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BSD Operating Systems

FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Reviewed 510

Posted by michael from the other-white-meat dept.
ValourX writes "Here's a full review of FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE complete with screen shots, a short comparison with GNU/Linux, and some notes on migrating to FreeBSD from Windows and GNU/Linux."
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FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Reviewed More

FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE Reviewed

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  • FreeBSD always was one of the more favorite OS's for me to play with. Always strong, never unresponsive, even back in the day it always stood up for being an honest and robust system. Thanks to it's ports system, it was a breeze to keep going. I guess that's why I still keep my old FreeBSD 3.0 CD around here, for memories.

  • ~/.signature (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mad Marlin ( 96929 ) <cgore@cgore.com> on Friday October 17, 2003 @12:40PM (#7241407) Homepage
    This is a rather amusing e-mail signature I saw recently:

    Microsoft: Where do you want to go today?
    Linux: Where do you want to go tomorrow?
    FreeBSD: Are you guys coming or what?

  • The screen shots must have been carried off on a candle truck. I don't see them.

  • Keeping a FreeBSD system up to date is not simple, but it is easy and efficient and if it breaks it's able to be quickly fixed.

    umm... what? I read this and I think to myself "Arn't easy and simple synonyms?"

    • EASY:Capable of being accomplished or acquired with ease; posing no difficulty
    • SIMPLE:Having or composed of only one thing, element, or part

    Not exactly alike, but they are synonyms [reference.com]. Maybe it is saying that keeping FreeBSD up to date is not simple, but FreeBSD is efficient? Or maybe understand

    • I think what he was trying to say is "Keeping a FreeBSD system up to date takes several steps (cvsup, buildworld, buildkernel, installkernel, mergemaster, installworld), but none of the steps are difficult".

      Of course, that is somewhat contradicted by the mention, three paragraphs later, of a binary update system which is simple, easy, fast, secure, and uses less bandwidth than cvsup.

      For the record, FreeBSD Update does work on 5.1-RELEASE; but there aren't any binary patches being distributed because I don
      • I have a 1.4GHz athlon which is permanently connected to the 'net on a 34Mbps line (shared with a load of other people). I'll probably be upgrading it to 5.2, when it's released (it's running 4.8 at the moment), so if you still need a machine to compile on then, let me know.

        Or, alternatively, provide me with a good reason to upgrde to 5.1 :) (It's currently my main workstation, but when my PowerBook arives it will be relagated to running the odd app that won't work on OS X, so I'll care less about the oc

        • I've had several people offer me access to their boxes; but that really isn't useful. When people run FreeBSD Update, they're running blind -- there isn't any way for them to verify that I haven't inserted a trojan into the "updates" I publish.

          The updates are signed, of course -- with my public key -- but in order for that to be any use I have to be building the updates on a system which is secure. Using a system, to which I only have remote access, offered by someone I don't know, doesn't qualify as "se
    • I read this and I think to myself "Arn't easy and simple synonyms?"

      When describing computer systems, the two terms differentiate between ease-of-use and learning curve. A simple system has a low learning curve, and can be mastered quickly by a beginner. An easy but non-simple system has a lot to understand in order to use it properly, but is very easy to use for those who understand the necessary material.

      Using Debian's package management from command line would be an example of easy but non-simple uti
    • I look at the difference this way. Let's say you're being punished in school, and you have to write out, "I will not play God." 1,000 times on the chalkboard.

      This is not easy, but is IS simple. As in, not complex.

      Or, you could be writing some bit of RegEx code to do some pattern-matching. Some would say this is complex, though easy. (miss a character, you're farked)

      That's why I see the two words as quite different. :)
    • Isn't this a case of desperately wanting to be pedantic, checking your facts, discovering you're wrong, and trying to make your point ANYWAY?

