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BSD Operating Systems

FreeBSD 5.1 Released 526

Posted by simoniker from the let-the-downloading-begin dept.
LogicX writes "FreeBSD 5.1 is now available. Mirrors and press release are at FreeBSD.org. Enjoy." Here are the release notes for this new version. Update: 06/09 18:15 GMT by S : Here's a BitTorrent link at scarywater.net, and another BitTorrent link from the original poster.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

FreeBSD 5.1 Released More

FreeBSD 5.1 Released

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  • And still no Java (Score:5, Funny)

    by kwerle ( 39371 ) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:32PM (#6152057) Homepage Journal
    I am so bummed. I really was looking forward to a release that included Java "out of the box."

    • Re:And still no Java (Score:5, Informative)

      by Zenin ( 266666 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:39PM (#6152123) Homepage
      Not that I'm against Java, but if you want Java included "out of the box" I'm afraid you understand neither FreeBSD's design or the fundamental issues of working with Java (on any platform).

      Arguably Perl has a stronger basis for being in the base system, and even it was been taken out now.

      • Re:And still no Java (Score:5, Funny)

        by titzandkunt ( 623280 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:13PM (#6152476)

        "Not that I'm against Java, but if you want Java included "out of the box" I'm afraid you understand neither FreeBSD's design or the fundamental issues of working with Java (on any platform)."

        And yet /.ers still portray *BSD'ers as elitist assholes. How the hell can this be so?

        T&K.

      • Re:And still no Java (Score:4, Informative)

        by kwerle ( 39371 ) <kurt@CircleW.org> on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:19PM (#6152530) Homepage Journal
        Not that I'm against Java, but if you want Java included "out of the box" I'm afraid you understand neither FreeBSD's design or the fundamental issues of working with Java (on any platform).

        Huh. Guess I'm a little slow.

        But I do remember Java being announce "out of the box" for FBSD 4.5, and not being delivered.

        Oh, and I know that Java ships on linux, Solaris, and OSX.

        What are the problems with "FreeBSD's design or the fundamental issues of working with Java?"

        Arguably Perl has a stronger basis for being in the base system, and even it was been taken out now.

        Don't much care for that either, but at least there is a reason I can follow: what version of perl with which options do you want? There are a lot of 'em...

        But there are only a few Java's(tm) that are worth mentioning: 1.1, 1.2.x, 1.3.x, 1.4.x. I'm willing to pass on 1.1. And I'm willing to ask for the latest and greatest by default.

        • Re:And still no Java (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Zenin ( 266666 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:56PM (#6153018) Homepage
          Don't much care for that either, but at least there is a reason I can follow: what version of perl with which options do you want? There are a lot of 'em...

          Well, the real reasons were other then this for most really. Almost no one needs non-default perl build options (I was one of those that did, but I'm a "freak" as described by my friends). Perl has a very clean dynamic loader system as well as sane package versioning. In contrast, Java has no package versioning whatsoever and AFAIK no plans to add it, sadly. I'm thinking of something at least equal to Perl's:

          use My::Class 2.3; # Compile time error if My::Class isn't version 2.3 or better.

          Ditto:
          use 5.006; # I need Perl v5.006 or better

          Simple, but highly effective. In the Java world to maintain any sanity I must keep a copy of each 3rd party package jar per application, even if they are all "identical". Nevermind the Java world rarely even puts version numbers in their .jar file names.

          But there are only a few Java's(tm) that are worth mentioning: 1.1, 1.2.x, 1.3.x, 1.4.x. I'm willing to pass on 1.1. And I'm willing to ask for the latest and greatest by default.

