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Operating Systems Software BSD

FreeBSD 5.2 Review 431

Posted by timothy from the mostly-good dept.
JigSaw writes "OSNews published a review of FreeBSD 5.2. They found the OS very solid as a server but pretty lacking as a desktop. The author finds FreeBSD very fast overall, easy to configure and that it feels integrated and mature. On the other hand, it has limited modern hardware support, small annoyances at places and that not many binary packages are available and so compilations from ports may take long time."
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FreeBSD 5.2 Review More

FreeBSD 5.2 Review

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  • Thoughts on infrastructure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DarkHelmet ( 120004 ) * <mark@@@seventhcycle...net> on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:31PM (#8108176) Homepage

    They found the OS very solid as a server but pretty lacking as a desktop.

    So, are they going to refer people to Windows as something with a "good desktop".

    Operating systems, to me, are a lot like buildings. The kernel is the foundations, and everything that sits on top of it are floors in the building. Where would you prefer the weak link to be? Near the bottom of the building, where tapping on a support column on the first floor makes everything come crashing down (read, BSOD)? Or would it be better to have parts of the building that are higher up be weak, in which case part of the building is still left in tact?

    I realize that this analogy isn't entirely true, as with the WTC the weight of the top part of the building entirely decimated the bottom part. But supposing that the bottom underlying part of an operating system is bulletproof, all the abstracting layers on top of it that come crashing down won't kill the whole thing.

    I see this as BSD. They're making sure their foundations are rock solid before building on top of them. It's good practice. The rest of the infrastructure will come with time.

    • Re:Thoughts on infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)

      by flewp ( 458359 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:35PM (#8108217)
      Good point. I would argue that Windows is a good desktop though. It's easy for people to navigate, do all the basic things they want, install hardware easily, etc.

      Now, Linux in the hands of someone experienced could be a far better desktop, but for the masses Windows is a good desktop. Also, Windows in the hands of an experienced user is also a good desktop. I haven't really encountered problems with Win2K Pro in quite awhile. The only times I do have problems are almost 99% the application's fault, not Windows.

      • argh (Score:3, Interesting)

        by SHEENmaster ( 581283 )
        I had to use nt5 (win2k for those that read the propaganda) for a day to port a library I'd written to ActiveX for some ungrateful VB yuppies. A few reasons keep it from being even a tolerable desktop; I'm ignoring why it sucks as a development platform and server platform.

        1. A busy window cannot be moved.
        2. Viruses abound, and they are a bitch for an unexperienced user to remove.
        3. Spyware apps abound, and they are a bitch for an unexperienced user to remove.
        4. Problems are left unfixed. MSIE explo
        • Okay, so my question is, if Linux is such a superior desktop, why doesn't it have a greater marketshare?

          1. Less support for drivers, etc.
          2. Installation can be a bitch for someone not used to Linux. (Though it is getting better, especially in distros like Red Hat)
          3. Lack of applications. (And no, WINE isn't acceptable for the average user)
          4. There are probably other reasons, but I can't think of them in the few minutes I have to post before going out for food.

          And what exactly is this propagan

          • Re:argh (Score:4, Insightful)

            by cant_get_a_good_nick ( 172131 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @11:08PM (#8109061)
            Okay, so my question is, if Linux is such a superior desktop, why doesn't it have a greater marketshare?
            This is a faulty argument. Quality does not have a 100% correlate to marketshare, and often marketshare has a very small correlation to quality. A 100% correlation assumes a market with zero friction everywhere. That market does not, and can not, exist. The current OS landscape (partly technical reasons, partly others) is very very far away from a zero friction marketplace.
            • I understand that. I guess I kind of phrased it wrong, or made my point unclear. The points I listed below the "...if Linux is such a superior.." question were meant to kind of answer the question I posed.

              So I totally agree with quality not correlating directly to marketshare, I just made a post that didn't flow coherently. To back up the quality and marketshare arguement, just look at beer, I highly doubt Miller, Bud, etc make the highest quality beers out there ;) .
              • I highly doubt Miller, Bud, etc make the highest quality beers out there ;) .
                AAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEE now I'm gonna have nightmares!!! The Czech beer called Budweiser in the Czech Republic (called Czechvar elsewhere) is actually pretty good though.

                at a beer brewers conference, the representatives for Anheiser Busch, Cerveceria Modelo, and Guinness got together at a bar. They all step up to the bar, and the bartender asks what they wanted.
                Bartender: so what do you guys want?
                Busch Guy: Give me the king

        • Re:argh (Score:4, Informative)

          by The Snowman ( 116231 ) * on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:24PM (#8108683)

          1. A busy window cannot be moved.

          This is the fault of the application programmer. If a programmer knows how to write a decent message loop, you won't have this problem. Despite this, even poorly written program windows can be moved, they're just slow.

          2. Viruses abound, and they are a bitch for an unexperienced user to remove.
          3. Spyware apps abound, and they are a bitch for an unexperienced user to remove.
          4. Problems are left unfixed. MSIE exploits are unpatchable even after months of MS being informed of them.

