FreeBSD 5.2 Released 507
James writes "Freebsd 5.2 is released. FTP mirrors. Release notes
This is another step towards 5-STABLE. Many improvements in this release, including ATA and networking enhancements." Patrick Jensen also points out that this is the first stable release with AMD64 support. You can also see the official announcement if you so desire.
FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here (Score:5, Informative)
Our site gets a million hits a day on a completely db-driven website. Both the Apache webserver and the two replicated MySQL servers on the backend are all running FreeBSD 5, and have been for months now.
No problems at all. Rock-solid. Good ol' FreeBSD.
Not on Thinkpad X40 (Score:1, Informative)
I'm running 4.9-R on my Thinkpad X40. I tried 5.2-RC2 about 2 months ago, and it was an utter nightmare. Wouldn't boot correctly, or if it did, it froze within a few minutes. Loads of errors, too.
Looks like I'll give it another try--5.x supports OpenBSD's pf and the Thinkpad wifi card (supposedly.)
Re:too bad (Score:3, Informative)
Wow (Score:3, Informative)
I'm overdue for an upgrade, I've got 5.0 running on my main desktop machine. I just love how easy it is to administer and how well documented everything is compared to Linux.
I haven't tried the Linux 2.6 kernel yet, mostly because there's no reason for me to not use FreeBSD. X, Fvwm, and Gnome apps run flawlessly, and the ports system is fantastic.
Re:too bad (Score:5, Informative)
cd
make install clean
tada, you now have perl 5.8
Not quite. (Score:5, Informative)
freebsd-announce mailing list has not mentioned it.
This means that it is not yet released.
Dinivin
Re:Not on Thinkpad X40 (Score:5, Informative)
recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop (Score:5, Informative)
My company uses FreeBSD 5 on half of our desktop machines in the office. All the PCs for customer service and general-purpose use are all running:
The fonts are anti-aliased and beautiful. I find it easier on the eyes than Windows or OS X.
It only takes us about an hour to set up a whole new ready-to-go office desktop PC for the office, using FreeBSD ports. And we LOVE that all boxes' apps are kept automatically updated every night using the portupgrade scripts.
If you're thinking of dabbling with FreeBSD as a desktop I can highly recommend it.
In fact I'm typing this on my Gateway laptop with FreeBSD 4.9 right now. Here are some FreeBSD laptop compatibility lists [google.com] if you want to see if yours will work.
Re:FreeBSD on Opterons (Score:5, Informative)
Finding a 64 bit SuSE is easy. This is not the Enterprise Edition, but if you want Enteprise, you will have to pay first.
FreeBSD 5 is not yet officially out (Score:5, Informative)
The mirrors are still updating. While 5.X is imminent,
In the past, we of the FreeBSD Project have started distributing an image to our mirrors and then recalled it when a last-minute bug is discovered. IIRC, at least once
Please do not grab this image thinking that it's FreeBSD 5.2! It won't be out until Scott Long says that it ready and available, and he has the right to nix this image up until the time he makes that announcement.
mwlucas at the obvious domain name
Re:FreeBSD on Opterons (Score:2, Informative)
I wouldn't call it easy to find if it's not even listed on their website...
Re:Suggestion (Score:4, Informative)
No, the world needs many *nix clones. It helps move things and sometimes things move in the wrong direction (i.e. IBM/DEC's answer to SysV). OpenBSD pushes the security in ways that the bloatware distros can't but the bloatware helps get more people comfortable with the *nix systems.
I would like to see a distory using the Linux kernel and most of the BSD tools just to see how it would evlolve.
Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here (Score:5, Informative)
The Broadcom Gigabit ethernet drivers that were needed were merged back into 4.8 and 4.9 - but 5.1 is so stable that we're not going to change anything.
(Did you buy some IBM eServer's too?)
Re:Not quite. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah right. And the FreeBSD release team reserves the right to change anything under that directory at any point prior to the official announcement. They done it in the past. And thanks to Slashdot jumping the gun back then, too, some people ended up downloading bad code.
IT IS NOT OFFICIAL TILL THE RELEASE TEAM SAYS IT IS.
Excuse my yelling, but the release team has been over this with Slashdot time and time again.
Dinivin
Re:Curious (Score:1, Informative)
(And Microsoft's ranting about the free software is particularly funny since they have no qualms against using it in their products.)
Lots of people use it, but perhaps not as many as Linux users. Like any other Unix-based system, you have a bunch of scripts, frontends, and administration helpers. Much of the user level stuff is identical to Linux. If you use a GUI then you'd be hard pressed to tell what was running underneath without dropping into a shell.
As for differences, a couple years ago the BSD TCP/IP stack was considered "best of breed". It worked very well under load, better than Linux depending on the benchmark, and thus was used in a lot of very high load environments. Because DNA tends to flow freely between Linux and BSD camps, the differences are negligible now and Linux does perform better in some situations that FreeBSD.
