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BSD Operating Systems

FreeBSD 3.2-Release is out 93

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-play-with dept.
Kenny_Dope writes "FreeBSD 3.2-Release is now available at the usual FTPs (ftp.freebsd.org , and mirrors) with lots of cool new features. go get it now! ( taken from freebsdrocks.com " You BSDies know what to do.
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FreeBSD 3.2-Release is out More

FreeBSD 3.2-Release is out

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  • SMP support? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I use FreeBSD on several boxes, and really love it. I recommend it over Linux for high-traffic web serving all of the time (although I have yet to throw a ton of traffic at a Linux 2.2 box).

    I have never tried SMP with FreeBSD, though. I have a client who wants to know what OS to put on their new SMP box, and I've heard great things about SMP in Linux 2.2 from everyone (including Intel).

    How does FreeBSD compare in this srea?

    Congrats to the FreeBSD team on their new release!

  • Oracle support? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How's FreeBSD's Oracle support? I don't need to run Oracle server on it, but I need an Oracle client for connecting to the backend server.
  • FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD all would have performed nearly the same. Its just a matter of preference. Linux is HARDLY a "slow" webserver.

    Well have a look to what a FreeBSD developer says about Linux VM [backplane.com]. Very clean, but not designed to survive under high load. Face it, the FreeBSD people focus on performance, and FreeBSD might well be faster than Linux for high load.
    Now the same couldn't be necessary be said for NetBSD and OpenBSD.

  • NetBSD is for development... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    - not only. I'm really dissapointed to read this here. Or should I've expected that? Hmmm, not sure...

    NetBSD is very fine for production servers: http, ftp, smtp/[a]pop*, irc, nntp, dns, dhcp/bootp, nfs, samba, routing, traffic analysis, firewalling/NAT, quake* :-), etc. - I've done all this in the past and was absolutly [satisfied..impressed] with NetBSD's performace/features. - Stability doesn't impress me, I *expect* an OS to be stable - at least more stable than the hardware it runs on.

    (Oh, and I use NetBSD exclusivly on my Desktop(s) as well) In short: NetBSD a Un*x style allround operating system for more than everything a Un*x style Operating system can do.


    And of course it's absolutly *not* insecure:
    The advantage of OpenBSD is the integrated *cryptography* since it's Canada-based (stupid and senseless US export restricions, we all know that).

    OpenBSD itself is *not* more secure ("crashable or crackable") than NetBSD: Known bugs are fixed nearly immediatly for *every* kind of *BSD and the linux kernel and it's stupid to say the the number of unknown bugs is less in OpenBSD than in NetBSD or FreeBSD. Don't pay much on OpenBSD's "code auditing". We all know it's stupid to say "we have looked at the code, fixed bugs and now it's secure" - if this has worked you shouldn't be able to see any OpenBSD related bugfix in the last years (you must be blind, if you don't).

    No doubt: OpenBSD is a fine OS, but it's FUD to say: "OpenBSD is secure and NetBSD is for developement".

    (Well, I know that a *small* part of the OpenBSD developers and users have become experts on FUDing NetBSD (and FreeBSD sometimes). That's why I'm posting anonymously: I just don't want to get mailbombed by Theo search the FreeBSD and NetBSD mailliglists if you don't know what I mean.)

    Oh, and NetBSD has a FreeBSD-style "ports collection" for over a year now as well. It's just called "packages" since the term "ports" is used to refer the many platforms NetBSD runs on (eg. NetBSD/arm32 is a "port of NetBSD to the ARM processor").

    Fight FUD!

    Thank you for your attention.
  • Certainly - I recently needed to revive an old
    IBM ThinkPad with a random PCMCIA NIC (10mbit).
    The installation floppy instantly detected the
    card, and installing over the network took no
    more than 5 minutes - very painless installation.
    The kernel supports all kinds of PCMCIA devices,
    and there's usually little or no configuration needed.
  • Figures.. I just picked up the 3.1 CD set a week or so ago. :P

    Oh well.. I know I can cvsup it fairly easily, but it's still worth it just to get the official CD set. FreeBSD is so excellent that I wouldn't even hesitate to buy an official version when presented with the opportunity.

  • Sounds fine to me. Just like Linuxies or Solarisies.
  • Posted by d106ene5:

    You're right - PCMCIA support still isn't really there. Linux is marginally better for laptop support.
  • Posted by JPerlow:

    Free UnixWare 7.1 [sco.com], 50 bucks for the media/manual kits, license is free to students, academics, home users and demo purposes.

    and check out the SCO Skunkware site for open source UnixWare 7.1 tools and popular ports of Linux and FreeBSD programs, like KDE.