          Do what I do -- install Mozilla on Windows. The only non-OSS software on my Windows box is Windows itself. I have zero problems with viruses, worms, etc. Oh, I am behind a firewall too, on a separate box.

        • I had to use nt5 (win2k for those that read the propaganda)

          Slightly OT, but what is the kernel version in Win2k3? WinXP was 5.1, would it be 5.2, 5.5 or 6.0?
          • Microsoft Windows [Version 5.2.3790]
            (C) Copyright 1985-2003 Microsoft Corp.

            Win2k3 corperate server.

            What happened to version inflating in good OS tradition (*cough* count slackware versions sometime)?
            • Solaris 2 combined with SunOS 5 gives us Solaris 7. Funny how Solaris 9 uses the SunOS 5.9 kernel. All of these major version jumps tend to result in a sort of revenge by the programmers, where a hidden version number still advances slowly.
              • " Solaris 2 combined with SunOS 5 gives us Solaris 7"

                Solaris is a term for the OS, Window Manager etc. bundle.

                Solaris 1, if it existed, would have been based on SunOS 4.

                Solaris 2 is based on SunOS 5.
                Solaris 2.1 used SunOS 5.1 etc.
                After Solaris 2.6 (based on SunOS 5.6) Sun dropped the first "2" so Solaris 2.7 was actually called Solaris 7.

                Right now Solaris 9 (should be Solaris 2.9) is based on SunOS 5.9

        • Re:argh (Score:2, Interesting)

          by slash-tard ( 689130 )
          In summary a poor application and dumb users are your problem with windows.

          As a user of OS X I can confirm that yes OS X does have windows that get stuck with the spinning beach ball. The difference is that in windows I see it happen with third party apps with OS X it happens with system utilities and third party apps.

          You can fix 95% of 2,3,and 4 by using a non MS web browser and email client as well as keeping your machine patched. Linux people always brag about the virtues of choice yet seem to forget

        • Re:argh (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Brandybuck ( 704397 )
          I've been using FreeBSD/KDE at work as a desktop for about two years now. Now I'm being forced to use Windows 2000 to get my work done. I've never really used Windows extensively except as a cheap ass program launcher for games. Now after three workdays of using as a work environment I've lost three millimeters of hairline. I'm absolutely dumbfounded that people put up with Windows in the business workplace.

          Windows is fast? XFree86 is slow? Hah! On the very same dual boot machine, FreeBSD with "bloated" XF
      • "install hardware easily"

        I have to disagree. That might of been true back in win98, but now its entirely hardware dependant. Its so much easier to lspci and find your hardware info, then compile/load a module than wait half a year for windows' wizard to try and detect it, then fail to find the driver. Your best bet is google to find you some registration required driver site that probably has spyware added in.
        A good example is google for my sound card, Creative/Ensoniq es1371. Phrase the search however you

    • Re:Thoughts on infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:39PM (#8108274)
      Yeah but the problem with Windows isn't its base. The base is rock solid. To prove that just run the OS from a clean install. You can run that thing for years without a problem. The problem is when you start adding things like Outlook, half-assed drivers from ATI or Creative, and every piece of spyware known to man. To me the biggest problem with Windows as a desktop is that it assumes that its users have even a modicum of common sense when obviously they don't. The safest desktop for a user is a locked down dummy terminal.

      • Re:Thoughts on infrastructure (Score:5, Funny)

        by iminplaya ( 723125 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:54PM (#8108417) Journal
        "The safest desktop for a user is a locked down dummy terminal."

        I would think that the safest desktop is pen and paper, but that might be too many sharp objects.

      • Wrong (Score:3, Funny)

        by qortra ( 591818 )
        The Windows base is hardly rock solid, unless you understand "Rock Solid" to mean "Full of Holes". Consider the RPC worms that came out last year (remember MSBlast?). These problems are win32 API level (something I would consider part of the base). And, this is not an isolated case; all the time, there are new holes being found in code written in the early days of NT that have propagated through today; many of them don't even get publicized because they aren't all neccessarily appropriate for spreading

        • Re:Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @01:04AM (#8109887) Homepage Journal
          I can only assume that your moderation of "Funny" related to your statement that FreeBSD release versions have always been truly rock solid, unless 5.0 doesn't count as a "release version".

          I wouldn't say that Linux is more stable or anything, but don't pretend that BSD is perfect. Even OpenBSD has its little idiosyncrasies, and it's supposed to have had more code review than any other open source Unix(-like OS).

          Windows NT does certainly have plenty of security issues, but in general, it is a fairly reliable operating system. While in some ways it has gone downhill in that regard since NT 3.51 (though it's gotten better since 4.0, FWIW) because of decisions made to improve the speed of the system, NT is built on a solid architecture. The problem with NT is not the design of the foundation so much as the implementation, and the fact that PC hardware is, for the most part, utter crap, and it makes a commitment to supporting (nearly) all of it in a way that enables hardware developers to publish closed drivers and yet still have them work and deliver good performance, and not be tied to an individual version of the kernel. You can service pack NT and end up with upgraded hal and kernel, and still use many of the same drivers across NT 5.0 and 5.1's assorted builds.

