Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Announcements Operating Systems BSD

FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE 414

Posted by timothy from the now-with-improved-goodness dept.
Triumph The Insult C writes "FreeBSD 4.7 is out. Here is the announcement. New items include an option for IPFW2, a number of disk controller updates, security updates, and some changes to userland. Remember, please use a mirror." Among other things, the release announcement says: "FreeBSD 4.7 also incorporates all of the security and bug fixes from 4.6.2 (released in August 2002), including several ATA-related bugfixes, updates for OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and fixes to address several security advisories." And here are the release notes.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE More

FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE

Comments Filter:

  • upgrade (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:51PM (#4424997)
    I've been waiting for an upgrade [attaway.net].
  • Just kidding.

  • What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:52PM (#4425002) Homepage
    Just a question, I'm not knocking FreeBSD.

    But I'm seeing Linux coming up so fast... Is there a likelyhood of putting the best of FreeBSD into Linux and getting a single best-of-breed Free Unix distribution?

    • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Moridineas ( 213502 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:55PM (#4425048) Journal
      The best of FreeBSD? Well some would say the best of FreeBSD is the BSD part (license and architecture). Another advantage (and what I like a lot) is the ability to keep track of the CVS tree and "make world" any time you want and have a completely upgraded core system. The ports system is also in my mind infinitely preferable to binary package hell. Ports has been tried in some linux distributions I believe (Gentoo? not sure). So in a way, some of the best parts of the BSD's are going into linux

      On the other hand, linux because of it's size and diversity will never have the core development group, and central design that the BSD's have.

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:4, Funny)

      by MadFarmAnimalz ( 460972 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:58PM (#4425076) Homepage
      That is, I suspect, a little like thinking that it might be nice to affix Pamela Anderson's knockers to Natalie Portman's front side.

      Nice idea, in other words, but perhaps not something modern medicine is up to just yet.

      • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Gendou ( 234091 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:27PM (#4425322) Homepage
        That is, I suspect, a little like thinking that it might be nice to affix Pamela Anderson's knockers to Natalie Portman's front side.

        Blasphemy. This outrage will not go unanswered. Have you no concept of balance, symmetry, proportion, applied aesthetics, and physical/spiritual curvature??
        • That is, I suspect, a little like thinking that it might be nice to affix Pamela Anderson's knockers to Natalie Portman's front side.

          Blasphemy. This outrage will not go unanswered. Have you no concept of balance, symmetry, proportion, applied aesthetics, and physical/spiritual curvature??

          The dark side of the force is strong in this one. Much anger that we can use to turn him...

    • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by aridhol ( 112307 ) <ka_lac@hotmail.com> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:01PM (#4425095) Homepage Journal
      Depending on your viewpoint, one of my "major advantages" to the BSD system may be a disadvantage to you. And it wouldn't translate well to Linux.

      If you get FreeBSD 4.7, it is exactly the same as anybody else's FreeBSD 4.7 in terms of included software. There's no RedHat FreeBSD, SuSE FreeBSD, Debian FreeBSD, etc. It's just FreeBSD.

      Now if only they could get that NVidia driver [netexplorer.org] working, it would be perfect.

      • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:4, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:14PM (#4425217)


        Yeah! Imagine if some wackos came out with other versions of BSD, they might name them openBSD, NetBSD, NotLinuxBSD, OS X, etc.

        Good thing there's just one BSD. Imagine if they followed Linux's bad example!

        • actually, since you mention it (Score:5, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:50PM (#4425579)
          The various BSDs are not differet distributions of a single operating system. They originate from a single source code base, but are separate operating system.

          Their kernels differ (often substantially), their filesystem layouts and utilities (to some degree) differ, their packaging systems differ, etc. There is cross pollination, and it's easier to adapt kernel features among the BSDs than between BSD and other *nix type operating systems, but they are not the same Beastie.

          And while we're on the topic, OsX is not really a BSD operating system; it's a Mach microkernel with a BSD layer on top that provides some utiltiy functionality. It's not substantially BSDish.

      • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:5, Informative)

        by dsb3 ( 129585 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:22PM (#4425288) Homepage Journal
        > There's no RedHat FreeBSD, SuSE FreeBSD, Debian FreeBSD, etc. It's just FreeBSD.

        Um. Actually there *is* Debian/FreeBSD. You can find more details here: http://www.debian.org/ports/freebsd/

        That said, I do agree with your original point.
      • If you get FreeBSD 4.7, it is exactly the same as anybody else's FreeBSD 4.7 in terms of included software. There's no RedHat FreeBSD, SuSE FreeBSD, Debian FreeBSD, etc. It's just FreeBSD. Now if only they could get that NVidia driver working, it would be perfect.

        That's kind of funny. The nvidia driver works fine under x86 Linux. What it really comes down to is you can have 15,000 different Linux distributions but they're all basically the same when it comes to kernel, libraries, X distribution, etc. So, getting the Nvidia driver to work under Debian is just as easy as getting it working under Red Hat or Mandrake. FreeBSD on the other hand seems to be a stable solid target with a well supported standard configuration base yet it has much less driver support available for it. Why is that? Less users spurring development I suppose.

        • Less users spurring development I suppose.
          I think that's exactly it. NVidia has released binary-only drivers for Linux and Windows, but not for any other OS. They claim that they can't release the source because part of it is licenced from another source (can't remember who), and that they aren't licenced to release it.
      • Now wait a sec, you say the advantage of BSD, its just FreeBSD.

        Last time I checked there was OpenBSD, NetBSD, BSDI, BSDOS, Firewall BSD, Darwin, emBSD, Debian BSD, Closed BSD, Micro BSD, PicoBSD, etc...

        Also, there is only 1 Linux. You can download it at www.kernel.org, Linux is only a kernel. (GCC sold separately)
        -
        this sig for sale
        • So there are a lot of BSD-based operating systems. There are also a lot of SysV based operating systems. BSD can't help the fact that they're such a large tree of the Unix family.

          If you want to say "there's a bunch of BSDs" then I could say "there are a bunch of SysVs [including Linux]" and then on top of that I could say there are a lot of Linux distributions.

          The moral of the story is if you are based on or modeled after a Unix, you are in a large family. Period. There's more than one of you.

          • I don't think Linux qualifies as a System V,
            though it has borrowed some concepts from System V.

            There is a formal definition of what is and is not
            a System V unix. Last I checked it was called the
            SVID (System V Interface Definition), but that may
            have changed by now.

    • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by albat0r ( 526414 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:04PM (#4425130)
      Yes, very good idea! And after that, we can take the best every Desktop and window manager and do a "single best-of-breed" Free Desktop Environment. But don't forget to also take the best from every good free Office Suite, so wea can have the "The-Only-Free-Good-Secure-Godlike Office Suite(tm)" to put into your distribution!

      And why stop now? Merge Mozilla/Konqueror/Opera to create the "Super-Duper-Magical Internet & File browser(tm)" too!

      Damn, I think we have a winner in that product! Maybe we should call it Windows XP?


      Really, I often read on /. about how great it could be if we stopped competion in open source and instead do a "only one" great app that take the best of all that currently exist. The problem here is that the idea you have about the "great one" isn't the same that I have or that everybody else has.

      I don't want a "single best-of-breed Free Unix distribution" just because such a thing isn't possible. So instead of having only one distribution "to bind them all", I prefer having the choice between a lot of good and different ones.

    • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:5, Informative)

      by b0r1s ( 170449 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:06PM (#4425150) Homepage
      Many will argue that FreeBSD is still more stable than linux. That is debateable, but I think a case could be made either way. Much of the difference is due to preference (some of it is due to the dislike of the GPL by many, many people).

