple.com] - which is 10.3 so they would still be a little behind.

Good grief - surely I've got something better [tninet.se] to do with my time.

Re:Support your local Daemon

Who cares? There's also a significant amount of hardcore agnostics and atheists. It's just a word, and only the most extreme christian cults/sects would even worry about using the word "Daemon".

Re:Does anyone out there...

Like I said before... you are a moron. You think the slashdot crowd knows anything? Most of them are a bunch of Linux Fanboyz who know nothing about how the os works.

With that out of the way, Several production shops use FreeBSD on their servers. Yahoo, Sony japan, Hotmail (yes, they still do, even if they won't admit it). And another thing, I was looking at linux's so-called SMP support the other day, (mainly because netstat was hanging for like 1.6 seconds on my 2.4 kernel 4 way smp machines) and the locking is horrible. Just running a netstat causes the rest of the TCP system to hang while the netstat completes. And it's noticable, The webserver latency goes from 5 ms to 1.9 seconds.

Things like this are why FreeBSD is still used anywhere that needs to support high traffic and high uptime.

Re:Does anyone out there...

Yep. I use freeBSD, and I like it. As much as anything I am used to the BSD way of doing things. I have no problems with linux (other than distributions tend to do things just a little different), and am considering a new linux machine for things that linux does better than BSD. BSD is still the best for servers, but for desktops some of the support isn't as good. All IMHO of course, you are free to disagree.

Re:Does anyone out there...

Absolutely.

I have had FreeBSD on all my laptops for ages now--both as a workstation, and as a console/sniffer/debugging machine. The only weakness in this regard was the lack of MS Office support (no, I don't find Star/OpenOffice or KOffice or friends acceptable alternatives as of yet.) It's stable, fast, easy to upgrade and maintain, secure, and flexible.

My personal firwealls have also been FreeBSD since I started finding OpenBSD too archaic for quick changes (my last one started deciding that what I told it to do wasn't secure enough. Looking for solutions in newsgroups/mailing lists inevitably came up with "read through the source and quit bugging us you fucking idiot".) I don't want to use an OS maintained primarily by a psychopath.

My home fileserver, and AMD K6-2-400 has also been FreeBSD since about 3 years now--running 24x7 without a glitch.

I've installed it at several client sites as firewalls, web servers, monitoring boxes, groupware and mail servers, and use it with no hitches _whatsoever_ for our company (DNS, mail, PHProjekt, www.)

Prime factors in terms of quality of an OS are

Ease of installation and upgrade

Support (I've always found the BSD mailing lists to be pretty friendly, and people to be fairly clueful

Good package management

Security

Well-thought out and common sense layout of the OS itself (file systems, config files, etc.
Yes, I have a good amount of unix experience, but I often just need something to work without too much knob-dicking around, period. This is the reason I have an XP box lying around at home (games, documents I get from clients, Windows software I sometimes use professionally, etc.). No, I don't think *BSD is ready for the desktop.

However, having worked with Unix variants, including various Linux incarnations, for more than 10 years now (holy shit! I'm old!) I can really recommend this as a reliable, and representative example of a good OS.

This is assuming, of course, that you're not just trolling.

Re:Does anyone out there...

For desktop and servers, yes.

I tried linux, didn't like one distribution, changed, had to relearn EVERYTHING.

Tried Gentoo recently, looks good, but they think portage is go gracing earth when it still has some issues that need to be resolved.

Besides, nothing beats the stability of FreeBSD, even on 5.1 and 5.2 I've never had a crash on my desktop machine.

come on...

I am a have excepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour and see nothing wrong with a play on words The great thing about Open Source, is you don't have to use it.

Accepting this as 'glorifying evil' absolutely incorrect. FreeBSD isn't saying, use it b/c the Devil uses it, or putting other 'evil' messages in the source. It is picture, one manufactured by Man, which has no idea what a demon even looks like. Red tights are fabrication by Man.

Anyone want to read Harry Potter?

Asenchi

Depends on your definition

Does that mean we'll have to abstain from using "icons" as well?

Actually, the word Daemon, like many things in Christianity, has roots in paganism, though it also has connections to Ancient Greek as well. Only in Christianity does the word specifically refer to an evil entity.

What's the difference between Unix borrowing the word to mean Disk And Execution MONitor, and Christianity borrowing the word to mean a sort of evil, supernatural entity?

Don't be a moron.

Everyone one of REAL IT-types us are heathen atheists. Sorry to burst your bubble. We likes our BSD naughty.