          Obviously NT is not without flaws, but they are not (in general) as great as you suggest, especially given what they are trying to do with it. And clearly, Windows is improving dramatically. I expect XP sp2 to help a great deal. And, as Microsoft implements more of the non-core functionality of the OS in .NET, it should ease transitions from one version to another, because they will be depending on a fixed API rather than juggling things around so heavily with each new version, mostly because the applications will not be coupled so closely to the OS itself.

      • Have I been away from Slashdot that long? In my day and age, only the trolls and the odd whistleblower had to resort to posting as AC's. Phtooey.

        Anyway, if I read this "Insightful +1" post as if it was, well, Insightful +1, I must disagree. The days have gone that you could install a Windows box without having to add grot to it. I have it on good authority that even installing XP is nigh impossible unless you allow it to install whatever feature du jour Bill decides you should have, automatically, through
      • The Blaster work exploited a hole in the kernel proper. Some previous fun things like having default shares enabled in the default install, now fixed) showed that Windows has issues with fundamentals. If you decide to do something for the marketing droids like embed a web broswer into the OS and make it's pieces part of the shell, then in my opinion any errors in your browser become OS errors, and msHTML component has been littered with them. As far as spyware goes, some spyware gets installed through ho
    • I think though that to get work done, you need an effective GUI. Humans are NOT designed to work from a command line. A good visual representation of data goes a long way. Example: I could give you a spreadsheet with a sequential listing of server utilization of memory. If you looked at the data alone, you would not see any trends without going over the data very quickly. If I handed you a graph, you would instantly see what is going on with memory usage. I HATE command line, and like a well designed G
      • I HATE a poorly designed GUI. The problem is theres hardly any mix. GUI input has nothing on a well made console app (GNU Readline hotkeys, vim style, whatever gets you off). GUI output is preferably for some things(webbrowsing, porn viewing, any other 'rich' content). Hopefully at some point we'll have an advanced enough system where I can have a standard normal looking 80x25 console that can drop in a picture at any time. The closest we have is fullscreen Eterms running under a minimalist WM, but no
    • Absolutely relevant comment on BSD architecture, but somewhat irrelevant on the WTC side :P In fact "they" have already admitted that WTC 7 was in fact blown up [infowars.com]. We have just to wait on 1 and 2.

      To be on the safe side with offtopic moderators, I want to stress that when upgrading to 5.2 via make world, one should be sure to build and install kernel _before_ building and installing world. And yes, 5.2 is extremely stable.
      The desktop side is as always second priority, Most people still use FreeBSD as a server
    • I see this as BSD. They're making sure their foundations are rock solid before building on top of them. It's good practice. The rest of the infrastructure will come with time.

      Hmm, they seem to have been building that foundation for a LOOONG time. Maybe the fact of the matter is just that they dont *care* about being a major desktop OS? Or, maybe they just dont have the ability to design a really good desktop.

      Whatever the case is, it looks like your view is just being an apologist for why they arent a

    • Your building analogy is flawed, IMHO... If you're only interested in the top floor (the desktop experience) it doesn't matter how far down the damage goes if the top floor is gone. If I spend 90% of my time in the desktop, there's not much difference to me in X crashing versus the windows kernel crapping out.

  • OSNews. (Score:5, Funny)

    by saintlupus ( 227599 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:34PM (#8108207)
    They found the OS very solid as a server but pretty lacking as a desktop.

    They must not have liked the default sysinstall color scheme.

    OSNews -- because we CAN evaluate an OS in thirty minutes or less!

    --saint
    • Damn, I was going to mod you up, but you're already +5, Funny

    • Re:OSNews. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by chickenwing ( 28429 )
      Yeah, I wouldn't go to OSNews looking for informed advice. You would think a site called "OSNews" would be about schedulers, memory managers, network stacks, etc... but it is actually about screenshots, shiny buttons, and other fluff.

      If the only critera you have is how things look and don't have any motivation to dig deeper, it is pretty hard to evaluate the importaint stuff.

  • Free (Score:4, Funny)

    by Popageorgio ( 723756 ) <popsnap@gmail.com> on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:34PM (#8108210) Homepage
    Plus it's not as cool as PayYouFiveBucksBSD.

  • OSNEWS.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:35PM (#8108221)
    At least its accurate, but only because they are stating the obvious.

  • Urgent! Serious problem with FreeBSD 5.2! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Please, for the love of god, do NOT deploy FreeBSD 5.2 in your corporate enterprise!! From grepping the source tree, it has come to our attention that FreeBSD contains hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lines of SCO's Intellectual Property (IP). For those who do decide to deploy it, expect our lawyers to be in touch.

    Darl.

  • I switched (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:40PM (#8108281)
    I was a first time Linux user who had been running Gentoo for around 3 months now.

    I found user support to be fantastic, and had lots to go from using Google and accessing varying forums, but there was just stuff that I could never get to work.