      What you've demonstrated is that the writer has correctly made the fine distinction between SIMPLE ("being composed of one part" -- perhaps an overly neat definition, but let's allow it) and EASY.
    • umm... what? I read this and I think to myself "Arn't easy and simple synonyms?"

      Eh, I'm thinking of art. A lot of great art is very simple, but certainly not easy.

  • Not only does he persist in calling Linux "GNU/Linux" (Stallman's attempt to hijack Linus' bandwagon) and use the term "Free Software" (with caps, indicating a bias), but he knocks FreeBSD for what is one of its greatest strengths: its truly free and ethical licensing. It'd be nice to see a review that lacks this strong bias.
  • Old news! ... and its a technical release still. THe ports are REAALL broken.

  • Torrents for the two CDs [scarywater.net] and mini-install [scarywater.net].
  • Nice review. Non-FreeBSD users can get a feel for where FreeBSD is in the FreeBSD 5.1 i386 Release Notes [freebsd.org]

    Ciaran O'Riordan
  • Does it include Java? I see the lack of Java on FreeBSD has been a major oversight by the core FreeBSD team. The primary focus of FreeBSD has been the server-side and these days Java is a big part of what makes a server useful. Recently a binary distribution of Java 1.3.1 was released for FreeBSD, but I see no mention of it with the 5.1 distribution.

    What is the status of Java on FreeBSD? Should I just switch over to MacOS X or Linux if I want a current Java runtime? Questions about Java have come up f
    • Java JVMs are a port, like most software on FreeBSD. Java is a little unusual in that the port cannot fetch the source tarballs directly due to licensing restricitons, so when you cd to /usr/ports/java/jdk13 and do a "make install" it will tell you what page to go to in order to download the sources and patches.

      The ports tree actually contains several different JVMs for you to choose from, including Sun JDK1.1 to JDK1.4, Blackdown JDK 1.2 to 1.4 (and JRE 1.1) -- but it runs under the linuxulator, the L
    • There is a binary release of JRE/JDK 1.3 for FreeBSD, and a native, but not release quality version of 1.4. It will also run any of the Linux native versions. The new n:m threading code in 5.2 should make Java (which uses thread a lot) faster.

    • Re:Java? (Score:5, Informative)

      by __past__ ( 542467 ) on Friday October 17, 2003 @03:42PM (#7243762)
      I agree that the situation sucks (or at least sucked until very recently), but it's hardly an oversight of the FreeBSD people. In fact, there has been a Java-on-FreeBSD project for some time. They have managed to port the Sun VM to FreeBSD a long time ago, but weren't permitted to distribute it - i.e. you as a mere user could use it, but you'd have to install the linux version first, then get the source of the linux version under NDA from Sun, then get a patchset, then compile it; distributing binary packages would have been illegal.

      The good news is that now there is an official, redistributable, native Sun Java VM port, at least for FreeBSD 4 (of course, you have to download it from the FreeBSD site, not Sun's, FreeBSD isn't part of the "A" in "WORA"). It has finally passed Sun's test suite, which it didn't earlier mostly because nobody could pay Sun enough money to run it. It was too late for 5.1, and there was still a minor issue IIRC, but I'd expect it to be in 5.2.

      Bottom line:

      • Java has worked fine on FreeBSD for ages
      • Installing it has been a pain, isn't anymore
      • Using proprietary technology tightly controlled by company with stupid, but influencial marketing department to develop free software is not a good idea.

  • "...is not simple, but it is easy..." (Score:3, Funny)

    by sjonke ( 457707 ) on Friday October 17, 2003 @12:56PM (#7241574) Journal
    Updating is "not simple, but it is easy"

    In addition FreeBSD is not convoluted, but it is complicated. It is not slow, but it is lethargic. Lastly, it is not painful, but it is agonizing.
  • Those frisky BSD users, always giving linux a hard time. Maybe they should just remove linux compatibility if the GPL is so evil. :P

    funny link [thejemreport.com]

  • FreeBSD handles resources more efficiently than GNU/Linux to the point that I can compile two programs at once, listen to MP3s and work on my website all at the same time without any significant slowdown. On the same computer using Gentoo or RedHat with either the 2.4 or 2.6 kernel, the system slows to a crawl under the same conditions. And comparing the speed and efficiency of FreeBSD to Windows is like comparing a cheetah to an armadillo.