There are fewer gee-whiz eye-candy apps for FreeBSD. But take this with a grain of salt. Many apps can be rebuilt on BSD with a simple "./configure; make; make install". They tend to be developed on Linux first is what I'm saying.
Now for the part that people may disagree with:
The BSD forums can (sometimes) be full of snotty, holier-than-thou, ivory-tower-sitting folks who won't deign to answer your questions. If you even mention Linux some have gotten rude. E.g., "In Linux I can do X, what's the equivalent in FreeBSD?" gets greeted with something like, "Hey stupid Linux user, this is a BSD forum. We don't do it that way." (well, at least that was my experience. Yours will be different. So don't waste any modpoints on this anonymous post.)
Re:Question (Score:5, Informative)
It "feels" right. I grew up on BSD systems (okay, sunOS 4 wasn't exactly BSD, but it was closer to that than system V), so BSD feels right. I like the way it works.
The differences are subtile though. I can use either linux or BSD systems without problem, and if I don't do anything to find out which I'm using it can take a long time before I find a difference.
Traditionaly linux has supported more hardware, but sometimes that hardware wasn't so good. FreeBSD traditionally has better (faster) networking, and better support for server class hardware. (Years ago this ment if you went with SCSI you used FreeBSD, IDE you used Linux, but that was years ago) In these modern times both have good support for most hardware you are likely to find in the real world, or neither has support.
OpenBSD and NetBSD are not the same as FreeBSD. FreeBSD is faster and better suited to the desktop, though if the desktop is your goal, a lot of what you want on the desktop gets into linux first. OpenBSD is more secure, at least in their (extreemly limited) default install, I wouldn't run a firewall with anything else. Otherwise I'm not sure I'd bother with openBSD. NetBSD runs everything you are likely to care about, and it is supported. Linux may have had prots to more systems, but half those ports are broken is seems. So if you want to run that Vax in the corner, or some other strange macine netBSD is your only reasonable option. Once you run it one place it may be easier to run it everywhere. (Yes there are good reasons to run old hardware even though a typical desktop today is faster. Those who have good reason know who they are)
In summery: FreeBSD and Linux are mostly an issue of Ford vs Chevy. Some people prefer one over the other, but in reality the differences are not significant. NetBSD and OpenBSD are for specialized uses, but still worth useing for a lot of people.
Re:BSD packaging systems (Score:2, Informative)
Personally, I think that darwinports is slightly easier to use than Fink, but there's not a lot of difference. The downside is that there are a lot more packages available in Fink, although the number for darwinports is increasing steadily.
My only real gripe with darwinports is that, by default, it installs packages into
In comparison to the ports system on FreeBSD, darwinports is easier to use. With darwinports, installing a package is as easy as 'ports install package', whereas in FreeBSD ports, you need to cd to the appropriate directory and then do a 'make install'. As a developer, I've got no problems using makefiles, but I can see how they might put off some non-developers.
Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here (Score:5, Informative)
I run all my machines on 5.x now, but am strongly considering to move one machien back to 4.x, why?
Because I need stuff like mjpegtools, mplayer and the like to compile and work without trouble. Currently they give waaay too much trouble on 5.x to be usable for me.
Stability? 4.x has crashed on me a few times in the last couple of months, 5.x hasn't so far (at least not without there being obvious reasons like cpu/memory failure due to overclocking)
In a server setup, neither has crashed on me ever, and I run quite a variety of servers on 5.x now, and used to run those on 4.x (and 3.x before that)
Matter of fact is that 4.x simply gives me fewer surprises, and as such is more usable in a production environment, 5.x provides interesting new technology and as such is more interestign as logn as I have the time to deal with the startup issues.
Re:Curious (Score:5, Informative)
How exactly is it licensed It is licensed under a BSD license [opensource.org].
Should I consider Running it? Short answer: Yes (but I am biased)
Long Answer: It depends on your applications. FreeBSD is a rock solid Operating System, also it is distributed as an entire operating system, as opposed to GNU/Linux where you have the Linux Kernel and then what ever utils/programs $VENDOR has built around it. We run it on 20+ servers here and have been really happy with it. I run it on Multiple boxes at home also. Then again the 2 of us here are kinda FreeBSD bigots. Here is my leg to prove it [muldoon.us] so my opinion might be biased.
Depending on your application, you really should run the best Operating System for the Job. I haven't found the one perfect OS yet. For instance if you are running Java app servers you might want to look at Linux for that as it's java implementation seems to be better( but FreeBSD's is getting there quickly). The nice part is it free and you can just grab The ISO's and try it out on a spare machine.
