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Announcements Operating Systems BSD

FreeBSD 3.5-RELEASE Now Available 108

Posted by Nik from the FreeBSD-4.4-should-go-on-a-gold-disk dept.
dougc writes: "FreeBSD 3.5-RELEASE is now available for the x86 architecture. Many changes in both the kernel and userland, plus several very small security fixes were included. A bunch of neat things were also merged from -current." 3.5 is the continuation of the 3.x branch, with mostly important bug and security fixes. New development continues on 5.x. This release is almost certainly the last on the 3.x line, with 4.x becoming the new ``stable'' release. The release notes have the full details on what's changed, you can download 3.5 from here.
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FreeBSD 3.5-RELEASE Now Available More

FreeBSD 3.5-RELEASE Now Available

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  • I am happy every time I see an Open Source project progressing, especially FreeBSD which is a superb OS.

    Unfortunately for me it is of limited use: what I need right now is an OS that has IPSEC integrated in the TCP/IP stack which FreeBSD is lacking. I could also use SMP support in order to install it to our gateways but it looks like this will take even longer as it requires an effective re-write as far as I am aware.

    Merci,

    Philipe
  • Slashdot really isn't a Linux-news site. "News for Nerds. Stuff that matters". The reason there is so much Linux-stuff on the site is that Rob and Jeff both big Linux fans, plus that Linux is definetly a geek thing.

    Besides, there aren't any interesting Linux-news out there currently.

  • This is great stuff. Now all FreeBSD needs is a little more security like its brother OpenBSD and we have the perfect operating system


    Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
    NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
    www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
  • Clearly you do not understand release engineering.

    3.5 is the last of the 3.x release branch. 4.0 is the beginning of the 4.x branch. Why the multiple branches? So that FreeBSD can introduce new, major features without breaking stablility. Now that 3.x is finished the 4.x release is the STABLE branch and 5.x is the CURRENT branch ie. the development branch.

    It is better to keep ones mouth shut and let people think you are a fool rather than open ones mouth and remove all doubt.

  • Re:I only wish I could see IPSEC and SMP (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Uhm, FreeBSD has SMP on x86 arch. For ages.
  • FreeBSD has had SMP since 3.1 and IpV6 and IpSec are now standard as of 4.0. Please read the release notes for FreeBSD 4.0

    http://www.freebsd.org/releases/4.0R/notes.html

  • Wait, it should be split in two very soon.
    --
  • You are obsolutely right. I was confusing with OpenBSD.
  • Made me smile at least...

  • Re:Can anyone explain... (Score:3)

    by WasterDave ( 20047 ) <davep AT zedkep DOT com> on Monday June 26, 2000 @02:22AM (#976879)
    I always get this *slightly* wrong, so bear with me.

    BSD sets off on branches with a fairly broad set of features. So, the 3.x branch changed a whole lot of stuff from 2.x and added (for instance) support for the Alpha.

    4.x binned the whole of 3.x's IDE architecture and replaced it with a new ATA one. The jail system call was added. A new network card driver architecture for cards that use the MII physical layer went in. Stateful extensions were put on the firewall. Lots of USB stuff. IP6 is now *very* integrated, SSL is quite integrated and all is good. Go see the changes for your self [freebsd.org]. I use it every day with no problem.

    Anyway, development continues along all these branches until no-one needs/wants it any more. There are thousands of incredibly serious users of the 3.x branch that have no desire to break their scripts so development continues along 3.x. Most users now use 4.x that I believe has just had its' first "-STABLE" release. I should cvsup and buildworld, really.

    There is a 5.x branch that is merging some of the work from BSDi. This is cowboy country, for hackers developers and nutters only. Not for production servers.

    So there you go. A more verbose explaination is yours for the taking in the FAQ [freebsd.org].

    Dave :)

  • Re:Slashdot needs to Stop!!!!!!!! (Score:4)

    by DestructioN ( 163267 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @02:23AM (#976880) Journal
    Uhmm... BSD *is* mainstream. Linux just happens to get all the media coverage. Ever wonder what sites like Yahoo!, Hotmail, eBay, run? Why it's FreeBSD! Oh my god, it's mainstream! Linux is slow compared to *BSD, for the mere fact that *BSD has more code maturity. Hell, NT is about on par with Linux for performance but *BSD smokes them (AIX and Solaris around the top of the study I saw, they didn't test my favorite FreeBSD, but it's up there). You Linux people need to stop thinking Linux is the be all and end all, it needs to catch up with BSD in alot of areas first. However, to be fair, I must say for software compatibility Linux is out in front (though FreeBSD's linux emulation levels it out). A *BSD beats Linux in all other areas, NetBSD for hardware, OpenBSD for security, and FreeBSD for performance. Read up next time.

    (I know some Linux-fanatic moderator is gonna mod me down for this, but I refuse to post anonymously)
    --

  • Re:Can anyone explain... (Score:3)

    by bamf ( 212 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @02:31AM (#976881)
    STABLE gets mostly bugfixes, RELEASE gets bugfixes and some new development, and CURRENT gets wild and crazy stuff?

    Sort of true.

    CURRENT is where all the major development goes on, think of it as a permanent beta test. It usually complies and works, but not always.

    STABLE gets some new features back-ported from CURRENT, plus bugfixes and other enhancements.

    Periodially STABLE is frozen for a short period, and is released as a RELEASE version, therefore think of RELEASE as a snapshot of STABLE at a particular period in time, with effort made to ensure that it's a worthwhile release point.

    Currently 5 is CURRENT, and STABLE sort of encompasses 4.0 and 3.5 depending upon your point of view. 4.0 was generally reckoned to be more stable than 3.4 and hence was adopted slightly quicker than normal.