    Then I tried to upgrade to the 2.6 kernel.... and I gave up.

    Popped in FreeBSD, installed, popped on my favorite graphic environment and apps that went with it. Using FreeBSD I had duplicated, in 2 hours, everything that took me a struggling 3 months to build with my linux distro. Going through the handbook was so easy I was shocked, and countless other sites (like freebsd diary) filled any gaps.

    I know there are various Linux distros and what not, but I thought FreeBSD was supposed to be the more "advanced" OS of the two? And by advanced I mean "pain in the ass to install for an idiot long time Windows user with no *nix experience."

    Now to completely discredit my experience above, why is every damn OSNews review getting posted these days? Why don't we save the reviews for the Gods of Arstechnica who understand it's not all about posting GNOME screenshots and throwing around the phrase "not ready for the desktop!!!" every other article.

    -j
    • I agree. I went through Red Hat, Mandrake, SuSE, Slackware and Debian... and never got any working quite right. A friend of mine decided to install FreeBSD 4.7 on my machine, showed me the handbook, and I was hooked. Granted, the hardware support is a little lackluster, but I was lucky with my machine (VIA chipset and LAN, onboard CMedia sound, GF4MX440); and plan on buying my future hardware around my OS. It does make a rock-solid desktop--if you use the right stuff. Gnome and KDE aren't quite stable
    • FreeBSD is nice, but it has a substantially bigger learning curve than your average GNU/Linux distro. Gentoo, however, probably has an even bigger learning curve than FreeBSD. I tried Gentoo for a while, and had the same experience that you had. There were just some things that I never got working (including some severe corruption in the portage repository). I use Debian on all my machines now and I find it to be incredibly easy to use (and Debian is also misrepresented as being one of the more difficul
      • > FreeBSD is nice, but it has a substantially bigger learning curve than your average GNU/Linux distro

        I would disagree, I went to freebsd after going through through rpm hell and pump screw ups. I thought freebsd was easier on newbies, just because when searching for help. I
        t wasn't well with suse do this, redhat do this, debian try this, slackware doesn't support that, etc...

        Not trying to take away for linux, but the OSs seem to strive for different things.
      • I would have to majorly disagree on your opinion of the learning curve. FreeBSD has a substantually smaller learning curve than Linux, for someone who wants to tinker with the system. It is much easier to figure out how everything works, where everything goes, and how to use all the system commands.

        What most Linux distributions tend to do, isn't to ease the learning curve, but to circumvent it. They provide tons of nice and pretty user-friendly utilities (that work a lot of the time, but not all the tim
    • Gentoo has a bit of a learning curve as well. It's damned hard to trust portage, but once you start to get used to it, it has advantages over ports.

      I won't hold it against them because 5.x isn't -STABLE yet, but I tried 5.2 and found it a bit lacking as compared to Gentoo. The lack of ext2 support and the way you have to manually tweak the modules to take care of dependencies is irritating.

      From a cold start it took me like an afternoon to get up to where my Gentoo installation is. The amount of tweaking y
    • I have used a variety of Linux distributions including Slackware, Debian, Mandrake, Gentoo, and Linux from Scratch. I've submitted patches to the Linux kernel. I'm quite satisfied with Debian as a server operating system for now, at least, but I keep on switching for my desktop dist. You seem to have had a similar experience to me so I'm interested in your FreeBSD experiences.

      I loved Gentoo. It was great. I got pretty much cutting-edge software installed and optimised for my system. The only thing I
    • Doesn't the fact that the OSNews folks are actually capable of using FreeBSD undermine their own argument that it's not ready for the desktop? ;) Hell, I've had more trouble installing Windows on a machine!
    • Conversly, I've been a Gentoo user since the first release of 1.2 and, always liking the clean structure of FreeBSD, decided to give it another spin on a spare machine. BSD installs with a simplicity which makes Gentoo users salivate, the ports package scheme is very nice and Gentoo was wise to steal from it, it ran well on the older Pentium platform, but when I installed Rox filer it was a jar to see something I'd totally forgotten about. The X desktop colour map changed as the cursor moved from desktop to

  • FreeBSD not designed as a desktop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ducomputergeek ( 595742 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:42PM (#8108300)
    "FreeBSD....The power to serve" has been its tagline for years. FreeBSD is designed as a server OS first, and if you really want too, you can turn it into an effective desktop. FreeBSD has always been a bit behind the technology curve, but do you really need drivers for the latest ATI or nVidia cards on a machine designed to run as a server?

    We still have a couple print servers around here that are running Pentium Pro's with FreeBSD 3.4 from five years ago. Yeah its probably time we replaced them, but they've been reliable.

    I mean for desktop, we use Mac OS X because that what its designed for, at the end of the day its the right tool for the right job.

    • Then why ship with graphical utilities that you know will destroy your server? Why not simply remove them?

    • Re:FreeBSD not designed as a desktop (Score:5, Insightful)

      by KrispyKringle ( 672903 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @11:31PM (#8109290)
      It's surprising how much of that technology is transferrable. Of course, it used to be that an OS that was good as a server had things like multi-user support (and security), multitaskng, and networking, things you'd never dream of asking a PC to do.