    Deinitely worth a look if you want a rock solid, ultrascalable UNIX (this one is SVR5 with a 64-bit filesystem, RAID, SMP and clustering support, pentium and even Merced optimized, works on lots and lots of hardware, X server works on tons and tons of cards). Administration and configuration is easier than any unix out there with SCO's graphical SCOadmin.

  • FreeBSD is too big, and it changes too fast for a single "changelog" file to really cover it all. If the summary of changes in the release notes isn't detailed enough for you, the next stop is the CVS commit logs. Everything is there, albeit not necessarily in a format that's the easiest to recover.
  • I haven't seen a "real" UNIX shop that laughs people out for using emacs... I rarely have seen one where many people use vi....
  • Not to start distro wars, but slackware doesnt seem to put much emphasis on ease of administration compared to other Linuxes. If you're going to compare, look at SuSE or RedHat or Debian (possibly PHT, but I know nothing about that distro)
  • I can't believe that he wouldn't be even more productive in emacs though... :)
  • Actually it is difficult if you have to guess about parts of your hardware. I have a bunch of crap that I got from various sources, most of which is still a mystery (my NE2000 clone card cost me $2). I used a RedHat 5.2 install to gather information about it, and then went on to a FreeBSD 3.1 install. Of course, I'm back on RedHat for the moment, but I'm going to try 3.2..
  • People get it now, I think. You like a FreeBSD feature? Port it to Linux. You think a Linux app rocks? Run it under BSD. The lines are blurring between distros and UNIX in general.

    The only question in your choice these days is exactly what you want out of your OS. Claiming one is better or the best isn't productive and usually isn't valid to other people.

    FreeBSD rocks. Linux rocks. NT, well, it runs.
  • I prefer "Daemonic Hordes" myself.
  • I don't see why there needs to be any degenerate threads. I use Debian linux myself, and tried FreeBSD once. It was different, but worked, until I messed up /bin/sh on the P60 I had it running. I never bothered to fix the problem, but I still never saw a reason to blast *BSD

    So don't believe that all linux users thing *BSD sucks.
  • FreeBSD SMP has been great lately, the 3.2 release incorperates many new optimizations for faster SMP performance.

    I can't say for sure how it benches against Linux, however FreeBSD's stability and speed always keeps me impressed.

    Although it has more RAID support, Linux just doesn't cut it for *me* in terms of easy upgrades, scalibility and stability.
  • on my 4.0 system with dual 400-PII i get about a 55 minute buildworld using -O3 -mpentium and no shortcuts. I was wondering how your box does?

    Other noted configuration: 256ram, 9gig 2940UWscsi

    Just curious...
  • I suspect there could be something like a trekkie/trekker war if pushed far enough. At first BSDies didn't sound right (it's still kinda "raw" in my mouth). Has anyone ever thought of BSDeities? :-)
  • There are quite a few of us.
  • I can run BSD on all those but the PalmPilot and since I don't have one, it doesn't matter.
  • GPL isn't communist. It's just a license to keep linux open. Redhat and caldera sell linux distros. They make money
  • ...and it runs like a charm. 3.1-RELEASE was perhaps a bit too early, but this one seems to be great.

    Now if I only could convince my boss to give FreeBSD a shot. He stares at his penguin all day long, and doesn't want to hear a thing about *BSD. Too bad. He should at least try FreeBSD before forming an opinion. Maybe in the future...

    Intosi

    Intosi

  • It's big, alright. I just ran du -sk /usr/obj and it returned 175762. The result of a single make buildworld. CVSup only ran half an hour to update me from 3.1-RELEASE to 3.2-STABLE on a 33k6 connection, though. That's not too much.

    Intosi

    Intosi

  • I hate to kill your dream, but I do not find UnixWare (and SCO in general) easier to administer and configure. The graphical interface might be nice for dummies, but not for Real Admins[tm]. I almost never actually see (or are in a 5 mile radius) the servers I installed for customers. And we all know how slow X over the Internet can be. Ever tried to alter the configuration by hand on an SCO?

    Intosi

  • Comparing Emacs to Pico is kinda funny. And totally spurious.

    I do understand that vi ships with virtually every system. I do know the basics but still find it purile and unneccesarily difficult. I mean, Emacs is no piece of cake, but at least there's no arbitrary difference between entering text and entering commands. (Basically Emacs is in command mode all the time, and keystrokes are mini-commands.)

    This is not intended to start a stupid vi-vs-emacs flame war. I just wanted to point out that lumping pico in with emacs is pretty laughable.

  • I recently tried to install FreeBSD 3.1 on my laptop over my PCMCIA ethernet card. Then I found out my card, although not an uncommon model, was not supported in the stock install disks. Anyway, long story short, I finally got pointed to some folks in Japan who made a set of patches called PAO to support a wide variety of PCMCIA cards...