          Java tends to have pretty serious issues wrt jre/lib versioning (worse still that the Java world collectively doesn't give a damn). I could rant for ages about the broken "deprecation" design and such, but in short if you are running anything critical (basically, anything) on Java you'd do yourself a huge favor and install a JRE per-application as well as any/all 3rd party packages, completely ignoring whatever may or may not be installed in the base system. I say this from the perspective of a professional SCM; Java has one of the most unstable and problematic runtimes ever created. I personally wouldn't really care if Java was in the "base" system or not. Most of what I manage is on Solaris as it is now and we ignore /bin/java completely as well for our WebLogic servers. It wouldn't be any different on FreeBSD. At least with Perl on FreeBSD the only reason I ever built my own was to enable debugging options; All apps could reliably be said to run on the base install.

          Maybe one day Java code will be able to do:

          import java 1.4.1.03; // Must be Java 1.4.1 / 03 or better
          import com.whatever.* 3.4;
          import com.something.Barney 2.9;

          But I'm not going to hold my breath.

      • Re:And still perl is a port now and java builds (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zeio ( 325157 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:27PM (#6152610)
        Man, does anyone who criticizes FreeBSD ever use it? Because I use it and like it quite a bit, and everyone I know who uses it likes it.

        On Perl: Perl is not in the base install, it's a port installed by default, So What! It was moved to ports because people want to have a lot of flexibility when it comes to what version of perl they run. The FreeBSD team was doing just what the users wanted. And I would like to know how to install FreeBSD without that Perl port installed. You would have to go out of your way in every install method to take it out. Big deal it moved from /usr/bin to /usr/local/bin (they even put symlinks for you in /usr/bin) So as far as I can tell, FreeBSD 5.1 comes with perl 5.6.1 in the "default install." The only ramification is simply this. If you for some reason want to upgrade perl, you use ports and you don't have to wait for the FreeBSD team to update it, because rightly so, they see no reason to do it. Also note that why would you want perl scripts in an OS? Shell is perfectly adequate for the scripting needs of the base system, perl is something users use.

        On Java: Sun is being an idiot with regards to Sun on anything but Solaris, Windows and Linux. They make it very hard to include the JVM in binary form in a "default install." They have a ridiculous license on they source code that makes it hard for FreeBSD to do much of anything about this. By they way, if you use ports the JVM 1.4 builds nicely and works rather well. I have personally written to Sun complaining about this - as have others, but they aren't willing to focus on FreeBSD. BTW, FreeBSD runs linux binaries and the Linux JVM works on that compatibility layer.

        NVIDIA: Nvidia builds binary drivers for FreeBSD. Hardly 'niche.'

        SMP, scheduler: SMP is vastly improved, scheduler and VM is very very good. This OS is very competitive with Linux, and despite what you may have heard, it is capable of outperforming it without sacrificing quality.

        Matched c-library, GCC, userland and kernel: One must appreciate that the FreeBSD team is a very thorough. They are obsessively concerned with coherency and quality. This is not some slapped together random miasma in every incarnation, this is a well thought out combination of the vital system components. It works. Trust me, it works. If you want military grade, use 4.8+, if you want rock solid, use 5.1. Frankly, where FreeBSD-current is, is where most linuxes start in terms stability/coherency/usability. It is quite useable in its "unstable" form.

        Polling Support: One of FreeBSD's best features is polling on networking devices to prevent interrupt driven livelock.

        Proof in Pudding: Think of heavy iron appliances with various free operating systems in it. I can think of two for FreeBSD. The godly Juniper routers and the F5 BigIP. These are serious pieces of networking equipment and they chose FreeBSD for a reason - its far more pleasant to deal with commercially, its fast stable and coherent and the license permits modifications without divulging them to the world.

        One project, one c compiler, one c library, one coherent userland, 5 different architectures, great portability, stability and commercial viability.

    • Re:And still no Java (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:46PM (#6152211)
      You could always Switch to OS X. I hear it is a Free BSD based OS that has Java built-in.

    • Re:And still no Java (Score:4, Insightful)

      by dildatron ( 611498 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:57PM (#6152337)
      Java is so easy to install, why don't you just install it yourself? FreeBSD is kind of a minimalist system, that you can customize how you want it. It's not a KitchenSink Distro.
      • Java is so easy to install...