      The advantages of FreeBSD over Linux is:
      • Complete control of ENTIRE operating system. With a few exceptions, tools in the base systems are BSD derived rather than GNU tools. This prevents the FSF people from calling it "GNU/FreeBSD", and allows the contributors to the operating system the ability to modify userland tools to better integrate with the kernel.
      • Incredibly well developed updating system. The CVSup setup employed by FreeBSD is simply unmatched by anything linux has. Yes, Redhat allows you to grab new kernel RPMs, and debian allows you to apt-get kernels, but FreeBSD is designed to be updated often ('updated' means the entire source heirarchy, if need by), and the system in place makes this possible. When you also consider that a single 'make buildworld' followed by an NFS mount, and multiple 'make installworld's on other machines can update an entire server farm to a custom built OS, you'll realize that linux can not compete with the level of customization that to which FreeBSD administrators have become acustomed.
      • Make tools that make developing nice. Things like <bsd.port.mk> et. al. have no rivals in the linux world. Creating kernel makefiles becomes trivial; a simple include statement handles 90% of the grunt work involved in writing makefiles.
      • Freedom from the GPL. Like it or not, most corporations do not want to give away all of their work to their competitors if they ever decide to release a product that required modification to the OS.


      Yes, linux is nice ... for the desktop. But I'd still prefer FreeBSD in the rack, or in any corporate situation.
      • Incredibly well developed updating system
        the entire source heirarchy, if need be

        Check out SourceMage [sourcemage.org]. This is a linux distro that, with a little work, is always the most up to date Linux distro Ever. You get the source from many different locations, and it's the latest stable version. It also has a nifty theme to it, Magic. You "cast"(install) "spells"(programs) and it downloads the source and compiles and installs it, and creates logs of all that happens. You can "dispel"(uninstall) it. you can "gaze" into the "grimoire"(list of spells). Even if you only get it because you can cast xfree86 or cast linux itself, its fun!

        ok made my monthly advertising requirement... :P

        • Check out SourceMage... It also has a nifty theme to it, Magic. You "cast"(install) "spells"(programs) and it downloads the source and compiles and installs it, and creates logs of all that happens. You can "dispel"(uninstall) it. you can "gaze" into the "grimoire"(list of spells).

          Look, I know we're talking about compiling kernels and whatnot, so none of us is exactly the most popular kid in school, if you know what I mean. But this is just embarrassing. I mean, there's such a thing as taking role playing games too far, you know?

          This is incredibly geeky, even by my standards.

      • Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by CoolVibe ( 11466 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:27PM (#4425330) Journal
        You forgot one:
        • The ability to make your own custom releases

        Seriously. I have several custom ISO's I made for myself for easy deployment of boxes. They all cvsup after install, and then install a ream of ports suited to the purpose of the machine. Like a webserver, database server etc. Complete with a scripted sysinstall! It's very easy to do. "make release" is my bitch :)

        Boot from the CD, partition/label, go have coffee and return to a machine ready to deploy. I love it.

      • Ports tree vs RPMs.

        I remember reading that OpenBSD group wants an audit of the ports tree due to 40% of the ports being broken. Source based packages can have major problems.

        BTW, give GPL some freaking credit, it spawned the opensource movement and created many programmers and hobbiests that release some of the best software, FOR FREE. How many of the ports have a GPL or GPL like license? 60-70%?
    • This is an idea whose time has come. After that, we'll combine the best of Led Zeppelin, the Grateful Dead, Abba, Snoop Dogg and Moby, creating a single best-of-breed musical experience!

      Seriously though, people like FreeBSD for different reasons than people like Linux. They've been hashed out over and over again, so I won't beat that dead horse, but I will note that I've never met anybody who after using FreeBSD, didn't migrate away from Linux.

      Go ahead, try it for a bit. Long enough to know how to update your sources by typing 'cd /usr/src && make update' and how to all of X, and kde by typing 'cd /usr/ports/x11/kde && make install'. Or if you don't like the flexibility of compiling things yourself, 'pkg_add -r xmms', and watch it install everything you need, painlessly.

      I guarantee you'll switch!*

      * not a guarantee

      • Re:Excellent Idea! (Score:2, Interesting)

        by jazman_777 ( 44742 )
        Seriously though, people like FreeBSD for different reasons than people like Linux. They've been hashed out over and over again, so I won't beat that dead horse, but I will note that I've never met anybody who after using FreeBSD, didn't migrate away from Linux.