Re:FreeBSD on Opterons (Score:2, Informative)
I recently built a dual opteron workstation using the MSI K8T800-based dual board. I am using a serial ATA hard drive connected to the onboard Via 8237 controller. I was able to intall Gentoo Linux and FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 (both i386 and amd64 'modes') cleanly.
At this time, the 'best' experience I had was with i386 FreeBSD. Except for a problem with the onboard broadcom 5705 not being initialized correctly and a weird issue with my logitech cordless mx duo setup (the mouse is detected but does not seem to operate when used as a usb device), I found that everything worked as if the machine was a normal SMP workstation.
In AMD64 'mode,' I experienced the same issues with the mx duo and the broadcom chip and otherwise did not have as much success. The system did install correctly and I was able to boot multi-user and 'do things.' Kernel modules were not capable of being used at the time (I don't know if this is still the case) so all devices had to be built into the kernel. After initial install there was a problem with the compiled-in ACPI support that caused a system panic. I was able to load the system without the ACPI support and after updating source and compiling a new kernel the ACPI problem did not occur again.
As far as I know, FreeBSD cannot run anything but amd64 binaries in and64 'mode.' If it could compile/run i386 binaries and use i386 linux binaries in my mind there would be no competition between it and linux for the amd64 platform. As it seemed (early last week, things may have changed) limited to amd64-only it is not as useful as it could be. It is still under considerable development though, so it would not really be fair to condemn it for deficiencies right now.
I then tried to install a few Linux distributions, primarily because I wanted to see if the broadcom and mx duo stuff worked fine. I found that after trying Slackware 9.1 ISO, A current Mandrake Cooker ISO and a Gentoo AMD64 LiveCD, Gentoo was the only distribution that would install to the hard drive. Mandrake and Slackware did not seem to have support for the Serial ATA controller, so I was unable to install anything with those two. I did try creating custom boot disks for Slackware but I did not have success doing so, primarily because Gentoo installed correctly and without issue (other than it takes about 5x longer to install Gentoo than it does to install any other system I have ever used, even a stage3 install).
I am currently using Gentoo on this workstation because the Broadcom controller is initialized correctly and the kb/mouse (mx duo) is working correctly. Also, despite numerous ports/ebuilds/whatever not wanting to compile for amd64 I am able to get enough things to work that I can use the system for light browsing and some daily tasks.
Despite being available for several months IMO the AMD64 platform is still very, very new. I think the availability of 'cheap' 64 bit x86 hardware is not something that a lot of developers considered when writing some of their software, and as a result there is and will continue to be some teething pains, so to speak, while projects gradually begin to support this platform.
Re:10 things which we know about FreeBSD (Score:3, Informative)
You can play Linux games on it (ok, no games)
2. It cannot be used by my grandma.
If your grandma is able to use Gnome or KDE, she can use FreeBSD.
3. It lacks a GUI of any note.
see above.
4. There is no support available for it.
There are a lot of places on the net were you can get help from the community. And some companies provide commercial support for FreeBSD.
5. It is an assortment of fragmented OSes.
FreeBSD is a complete OS by itself, it's an evolution of 4.4BSD.
6. It cannot be run on the x86 platform.
Of course it runs on x86.
7. You have to compile everything and know C.
Thanks to the ports collection, you just have to type "make" to get something compiled for you.
8. Support for the latest hardware is always poor.
Support for the latest hardware is sometimes poor indeed.
9. It is incompatiable with GNU/Linux.
FreeBSD has a complete Linux compatibility layer which allows to run Linux binaries.
10. It is dying.
Well, some people like to repeat that every month since 1993!
Stephane
------
Life isn't fair, but the root password helps.
Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here (Score:3, Informative)
That made me go back to FreeBSD 5.0 that ran without any problems since day one. It seems, however, that the source tree for 5.0 has been removed from the FTP mirrors so unless 5.2 works better than 5.1 there is no way for me to update the applications on any of the 5.0 machines. I am keeping my fingers crossed for 5.2.....
Re: Mandrake (Score:5, Informative)
You couldn't be more right. The difference, at least to me, is that FreeBSD is much easier to configure properly because the documentation and ports system are so good.
With regard to OpenBSD however, there are many security enhancements that put its security far ahead of the rest. But it is rather paranoid for simple applications, and probably not worth the performance/ease of use hit.
NO RELEASE YET! (Score:1, Informative)
FreeBSD 5.2 is NOT released!
Re:FreeBSD 5 works fine in production, here (Score:3, Informative)
I use FreeBSD on my workstation, and now 2 production servers here in this school district. They function rock solid as dns servers, and recently, a small DHCP server for roaming laptops. It took a complete failure of a motherboard to bring it down. Sure they only have 100 zones loaded, but they also are the recursive servers for the district.
Swapped out the hard drive into another computer, loaded kernel.GENERIC, and the computer boot up. Reinstalled world because I switched from Cyrix to Pentium, and I was up and running. 1 hour total downtime, most spent finding a suitable replacement and physical labor.