        Afraid not. If I want to install it on 10 system, I have to log into 10 systems and interactively run the installer nightmare - and it takes a long time to run on each of those systems. Not to mention that you have to run the nightmare every time FreeBSD OR Java updates.

        • Re:And still no Java (Score:5, Informative)

          by dcs ( 42578 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:15PM (#6152491)
          Err, no. You go through the annoying fetch/"I accept" process once, "make package" on one machine, put the resulting files in a ftp or web server, and then pkg_add from each machine.
          • Err, no. You go through the annoying fetch/"I accept" process once, "make package" on one machine, put the resulting files in a ftp or web server, and then pkg_add from each machine.

            I wonder if that's legal. Not that I care enough to look into it, mind you...
            • It's legal as long as you are the only one with access to it. You are not providing it for distribution, you are just installing it on multiple systems.

              The current license from SUN prevents distributing the binaries to others. IOW, each person that wants to use it must build their own copy. Since you are the only one using it, there's no issues with you creating binaries for installation on the other systems you are using.
        • If I want to install it on 10 system, I have to log into 10 systems and interactively run the installer nightmare - and it takes a long time to run on each of those systems.

          You could compile on one box with "make package". On the other systems, run pkg_add on the built package. What do you mean by "installer nightmare"?

          Not to mention that you have to run the nightmare every time FreeBSD OR Java updates.

          Why do it every time you update FreBSD?

        • If I want to install it on 10 system, I have to log into 10 systems and interactively run the installer

          Or adopt a more sophisticated approach. Have a reasonably well specced machine which has all the extra toys installed under /usr/local. Then get all your other machines to NFS mount that directory as their on /usr/local. This means upgrades only occur on one machine, and the others can be locked down as your users don't need to install anything locally.

          Chris

          • Re:And still no Java (Score:4, Interesting)

            by Zenin ( 266666 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @03:07PM (#6153133) Homepage
            Another, similar option but which removes the problems of high-use NFS links, is to use one "build/test" machine and use it to target installs via NFS to the /usr/local of your "client" machines.

            If you have a huge number of machines to update, it's pretty simple to script such port upgrades either using "make install LOCALBASE=/mnt/nfs_other_usr_local", or pkg_add, or rsync. Portupgrade might likely have some tricks as well, haven't tried it myself yet. The point is, there are a dozen ways to handle mass-installs/upgrades cleanly and reliably. I would not however, recommend live network (NFS or whatever) /usr/local for a large install base for any OS, be it FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Windows, whatever. Diskspace is a hell of a lot cheaper/faster then running a fast enough network to deal with a single app install network mount not to mention the lovely "single point of failure" issues also associated.
      • I'd like to bring to your oblivious attention that FreeBSD (nor OpenBSD, etc) is not a distro at all, but in fact, a BSD variant.

        So how would you know anything about how easy anything is on *BSD, exactly? You obviously don't use it.

  • What?! Did Slashdot get it right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:33PM (#6152063)
    And not announce the release early thereby crushing the servers as in previous releases?

  • you might be laughing now (Score:5, Insightful)

    by andy666 ( 666062 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:34PM (#6152087)
    but if SCO wins we might all be using BSD!

  • It's a great time. . . (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:36PM (#6152098)
    . . .to get a subscription to one or more of the BSD's at www.bsdmall.com.

    Particularly in the face of 5.x being ready for production, and OpenBSD losing DARPA funding.

    • Sure wish... (Score:4, Informative)

      by msimm ( 580077 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:35PM (#6152735) Homepage
      One of the Linux distros (cough, Mandrake [mandrakelinux.com]) would cop the subscription system. FreeBSD is right on with this method, the price is reasonable, its a great cause and satisfying as hell to receive the disks as your reading about the new release.

      Paying $60/$120/$600 [mandrakelinux.com] up front is a little steep (at least for some of us) but paying $25 per release [yahoo.com] (or something similar) is a very nice approach.