        I had heard about OpenBSD, and how it was constantly audited for security. So I checked it out, and looked at how to set up firewalling + NAT. Looked pretty easy (documented, with a good working example), and I had it working easily. Maybe now I just think I'm smarter than I really am. Now, when I go look at Linux iptables, it makes my head spin (it just _looks_ a lot harder than OpenBSD's pf). For crying out loud, RedHat "starts" both ipchains _and_ iptables. That's a distro problem, true.

        And I like the minimalist install of OpenBSD, and you add only what you need through ports, which is way easier than filtering though a list of 5000 packages, trying to figure out, "do I really need libZonk and libZonk-devel, what is it for?"

    • Good Article on BSD (Score:5, Informative)

      by snookerdoodle ( 123851 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @02:11PM (#4425796)
      Appeared here recently:

      http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,55618 8, 00.asp

      Mark
    • Much of the software that's available on the average Linux distribution is available on FreeBSD. Add to that a consistently stable VM (which certainly has a lot to do with overall stability) and the ability of FreeBSD to run Linux binaries(!) and I have to say I see no reason to take from FreeBSD to add to Linux.
    • I've set up a bunch of systems over the years using both Linux and FreeBSD (I've used both since 1993/1994). In general, you get user-related foo (eye candy like enlightenment, games like the id Quake series, drivers for webcams, etc) in Linux before FreeBSD. However, stuff you'd need to run servers end up in FreeBSD in way better shape (at least initially) than they do in Linux. A lot of this has to do with the users -- there are more Linux desktop users than there are FreeBSD desktop users (actually, I guess the same goes for server users).

      FreeBSD has had better device support for certain types of devices (scsi controllers, usb equipment, etc) than Linux -- again, initially. The larger Linux userbase has made it so that now more devices work with Linux than they do with FreeBSD. It's simply a matter of scale -- more users, more device support. My webcam works with Linux and Windows, but doesn't work with FreeBSD (it doesn't have an equivalent project to V4L).

      In terms of software, Linux can get really annoying. I mean, its proponents claim it's similar enought to Unix to replace Unix systems
      (corp db servers, etc). However, you run into a lot of Linux apps that either use Linux-specific system calls or are a pain to compile on other platforms. A lot of people appear to code to Linuxisms, and don't care or don't test on other systems (like Solaris, FreeBSD, etc). Even stuff as simple as using #!/bin/bash in shell scripts and using bash syntax makes it hard to run stuff on (say) my AIX boxes at work. Annoyingly enough, I've even run into people who won't accept my patches to get stuff running on FreeBSD (a total of 10-20 lines in > 5k LOC code!) because they can't be bothered to try it out ("all our developers use Linux"). In general, apps written by people who use FreeBSD are more adaptable.

      I usually set up Linux servers (using RedHat or Debian) and end up turning stuff off after the installation. With FreeBSD, I get pretty much all the same apps (ssh, samba, etc), but they're disabled by default. This is an important issue when you consider the number of named/apache/etc worms out there (and more are on the way). In that sense, FreeBSD's more security-friendly than many Linux distributions.

      Some places have successfully used hundreds of FreeBSD boxes as web farms; I hope someone working at Yahoo or Hotmail posts explaining why they didn't use Linux. (Yes, I know Google uses Linux).

      Faried.
    • I think we are all overlooking the real reason [xs4all.nl] that FreeBSD is superior to Linux.
    • There are many good parts which don't seem likely to end up in Linux.

      For instance:
      1) Softupdates (and dirhash, etc)
      This is REALLY GOOD stuff. I'd say in most cases it performs better than journalling file systems.

      2) IPFW or IPfilter.
      I've looked at netfilter, it is an improvement over ipchains which was crap. Just an improvement tho, not great. I still prefer IPFW/IPfilter from the usage side - the rule construction seems cleaner.

      These are the two major advantages of FreeBSD for me.

      The FreeBSD VM is pretty good too (but I heard the Linux VM should hopefully be getting better).

      The other stuff is nice, but I believe you can get similar stuff in the Linux world.

      The make world stuff? Is nice, but for live server upgrades it's nicer to download a bunch of RPMs, check sigs, distribute to all servers, and then install, and reboot in 30 seconds if necessary.