    4.1 will most likely be the official STABLE version when it is released.


  • I guess I am a typical example of the target group of the *BSD's.

    I started out with Linux 2.0.14 and tried numerous distributions, and am running Mandrake 6.1 now. Because I have to be really productive on my machine right now, so I can't afford a non-clean system upgrade. Unfortunately, a simple upgrade-patch-whatever (just upgrade what needs to be upgraded) is not available for Mandrake.

    OK, so there is Debian. So I happen to be one of the "unfortunate" KDE users. I have read the Slashdot article the other day, I fully understand the legal issues, but I happen to still don't understand why an inclusion in non-free seems to be a non-option.

    After a while, spending a time on the 'net, looking and comparing...

    Hey, there's FreeBSD! IMO, if FreeBSD would run the Linux kernel, it would be the very best distribution available. It's port collection is unmatched. Simple total system upgrades by typing a few words.

    I need a file system which supports files larger than 2 GB and some sort of journaling facility. I found out that UFS with soft-updates can be the answer to my question. Could be a replacement of the ReiserFS partitions now. SMP support in FreeBSD 4.0 is improved.

    All my hardware is supported by FreeBSD.

    As soon as I can find the time, the change from Linux to FreeBSD will not be unrealistic. I want to do stuff with my computer, not muddle around.

  • 3.5 (Score:2)

    by Mr804 ( 12397 )
    I started using freebsd with 3.0 and haven't went back to redhack linux since. Everyone should try it at least once. Use the tools for the job.
  • If you don't like ftp-installs or don't want to wait for the CD from Walnut Creek/BSDi, you can also download the ISO image at ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/i386/IS O-IMAGES/3.5-install.iso
    Buy the CD later to support the FreeBSD project.

    Related to this: the OpenBSD 2.7 ISO's can be grabbed at ftp://ftp.zedz.net/pub/varia/OpenBSD-2.7.iso/

  • No, this is standard release engineering. This is the way Sun, HP and IBM do it. Linux stands alone as the only "Unix" system that has a kernel developed separately from the rest of the OS. If you had a little more experience and maturity you would understand why this is superior release model. It is the reason that very large installations, like Yahoo, HotMail and Link Exchange use FreeBSD instead of Linux.

    Like Sun and HP, FreeBSD maintains two branches of development at any given time. FreeBSD calls these branches CURRENT and STABLE. Unlike Sun and HP, FreeBSD allows the public to see the CURRENT branch. A RELEASE is a snaphot in time in which the given state of the CURRENT branch is judged to stable enough to be a release. This becomes a .0 release and is then called STABLE instead of CURRENT. This how we got FreeBSD 4.0.

    Like all OSs there are bug fixes. Sun and HP release patches to their current rev of their OS. We in the FreeBSD world see patches as messy. What we do is to incorporate the patches into the OS source code on the STABLE branch and periodically snapshot the STABLE branch as a dot release. FreeBSD 3.5 is the last snapshot on the 3.x STABLE branch. 3.x is now being retired and 4.x is now the STABLE branch and 5.x is the CURRENT branch

    STABLE is for those who want the most stable version of FreeBSD. CURRENT is for those who are willing to experment and don't mind if source tree is less than perfect from time to time.

  • Even Linux-kernels come out in different "trees/branches" of development.

    You have the old 2.0-kernels
    You have the newer 2.2-kernels
    and You have the 2.3-series of kernels

    If we leave out the FreeBSD-5.x and the linux 2.4-branch ... We can make some sort of parallel like the following:

    2.0-kernels/FreeBSD-2.2.x
    -------------------------
    Both are reasonably functional and stable just not really supported any longer. People are advised to switch over to the newer "branches" ... For Linux that means 2.2-kernels ... for FreeBSD that means the 3.x-branch

    2.2-kernels/FreeBSD-3.x
    -----------------------
    Both are currently considdered to be the mainstream branches of both development trees. Expected to be quite stable and are known to catch occasional minor/average changes in their internals ...

    2.3-kernels/FreeBSD-4.x
    -----------------------
    These two trees are the "Playground" of the developers ... Things get broken (accidentilly Or on purpose) way more often when compared to their more stable-branches ... But they also get a lot more average/major changes in their internals.
    These branches are where all the really interesting stuff happens.

    Now taking linux-2.4-kernels and the FreeBSD-5.x-branch into account. I assume as soon as linux-2.4 kernels will be released the 2.2-kernel branch will take on the role of the 2.0-kernel-branch.

    With that assumption .. the following shift will basically happen:

    - FreeBSD-2.2.x will be the linux-2.0-kernels
    - FreeBSD-3.x will be like linux-2.2-kernels
    - FreeBSD-4.x will be like linux-2.4-kernels
    - FreeBSD-5.x will be like linux-2.5-kernels*

    * assuming 2.4 will released anytime soon and the 2.5-kernel tree will be started.

    I hope this parallel will basically explain how FreeBSD's Release Engineering works ... i know the parallel is probably not water-proof ... but i think it comes close. Feel free to ask any question.

  • KDE in Debian is as easy as visiting http://kde.tdyc.com/ and adding a line to /etc/apt/sources.list (per the instructions).

    You will then have all the benefits of Debian and KDE together. You can even try a beta of KDE2 if you like.