Mmmm... sacrilicious.

Re:Support your local Daemon

"There is a fairly significant amount of Christians in IT. Shouldn't open source be using something less offensive, like "services" instead of glorifying evil?"

Who modded a troll up as 'interesting'?

Who modded this up?

You got trolled. If the word "daemon" is actually OFFENSIVE to you, you may as well not live, because everything will be offensive to you.

Re:Security Fixes

this has been (kinda) answered by others, but I'll try to make mine a bit clearer.

The above statement is talking relative to release of 4.8, as cut to CD. This doesn't mean it hasn't been fixed, it just means they can't go back in time to fix it on 4.8 as it was on release day (think what was cut to CD).

That said, FreeBSD users don't have to stay on the "as cut to CD version". Once you get a release, a good FreeBSD user can update his system, tracking one of a few cvs branches, such as STABLE (which will get you this whole release), the 4.8-RELENG "security fixes only" branch, or CURRENT, which would put you in 5.x world. All security problems are fixed in all releases.

If this is the case, why isn't the /. community all over them like they are Microsoft?
Because all critical vulnerabilities are on a mailing list, all versions of FreeBSD affected are updated, even old ones (you'll occasionally see updates for 3.x and even 2.x sometimes) instead of forcing people to upgrade off NT 4 so they can sell more XP licenses.

Not true, there are security releases.

I'll take your post seriously.

They probably mean it includes security fixes compared to 4.8-RELEASE. However security releases do exist, they are versions with a p# in them. e.g 4.8-p13. These contain 4.8 release plus any security fixes.

Also there are release engineering versions (aka releng) that have the update that have a version number like 4.8-20031010. These contain secuity updates plus system and driver updates.

Re:Does anyone out there...

FreeBSD is alive and well here as well. We use it to run a number of firewalls, a few web server, and a network monitoring station. It is a lot cleaner than linux, and integrates userland better than Linux.

So basically, we have a heavy Windows installation protected by FreeBSD running IPF, snort, etc.

And I am in the process of installing BSD on a diskless PC. I got 4.8 down to 8 megs, which includes kernel, shell, userland commands, network tools, etc. You come to appreciate features as the freebsd jail when you do things like this.

Re:Excitement

I thought the Linux users at the one show were the socially inept losers since the BSD people had the women in the tight clothing....My how the times changed.

Re:disk 2 ???

My advice is, either wait until the disk 1 image appears on your local mirror, or, if you're really impatient, download the floppy images and go from there. (if you've got the bandwidth to download iso images, network install via ftp or http should be just as feasible).

Disk 2 is a live filesystem disk of a base system install, mainly good for rescues etc. This means no extra packages etc, making the image smaller than disk 1, which contains installer, various packages such as kde etc. If the transfers started at the same time, it makes sense that the smaller file would be completely transferred first, appearing to the public before the larger disk 1 image.

Re:Wow, those guys sure are behind the times!

Pffft... If you rhink that is bad, wait till you hear this: Linux is only on version 2.6! They need 2.5 versions just to catch up to NetBSD -current! And then, they need to go up 8.4 versions to be even close to Apple! Seriously, why do they Linux fanboys bother?

BTW, Windows doesn't count. They cheat. Bad. Going form v3.1 to v95, then from v98 to v2000? WTF!


DISCLAMER: This is what is commonly known as a joke. Laugh. Oh, and I use Linux.

Re:Before a troll says it

spoken like true dead Anonymous Coward... once again sad :(

Re:Security Fixes

Security updates can be tracked easily without upgrading. But if you compare an unupgraded 4.8 to 4.9 yes 4.9 has more security fixes. But it's your responsibility to keep you system patched.

Re:Troll? Care to explain your modding parent down

One of the points of the license is to allow for others to use it in their closed source software.

Gee, for a while there, you started to sound like one of those GNU people saying GTK+ was better than Qt because it wasn't under the GPL...

Re:MP support?!?!

I felt like calling someone a dumbass today. You're the lucky winner.

Dumbass.

Re:MP support?!?!

Blatent troll, however: It's false. Look at apache for instance, It's thriving on a BSD license. If I release code, then I want to guaruntee it's usefull to someone, no-point reinventing the wheel so to speak. If someone at a draconian institution can use my code to help him achieve his task, then so be it, I have just made someone's day easier, and at no cost to myself. So what if they can stick a big price tag on it, the original version's still around and availible, and will probably spring competitor's.

-Gwala