      But now, I can't think of that many differences. Multi-user systems have the security necessary to keep networked systems free of viruses and spyware. Good multi-tasking is something you want on the desktop as well. PCs now do as much networking as servers. Stability and security? Yes, please.

      Similarly, many sysadmins prefer more automatic configuration, graphical interfaces, and the like (I personally wouldn't choose Windows on a server for its graphical configuration, but apparently many do).

      The primary difference, really, is just hardware support and perhaps prioritising software upgrades versus stability. Debian, for example, has slow updates but rock-hard stability. Gentoo (my desktop of choice) has a few reliability issues (in my experience, but you can take issue with this if you'd like) but is great for up-to-date software. Similarly, FreeBSD doesn't support my nforce2 motherboard (a shame; I'd kinda prefer it to Linux) but supports SCSI, various WAN technologies, and similar.

      But in terms of the basic code-base, I don't know why we should assume there's a big difference between what's good on a desktop and what's good on a server. Because stability, security, speed, usability--these are all traits we want in both.

    • Actually, the way I see it is that FreeBSD is designed to be a bare-bones unix. Pretty much all of the key server software and the desktop software is an optional install. I'm trying to remember what comes with FreeBSD-base these days, I think just ssh and sendmail.

      Most people don't really nead the latest ATI or nVidia cards on a workstation either.

  • What kind of crack are they smoking? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:43PM (#8108306)
    Not usable as a desktop? Over 10,000 apps available now. Not usable as a desktop? Gnome2, Openoffice, Mozilla, Gaim, Linux binary compatability, DVD-R support, over 100 different email apps. Not usable as a desktop?
    Because DHCP and USB don't work? Here's an idea: GET A FUCKING CLUE. I just installed 5.2 on a Toshiba Laptop. EVERYTHING WORKS. USB, DHCP, CDRW, NIC, EVERYTHING. if the OP is too much of a moron to figure out FreeBSD 5.2, he'd better stick to Windows.

    *shakes head*

    FreeBSD is ugly to install...but once done it's a damned fine OS for the money.

    This review was typical of the kind of simpleton garbage seen from OSNews. A slashdot-wannabe in a field of 1000s.

    *spit*

    • Install (Score:3, Insightful)

      by b00m3rang ( 682108 )
      I love the install. I've been using FreeBSD for several years now, and I decided to throw RedHat on a machine to check it out. Suffice it to say, I won't be making that mistake again.

  • I hope 2004 is the year... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:44PM (#8108319)
    I hope 2004 is the year Eugenia will stop posting stupid OS reviews.

  • slightly biased review (Score:5, Informative)

    by ciaran_o_riordan ( 662132 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:44PM (#8108324) Homepage
    I use FreeBSD every day as a desktop, and it works great for me. At least the reviewer appreciated the integrated feel that come from a real Unix, that was planned rather than hobbled together. It's also good that they noticed how solid FreeBSD is as a server. *BSD performance under heavy loads is something that can't always be proved by benchmarks. It has to be seen to be believed.

    My main dissagreement though, is his complaint about the ports system. Debians apt-get system is the only thing that comes close, but with ports I find it much easier to maintain my own changes to the source tree.

    I moved to FreeBSD after bad experiences on Linux, with licensing, the ad-hoc design, and spagetti code. Now I stay with FreeBSD because of it's engineered design, and because it's nice to have a truly free system.
    • That's the one thing about BSD users that we Linux users will never be able to tolerate. The snobbish attitude.

      "appreciated the integrated feel that come from a real Unix, that was planned rather than hobbled together.
      " moved to FreeBSD after bad experiences on Linux, with licensing, the ad-hoc design, and spagetti code."
      "because it's nice to have a truly free system."

      So your basically saying you think Linux is a wannbe Unix, with the "wrong' license, and is poorly designed? BSD is a solid reliable
      • I was actually surprised when Eug said a gui app crash brought the whole system down. That doesn't usually happen.

        Based on that statement I assume you did read her article. But did you read it, and I quote:

        After hitting a few random buttons on its window to make it stop, FreeBSD would just crash and the machine would reboot.

        Try that on any other OS and see what happens...

    • Re:slightly biased review (Score:3, Informative)

      by FFFish ( 7567 )
      I LOVE PORTS!

      I installed FreeBSD for the first time two days ago. Then I discovered it has this awesome Ports deal for installing applications and utilities and stuff.

      My god! It's wonderful! I track down the port I want, type "make install clean" and the damn thing goes out and finds all the necessary bits and pieces. I end up with the latest stable release with no effort at all!

      Hot damn.
  • On the other hand, it has limited modern hardware support, small annoyances at places and that not many binary packages are available and so compilations from ports may take long time

    I believe that the lack of a large, centralized resource for FreeBSD binary packages is one of the biggest things holding back BSD acceptance in the open source community at the moment. I worked a few months ago as a contract system administrator in a university computer science department, and they were evenly split between

    • Re:Additional packaging systems for FreeBSD? (Score:5, Informative)

      by bluGill ( 862 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:09PM (#8108560)

      I haven't used apt-get, but freeBsd has a nice package system. Most people use ports and compile from source, but you can also use pkg_add with some options to fetch the binary package and install it. Portupgrade and source installs rock, unless your system is very limited.

