FreeBSD 7.2 Released 204
An anonymous reader writes "The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE. This is the third release from the 7-STABLE branch which improves on the functionality of FreeBSD 7.1 and introduces some new features. Some of the highlights: Support for fully transparent use of superpages for application memory; Support for multiple IPv4 and IPv6 addresses for jails; csup(1) now supports CVSMode to fetch a complete CVS repository; Gnome updated to 2.26, KDE updated to 4.2.2; Sparc64 now supports UltraSparc-III processors. For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the online release notes and errata list."
Adds another anonymous reader, "You can grab the latest version from FreeBSD from the mirrors or via BitTorrent. There is also a quick review of the new features and upgrade instructions."
I really wish BSD would take off. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I really wish BSD would take off. (Score:3, Insightful)
Haiku / BeOS (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yaaaaay! (Score:1, Insightful)
I don't get it either. As if I'd want FreeBSD to be a desktop OS.
Desktop OS's are supposed to be ready for the desktop. Not FreeBSD.
Re:Yaaaaay! (Score:5, Insightful)
And in rare cases when you need a rare obscure feature, it will not be compiled in, leaving you to play a bit with debuild and stuff. That sucks, too.
However, binary packages are much convinient in many cases. I've been using FreeBSD with ports before, and now I'm using Gentoo with portage (which is inspired by FreeBSD's ports) and I'm happy to turn optional features as I like, but I miss a lot of things from binary distros like Debian -- speed of installation, some assurance that the package will work, less work on my part to get it working, etc. To get the source, change a few switches and create your own deb isn't such a deal if you have to do it for only several packages. I did this on Nexenta OpenSolaris installation recently, and I say it's easier than maintaining a Gentoo installation.
And the unneeded features aren't such a big deal, really. I've run Debian on slow low-end devices, and it runs fine, they take a bit more space and the memory usage somewhat grows, but on a modern system that shouldn't be a problem at all -- it is offset by the lack of ports tree, the need for installed compiler and headers, and the faster installation. Debian developers also splits some optional features as seperate packages, where it is possible. And you never know when you actually might need these optional features.
So ports have their pros and cons, I really liked them when I had to play with them, but as I'm lazy I would choose something apt-get-style now. Debian GNU/kFreeBSD is a nice choice if you want apt-get, FreeBSD kernel. I'm not sure if they have working ZFS and DTrace support at the moment, but it's still worth checking out.
One of the main reasons I would choose FreeBSD at the moment is ZFS. And there is very low probability that we'll see this in Linux.
Re:Includes ZFS and DTrace production ready ! (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with ZFS on OpenSolaris i386 is that ZFS is very heavy on 64-bit arithmetic. The only way of doing this on x86 is to store the 64-bit value across two registers, meaning that each calculation uses 4 registers in total, dramatically increasing register churn. This makes performance suck.
The problem on FreeBSD is that the adaptive replacement cache runs out of memory and the kernel panics. This is a much, much more serious problem. I'll take slow-but-working over crashes-and-loses-data any day.
Still, I'm looking forward to 8 RELEASE if it includes ZFS v13 and the improvements to the sound subsystem (per-vchan volume, faster mixing, and so on).
Re:I really wish BSD would take off. (Score:0, Insightful)
Ohh that's clever but BSD is much better in the server than linux is
It's funny that I still hear things like this.
People, Linux surpassed FreeBSD years ago. FreeBSD 5.0 lost the race to Linux 2.6. The amount of industry support of Linux (measured in number of programmers and lines of code) is huge, compared with it FreeBSD is tiny, so there's no much FreeBSD can do to catch up. If you check the list of changes of the latest FreeBSD versions, many of the changes are things already found in Linux and other operative systems (oooh, UFS journaling!). The one killer feature of FreeBSD these days is ZFS and Dtrace, which are only encouraging freebsd users to switch to the real opensolaris...
Re:Jails (Score:5, Insightful)
And in the same vein, they are inadequate because all instances share a kernel.
And are significantly faster (on our workload) and more efficient for the same reason. Since all jails pull from the same heap, you don't have to worry about under- or over-allocating RAM to an instance. You also don't have to contend with multiple kernels all trying to do bookkeeping many hundreds of times per second.
Jails obviously aren't the right tool for every job, but when they suit your needs, they're outstanding.
Re:FBSD on the desktop . . . (Score:1, Insightful)
I have the Linux version of Flash 9 installed and it does a good job.
But what are you trying to say with this stupid stick shift comparision? That even a half-brained monkey is capable of using it? Automatic is not that common outside the USA. Like in the countries where they still build cars.
Re:just my two cents (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you aware that Linux 2.6.3 is 5 years old? Linux increased the default group limit in the following release, 2.6.4, to 65536 [kernel.org]
I absolutely love this argument that "linux is better" because one constant in the kernel is bigger in the linux kernel (thus also causing certain kernel data structures to be necessarily larger) than on FreeBSD, neither are runtime configurable, both can be changed at kernel build time, and the common case is that a user belongs to well under 65K groups. I concede, linux has won the day, and is the One UNIX-like System To Rule Them All.
Three UNIX-like Systems for the mainframe users under the sky,
Seven for the RISC lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Open Source projects doomed to die,
One for the Penguin Lord on his dark throne,
In the land of Helsinki where the Penguins lie.
One UNIX-like System to rule them all, one UNIX-like system to find them,
One UNIX-like System to bring them all, and in the GPL legally bind them
In the land of Helsinki where the Penguins lie.
That is, until some pesky meddling halfling tosses it back into the fiery chasm from whence it came.
Re:Yaaaaay! (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe you could have read his post instead of imagining what it was and then commenting that he is wrong.
What, and sully such a longstanding /. tradition?
Besides, that also means that one would actually have to think and respond to certain facts and logical arguments put forth by another person. Such tedium!
He was talking about PC-BSD, a FreeBSD-based distro designed for desktop use. Since it has many pre-built packages and a GUI front-end for ports, it is actually quite a usable desktop distro. Pretty much about as easy as Ubuntu. I normally prefer linux because of hardware compatibility, so I usually use Ubuntu as my desktop and debian or Ubuntu-server for servers, but PC-BSD is pretty nice.
Not only a GUI front-end for ports, but also an entire package system using ".PBI" packages (sort of like ".deb" packages in Debian Linux, only with less dependency-hell) for click-to-install behavior closely resembling that of Windows software installation packages. You can use both systems to install and remove software along with all the various CLI port-managers, not either-or, so another bonus.
I must also say that the PC-BSD system installer works great and is far faster and friendlier/informative/easier to use than the Windows system installer. PC-BSD (and FreeBSD itself) has made tremendous progress as far as hardware compatibility/drivers/kernel modules and supports most anything Ubuntu does. There's also Java and Flash Player support, so one can browse/watch YouTube videos and use most webpage-embedded Java apps.
If you're tired of Ubuntu and/or want or need a desktop OS with the features, software, security, and power of a more Unix-like system than Linux then PC-BSD may be for you.
Definitely worth trying, IMHO.
Strat