  • This is called the concurrent model of software engineering. M$ also uses this model, in daily build form, similar to CVS. Though our textbook referred to it as build and test, we affectionately referred to it as the build and "fsck up" model, in order to help us remember the drawbacks (can lead to miscommunication and differences in builds chrologically).
  • Wow, that's nearly the same situation I was in when I upgraded from Linux to FreeBSD! I'm now much happier.
  • you lose [slashdot.org]
  • oh that was funny!
    did you think that one up yourself?

    you lose

  • [slashdot.org]you lose
  • [slashdot.org]you lose
  • [slashdot.org]you lose
  • I'm in the same boat as you rutger...being a GNU/Linux user who wants to defect as well. However, not fully yet - I am just going to have a go at OpenBSD 2.7 on a separate box. Hopefully it'll become my fully fledged firewall/gateway and drive away even the most determined hacker.

    Despite being a zealous Linux user and Slashdot reader, I still want to remain open-minded about what is out there in the open-source world, and not look at it with a single main frame set on using on Linux alone. Diversification - That's the one beauty of open-source I think a lot more people need to appreciate, and I have a gut feeling that raising concerns about privacy and security on the Internet will create more demand for BSD experience; not that I'm implying that Linux has poor security. It's just that BSD, especially Open has an unrivalled track record with not having any local or default-install exploits for the last 2-3 years. It's a record that even the most paranoid Linux distribution would envy.

    I've also noticed in recent months that FreeBSD has one of the largest collection of ports compared to any Open source OS out there, not to mention high performance as indicated by the trust placed in it by so many high-level Net services such as Hotmail. The only thing holding me back from diving straight into BSD is package-management. Please enlighten me on this one if I'm wrong. Sure, FreeBSD has a simple package management system, but does it come anywhere near to the sophistication of Debian's apt? I've never seen anyone else come even close to beating the dpkg system. What does the BSD have in store for the future of it's package management? Please do tell me

    I'd also like to point out having a Linux kernel for BSD defeats the purpose of using BSD. BSD is inherently stable due to the maturity of its kernel. Ports are recompiled from source designed with Linux in mind so that it can run at its best on BSD systems. From what I've heard BSD already has very good Linux emulation as well. BSD looks like it could outshine it's famed-endowed cousin Linux with the next few years as long as it keeps its high standards up.

    To all BSD developers/auditors/testers out there, keep up the great work (please improve package management for all the BSD newbies/hopeful converts = P) and you're bound to become the next great thing...

    PS: Now if only Linux could keep up in security and performance...then we'd have a great competition and higher quality development = )

  • [stupidcoward]you lose
  • Trolls are real. They live under bridges. Please do not assume there are no trolls simply because some trolls have not made the choice yet to "come out from under the bridge" so to speak and openly declare their troll lifestyle.

    Please be more considerate in the future. Thank you from your friends at the ULTOAD.

    United League of Troll and Orc Anti-Defamation

  • They don't market CURRENT, they market STABLE.

    CURRENT is available via CVS or by downloading a snapshot, you can't (normally) get it on CD and you actually have to go looking for it so you can't install it by mistake.
  • OK, so there is Debian. So I happen to be one of the "unfortunate" KDE users. I have read the Slashdot article the other day, I fully understand the legal issues, but I happen to still don't understand why an inclusion in non-free seems to be a non-option.

    It's not an issue of freeness or non-freeness. It's an issue that, in the Debian's opinion, that the unadorned GPL and the QPL make it illegal to legally distribute KDE binaries linked to Qt. Free or non-free is irrelevant.

    Oh, and if you want KDE for Debian, another poster has pointed out how to get it. It's extremely simple to do.

  • Well, I actually did (sort of). I was following the 4.0-CURRENT branch (i.e., cvsup tag=.) before 5.0-CURRENT existed. Of course, once 5.0 became the head and I recompiled a new kernel, I got loads of nasty surprises. The funny thing was that I didn't notice that the bootup message said 5.0 until a few days later, and I was terribly upset by how unstable the 4.0 branch suddenly had become.
  • Care to cite these studies? Are they recent? Do they compare recent linux and BSD kernels? In my experience, neither linux nor BSD has any advantage over the other as workstations or as mid-range servers. I cannot comment on very high load applications.

    Hari.
  • Uh... What study are you referring to? A link,
    please. And could you elaborate on the specific
    areas where *BSD smokes Linux? Not that I doubt
    that e.g. the BSD MMU is currently better than
    the Linux MMU, but I recently saw some netstats
    that one of my friends ran on identical HW with
    linux (2.2.x) and FreeBSD (3.3?) and linux
    smoked     FreeBSD's ass. And that ran somewhat
    contrary to my understanding of things as I had
    gathered by word-of-mouth.

    To sum up: Please supply links and be specific.

    Thank you for listening,

    Rasmus

    PS: And yes, I know that Im being as whooly as
    Mr. DestructioN, but I dont have the numbers
    here. Sorry :)
  • OK,I guess its kinda hard to make a statement sound retorical on a message board.

    I didnt really mean they needed to cover more linux, Its was a attemp to show how much bitching goes on with every linux post.

    and I ment main stream y media covrage not by server use, I know BSD smokes linuxs ass, I love the BSD way things are done, hell the linux distro I use is slackware if I'm going to run linux.

    GET A LIFE PEOPLE
  • I'd like to know whether apple is going to try and modify its kernel along with the updates to BSD.
  • Uhm, the only thing OpenBSD has over FreeBSD for security is embedded crypto, but that doesn't mean you can't make a FreeBSD box as secure as an OpenBSD box, you just have to _know what you're doing_!!!
  • YOu would think that there might be one or two /.'s who use linux *and* freebsd.