    Only I still had problems. I got the system installed, but getting it to see my card after the first bootup was a nightmare. And I was not really equipped to patch and compile a kernel. Not to mention the fact that FreeBSD does not ship with Emacs and I haven't the foggiest idea how to use vi.

    My question is, when is this vital laptop support going to be rolled into FreeBSD itself?

    In the meantime, I'm quite happy with Linux. I just installed RedHat 6.0 on the same laptop, and everything was flawless... both the network interface and sound and everything was instantly recognized.

    This isn't a complaint, really. It's a question.

  • So you want degenerative threads to illustrate your innate superiority or something?

    How about this: cvsup it and enjoy it and live life outside your choice of OS.
  • I didn't see anything like "Changelog" jump out at me on freebsd.org or on freebsdrocks. I'm not a hordling (though my name *is* Chuck) but I'm still curious about it.
  • I found 3.1 ISO's on one of the german ftp mirror... ftp7, I think... check that out...
  • What do you mean, beta release? It's a full release, and there's nothing beta about it. The announcements page is usually the last to get updated. You can get all the info you need from the freebsd-announce list and from the docs on the ftp sites.

    -lx
  • Well, if there was a best BSD, the other projects wouldn't exist, right?

    ;)

    -lx
  • Well, depending on what your PC card is, there is a new device in the generic kernel for xe, that is, Xircom Pc Card driver. Maybe that will help...

    I did my laptop install over PLIP, that seemed to work ok for me...

    -lx
  • Sounds ok, (cept the svr5 part), but I've heard some bad things about sco's stability and general worthwhileness. Then again, that might just be because of the general slashdot Linux bias.

    -lx
  • That's actually useful info, as I ran around looking for the release tag, which apparently is RELENG_3_2_0_RELEASE or something horrific, before testing it out and finding that RELENG_3 was sufficient. :)

    -lx
  • You should learn vi. Even if you aren't going to use it regularly, it is the default editor for important system work on all unixes and you will be laughed out of any "real" unix shop if they see you using pico and emacs...
  • I found out, unfortunately, that NetBSD doesn't support the Microchannel architecture very well (which, surprisingly, Linux 2.2 suppors nicely). This disappointed me, because I wanted BSD's superior VM on my slow PS/2. Oh well, can't have it all.

    What I really want is a Debian GNU/BSD, with Debian's pleasant APT, decent GNU tools, as opposed to the dated 4.4BSD/Lite tools, and same filesystem layout as Debian GNU/Linux. That would be heavenly.

    Through in GNU/OS/2 while you're at it. Thanks. ;p.

  • Still running CURRENT cmc? ;)
  • BSDality?

  • I work in a 'real Unix shop' and I collegue uses pico for everything. He's no dummy, in fact he does a large percentage of our CGI coding.

    At first I laughed at him, but he gets the job done. Incidentally, he does know vi and can get around in it but find pico more productive. I can't see it myself :-)

  • ... or BSDites perhaps?
  • I'm not 14 anymore so I couldn't care less who laughs at what. The only editor I've liked so far is ZED although I use more the one integrated in MC. And even it does not pay attention to all editing keys that any PC keyboard has.

    I try not to laugh at people who use this or that. But I pity people who let software make them feel like octopuses and who choose programs depending on how many laughs they are expected to arouse.
  • For a "ChangeLog", look at RELNOTES.TXT. It's in the root 3.2-RELEASE directory on every mirror. The release notes has a list of all userland and kernel changes.
  • I must sadly admit that I've only tried FreeBSD, I intend to try Open and Net as soon as I have the possibility. But if you run a PC, FreeSBD is a great os, in my opinion quite a bit better that linux (stability/speed). I've run Linux before, quite a few dists... So give FreeBSD a try!
  • I run FreeBSD 3.1 SMP on a dual 166 Pentium with 128 megs ram. I run two instances of SETI@home on it and can hardly tell much is going on while using Netscape or other apps.

    When nothing else is going on seti runs both cpus at 95% or more. But with a nice value of 1 it smoothly gives up the cpu cycles going down to 40% or whatever.

    I have run NT and Solaris on dual cpus and Solaris is the only one that runs as nicely. I am very impressed with FreeBSDs multi-tasking smoothness.
  • OK, I've tried linux and like it but now I want to try BSD and see which is better (for me). So which version is better, Net, Open, or Free?
  • The RELNOTES.TXT says
    Support for USB devices further improved.