If FreeBSD can run stable for a year on old failing Cyrix hardware, I dont know what other kudos it needs. Oh yeah it runs fast on those dual opterons as well
Re:Live CD (Score:3, Informative)
There are a couple of third-party LiveCD projects underway, although the only one I can recall the name of is Freesbie.
Great But Disk Is Slow (Score:3, Informative)
As a hardware nerd, though, I was a little disappointed at the empirical results the OS turned in for my disk array (RAID5, 4x200GB, 16kB block size, 8:16:32:256K stripe size) - burst and sustained transfer is much faster under Windows. Have a look at the results: IDE Hardware Raid On FreeBSD [berkeley.edu]
Re:recommend using FreeBSD as a desktop (Score:2, Informative)
It supports them quite well. I got a dual pentium pro, installed FreeBSD 5.1 and it's been running like a beast ever since.
Re:FreeBSD as a Desktop? (Score:3, Informative)
Check out this thread: http://www.freebsdforums.org/forums/showthread.ph
Another advice: freebsd folks spend a great deal of effort (money, resources, time) in writing the best *nix documentation out there. This is true across the entire distribution. The man pages are superb and cleaner than those I find in linux, and there are more of them (almost every
I've been in love with FreeBSD since the moment I tried it (I installed it because when I pulled shorewall from sarge, it erased my
1) Java - it works, but it is 'difficult' to install. By difficult I mean: you have to download some files manually, portinstall jdk14 won't work out of the box). When you get used to freebsd's package management/ports (yes, you have both, with automatic dependency resolution) you consider this as annoying
2) Flash - no native flash for freebsd, and again, you have to install linux-flash manually. It works in mozilla/firebird (both native and linux version) but not in konqi. A better solution is on the way though.
If you can live with these, you will love freebsd, especially if you want to get the latest and greatest progs. I find (I know, since my roommate uses it) that freebsd ports are slightly more up to date than portage in gentoo (which is no minor accomplishment). For example, gimp 2.0pre was added the day it was released.
Re:Question (Score:2, Informative)
(There's no such thing as 'Unix GUI', if you rule MacOS X and other commercial systems out - if you install KDE, it will look and behave exactly the same on every single platform that's supported).
As for the server side, I noticed major improvement (in ATA code, mostly) when I went from FreeBSD 5.1 to 5.2BETA on a really old machine (P133), so I guess the system actually *is* getting more mature. (That same P133 machine has not had a single crash since it started running FreeBSD (5.0 at the time was the hot thing.) - it is a heavily used file server with a new ATA133 controller). There are a few maybes and insecurities around the new threading and scheduler systems, but it seems they are getting more polished by the day (notice that, despite the witnessed stability, it is still not "STABLE" by the high standards :)) ).
Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)
Second, the documentation is superb. Linux is notorious for having imcomplete documentation. Part of this is the fault of GNU, which actively discourages the writing of man pages. A while ago I was trying to get a USB thumb drive working under Linux and I couldn't find instructions anywhere. Heading online, most of the stuff I found was outdated. But under FreeBSD there is a man page for everything, down to and including individual drivers. The Handbook is comprehensive and well written. There is install documentation for everything from writing and updating ports to dual booting with Linux and Windows.
Performance. This is highly subjective, and I have not done any benchmarks. I am sure that there is stuff that Linux does better than FreeBSD, and vice versa. But from my experience, FreeBSD just seems snappier and more responsive. It boots faster. Shutdown is faster.
Finally, believe it or not, hardware support. In my experience FreeBSD supports more hardware than Linux. This didn't use to be the case, but I think the situation has reversed. Other posts in this article talk about SATA. Linux supports it, but it's a separate driver that isn't default on many current distros. Under FreeBSD SATA support is built into the ATA driver, and it's been there for a while. I've found through experience that USB support is much better on FreeBSD than on Linux. I recently purchased a new laptop, and FreeBSD supported everything on it (sans winmodem) out-of-the-box. Linux did not.
But hey! FreeBSD is Free! You can try it for yourself. Find a spare partition and try it for a week to get the feel of it. Even if you decide to stick with Linux, you'll at least get the benefit of exposure to another system.
Re:Question (Score:4, Informative)
No, the ports tree is source based. To fetch and install a binary package (with dependencies automatically fetched too), simply type "pkg_add -r xmms" but binary packages may not be as up-to-date as ports.
Re:BSD packaging systems (Score:2, Informative)
And darwinports was included in earlier developer previews of macosx 10.3, but later removed.
The basic reason that they used apt-get instead of FreeBSD's ports is basically this: the ports system rules for users, but sucks for developers, to paraphrase the ports system creator Jordan Hubbard, known here in the BSD section as "God."
Darwinports is his rewrite of said FreeBSD ports system.