      Sure you can synchronize and compile on a "compile server" and then copy stuff over, but in that case it starts looking very like RPMs now eh?

      And so far the FreeBSD team seems more concerned about stability. That said, for Linux, its the distros which do the stability testing, so in practice stability/flakiness isn't a prob if you go with a more stability oriented Linux distro.

  • My personal favorite addition... (Score:5, Funny)

    by splume ( 560873 ) <splumes@hotmail.com> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:54PM (#4425026) Journal
    nice(1) now uses the -n option to specify the ``niceness'' of the utility being run.

    Doesn't that just sound like a happy command?

  • Mirrors (Score:5, Informative)

    by aridhol ( 112307 ) <ka_lac@hotmail.com> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:55PM (#4425042) Homepage Journal
    Instead of pointing to the front page, it may be more useful to point at the mirror list [freebsdmirrors.org].

  • Heh jsut in time :) (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:57PM (#4425060)
    I think its a good thing i didnt buy 4.6 from the London (UK) Linux Expo then isnt it :)

    No, dont ask me why they were selling BSD (quite heavily actually) along side Linux on most stalls.

    Oh, and a note to KDE and Gnome teams, having blank stalls with two spotty kids sitting at laptops, with no promotional items or banners or posters really isnt a good way to promote your product guys. (And believe it or not, they were sat next to each other, AND NOT FIGHTING ;) )

    • Re:Heh jsut in time :) (Score:5, Informative)

      by DoctorPepper ( 92269 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:06PM (#4425144)
      Why is that a good thing? Hell, once you install a FreeBSD distribution, you never have to install another one on the same computer again (assuming you don't mess it up :-). Just point your cvsfile at the branch you wish (RELENG_4 in this case) and do a buildworld, and voila! You will have FreeBSD 4.7.

      • Re:Heh jsut in time :) (Score:3, Informative)

        by b0r1s ( 170449 )
        While I agree with most of what you said, I dislike tracking -stable.

        It's far better to track the latest release. Setting the tag to "RELENG_4_7_0" would allow you to grab the exact sources used to build the 4.7 cd, AND any security updates as they come out.

        Stable is fine, for home users, but some of the patches MFC'd aren't quite as stable as they should be for production equipment.

      • Its a bad thing cause it means more to download. I got home from the Expo, and a mate had already gotten hold of 4.7, so i had the cds. All i have to download now is updates as opposed to the whole cvs tree for 4.7.

        Oh and just so you know, i use openBSD extensivly so i know what im talking about and not just mumbling ;)

  • no java? who cares (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:13PM (#4425205)
    I love FreeBSD b/c of it's security and it's great ports system. I wish there was a linux distro on par with those two aspects of FreeBSD. But the one problem with FreeBSD for me?

    No native JDK 1.4.

    It's on linux, windows and solaris. The announcment of the license thingy with Sun came out 12/01 and I haven't heard anything yet.

  • Still no CARDBUS support yet? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fialar ( 1545 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:13PM (#4425209)
    How come FreeBSD has no cardbus support?
    That's the only thing keeping me from running it on my laptop.

    • Re:Still no CARDBUS support yet? (Score:5, Informative)

      by CoolVibe ( 11466 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:20PM (#4425272) Journal
      FreeBSD has cardbus support, but you'd have to dare to run the CURRENT branch. CURRENT is now having a big overall nouw ith the recent additions of the new KSE threading and GEOM, so I'd just wait for a bit until everything in CURRENT dampens out a bit.

      CURRENT is going to rock when it goes STABLE.

    • I don't understand. I've been using FreeBSD on a notebook since 2.x. Back then and with 3.x is was done with the PAO package, but that all got integrated into the kernel in 4.0.

      Of course, pretty much all you could use at the 4.0 point was 3Com network cards, but now most NICs work, SCSI cards work, I even have a SD adapter card working on FreeBSD 4.6-STABLE that worked on the first try without any tweaking.

      Suspend works fine, too. So I don't see any reason to not use FreeBSD on a notebook.