    If there are, "they are being very very quiet"

    I think I'll try FreeBSD soon. I just gotta free up a computer....
  • OpenBSD does do IPSec, the man page is dated 1997, but not sure when it was first implemented. OpenBSD doesn't do SMP yet though they are working on it.
  • Ebay does not run BSD. Try using Netcraft [netcraft.com] and see what you get: IIS on NT.
  • FYI, if that ISO of OpenBSD is a rip of Theo de Raadt's one that real OpenBSD cds are made from, then that is a copyright violation. Theo copyrights their cd layouts to encourage cd sales. You only need to download about 40 mb of files to install OpenBSD anyhow.

    matt
  • STABLE is for those who want the most stable version of FreeBSD. CURRENT is for those who are willing to experment and don't mind if source tree is less than perfect from time to time.

    This much I understand, but what (if any) is the difference between STABLE/CURRENT and RELEASE? Who is RELEASE for?

    You say "A RELEASE is a snaphot in time in which the given state of the CURRENT branch is judged to stable enough to be a release. This becomes a .0 release and is then called STABLE instead of CURRENT. This how we got FreeBSD 4.0.", which makes sense, but what is the criteria by which a RELEASE becomes STABLE. If that's how we get 4.0, is "4.0 RELEASE" basically the same as "4.0 STABLE", and if so, why isn't it labelled as such?

    Sincerely wanting to understand...
  • If BSD had gone for the insanely large popular push that linux did, then BSD would have been linux. and not just linux, but a better linux, as i will admit, BSD in general seems to be a better platform than Linux, however, the following is just not as big... just as macs are arguably better than PC's in terms of architecture, but PC's have saturation.

  • The Mac OS X kernel is a Mach kernel, not BSD. The toolset used is the BSD toolset, among other BSD bits and pieces thrown in. Overall architecture is (as of DP3) NeXT on a Mach kernel though... so, that would be a "probably no" answer to your question, although I'm sure they're putting in patches based on what other people are updating all the time while they're working. It's not like they're going to release any time soon :)

    ---
    Tim Wilde
    Gimme 42 daemons!
  • Obviously Ebay runs on one machine so you must be correct. If the only machine you checked is the web server then you didn't check much. Did you bother to check the database servers or just the front door?

  • What exactly are you missing?
  • about a RealNetworks-sized penis (Linux)?...What about an OpenBSD sized penis (Solaris)?...What about an Ebay sized penis (NT)?

    The point is, don't hold FreeBSD or any OS on a pedestal. If you do more digging in Netcraft, you'll actually find that a lot of big sites are also running Solaris, Tru64 Digital Unix, IRIX, HP/UX, GNU/Linux, NT 4 and even Windows 2000. There are plenty of operating systems in use out there, and to point out one site as a reason why one OS is superior to another...it's ummm...ridiculous.

    At work, we use Linux because it's free and does the job well for us. We don't use it because it "powers a bigger site than another OS, blah blah." That's basically bullshit. Personally I wouldn't use NT because it only logs NetBIOS names, amoung other annoyances. (Yep, "HAXOR" machine logged in and tried to hack the network....now, let's search the whole internet for that "HAXOR", it'll be easy, really!)

    But, all things considered, if corporations are willing to pay the price for NT (in more ways than one) and are happy with it, good luck to them. Linux will probably stay on our servers and everyone else is free to use whatever OS they'd like, although I'd not recommend NT - it crashes, it's slow, and it's a general pain. These are my experiences, though, and might not apply to everyone. Management at the last company I worked for wanted to switch from Digital Fortran compiler to some Windows NT-based package. We lost 2 months of work and after another month, our lead scientests started complaining and demanding their Digital workstations back.

    These are my experiences, though, and might not apply to everyone

    Cliffton Watermore

  • ...which I just downloaded and stayed up all night trying to get onto my f*$^@!# laptop.

    My impression is that FreeBSD "Release" is somewhat equivalent to Linux's "Stable", with "Current" tracking the changes from the CD-ROM's. So which # is the current "Release" now? Is it 3.5 or 4.0? Surely there is some distinction that I am missing...

    Apparently 4.0 was missing all sorts of .inf files that my install needed, so I'm wondering if it isn't somehow a pre-release or upgrade-only sort of distro at the moment.

    Any FreeBSD users in the audience?

    --Lenny
  • Debian's Apt does that as well, so that's hardly a great advantage.
  • 3.5-RELEASE is an updated version under the 3.0 branch, whereas 4.0-RELEASE is the first official (almost stable) release under the 4.0 branch. 4.0-RELEASE wasn't meant to be a mainstream release (I think 4.1 would be).

    3.5 was released for people who were not quite ready to jump onto the 4.0 branch due to changes in some of structure and syscalls.

    You can think of -RELEASE as a completed product, but it can have bugs and possibly some exploits that were not caught during final testing of the code before the official release.

    -STABLE usually contains patched code that fixes problems found after -RELEASE was released. Many people keep up with -STABLE to make sure that the latest programs compile and that there isn't quite as much risk when it comes to bugs and what-not.

    -CURRENT is usually considered the current code while that version is in development. This allows developers and contributors to check out the code and make changes before -RELEASE goes live. I could be wrong on this portion of it since I haven't been caught up with -CURRENT.

    4.0-RELEASE is a full version (not pre-release or upgrade-only but was not aimed to be the mainstream release) and 4.0-STABLE is now available on the CVS servers. FreeBSD Diary [www.freebsddiary.org] [freebsddiary.org] has an article on upgrading from 4.0-RELEASE to 4.0-STABLE. I have used their upgrade process on three different machines with a lot of success.
  • According to Apple's website:

    The system's kernel, which does the heavy lifting to support all those rich applications, is based on Mach 3.0 from Carnegie-Mellon University and FreeBSD 3.2 (derived from the University of California at Berkeley's BSD 4.4-Lite), the most highly regarded core technologies from two of the most widely acclaimed OS projects of the modern era.