  • relnotes are ./ed (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:39PM (#6152128)
    The release notes for FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE contain a summary of recent changes made to the FreeBSD base system on the 5-CURRENT development branch. This document lists applicable security advisories that were issued since the last release, as well as significant changes to the FreeBSD kernel and userland. Some brief remarks on upgrading are also presented.

    Table of Contents
    1 Introduction
    2 What's New
    2.1 Security Advisories
    2.2 Kernel Changes
    2.2.1 Processor/Motherboard Support
    2.2.2 Boot Loader Changes
    2.2.3 Network Interface Support
    2.2.4 Network Protocols
    2.2.5 Disks and Storage
    2.2.6 File Systems
    2.2.7 PCCARD Support
    2.2.8 Multimedia Support
    2.3 Userland Changes
    2.4 Contributed Software
    2.5 Ports/Packages Collection Infrastructure
    2.6 Release Engineering and Integration
    2.7 Documentation
    3 Upgrading from previous releases of FreeBSD

    1 Introduction
    This document contains the release notes for FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE on the i386 hardware platform. It describes recently added, changed, or deleted features of FreeBSD. It also provides some notes on upgrading from previous versions of FreeBSD.

    This distribution of FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE is a release distribution. It can be found at ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/ or any of its mirrors. More information on obtaining this (or other) release distributions of FreeBSD can be found in the ``Obtaining FreeBSD'' appendix to the FreeBSD Handbook.

    Users who are new to the 5-CURRENT series of FreeBSD releases should also read the ``Early Adopters Guide to FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE''. This document can generally be found in the same location as the release notes (either as a part of a FreeBSD distribution or on the FreeBSD Web site). It contains important information regarding the advantages and disadvantages of using FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE, as opposed to releases based on the FreeBSD 4-STABLE development branch.

    All users are encouraged to consult the release errata before installing FreeBSD. The errata document is updated with ``late-breaking'' information discovered late in the release cycle or after the release. Typically, it contains information on known bugs, security advisories, and corrections to documentation. An up-to-date copy of the errata for FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE can be found on the FreeBSD Web site.

    2 What's New
    This section describes many of the user-visible new or changed features in FreeBSD since 5.0-RELEASE. It includes items that are unique to the 5-CURRENT branch, as well as some features that may have been recently merged to other branches (after FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE). The latter items are marked as [MERGED].

    Typical release note items document recent security advisories issued after 5.0-RELEASE, new drivers or hardware support, new commands or options, major bug fixes, or contributed software upgrades. They may also list changes to major ports/packages or release engineering practices. Clearly the release notes cannot list every single change made to FreeBSD between releases; this document focuses primarily on security advisories, user-visible changes, and major architectural improvements.

    2.1 Security Advisories
    A remotely exploitable vulnerability in CVS has been corrected with the import of version 1.11.5. More details can be found in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-03:01. [MERGED]

    A timing-based attack on OpenSSL, which could allow a very powerful attacker access to plaintext under certain circumstances, has been prevented via an upgrade to OpenSSL 0.9.7. See security advisory FreeBSD-SA-03:02 for more details. [MERGED]

    The security and performance of the ``syncookies'' feature has been improved to decrease the chance of an attacker being able to spoof connections. More details are given in security advisory FreeBSD-SA-03:03. [MERGED]

    Remotely-exploitable buffer overflow vulnerabilities in sendmail have been fixed by updating sendmail. For more details, see security advisory FreeBSD-SA-03:04 and FreeBSD-SA-03:07. [MERGED]

    A bounds-

  • Alan Eldridge (Score:5, Interesting)

    by noackjr ( 541550 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:39PM (#6152131)
    This release is in memory of Alan Eldridge [kde.org].

    • Re:Alan Eldridge (Score:2, Interesting)

      by dracvl ( 541254 )
      This post [google.com] to the FreeBSD ports list. Five days later, he is dead. Tragic.

      Rest in peace, Alan. I know I appreciated your work, and so did a lot of other people.