      That said, why didn't you do a apt-get to install your packages on a local network machine, and nfs export it?

    • What do you mean by "lack of a large, centralized resource for FreeBSD binary packages"? The FreeBSD FTP site contains binary packages for all supported branches and architectures (almost 9000 binary packages for FreeBSD 4.x on i386 at the present time). They're indexed at http://www.freebsd.org/ports and you can download them easily with pkg_add -r.
      • That just goes to show the REAL problem with FreeBSD is that no one on /. knows anything about it. If that guy had bought a box set and read the book he would have known about pkg_add, but he probably downloaded the ISO, installed it, tried apt-get, tried rpm, tried yast, and finding that none of them were installed said to himself "this OS doesn't have a binary package system!"

        SELECT CLUE FROM $Slashdot_Comments WHERE (OS_Name IS NOT LIKE '%Linux%';)

        Zero rows returned;

  • Binary Packages? (Score:5, Informative)

    by vpscolo ( 737900 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:50PM (#8108383) Homepage
    So what does pkg_add -r packagename do then? I thought it downloaded the pre-compiled binary

    Rus
    • In short it does. In long if it exists and you happen to guess the right name for the package it works amazingly well otherwise you are left to guess the name (normally its ovious, but sometimes it can be a pain), and sometimes binary packages dont exist for the larger apps (OO, Gnome, etc).
      • So look at the FreeBSD web site and browse the packages at http://www.FreeBSD.org/ports/index.html If you find yourself guessing on *nix, its a pretty good clue to RTFM... if only you can figure out with FM to read. I can never rember if its PyQt or py-qt or pyqt or whatever, so I agree that guessing the name is a chore.

  • who cares? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:57PM (#8108451) Homepage
    In 6+ years as a systems developer, very little approaches the way FreeBSD balances all considerations such as centralized development process, ported software, stability, and feature set.

    I like FreeBSD. Its never leading edge, its never trailing edge, it never supports the most hardware, it never does desktop best .. but when it comes to running a server, its hard to argue with an OS that took well over 80 software platform upgrades (our own) without nary an OS crash.

    Uptimes were 2+ years, 40 hits per second avg, and every freakin C bug I could throw at it.

    FreeBSD is rock solid. ROCK solid. Oh, plus its dying. ;)

  • [Desktop use] Well let me put it this way (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Ricin ( 236107 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @09:58PM (#8108462)
    Works For Me (tm)

    Desktop performance is a lot better on 5.x. Things like flash and other (binary linux) plugins actually work. Do use SCHED_ULE. It helps. Mplayer does it all, media plugins largely work. many of these issues are really external from FreeBSD but its nice to see things come together. Yes, you may have to fiddle a bit.

    But it can be used on the desktop and it can work very well there. Like I said, things are starting to come together. Sometimes it looks like merely cosmetics from the Linux side I guess but as desktop apps get more mature so does their portability. Or at least easier to fix in ports. More hands and brains also help. There's clearly an influx into the BSD users realm.

    So yes, there is a viable *BSD desktop other than Apple's (perhaps even 3 or 4). A true *NIX head or someone willing to read some docs can have a pretty complete desktop on top of a *BSD. I get GL animated snapshots from camera/tv card snapshots in my xscreensaver. Does windows have that? ;-)

  • As much as I hate to admit it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stox ( 131684 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:07PM (#8108543) Homepage
    The reviewer does hit a nail on the head, "If you are after an easy-to-use desktop system that doesn't require you to learn anything new, then you better look elsewhere."

    This is the arrogance/beauty of FreeBSD, it is designed/engineered/distributed as an O/S to get the job done like no other. The Bauhaus school of software design. It is an SOB to get a new user going on, but once they see the light, good luck prying it from their hands. Good things are rarely easy.

    The best thing ever to happen to FreeBSD was Linux, the best thing ever to happen to Linux was FreeBSD. A good, clean, honest competition which leaves both sides stronger.
    • I disagree. I'm a rank newbie: I installed FreeBSD last Friday.

      It was a delight, and thoroughly kicked ass on the half-dozen Linux installations I've experimented over the years.

      Right out of the box, for instance, it's configured sensibly. It autodetected all the hardware just peachy, and connected itself to the net without issue. None. No issues. At all.

      I did the mini-Install. While it was doing its job, I glanced at the FreeBSD Handbook and discovered the Ports chapter. Very cool.

      So after it in

  • How does FreeBSD compare to Linux 2.6? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by steveha ( 103154 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:08PM (#8108545) Homepage
    I remember a few years ago, I read that FreeBSD was far superior to the Linux kernel for a heavily-loaded server. Supposedly you could run a server at about 100% CPU load, for days, without any problem if you used FreeBSD, while a Linux kernel would have problems.