    You can find that here [apple.com].

  • You also say that "there are thousands of incredibly serious users of the 3.x branch that have no desire to break their scripts". So the newer versions lack functionality that the older ones have?


    The scripts break because things are entirely rewritten and put in different places. Now I'm not the most experienced FreeBSD user but just as a hypothetical example. Lets just say a whole new backup technology comes out and eradicats tape drives. Now naturally all the freebsd backup utilities will be replaced. Assuming these new utilities still work on tape drives, and you have a tape drive, upgrading to lets just say the 5.x branch from your 4.x bsd means you scripts that run from cron will need o be rewritten. This is probally a poor example so I'll give another one.

    Lets say that the BSD people decide to create a devfs in 5.x. Now along with this thet develop a new naming mechanism for the whole dev directory, which btw is very different from linux's. Now assuming you had a network of FreeBSD systems and for some reason NFS wouldn't do (probally security) you probally would have a series of scripts that would perform the functions of Norton Disk doctor.

  • *BSD's developement/release model has been described several times in this discussion, often far better than I am about to do. Read the fine posts?

    As a quick and dirty refresher:
    Primary development is done on code in the -CURRENT branch. Code from -CURRENT is back-ported into -STABLE. Every so often -STABLE is frozen and called a -RELEASE. Major changes in -CURRENT are eventually frozen and called a .0-RELEASE.

    Thus, there was development occuring on 4.0-CURRENT, the changes to which were being backported to 3.4-STABLE. 4.0-CURRENT was frozen for a time and released as 4.0-RELEASE, and 5.0-CURRENT was born, whose changes get incorporated into 4.0-STABLE. Meanwhile, changes were still being backported into 3.4-STABLE, eventually to be frozen into 3.5-RELEASE.

    So, yes, 4.0-RELEASE is a pre-release in a way. It is not, however, an upgrade-only release. It is a full-fledged release, but as it is a snapshot of -CURRENT rather than -STABLE it is not guaranteed to be as stable as a snapshot of -STABLE.

    As for "missing all sorts of .inf files", I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. A "find / -name "*.inf" on one of my FreeBSD machines, including full source, turned up exactly one .inf, located in pine's port directory.

  • Here's a picture:

    ~
    |
    +--3.0--3.1--3.2--3.3--3.4--3.5--x (3.x-STABLE |
    |
    +--4.0--x (4.x-STABLE)
    |
    |
    x (5.x-CURRENT)

    Thus, the -CURRENT branch is where the experimental stuff gets done. Every so often, -CURRENT is frozen, made stable, and released as a .0 version. A -STABLE branch is then created starting with that .0 release, to which only bug/security fixes and a few enhancements from -CURRENT are added. When enough changes accumulate on a -STABLE branch, the .1, .2, etc. releases are made. So at any one time, there are several separate branches being worked on; the ones receiving the most attention right now are 5.0-CURRENT, 4.x-STABLE, and 3.x-STABLE (but there are others). This means that even as work progresses on the 4.x-STABLE branch towards release 4.1, work progresses simultaneously on the older 3.x-STABLE branch. One side-effect of this system that confuses some newcomers is that versions can be released seemingly out-of-order, like 3.5 after 4.0.

  • Please enlighten me on this one if I'm wrong. Sure, FreeBSD has a simple package management system, but does it come anywhere near to the sophistication of Debian's apt?

    I don't know. What does apt do? The ports stuff handles fetching a tarball, or using one you have allready fetched, applying "local" patches, building all dependent packages, some crud to handle fetching crypto from the "right" country, installs, uninstalls, and some other stuff I don't use, so I don't recall.

    It is a little weak on "tell me what is installed", "tell me what depends on FOO", and "I was looking for that thing that displays GIFs and makes usic, what's it called?". Weak doesn't mean it won't help, but that the interface is clunky.

    I'd also like to point out having a Linux kernel for BSD defeats the purpose of using BSD. BSD is inherently stable due to the maturity of its kernel.

    Some of the satability is from the kernel, some is from the userland. There was a BSD/Linux effort at one point started by tchrist shortly after the whole GNU/Linux thing came to a head, but I donno if it ever went anywhere.

    I would guess more of OpenBSD's security is from the userland then kernel (skiping over encrypted swap/FS, and IPsec for the moment).

    Of corse the uptimes I have heard from Linux users isn't far diffrent from FreeBSD users, probbably both have weakspots. I'm sure both have strengths.

  • The development branch is 2 major releases ahead of the stable? What's up with that?
  • It's not an issue of freeness or non-freeness. It's an issue that, in the Debian's opinion, that the unadorned GPL and the QPL make it illegal to legally distribute KDE binaries linked to Qt. Free or non-free is irrelevant.

    from http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages:

    Non-Free
    Packages in this area do not necessarily cost money, but have some onerous license condition restricting use or redistribution of the software.

    I still don't really get it... but never mind. If I want KDE, I'll just use the KLPP site.

    Then there's the 2 GB file limit problem on Linux before 2.4, which is impossible. Well... I'm still a few months busy, so... I'll look further in to it then.
  • I'm also considering moving to freebsd because of its lauded stability. They say it has some linux binary compatibility, but how much linux-only software will it run?

    Will linux WordPerfect Office 2000 work on it?

    Those Loki-ported games?

    If it can't run my applications, then I'm not going to switch. (gee, where have we heard that one before? ;-) )

  • Re:Major releases (Score:3)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Monday June 26, 2000 @07:14AM (#976928) Journal
    5x won't be released for quite some time.