    • This very sad news should remind us that many very good people have been hurt in the last few years by the IT implosion.

      Sometimes nothing we do can make a difference. Sometimes the tiniest gesture can save a life.

      Please remember to say "Hi, how are you?" to someone who might need it.

  • Wow... 5.1 already? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Sheetrock ( 152993 )
    I've tried out FreeBSD a few times, having heard a great deal about its middle-of-the-road approach to things (freest license, OK server, workable desktop), and thought it was alright but in a lot of ways it seemed to be cursed in the same way as all BSDs in assuming it knew better than I did how I wanted my own system to run.

    Ports worked out well until they broke during an upgrade. Switching terminals was just plain wierd, coming from the more logical Linux perspective, and I only had four of them (five

    • Nope.

      Then again, your experiences are rather singular, or rather a matter of taste. But if it was not for you then, for the reasons you mentioned, it is not for you now.

    • This is either troll, or a pseudotroll (Score:4, Informative)

      by dmelomed ( 148666 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:51PM (#6152277)
      You can read wscons documentation, then edit the config file, reboot and you have more virtual terminals. You obviously didn't read the docs, or you're just trolling.

    • Re:Wow... 5.1 already? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jandrese ( 485 ) * <kensama@vt.edu> on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:55PM (#6152323) Homepage Journal
      4 VTYs out of the box? You must have used FreeBSD during the early 3.x cycle. The installer is pretty much the same, but a lot of the support stuff is better now. FreeBSD still defaults to a fairly conservative interface, without excess services or many userland apps to install. The ports tree is even better now, with the advent of portupgrade and other sophisticated port tracking mechanisms. It still blows RPMs out of the water (at least compared to RH9's RPM system). There are options to install a desktop (Gnome or KDE) from the installer, which makes the whole experiance a bit more Linux-like.

      Honestly, if you're happy with your current OS, there's not a lot of reason to bother switching. The differences are mostly minor, even if they are in FreeBSD's favor. Linux still has better hardware support, but it's mostly in oddball hardware that only has vendor-supplied binary only driver support in Linux.

    • Re:Wow... 5.1 already? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Zenin ( 266666 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:18PM (#6152516) Homepage
      Ports worked out well until they broke during an upgrade.

      Install /usr/ports/sysutils/portupgrade, it makes managing ports much easier/cleaner/more reliable. Pretty much impossible to screw up installs using it, and even if you screw up installs when not using it (don't upgrade depends and sibling ports of those depends), portupgrade can fix them. The learning curve is pretty much nill as well. AFAIK it's only not part of the "base" system because it, like cvsup and other "must have" utilites, is written in Yet Another Funky Language that would also need to be added to the base.

      Switching terminals was just plain wierd,

      Er, virtual terminals? Alt-F#, just like Linux AFAIK? From XFree86 it's the same Ctrl-Alt-F# as Linux as well.

      coming from the more logical Linux perspective, and I only had four of them (five with X-Windows when I could get it running.)

      So you're bitching that FreeBSD has more enabled by default then Linux? (FreeBSD IIRC has 8 by default). Is this even an argument? Comment ones you don't want out of /etc/ttys if you really care that much (maybe the same for Linux, but honestly one of my major Linux complaints is that I can't ever find a "basic" Unix config where it's "expected" and it's likely different per distro anyway).

      I suspect I would have had a better time of it if I had gone scavenger hunting for that magical bit of hardware that wasn't too old or too new to work, but in the end I figured screw it -- just about any distribution of Linux seemed to install properly and run efficiently, so why torture myself?

      Hmm...if anything, FreeBSD tends to be leaps and bounds more compatiable on older hardware then Linux. "Bleeding edge" and "junk" hardware is another story, however. The FreeBSD world historically hasn't wasted too many brain cycles on making Joe's Fly By Night $5 eModem play nice, as it's mostly targeted at "power users" (server and workstation) that don't buy hardware based on what's available this week from Fry's for FREE (w/mail in rebate).