    This is a massive fallacy if ever I've heard one. On my Gentoo sy

    • >
      I think Gentoo's ports system is more robust than BSD's

      Why?

    • This is a massive fallacy if ever I've heard one. On my Gentoo system, a 1.3 GHz Duron (which far from even mid-end these days), I'm running Gnome 2.4 (bloated as it is), chatting with friends in Gaim, compiling kde-libs/k3b and The Gimp in my F1/F2 terminals, browsing the Web in Firebird, reading email in Evolution, while another xnested Gnome session sits in the background burning a CD image from an NFS mount (too lazy to add my user to the cd-recording group, sue me) in gcombust and a Windows server at w

      • A strawman strawpoll. How interrrresting.

        I've never run across this sort of FreeBSD user. And when I have heard people constrasting FreeBSD with Linux, the subject usually turns on the impression that the FreeBSD development path is somewhat more controlled than the pell mell evolution of Linux.

        I've already sensed the message from Linus that post 2.6 kernel, the pell mell phase of Linux kernel evolution will end. He thinks future work will largely be driven by the needs of supporting advanced hardware.
        • Actually on most #freebsd channels and most FreeBSD advocates do state "Linux sucks/ Linux is unstable" etc.

          Now as for this statement : With Linux, I find myself checking google a lot more often to make sure I'm not wasting time configuring some subsystem already slated for obsolescence.

          Can u give me an example where you searched on google for a subsystem on a fairly recent distro to see if it was slated for obsolescence ?

          Personally I consider myself lucky that there is LInux and there is FreeBSD.
      • Now, I am seeing FreeBSD users jumping on the SCO bandwagon and claiming the GPL is bad, and the BSD License is the only way to go


        FreeBSD users claimed GPL was bad for ages. It's irrelevant to SCO. BTW SCO's does not care about GPL, they try to take over Linux for allegedly stolen code.

        You are trying to smear BSD using SCO. Why? Are you envious?

    • I guess that has me beat. But still, I was showing my Mac Wheenie friend my system and I was browsing the web, downloading a .MOV onto my dad's computer by way of my computer using Samba, compiling my kernel, watching TV (I cheated -- I used overlay), and playing Oggs at the same time in GNOME 2.2. My system is about the same as yours: Athlon 1.33GHz, 256MB RAM. Considering that his PowerPC is ten years old and will never run MacOS > 9.1 and the printer driver requires an animal sacrifice to keep it f
    • ...I'm running Gnome 2.4 (bloated as it is)...

      Ummm, so how do you know it's bloated? And, compared to what? Have you measured the code size and memory use and determined what other software can provide the same functionality with fewer bytes?

      Or, are you just mouthing something cool you heard some other dweeb say?
      • Please, stop being a trolling dipshit.

        Gnome has many additional layers of abstraction, and you know it. I'm talking about things like the Bonobo activation server, gconfd, gnome-settings-daemon, and all sorts of other processes that consume system resources and slow things down for the purpose of ease of development and maintenance.

        Compared to XFce4, CDE, Fluxbox, Openbox, WindowMaker, IceWM, or any of the countless other window managers I've tried, I'd say Gnome is pretty heavy.
    • Put in a gigabit nic (it had better be a good one - the intel ones are quite good) in your Gentoo box & tell me if you can saturate the link (full duplex) using a bidirectional load - here's a hint: you had better make sure that the loading/receiving box on the other end of this test is FreeBSD, because Linux can't do it.