    4 is the current version

    3.5 is an update for those that don't want to change from 3 to 4. Similar releases happened for 2.x after 3.x came out. Come to think of it, I think 2.x stil gets security fixes.
  • You also say that "there are thousands of incredibly serious users of the 3.x branch that have no desire to break their scripts". So the newer versions lack functionality that the older ones have? Gee, this is mighty illogical, and only gets more confusing...

    Going from 2.x to 3.x a.out stopped being the executable format, and ELF started. 3.x could be compiled to run a.out files, but by default it wasn't. The shared libs for new things were also made as ELF by default, and if you wanted a.out shared libs you had to thwack it yourself. In the short run, it's a big pain. In the long run ELF is much better (better debugging support, better shared loader support for example).

    Going from 3.x to 4.x (or maybe this was 2.x to 3.x again) the low level SCSI stuff changed. If you had a program that did raw SCSI it had to be "updated", the new interface is much nicer, so programmers in the future will be far happyer with the system, then the old one.

    Going from 3.x to 4.x some of the sound and interrupt things changed (interrupt for better SMP I think, sound for supporting modern PCI sound cards better). The one-two-punch finally took out the old PAS-16 driver (the cards were state of the art nine years ago, and the compony that makes them defunct for 5 years). /it still compiled, but had config and boot time warnings and lost interrupts. I might have been able to fix it, but decided to buy a better audio card for $30.

    All of these changes are nice in the long run. Any of them could be a short term show stopper. It's nice that the "old" branch still gets important patches. It's nice that things can be changed in incompatable ways when that will be better in the long run. That way we only have four async I/O systems, not 28 :-)

  • Last night I just updated my Mandrake 6.1 to 7.1... the CD install program *will* let you selectively update packages. Takes a little time (and the GUI has a nasty little feature that makes it hard to tell which packages are selected in tree view), but it all worked out real well... the only thing I had to do afterward (because I wanted to) was to get the newest kernel and reapply the VPN-MASQ patch (if you don't know, you don't need it).

    I've been rather happy with Mandrake for a long while now, though I have used FreeBSD on and off for a couple of years now - a great system, too...
    that's why I have multiple boxen 8^)
  • However, I have a fairly strong preference for *bsd. In every case where I've noted a difference between the GNU stuff used in Linux distributions (no, not GNU/Linux. It also includes perl, X, som bsd stuff, and many other things before it's something that would be called Linux. Something that was merely GNU/Linux rather than BSD/Perl/X/GNU/sendmail/.../linux would be useless, but I digress), I've preferered the bsd way/implementation/mindset.

    However, my laptop runs linux (an old debian and 2.0 kernel), and my last office machine ran debian (not enough disk/memory to take advantage of the source for bsd). I also keep a small installation of an old debian on my main home machine for repairs, though Tom's has made this kind of redundant . . .

    hawk
  • *BSD's developement/release model has been described several times in this discussion, often far better than I am about to do. Read the fine posts?

    I've read explanations of this on Slashdot, on freebsd.org and in the FreeBSD manual many, many times, so I feel I've RTFM, but what is really going on is still a bit hazy.

    but as it is a snapshot of -CURRENT rather than -STABLE

    Ah, here lies the source of my confusion. I was under the impression that CURRENT trees did not make RELEASE's. I thought that RELEASE's were made only from the STABLE tree, and that snapshots of CURRENT were just called CURRENT. So, RELEASE doesn't mean "release quality", it means "we're sticking this on CD-ROM". Thus, one should be cognizant of which tree a RELEASE is from. Now the confusion is lifted.

    As for "missing all sorts of .inf files", I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.

    Yeah, I don't know what the heck that means either, but the FreeBSD installer kept complaining that it couldn't find "foo.inf", or "bar.inf" on my FTP mirror of RELEASE-4.0 . Such files do not exist on ftp.freebsd.org , so I don't know what it is talking about. Very odd. Oh well, in light of this discussion, I will be resorting to 3.5 shortly.

    Moral of this story: "Not all RELEASE's are equal", or "Linux users beware".

    --Lenny
  • It's kind of like Linux durning the early 2.2 releases. 2.3 was considered development (5.0-current) 2.2 was considered stable, but still experimiental (4.0) and 2.0.x was considered the one to use if you absolutely needed a well tested stable version (3.x-stable)
  • Actually, Mach is a microkernel so it doesn't actually expose the system interface. The MacOS X system is kind of like NeXT. It has a Mach microkernel, on top of which is a modified FreeBSD 3.2 system server. There is a great deal more BSD in there then just "bits and pieces."
  • Actually, its very compatible....

    The very odd thing is, that it is sometimes even faster
    Yes, wordperfect 8 and staroffice 5.1a are both in the ports collection.

    As far as the games..... well, they may well run. They should run with little or no modification at about the same speed.


    The linux enviroment is based on RH 6.1 currently, you can even just use rpm's right on the system ;)


    FreeBSD, the choice of those who know how to choose ;)

  • Hey, there's FreeBSD! IMO, if FreeBSD would run the Linux kernel, it would be the very best distribution available. It's port collection is unmatched. Simple total system upgrades by typing a few words.

    >>>>
    Are you serious? If FreeBSD ran the Linux kernel, it would not be a BSD anymore now would it? Also, I hope you understand that FreeBSD is not a "distro." What would be nifty, however, is to bring the ports system to Linux.
  • FreeBSD does have SMP support, but it sucks. No fear, though, SMP is being rewritten for the 5.0 release (I think.)
  • BSD is not run on the Linux kernel, they don't have Linus... Those moderating this, please read the parent...
  • Also, I hope you understand that FreeBSD is not a "distro."