    Now that Linux 2.6 is released, has Linux caught up with FreeBSD, or is FreeBSD still better?

    (And play nice, folks, please. I'm not trying to start a flame war here.)

    steveha

  • Somebody should tell this gal... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:08PM (#8108548)
    Somebody should tell this gal that 5.2 is NOT a stable release. Maybe I missed it, but she fails to mention that 5.2 is a "New Technology Release" and is not yet intended for production use.

    Many of the problems that the author experienced will probably (hopefully) be resolved by the time that 5-STABLE is released.

    I don't argue that there are problems in the 5-series (I still stick with 4-STABLE), but if you're going to review it, at least make it obvious that it is not a finished product.

  • BSD vs. Linux on the Desktop (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Necrotica ( 241109 ) <cspencerNO@SPAMlanlord.ca> on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:08PM (#8108552)
    The hardware support available in modern Linux distributions make it a very good candidate for desktop workstations. But the ability to tweak certain kernel settings to suit it to a desktop workstation (like the CK release of patches) make it an even BETTER choice for a desktop.

    That said I would rather have a cohesive, well thought out OS for a server. I don't want the server to change ever. I want to have easy to read documentation when I need it in a pinch and actually have documentation that relates to the OS environment I'm in!

    BSDs are far more cohesive than any Linux distro I have ever used and don't feel like a bunch of utilities slapped on top of a kernel. Man pages make sense, documentation is everywhere, and the bastard runs really freaking fast too.

    On the other hand, my few adventures with *BSD on the desktop always had me banging my head in frustration.

    The choice is obvious: If it supports your hardware, *BSD for the server. Linux is still the best choice for the desktop.

  • 5.1 vs. 5.2 (Score:5, Informative)

    by klocwerk ( 48514 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:10PM (#8108573) Homepage
    I had 5.1 installed and running perfectly fine on my box, tried to format and do a fresh install of 5.2 and it won't write to the HD.
    did drive scans, installed various other OSes, all fine. but freeBSD hates me now.
    so i installed 5.1 again and all is good.

    that's my 5.2 experience. while googling for a solution I ran across a bunch of other people with the same problem and no resolution.

    Drive geometry on Seagate barracuda drives doesn't seem to play nice with the 5.2 installer.

  • My experience has been simular in terms of the setup. I wihs the FreeBSD boys would work on that. However, I am happy user. I am using FreeBSD as both a desktop and as a small-scale server, and I have been very happy. It took a lttle playing to get CUPs up, but other than compiing a lot, things went great. The speed asolutely rocks. I am amazed at how fast things run -- even faster when you compile in the ULE scheduler; X was noticably faster.
  • I use a FreeBSD-based CD firewall (netboz) and have it set up as a VMWare guest OS.

    I like the OS, and find the syntax of its firewall rules a little easier to write from the CL than Linux iptables. The tuned kernel, memory and disk utilization were the seller for me on the firewall. Fast and stable.

    As far as not being a good desktop OS, I'm not sure what the reviewer expects of a desktop. It lacks the 3D games and fluff, but for a business developer's or power user's destop, it's pretty solid and fast.

  • Knoppix / LiveCD for *BSD? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bstadil ( 7110 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:23PM (#8108674) Homepage
    Anyone know if someone has put together a LiveCD type distribution for *BSD?

    I think it would be a good idea, so Linux folks could at least try it. Googled for it but didn't succed.

    • Nope, but please, go ahead and make one ;)

      NetBSD : Portable

      OpenBSD : Secure

      FreeBSD : Stable

      LiveBSD : CD???

      Just a thought
    • I don't know what you expect people would gain from this. They pop the CD in their drive, it boots into KDE or Gnome, and looks just like their Linux desktop. They nod, smile, and reboot into Linux.

      To me, the main advantage of FreeBSD is that a FreeBSD system is easy to maintain and upgrade, as well as stable. A LiveCD would not really convey this.

  • " After about 40 minutes of compiling it and its dependancies I had VidioLAN up and running, only to get a black output window (the video was playing fine and the sound was fine but it would render black and it would take an awful lot of cpu, error messages on the terminal would appear, Google didn't help). After hitting a few random buttons on its window to make it stop, FreeBSD would just crash and the machine would reboot."

  • Building it all yourself is good. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Freddy Fantabulous ( 539208 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @10:55PM (#8108957)
    Is the time spent compiling things from scratch really an issue for most folks anymore? I have a "puny" 1.2GHz, and a complete bootstrap and build of everything I use only takes a few hours. Day-to-day builds of new stuff I want usually only take a few minutes.

    For me, the advantages of compiling everything from scratch justify the investment in compile time. If I can get a piece of software to build on the same machine that I intend to run it on, I've found that I have far fewer problems overall. Most potential problems get caught at compile time. This is what kept me using FreeBSD/OpenBSD for years.