      That said, FreeBSD's hardware support is within a percentage point or two of Linux (sometimes sooner, such as FreeBSD getting USB support ages before Linux did), and what is supported is often supported better.

      So basically I've been running with Gentoo for the last couple of years. Has FreeBSD gotten any friendlier lately?

      Depends. For a Unix system, FreeBSD has pretty much always been "friendlier" then most/all Linux distros. For a Windows desktop conversion/political statement system, stick to Linux. FreeBSD has Wine support and such, but it's really more of an afterthought and so far as politics go...M$ tends to like FreeBSD (witness Mono on FreeBSD).

      In the end it's really a question of being an "anti" person or a "pro" person.

      Linux: Anti-Microsoft
      FreeBSD: Pro-Unix

      Personally I want/need a Better Unix and I've got no problems keeping a Win2k box on tap to play games, deal with .doc files, run my AIW-TiVo, etc. If someone finds a way to make EQ, PlanetSide, Unreal II, etc run on FreeBSD that's great for someone, but myself and the vast majority of FreeBSD users won't really care; We'll still use our Windows boxes. In the Linux community however, it often seems like if the lastest game or whatever doesn't have Linux support (at the Windows level or better to boot), then it's some kind of personal afront to the entire Linux world.

      Seriously, whatever. If/when I ever publish desktop software (games, whatever) it's highly unlikely I'll ever bother with a FreeBSD version, much less a Linux version. If I'd publish for a non-Windows system it would be OS X ages before Linux...and I don't even own an OS X system.
  • announcing themselves so much, else SCO could give a look to their code, and find it strickingly similar to their own...

  • FreeBSD in Surround Sound (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:41PM (#6152158)
    5.1 speaker support has been lacking from FreeBSD for years. I'm very excited this added this feature, since I can now using my speaker set-up to the fullest.
  • Enhanced "jail" management, allowing one server to provide many different "virtual machines" with reduced administrator workload.
  • Does anyone know if they managed to nail the BunDirty problems with UFS 1.0? I have a FreeBSD 5.0 machine I'd like to upgrade, but every time I installed a 5.1 kernel and world via CVSup, it would crash with a "BunDirty" error on boot.
  • I just finished downloading my copy, seconds before this story posted.

  • BIT TORRENT! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:47PM (#6152228)
    HERE [rit.edu]
  • And if they didn't, I suspect that they will have one mailed to them today... ;)
  • w00t! I'm sure it will take ages since I'm on dialup, but I'm still excited!

    Wish me luck! [booting FreeBSD floppies on vmware has been flaky last few times I've tried it. :(]

  • FreeBSD 5.1 vs 4.x (Score:5, Informative)

    by ikewillis ( 586793 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:53PM (#6152304) Homepage
    If you are interested in the respective merits of FreeBSD 5.1 over 4.x and are unsure which one to install, you might want to see the Early Adopter's Guide for FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE [freebsd.org]

  • BSD isn't dead??? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09, 2003 @01:57PM (#6152339)
    ...what???? AAAaaaaauuugggghhhhhhh .... !!

    *runs screaming from slashdot*

  • Unfortunately... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mckeever ( 410646 )
    It's too bad, but I won't be able to use this release for the projects I've had on the go (closed source - sorry) that run off of FreeBSD.

    For some reason, the bktr driver used for TV tuner card and some other hardware hangs seconds after activiation on FreeBSD 5.x. I'll likely have to rewrite the driver anyway at some stage to fix some issues I have with it, but this is preventing me from upgrading past FreeBSD 4.8.

    The efforts required to get Darwin running for at least one of these projects is starting

    • Re:Unfortunately... (Score:3, Informative)

      by nutznboltz ( 473437 )
      Read the Fine Early Adoptor's Manual.

      http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.1R/early-adopte r .html [freebsd.org]

      Section 4 - Drawbacks to Early Adoption.