      Yes, Linux is easier to use, and Linux's multiprocessor support is better - I could go on & on about features & performance that Linux provides that FreeBSD doesn't. However

      • What would be the point of putting in a 32-bit, 33 MHz gigabit NIC? The PCI bus itself couldn't saturate it, much less Linux. Do they even make those? But alas, I'm nitpicking and avoiding the real issue. :)

        I absolutely agree, the BSD networking stack has been the de facto standard of TCP/IP for years, proven by the fact that even Microsoft jacked it for the TCP/IP implementation in Windows NT. But seeing as how Linux was built from the ground-up as a desktop Unix[-like] OS, it makes sense that I would be
  • I find it interesting how the so-called "experts" on Slashdot judge an entire Operating System by a screenshot of a window manager that incidentally is not part of said Operating System.

    You could turn that around and say Linux is crap, because GNOME and KDE look too much like Windows...

    Sheesh, people, get your facts straight.
  • Slightly off topic, but...does anybody know off hand if any of the BSD's support parallel port CD-RWs? I have an older laptop that doesn't have a CD-I managed to shoehorn a small Linux distro on but I'd like to look at using a BSD. Older desktops always seemed to be a bit snappier under BSD than Linux, and the only thing holding me back is whether or not my Microsolutions parallel port CD-RW would be supported.
  • RMS is going to shit a brick when he catches wind of this article's author repeatedly referring to FreeBSD as "Free Software". And even has a hyperlink, in one of these instances, pointing to GNU.org.

    Purposeful trolling by the author?

  • Indirect slashdotting in action... (Score:3, Offtopic)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Friday October 17, 2003 @01:14PM (#7241729) Homepage
    I've never had the honour (pain?) of being directly slashdotted, but I seem to be getting an indirect slashdotting. From the link in the middle of the article (to a very handy utility in development [daemonology.net] for performing binary security updates) I'm seeing a couple visitors per second.
  • OK, so I'm new to all this BSD stuff. Skimming the page for the promised screenies I saw this image [thejemreport.com] that says "WARNING: kernel contains GPL contaminated ext2fs filesystem." Am I missing something? Is this that "BSD is free-er than thou" I've heard about?
    • Everything in the BSD kernel is supposed to be BSD licensed. If you put things like ext2 (GPL) or HFS+ (AFPL) support in it, then it will warn you. this may be important to you, or it may not. It simply exists to tell you that you are using parts which deviate from the standard license for the kernel. The word `contaminated' may be a bit charged, but the information is important (to some people, at least).
    • The warning is to prevent companies from accidentally getting GPL code in something they plan to modify and release for profit. The FreeBSD kernel in the screenshot will be contaminated by GPL and it's viral properties, which means it cannot be used without abiding by the terms of the GPL.

      FreeBSD does have lots of GPL code in the (optional) userland tools, although the system tools (cp, mount, etc...) are BSD licensed. This allows you to use FreeBSD on a desktop PC (with Gnome) or in a router [juniper.net]. Compan

  • Why the author thinks web fora are better than mailing list is a mistery to me. None of the reasons he gave sticks, and I actually find them a pain. With a mailing list I can always use Gmane to get a nice news interface!

  • What the hell is he talking about? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mark Bainter ( 2222 ) on Friday October 17, 2003 @01:27PM (#7241912)
    The reason why this is a three-step process is to make the updating procedure more reliable and easier to fix. Having survived the nightmare of Gentoo Linux's always fatally broken and never easily fixed portage system, I can tell you that "ease of use" means "difficult to fix" because it doesn't allow the user to control the process.

    Ok...I can agree with the underlying concept (ease of use can mean difficult to fix). I don't see this in the portage tree however. Hell, it's all just text files. And "always fatally broken"? Huh? I've been using Gentoo since the early releases and I have not experienced the portage system being "always fatally broken". Hell, you wouldn't even be able to install gentoo if that was true.