    Now that I've been using Gentoo for about a year, I've come to believe that this is 90% of what made the BSDs better than any linux distro I'd used back in 1999. If you want a program you build it... it's built for your architecture, with your optimization settings, exactly the way you want it. If the program you want isn't in ports/portage, you can usually add it yourself by changing a couple lines in an existing port. If the developer updates the source to a program without changing the build process too much, you can just rebuild. No need to hunt down rpms or debs.

    Because you're building your own binaries, you're also afforded some small amount of protection from scripted security exploits that target known builds of programs... but that's another subject.

  • FreeBSD - Good server, bad desktop? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Zefram ( 49209 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @11:00PM (#8108998) Homepage
    I've been using FreeBSD as a server since 1999, and as a desktop for only 6 months or so. I would have to agree that FreeBSD is not as good a desktop system as it is a server. But there are a couple reasons for that.

    "Linux" Application - KDE, MPlayer, Mozilla, XMMS, etc etc are more geared towards running on Linux. The developers are on Linux as are most of the userbase. When one of the Linux geared projects is ported to FreeBSD, there are usually many patches that need to be applied to make it run better. However, Samba (last I tried it), Apache, MySQL, PHP... all compile without a hitch.

    Driver support. I can't use either of my web cams with FreeBSD, because there are just no drivers available. The people developing FreeBSD don't have the time to keep up with the latest wacky devices. If something is standard compliant (like my Nikon 995), it will just WORK. My nVidia (mostly because I use nVidia's binary drivers) crashes once a week, and I can't get out of X without locking my system up. However, I can use just about any RAID card in my server.

    I mostly use FreeBSD as a desktop because it's the same system that my servers run. I keep my CVS repository on this machine, and I keep FreeBSD's source tree on this box, NFS from the servers and update when they need it. It makes my life easier from an administrative point of view, but it's definitely not geared towards being a Windows 9?xp? killer.

  • The Eugenia Loli-Queru Style (Score:5, Insightful)

    by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @11:02PM (#8109007) Homepage
    Sadly, I took one glance at the screenshot [osnews.com] in the upper-right hand corner, and knew I would be reading a Eugenia article.

    She continues to base a useable desktop by how many windows she can open at once. Skip the article, and read the reviews from the /. posters. FreeBSD 5.2 is rock solid, as any Unix, Linux, box would be. Every port in the ports tree has a pkd_add to go along with it. That's 10,000 precompiles binary ready to download. They all install, deinstall, with near zero user interaction.

    In short, use FreeBSD.
  • I believe the OSNews review said that *exotic* hardware support, not *modern* hardware support, was a bit lacking.

  • Eugenia, Eugenia, Eugenia (shaking head) (Score:3, Funny)

    by morelife ( 213920 ) <f00fbug&postREMOVETHISman,at> on Tuesday January 27, 2004 @11:35PM (#8109315)
    Put that coffee down. Coffee is for hackers only.

  • We *have* a fantastic FreeBSD 5 desktop (Score:5, Funny)

    by Are We Afraid ( 303373 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @12:43AM (#8109778) Homepage
    It's called Mac OS X [apple.com].

  • He would better read the FreeBSD Handbook first (Score:5, Informative)

    by koinu ( 472851 ) on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @02:25AM (#8110288)

    You can find it here: FreeBSD HandBook [freebsd.org]

    Instead of doing this:

    using the installer, I typed /bin/bash as the shell

    I could edit the passwd files

    It took me over an hour trying to find on Google clues

    I had to create links for /dev/dvd and /dev/cdrw

    I also had to edit rc.conf to enable Samba

    Further remarks:

    The ports system does come with preconfigured applications, this is what I really like about FreeBSD. I don't need long time to setup things.

    Instead VLC (which is a really buggy thing), better use mplayer.

    ext2fs has an evil license (GPL), that's why it is not default.

    I am happy with my X11-speed on 5.2R, I have 2700fps using glxgears on my P3-500.

    Ports is the best thing about FreeBSD. Talking differently is typical for Linux users.

    I consider FreeBSD as the best desktop ever, but I don't use Gnome2 (does not mean, I don't like it), I rather use Xfce4, which looks good and is lightweight.

    I actually think that you need less experience to install FreeBSD. I recently tried to install Debian, but it failed to find my Intel Ethernet Express Pro 100, because Debian is using ancient kernels. Such things and all networking (including PPPoE) works out-of-the-box on FreeBSD.

  • Why I left FreeBSD... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Duty ( 731705 ) <duty86@co m c a s t . net> on Wednesday January 28, 2004 @02:25AM (#8110289) Journal
    Once upon a time, I was a happy FreeBSD user who submitted a trivial port update to gnats. I waited three months. I waited six months. I waited nine months. When it was finally committed, a newer version of the software package then my update had since been released.

    Shortly after, I switched to Gentoo, which is usually very prompt in getting the newest software into unstable portage. I can't say I've never looked back, but even hearing the bureaucracy has since improved, I don't feel like giving up my USE flags in favor of "WANT_KITCHEN_SINK=1" again.

    I like the BSD design philosophies better and didn't really notice the lack of drivers everyone complains about, so if Gentoo/BSD matures to the point of usability soon, I'll be first in line to try it.

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