  • No thanks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:16PM (#4425227)
    I get lots of free BSD's already with Windows

  • BSD ? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AresTheImpaler ( 570208 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:32PM (#4425383)
    I want to try BSD... but have some questions before doing so. My computer has both win xp and linux. I am going to buy another hard disk to put freebsd. Can I boot bsd with grub? also... Can anyone please tell me why some people prefer bsd from linux? doesn't linux have more support? does unreal tournament run under bsd(I don't thinks so)? I'm a bsd newbie but been using linux for about 2 years. What differences would I find? thanks

    • Re:BSD ? (Score:2, Informative)

      by rplacd ( 123904 )
      FreeBSD boots fine with grub. FreeBSD also comes with its own bootloader; I believe that'll work with Linux (with root on ext2fs).

      I have a dual-boot system with FreeBSD -current and Debian Sarge; I have to use grub because my Sarge installation is on XFS.
    • As mentioned, GRUB does work w/Linux + FreeBSD; I do it at home.

      Reasons to try: ports system, easy way to upgrade every part of the core system (make world), everything being in the One True Location (/usr/local, of course...let the flames begin! :-). For some reason I find getting the login prompt back when I've typed in the wrong password *much* faster in FreeBSD compared to Linux. Weird.

      Just about all your fave. programs should be around in ports, so I don't think you'll miss too much. Oh, one weird thing I found: can't do...oh crap...what's the term for s00per-high resolution in text...framebuffer...arghh! Stupid head...anyway, can't do in in FreeBSD w/my graphic (don't ask me which one; as you can see, I'm no graphics geek), but it works just fine in Linux. I checked around at the time, and there was talk of source code hacks you could do to enable it, but I couldn't get it to work.

      Give it a try; one more OS shouldn't scare you at this point...:-) Oh, and check out www.freebsddiary.org [freebsddiary.org] for tips.

    • Can anyone please tell me why some people prefer bsd from linux?

      I'm ASTONISHED that nobody has answered this yet.

      BSDs get diehard fans for several reasons... For one thing, BSD init/rc scripts are SO much simler than SysV. In OpenBSD, 99% of the configuration of the whole system is done in a single rc.conf file, where you simly change a YES to a NO, or vise versa.

      The system is much more elegant & simple, has PnP, every kernel module ALWAYS works, programs don't conflict with each other, the filesystem is better, the security is better, the system is more stable, and on and on I could go. It's easier to just use it, than to write a book about why people like it...

      doesn't linux have more support? does unreal tournament run under bsd(I don't thinks so)?

      Your reason for not using BSD are the same reasons for not using Linux.

      Doesn't Windows have more support? Do Sim City, Black & White, and other Windows games run under Linux(I don't think so)?

  • The only problem... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sp4c3 C4d3t ( 607082 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:39PM (#4425445)
    I love FreeBSD. I would run it in place of Linux... but my Audigy doesn't work. And I don't have accelerated nvidia drivers (though I did read something about those coming to FreeBSD?). But the nvidia issue isn't important... I need sound, and that's all there is to it... and I refuse to use those payware drivers that apparently don't support the digital out on the card.

  • gcc 3? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ashish Kulkarni ( 454988 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:41PM (#4425465) Homepage
    just a curiosity...what is the reason that all the *BSDs are sticking to gcc2.95.x? I know that Linux has been using gcc3.2 for quite a bit of time now, and it can be considered somewhat stable.

    • There was a fairly long thread on the gcc devel mailing list about how gcc3.2 ICE's on a number of applications in the FreeBSD ports tree.