      Along with the new features of FreeBSD 5.1 come some areas that can cause problems, or at least can lead to unexpected behavior. Generally, these come from the fact that a number of features are
      works-in-progress. A partial list of these areas of difficulty includes:
      • A number of features are not yet finished. Examples from the
        feature list above include SMPng and KSE. Wh

  • FreeBSD & Embedded Devices (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Teckla ( 630646 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:17PM (#6152511)
    I've always wondered why embedded device makers choose Linux over FreeBSD. Does anyone know why?

    I'm curious because using Linux (which is GPL'd) seems a bit risky. It seems every other week some poor embedded device company is being tarred and feathered for allegedly breaking the terms of the GPL.

    Why do companies run the risk of Linux/GPL license problems when FreeBSD is available? This is not a troll, I am genuinely curious.

    -Teckla

    • Re:FreeBSD & Embedded Devices (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ctid ( 449118 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:24PM (#6152569) Homepage
      It seems every other week some poor embedded device company is being tarred and feathered for allegedly breaking the terms of the GPL.


      But there's no risk really. Any professional organization will read the licences of any copyrighted material they want to use in their products. If there's a problem with what a professional organization wishes to do with GPLed material, they will decide not to use it and look elsewhere. That is their choice.

      A company that gets into trouble for using GPLed software without releasing the source is not "poor" in the sense of deserving sympathy.

    • You're ignoring the possibility that companies will be accused (in the court of public opinion) of violating the GPL when, in fact, it hasn't been violated.

      Did you read the recent Slashdot story regarding Linksys and Linux/GPL?

      Overall it seems safer for a company to take the safe road and choose FreeBSD for their embedded devices. I can only imagine there is a technical reason embedded device companies choose Linux/GPL over FreeBSD/BSD, a reason so overwhelming that they're willing to risk accusations of
      • Actually NetBSD(wasabi) is capitalising on the fact that they are GPL-free.

        A quote from their website. [wasabisystems.com]
        NetBSD is free of the GPL. Its BSD license is the most flexible, business-friendly license available. Users may change the kernel or add drivers while keeping the changes entirely secret. With NetBSD, OEM's IP is secure and protected.         /end of quote

        It's that classic battle of GPL vs BSD licensing. There are now, today, more people running BSD,if you consider Darwin(osX,etc) BSD.the core sure is,but
    • This one's easy, so I'll answer it.

      Companies don't have to announce that they use freebsd in their embedded devices. All they need to include is the following statement somewhere in their documentation:

      Copyright 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.

      Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

      1. Redistributions
  • From the home page:

    "Easy to install
    FreeBSD can be installed from a variety of media including CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, floppy disk, magnetic tape, a MS-DOS partition, or if you have a network connection, you can install it directly over anonymous FTP or NFS. All you need is a pair of blank, 1.44MB floppies and these directions."

    Oh, well. I have a ultra-modern portable that doesn't ship with a floppy drive. Easy? Not for me.

    • I realize this is probably a joke, but bootable ISOs have been available for FreeBSD since the dawn of CDROM time. The text that you are referring to is back from the days of floppy disks being more common than CDROM drives. Ah yes, back then we did FTP installs of BSD and we liked it. And for some reason we dragged our PCs uphill through a blizzard. Don't ask me why, because I haven't the foggist. ;)

    • Re:No floppy drive :-( (Score:3, Informative)

      by SirSlud ( 67381 )
      If you can boot via CDROM, you dont need a floppy.
    • It said you needed floppies, not a floppy drive, can't you read! You boot from the CDROM then juggle the floppies while you install. It would be too hard to juggle three floppies, so FreeBSD makes it easy for newbies by only requiring two.

      Seriously, if you read the instructions carefully, including the commas, you'll see that the floppies for are installing over anonymous FTP or NFS. You could still boot from the CDROM in such a case, but if you have a CDROM then you don't need to install from a network.