    How about a little less hyperbole and a little more specific and accurate facts? I've only known of a couple of instances where things got really messed up, and that was because of screwups in releases. And unless you were one of those people who felt the need to update everything all the time every time a new release came out you didn't even get bit by it.

    I've seen APT and Portage choke on dependancies with no obvious way to fix them,

    Again, huh? If you're having troubles with dependancies within portage not working then you need to get a better understanding of how portage works. You can't blame your ignorance on the tool.

    and anyone who has ever tried to use a third-party RPM knows what a disaster that can be.

    yes. Emphasis on /can/ be. RPM isn't unusable, but it is unusable for some purposes. And the workstation of any linux user who installs something other than what their distro releases is not it. ;-) And even then, a workstation install can be unpleasant. However, if you're running a typical internet server system redhat's setup can serve just fine. Not only do you not need the latest cutting edge releases, you don't really even want them. Works fine then as long as you stay within the lines.

    FreeBSD is, if nothing else, a nice respite from the various GNU/Linux package management systems.

    You know. I have nothing against BSD. I'm not an avid lover/user of BSD, but I have installed it on several occaisions and played with it. It's a nice OS. I prefer linux cause I like the faster pace and the more ...gritty...(for lack of a better term) feel to it. People are /doing/ things in linux. People from all walks and of all levels of skill. BSD doesn't (imo) seem to lend itself to that. It's always seemed to me that BSD considered itself destined for the elite, while linux was an OS for the great unwashed as well.

    My impression could very well be inaccurate, as it's based mostly on things I read in mailing lists and from people I've met who /are/ avid BSD fans/users. (Few, if any, of which actually meet the "Elite" definition, but they sure felt and acted like they did. Which imo is why BSD tends to attract people like that. But I digress.)

    Bottom line, both are great OSes. Why is it that this has to be us /or/ them. Why can't it be both? Is there some unwritten rule that one OS has to be cool and vibrant and the other has to be lame and dying?

    I think the writer does BSD a disservice. The article makes it look like BSD defines itself by the shortcomings of some linux distributions (ignoring the fact that most of those "shortcomings" are hot air). BSD has enough positive things in and of itself that I highly doubt it needs to poke holes in linux or try to make linux look bad as a means of promoting itself.

    Don't rag on linux and tell me linux sucks so I should use BSD. Tell me what's great about BSD. I already know windows and linux's shortcomings. Tell me what's great about BSD and I'll make my own comparisons, thank you very much.

    </soap box>


    • /jesus/ do /you/ know /how/ annoying /that/ is /?/

    • A very defensive article (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Merk ( 25521 ) on Friday October 17, 2003 @03:22PM (#7243503) Homepage

      The first thing I noticed was that when they describe the license, they talk about how Free it is, but don't mention the crucial difference between the GPL and BSD licenses: your option to not release the source when you include the code in another programs.

      The next comment that caught my eye was "The installer is fairly intuitive and informative, and everything works perfectly as far as I can tell -- I've installed FreeBSD about a dozen times." If you've installed FreeBSD that many times, of course it will seem intuitive and informative. I've heard the install process is much more Debian-like than say RedHat like. More information on that would really have been helpful.

      When he talked about the boot process he said: "The FreeBSD bootloader, while simple and unable to be manually configured, is one of the best I've seen." He makes a good point that this means that no reconfiguration is needed when a new bootable partition is added... but "unable to be manually configured"? Does this mean you can't set a default OS to load? You can't set a default timeout? Seems odd to me, and needs more explanation for that comment.

      The potshots at Debian, Gentoo and RedHat's respective package management systems are not backed up at all, and don't match my experience in the slightest.

      Finally, at the end, there's the bit about 'ee' beint better than 'vi', but no discussion about what 'ee' is or why it is better than a very standard editor that's on every Unix in the world. (I'm an emacs guy myself but I happily fall back to vi when appropriate). He also says a lot of other FreeBSD tools are better than their Linux equivalents, but without so much as a single reason why.