    Of course... I perfectly understand FreeBSD is an OS, and Linux isn't.

    What would be nifty, however, is to bring the ports system to Linux.

    That's what I intended to mean :-)

  • Re:Slashdot needs to Stop!!!!!!!! (Score:3)

    by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @08:52AM (#976940)
    BSD doesn't smoke Linux in all areas. (Hey, I use BeOS mainly, so I have no preference for either.) In terms of usage, I'd give the upper hand to BSD because it is a much more coherent system, and the ports system absolutely rocks. As for performance, it all depends on what you're gauging. Under low load single proc systems doing network stuff, Linux has a slight edge. However, BSD handles high load MUCH better than Linux does. Also, the MM in BSD is better, but the multimedia subsystems (sound, graphics, etc) are better under Linux. As for NT, NT smokes both Linux and BSD when it comes to certain gauges of performance. It wins for raw throughput through the network, for raw disk I/O speed, an has insanely better multimedia capabilities. (Courtesy DirectX and a very mature OpenGL.) However, you have to look at its performance in real world terms. NT makes a lot of sacrifices to achieve these raw benchmarks. First, it has small in kernel bufers for I/O and stuff. That makes it faster, but mucks up the system and increases non-pagable memory use. Then there is graphics. The Win2K HAL integrates DirectX calls, again messing with the cleanliness of the system, increasing the code size of a very low level layer, and introducing a major source of bugs into the HAL. Also, all system servers run in kernel mode, so they do not enjoy the protectedness inherent in micokernel designs. By running stuff like graphics in the kernel and running the server in kernel mode, it becomes a lot faster, but at the cost of stability, memory use etc. Also, NT has problems under heavy load, so when comparing a FreeBSD and an NT machine, the FreeBSD machine will wipe the floor with NT, even though NT has the raw throughput advantage.

  • 3.5/4.0/etc (Score:5)

    by toastyman ( 23954 ) <toasty@dragondata.com> on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:01AM (#976941) Homepage
    I know the issue of having 3.5 come out AFTER 4.0 is confusing, so let me try to explain why.

    There are many thousands of users who are using 3.4, which are quite happy doing so.

    When 4.0 came out, it was using lots of (relatively) untested code, so the general advice was "unless you have a good reason to use 4.0, stick with 3.x until 4.1 comes out". To be perfectly blunt, in the past anything ending in .0 tended to be a bit rough around the edges.

    4.0 came out, and actually has been very stable and bugs have been scarce. However, they still have the comittment to the 3.x users to incorporate some of the recent changes, so here came 3.5.

    5.0 is the "bleeding-edge/scary" code that hasn't been released yet, and is where developers to go make huge changes. Right now they're making gigantic changes to the SMP structure to make interrupts more thread-like, and the such.

    While I give the FreeBSD team kudos for supporting users who aren't tracking the latest and greatest, I've had no problems with 4.0 at all, and am recommending it to anyone who is getting a fresh start.

    If you're a 3.x user who just wants to update, go with a 3.5 upgrade.

    If you're a new users, grab 4.0. (4.1 isn't too far away, too).

    -- Kevin

  • Re:I'm thinking of defecting... (Score:3)

    by scrytch ( 9198 ) <chuck@myrealbox.com> on Monday June 26, 2000 @09:18AM (#976942)
    FreeBSD has supported >2GB files for as long as I can remember. I don't know how to tell for sure, but it would also appear FreeBSD uses a 3gig user, 1gig kernel address space, since absolute addresses well above 2G were reported available when I ran a malloc arena prospector program.

    Linux support is superb. I'm posting this reply with linux netscape 4.7, and there's no detectable difference in performance, behavior, or stability. Actually it's more stable than I've ever had it under linux (probably because I'm disinclined to constantly futz with the system installed in /compat/linux)

    I do have to disappoint you a bit: UFS+softupdates will not give you journalling. Soft updates is merely another block cache and deferred write queue. Speeds up the filesystem tremendously, but doesn't really add any new features.
  • I'm a FreeBSD user, and I love /usr/ports like nothing else, but the package manager is awful. Bad as slackware, possibly worse. It doesn't approach rpm, much less apt. There isn't any way to upgrade packages, you pretty much have to remove the old one before installing the new one. Packages seem to have versioning, but the version is still part of the name, so when you update ports with cvsup, a "make deinstall" won't even find the old package built from ports. Since making a new version from a new port will overwrite the old files, I tend to just not bother with deinstalling the old version and thus pkg_info becomes a sort of history (the consistency checker can at least tell me which ones are "really" installed).

    Ports is nice, I do wish it built more robust packages tho.
  • All of you lose. I hereby taketh away thy winning streak! muahahahahahahaha!
  • You don't want 4.0-RELEASE, you want the latest 4.0-STABLE. Then when you install cvsup, make sure you use tag=RELENG_4 or you'll end up getting forcibly upgraded to 5.0-CURRENT, which is *not* stable. Was not pretty when this happened to me.

    comparing version number systems, BSD to Linux:

    5.0-CURRENT is the equivalant of 2.3.x
    5.0-RELEASE will be the equivalent of 2.4pre
    5.0-STABLE will be the official equivalent of 2.4

    FreeBSD does not have any kind of patchlevel number for its minor releases, since it is updated constantly in CVS, so if you stay on the edge of whatever version, be it CURRENT, RELEASE, or STABLE, your build date is part of the uname. If you install from a snapshot out of FTP, then your distribution version looks something like 4.0-STABLE-20000624 (i.e. Jun 6, 2000). When enough patches accumulate to make it a recommended upgrade for everyone, then the powers that be (presumably jordan?) bump the minor version number.
  • The site that this is a mirror of, ftp.fsn.hu, is a very nice high-speed mirror of both unofficial OpenBSD 2.7 ISOs and the official (md5-checked) FreeBSD 3.5 ISO. I immediately dropped my connections to Walnut Creek CDROM and fire up this one, and it's roaring away now. Best of luck.
  • I goofed up slightly. I'm told -RELEASE is a "checkpointed" -STABLE, and would be sort of the equivalent of a new distribution from a vendor such as redhat or mandrake. 4.0-RELEASE was just like any other .0 release though, and I was warned away in pretty strong language from getting it til it hit -STABLE if I didn't know what I was doing.
  • Only if it can do more that 1 TB/sec.