      Frankly, FreeBSD doesn't want a "somewhat stable" compiler. They want one that actually functions like it's supposed to :-)

      Dinivin

    • Re:gcc 3? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ozzmosis ( 99513 ) <ahze@ahze.net> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @02:05PM (#4425717) Homepage Journal
      Just the "stable" branch is sticking around with gcc2.95 the newer more cutting edge "current" branch has gcc3.2. And the reason behind this is gcc 3.2 isn't stable yet and gcc2.95 is and has been stable for quite some time.

      ahze@ahze(~) gcc --version
      gcc (GCC) 3.2.1 [FreeBSD] 20020901 (prerelease)

      ahze@ahze(~) uname -v
      FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT #34: Sun Sep 22 20:30:11 EDT 2002

    • Re:gcc 3? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Fweeky ( 41046 )
      Generally large scale software upgrades are avoided in a -STABLE branch. That means prefering to backport patches than upgrade to the latest and greatest (OpenSSH was somewhat of an exception because patches were not available at the time). Those who need to version chase can use ports and have a much greater choice and level of control over how things are set up and which versions to go for (gcc3, 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 are in ports, perl 5.6 and 5.8 too, as are latest OpenSSH, OpenSSH, sendmail, etc).

      This keeps cvs deltas down as imports are much more rare (hence making updates smaller) and helps keep only well tested and well known code in base.

    • Somewhat (Score:5, Funny)

      by Multiple Sanchez ( 16336 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @03:43PM (#4426677)
      "Your husband is somewhat dead."

      "Sir -- I got your daughter somewhat pregnant."

      I think you should reconsider your definition of "stable" somewhat.
    • Then wait till 5.0 comes out and use it. As far as I know FreeBSD current is the only Unix running gcc-3.2.1 [prerelease] and they just imported a new gcc snapshot a few days ago [or yesterday.... I forget].

      The only Unix I run on my PC right now is FreeBSD CURRENT which is only for the uber-geek or the person who doesn't care when stuff dies :). I am pretty impressed at 5.0's progress as of late. I can't wait till they get it more stable :)

    • Re:gcc 3? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Arandir ( 19206 )
      gcc-3.2 was released less than two months ago. gcc-2.1 was released less than five months ago. And gcc-3.0 was released not much longer than one year ago.

      How many -release- Linux distros can you name that were using gcc-3.2 even thirty days ago?

      Face it, gcc-3.2 has not been around "for quite a bit of time now". It is in their -current (unstable) branches, and if you wish to live on the cutting edge, feel free to use them. But two months is nowhere near the amount of time required to properly test the inclusion of a new compiler in a system with a reputation for stability.

  • Me hopes for support for my controller (Score:3, Informative)

    by Openadvocate ( 573093 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @02:53PM (#4426224)
    Ah, I hope it will support my promise Supertrak SX6000 RAID controller.
    hmm:
    The pst driver, [freebsd.org] for supporting Promise SuperTrak ATA RAID controllers, has been added.
    Sweet. There is hope, thank you Søren Schmidt.

    And ftp.freebsd.org is hosted by a local ISP, as well as the local mirror. Ah, I will have the disc in 40 minutes. yes.. Now if only I haven't drunk that bottle of wine for dinner, oh well. just makes installing that more fun.

  • FreeBSD rules! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Petronius ( 515525 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @03:00PM (#4426295)
    I started playing with it a week ago and now I'm thinking about abandonning RH for FreeBSD: so far, I've had nothing but good experiences with it:
    - all the stuff I like (bash, Python, Java, PostGres, webmin) is there
    - KDE is fast, very fast!
    - boot time is amazingly fast
    - the Ports system is *amazing*
    what's not to like about it?

    • Re:FreeBSD rules! (Score:3, Informative)

      by destiney ( 149922 )

      I started using FreeBSD a few days ago myself. I've used Linux for several years previously.

      The thing that amazed me most about FreeBSD was the speed and response time of the networking. FTP and Samba are near instantaneous in response time on my local network. I have all my mp3s and oggs on there and I play them in Winamp across the network. Previously it would take 5-7 seconds to start an mp3 up, but now since I switched to FreeBSD the startup time is 1-2 seconds.

      I don't know about other OS's but I installed my FreeBSD satrting off with just two floppies, now that is cool! Two hours later I had a complete system and never burned the first CD.

  • Best Feature of FreeBSD... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 11, 2002 @06:37AM (#4430890)
    is the documentation. Yes there's some excellent linux docs on the ldp site but for FreeBSD you can just consult the Handbook [freebsd.org] for everthing.

Slashdot Top Deals

One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.

Close