      I'd love to hear an article on a BSD saying what the differences really are, why the author prefers one version to another, etc. This one seems, at times, to be a review, but it isn't a review from someone who seems to have given both Linux and FreeBSD a chance.

      At least it was enough for me to decide that FreeBSD isn't for me. I'm lazy, I admit it. I do certain things often enough that I want them to be simple. I prefer 'make xconfig' over manually editing a file to customize my kernel. I prefer a one-step package management command to a multi-step one. Sure, I'm familliar with CVS, and it's nice to know that's what you're doing with the BSDs, but I install and remove packages often enough that if I can save a few keystrokes every time, that will add up. FreeBSD sounds like it might make a better choice for an ultra-stable server which only ever has to be upgraded. If you're doing the maintenance over SSH anyway, configuring by editing files rather than a GUI is the way to go. But for a desktop system, Linux seems to be the better choice for me.

      • Does this mean you can't set a default OS to load? You can't set a default timeout? Seems odd to me, and needs more explanation for that comment.

        What the poster should have written, is that the bootloader does not _need_ to be manually configured. By editing /etc/loader.conf, you can specify default OS, boot loader timeouts, and anything else your heart desires.

        As for the article, the author is clearly inexperienced. He used the deprecated kernel compile process instead of the current system.

        Finally,

    • And "always fatally broken"? Huh? I've been using Gentoo since the early releases and I have not experienced the portage system being "always fatally broken". Hell, you wouldn't even be able to install gentoo if that was true.

      I have had plenty of problems with Gentoo myself. It has a lot of weirdness to it that I really hate...

      For some programs, I try to install them, but the fact that a few of the newest versions are marked as unstable, prevents it from installing any version at all (without user inte

      • Gentoo/Portage:

        I'm not saying Gentoo doesn't have it's blemishes. It's certainly not perfect. Nor am I saying it's crazy to say you have problems with it. I just take issue with his hyperbole.

        When I say learn portage better, I don't mean read the code necessarily. I mean read the man page. My reading of the article leads me to believe the author really didn't take the time to learn what he was doing with Gentoo, and thus had problems with using it.

        Off topic a bit, I'm not sure why you think a bro

  • The supposed FreeBSD vs GNU/linux competition is one of the strangest things I've seen.

    I use both. And, the reason for using one rather than the other isn't that crucial. I would be perfectly willing to use either for everything. It is just that I don't have to. So, I use FreeBSD for server stuff with standard hardware, and I use linux when I want to support more up-to-date hardware.

    Best wishes,
    Bob

  • The development process is democratic; a team of between two and three hundred Committers elects a Core Team of nine people to make all the important decisions. The Core Team acts as a sort of "board of directors" to the Committers, all of which have the ability to modify the source code. This model differs greatly from that of GNU/Linux, which is divided into the GNU Project development and the Linux kernel development, both of which are ultimately headed by only a few all-powerful decision-makers.

    a "few

  • The last time I compiled 5.1-CURRENT (a couple of days ago) the system paniced on boot. Maybe we should wait until 5.2...
  • I'm trying to grab the iso on dialup (no broadband around these parts)and I ^C'ed it so I could load slashdot.

    At any rate, I should have it, and my review, sometime around thanksgiving.
  • and FreeBSD is not "GNU/FreeBSD"? Don't they each supply a kernel with a bunch of GNU software piled on to make up a complete OS? Or does FreeBSD not use basically the same system software as Linux?
    • Linus wrote the kernel, unsatisfied with Minix and its licensing restrictions, and really wanting to become a tinkerer. He never really cared about userland and he took the freely available GNU tools and got his kernel running. Because a huge part (essentially all) of the early Linux userland was GNU tools, RMS felt that the FSF was justified for taking part credit for Linux. When Stallman first proposed GNU/Linux, Linus thought he was talking about Debian Linux, which was at that time the most FSF frie

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