  • amd64 support (Score:4, Informative)

    by edhall ( 10025 ) <slashdot@weirdnoise.com> on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:38PM (#6152774) Homepage

    The release notes mention that an experimental amd64 release is available, but don't mention that it can be downloaded from here [freebsd.org], including ISO images [freebsd.org].

    Most of the credit for its rapid development goes to Peter Wemm, who nearly single-handedly took the X86-64 architecture from "it can't even mount the root filesystem or exec init" to a nearly-polished release in little more than a month. (And, no, it wasn't just a matter of copying what NetBSD did; the processor-specific parts of FreeBSD and NetBSD are quite different.)

    -Ed

  • YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. CEASE AND DESIST (Score:4, Funny)

    by oliphaunt ( 124016 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:42PM (#6152840) Homepage
    Dear Free Software Zealot,

    WE the undersigned have reason to believe that the software referred to as *BSD contains source code ("Code") that is the Intellectual Property ("Stuff") of the SCO Group, Inc. Or maybe the SCO Group Stuff contains Code that is the property of *BSD, we're not really sure. But we want your money, either way.

    Please stop using *BSD until our lawyers are able to send you an invoice for the Code you are using. If it is easier for you, you can just mail us a check in advance and we'll subtract it from your balance.

    Best regards,

    D. Boies
    Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe
    Attorneys for the SCO Group, Inc
    • I know this was a joke, but some people may think this is true. FreeBSD (and Net and OpenBSD) are indemnified against UNIX claims from SCO or anyone else. They've already gone through their hell (daemon mascot pun intended) and came out legally unscathed, though pushed back in mindshare that they still haven't recovered from.

      D. Boies
      Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe
      No Mr. Howard, Mr. Fine, Mr. Howard?
      • I know this was a joke, but some people may think this is true. FreeBSD (and Net and OpenBSD) are indemnified against UNIX claims from SCO or anyone else. They've already gone through their hell (daemon mascot pun intended) and came out legally unscathed, though pushed back in mindshare that they still haven't recovered from.

        And this will stop SCO from sending cease & desist letters or filing lawsuits? You don't know much about the legal system, do you? They can send as many letters as they want, unt

  • FreeBSD 5 + A7V8X = kaboom (Score:3, Interesting)

    by chrysalis ( 50680 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @02:52PM (#6152969) Homepage
    Unfortunately, once the system has been installed, I can't boot it. The kernel always crashes during the bootup phase on my ASUS A7V8X motherboard :(

    Maybe it has something to do with USB2 and my CD burner (Plextor S88TU). I had similar crashes with NetBSD and old Linux kernels.

  • ftp2 traffic (Score:3, Informative)

    by semanticgap ( 468158 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @03:03PM (#6153087)
    ... is always fun to whatch [freebsd.org] when a new big release comes out.

  • Features and bloat. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MrHanky ( 141717 ) on Monday June 09, 2003 @03:08PM (#6153137) Homepage Journal
    I currently use FreeBSD 4.8 on my old laptop, a 133 MHz Pentium Classic with 40 MB RAM. It's mainly a typewriter and ScummVM [sourceforge.net] box, and FreeBSD 4.x is very nice, fast, and lightweight for the hardware (compared to Debian and Slack). But I love features as much as the next geek, so I'd like to know how 5.x compares to 4.x with regards to consumption of my precious RAM and disk space.

    And I'd also like to know if there are any special features to drool for. Come on, just convince me to upgrade. I know I want to. :-)

  • As the release notes [freebsd.org] state, FreeBSD [freebsd.org] 5.1 includes the latest stable releases of GNOME [gnome.org] and KDE [kde.org], 2.2.1 and 3.1.2 respectively.

    Getting FreeBSD 5.1 would be a great way to easily get the latest stable versions of these desktop environments as they were intended to be (without all the distribution-specific customizations made by Red Hat, SuSE, and so on).

    Granted, you could also use Gentoo current or Debian unstable, but FreeBSD 5.1 is likely to be more stable (in the sense of not frequently changing) and you can get it on CD.

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