FreeBSD 6.4 Released

hmallett writes "FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE, the fifth release from the 6-STABLE branch of FreeBSD development, is now available. In addition to being hosted at many FTP sites, ISO images can be downloaded via the BitTorrent tracker, or for users of earlier FreeBSD releases, FreeBSD Update can be used to perform a binary upgrade."

Where is VMware host support?

[Cthefuture]

VMware is the one application I simply can not do without. Is there anything equivalent for FreeBSD?

I used to run BSD a bit back in the 90's and I have long wanted to run it as my workstation OS, especially now to get ZFS. However, without a good virtualization solution there is no way.

Re:Wow, tells you about the popularity

[TheRaven64]

No one really cares about 6.4. The people who really, really, care about stability might decide to run 6.4, but most of the stability-conscious people will just run 6-STABLE and not care about releases. The people who want new features are running 7.0 or 7-STABLE and are waiting for 7.1. The people on the cutting edge are running 8-CURRENT.

Re:Where is VMware host support?

[TheGratefulNet]

I'm a big freebsd user (not desktop but server). I'm waiting for zfs to become MATURE on the non-sun boxes. from all I've read it is NOT ready for prime time. some really bad memory problems seem to still be there and they are throwing horsepower at it but it sounds like a losing game. its not ready yet (not for my multi TB home video/audio collection!). I do trust raid5 and jfs and that's been doing fine for me but zfs will totally replace that - ONCE it gets ooops-proof on intel/amd and bsd.

not sure if solaris/x86 is more stable for zfs (I would hope so) but freebsd does not seem like its 100% ready for zfs. maybe in a year?

also, I'm seeing poor samba/cifs performance compared to my gentoo linux boxes (both going from an xp box to the back-end server). on linux, my network led lights are solid on and the thruput is fabulous. on bsd, there are more wait-states and lights being off more often than on. not sure what the blocking is (similar hardware on linux and bsd) but bsd has disappointed me big-time the last few years on samba. I won't run it seriously and have had to let my linux box do nfs/samba/raid for me.

linux seems to be overtaking bsd and that's a very sobering thought from a mostly die-hard bsd fan, here.

Re:Where is VMware host support?

[Anonymous Coward]

ZFS memory problems are on 32bit architectures. It was developed for 64bit and it needs some room. Some hard limits on 32bit platforms need to be tweaked so it fits. Use a 64bit system with zfs.

Samba is optimized for the linux network stack and you need different options for your FreeBSD6. Seems to work better with FreeBSD7. I d wish the developer wouldnt assume that everything works like on their local linux box.