    I justed switched to 4.0-CURRENT after 3.2-STABLE had been out for some days. I recall that they removed the sample usb options from the LINT and GENERIC config files, and the cvs-log stated something like "Not ready for mass consumption."
    Was this released to early??
    Correct me if these are bogus claims.
  • See http://www.freebsd. org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/i386/conf/GENERIC [freebsd.org]

    The sample USB configuration was removed Mon Apr 19:

    Remove the lines for the USB support. It is not ready for public consumption.
  • -CURRENT rocks. Plus, the more people out there using -CURRENT on non-critical machines, the faster bugs can be found and reported to the development team. And the faster that happens, the faster cool and useful features can be stabilized and integrated into -STABLE, where I can feel safe using it on a server.

    I tend to cvsup my -CURRENT box at home about once a week and rebuild everything, though often times i'll hold off for a few days if the traffic on the freebsd-current list indicates that doing so will probably break me badly :)


  • Pronounce it like "Beasties". It has harmony with the logo.
  • They are working on an alpha version now. Also thereis is also NetBSD and OpenBSD.

  • That Linux may not be the end all and be all of operating systems in the near future I may choose to become Future FreeBSD Guru, and Future Solaris Guru and Future (ACK!) NT Guru...
  • I have FreeBSD (3.1 - 3 day old install and I'm behind already :) on my workstation and OpenBSD (5 months and still kickin') for my firewall. All these new releases, and I have to pack up my boxes for the end of the semester - sigh.

    As for the choice, I went with FreeBSD for my primary machine because of the larger ports (software) tree and what seems like simpler Linux emulation.

    Matthew
  • 3.2 rocks. Watching make-world on the console on a fairly fast system in nearly hypnotic.

    I can't see using any other OS in the near future - FreeBSD rocks.

    Signed, A BSD Bigot.
  • Check out http://advocacy.freebsd.org/ammunition/ [freebsd.org] -- there's a lot of information there that you might be able to use to sway your boss's opinion.

    --Sam Stephenson
  • Changes and other information about FreeBSD 3.2 can be found at ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pu b/FreeBSD/3.2-RELEASE/RELNOTES.TXT [freebsd.org], alongside hardware support and methods of obtaining the OS.


    --Sam Stephenson

  • Re:Question for BSD people (Score:5)

    by conio ( 39484 ) on Tuesday May 18, 1999 @01:03PM (#1887517) Homepage
    All the BSDs are great. Most people tend to associate the following things with these three flavors of BSD:
    • NetBSD [netbsd.org] : Runs on almost every architecture imaginable
    • OpenBSD [openbsd.org] : Based on NetBSD, with high emphasis on security and buglessness.
    • FreeBSD [freebsd.org] : Developed mainly for the x86 platform (with ports in the works for sparc and alpha); provides excellent speed and stability.

    It seems that most x86 users find FreeBSD the best choice for them. But depending upon your needs, NetBSD or OpenBSD could be your solution.

    --Sam Stephenson
  • FreeBSD 3.2 supports nfs3, and it's pretty stable as long as you keep to UDP. NFS/TCP still have it's share of problems.

    As for performance, you may have to tune nfs sysctl settings. On a recent thread on one of the FreeBSD lists, for instance, it became clear that OS/2 clients interacted badly with FreeBSD's NFS write-gathering.

    Also, Linux (by default, at least), violates NFS2 specs by immediatly acking write requests, instead of waiting until they are committed to disk. FreeBSD has this tunable, with the default being not violating the specification. But if you are going to use nfs3, that's a non-issue.

  • Yep. (Score:1)

    by cmc ( 44956 )
    CVSup straight to -STABLE if you're into that tame 3.x stuff.
  • I'm glad there are little posts on this article. It means the [f]lamers are ignoring it. The next step, hopefully, would be to get some decent, mature commentary on the stories. I hope to see it soon.

  • Re:Yep. (Score:1)

    by cmc ( 44956 )
    Absolutely.

  • i386 (Score:1)

    by cmc ( 44956 )
    FreeBSD also has a working port to Alpha, and a Sparc port is in the works. Perhaps the people who are working hard on these areas should know that the only work on FreeBSD is being put into i386.
  • I think the problem with BSDies
    is: B S Dies
    Not only does it not sound good, it looks like your saying "BS" DIE!
    I like the BSDieties idea.
    I've just been saying BSDite... but Diety sounds really good to me.

    ~unyun~
  • I haven't tried Linux 2.2, but FreeBSD SMP should be comparable. I've got FreeBSD 3.1-RELEASE running on a dual-400MHz Celeron box (*not* overclocked), and it screams.

    Side note: while it was worth it when I built the box, dual Celerons make less sense now, as the price differential for two CPUs (Celeron vs PII) is on the order of a couple hundred dollars. It's probably now worth the extra cost to get a 100MHz FSB (when you don't overclock) and a 512KB cache (even if it isn't zero-wait). These are important for SMP.

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