    Sure it can!

    Ok, the latency is a little high, but if you drive a semi full of CDs over it, I'm sure you could break 1 TB/sec...

  • I use FreeBSD when I need scalabilty and OpenBSD when I need utmost security.

    In Simple Terms:
    All of the OpenBSD code cas been combed over for any "potential" security holes. Every port sanctioned by OpenBSD is put through rigorous testing. That means that many times the OpenBSD version of a port is older than FreeBSD, because the new version is not confirmed as secure yet or may have bugs that need fixing. OpenBSD is tight as a drum. It is not to say that you cannot make a FreeBSD box secure, but because of the incredible level of code review in OpenBSD, it will always be "more" secure in an equivilant configuration. OpenBSD also runs on more hardware platforms due to its roots in NetBSD

    I use FreeBSD whenever I want scalability. For one, FreeBSD supports SMP, OpenBSD doesn't. RAID support is also better in FreeBSD. It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'! FreeBSD is also somewhat friendlier to install and manage. On the other hand, OpenBSD is a no-frills OS, which itself has its advantages.

  • There isn't any way to upgrade packages, you pretty much have to remove the old one before installing the new one.

    So what I read at http://www.freebsddiary.org/portsupdate.html is not true?
  • All I hear about from here is Linux. You know I heard somewhere that FreeBSD just released a major version and there is NO mention of ... oh, hehe ahhh, nevermind :)

  • Actually, it was a snipe at me, and my description of the BSD development model, it was child to my post. I mentioned CVS, and Microsoft, and he sorta used those words, but none of them were coherent or even together.
  • No scrytch was talking about packages, *not* ports. Ports are the little thingies that you cd to and make. Packages are usually binaries that you install with pkg_add or via /stand/sysinstall.
  • I keep hearing over and over again how all the *BSD variants are so much faster than Linux because of tighter kernel code etc... I've searched all over the web for some kind of benchmarks to back these statements up and haven't found anything. My question is, does anyone know where I can find non-anecdotal evidence to prove this point, or is it all just hype?
  • Some actual facts to back up your statements might be useful. Otherwise I'll just chalk you up as just another troll.
  • The ports & packages collection does NOT go through the thorough security audit that OpenBSD follows. Although we strive to keep the quality of the packages collection high, we just do not have enough human resources to ensure the same level of robustness and security. -- www.openbsd.org

    Only packages that are in the default install are subjected to OpenBSD's auditing. Everything you just said sounds like paraphrased material that you read on slashdot.

  • Theo de Raadt copyrighted the Official OpenBSD CD layout. There is nothing illegal about what they are doing, in distributing an iso based on an unofficial cd layout.
  • WARNING !!!!

    openbsd.org is owned by domain stealer Theo de Raadt (he stole theos.com), I would not be surprised if he backdoored OpenBSD.

    (Read the information regarding the conflict before making accusations.)

  • 5.x is the -CURRENT version.

    4 is the current -STABLE version.

    3.5 is the last release in the 3.x series. (which like 2.x maintains a -STABLE branch)
  • It's a shame that this has to be run using two compatibility layers (WINE + linux emulation). I don't know that it matters that much, but it would be possible to run WP 2000 with a natively compiled WINE (this could also apply to all other BSD's and Solaris x86).

    I wonder how hard it would be.
  • http://www.securebsd.com add some security to FreeBSD =)

  • ack! (Score:2)

    by hawk ( 1151 )
    That was a poor choice of words on my part :)

    I used "current" as in, "the version that is generally installed today," which was a particularly poor choice given the meaning of "CURRENT" . . . .

  • BSD has hype now? Wow, first time hype has ever been used to describe any BSD. Then what about the Linux "hype" about how it is supposedly easier for newbies to pick up? Or that its better as a desktop? The once a month BSD article slashdot decides to run has turn into (always has been?) is when all the kiddies come out to bash OS blah without even basic vnode concepts. Lets use real ammo rather than the "he said she said" crap. Each has its strengths and weaknesses.

  • Re:Slashdot needs to Stop!!!!!!!! (Score:3)

    by Inoshiro ( 71693 ) on Monday June 26, 2000 @03:31PM (#976964) Homepage
    eBay uses NT [netcraft.com]

    They also use Solaris (although it seems to be used less in recent times).

    Different OSes of choice for different people. There's no need to rant and claim that moderators are "out to get you."
    ---
  • illegal to legally distribute

    Now I'm totally confused! A screw it all to hell, I'll just do what KDE Core says I can do and go ahead of distribute it. If I get arrested for legally distributing it, then I'll just resign from the English language.
  • Then when you install cvsup, make sure you use tag=RELENG_4

    That's what I did this weekend. After a two hour build, it wouldn't install! I found little errors everywhere! After doing a bit of reading, I suddenly realized that STABLE is not necessarily stable. It is still a development release that changes from day to day. It safer than current, but you still don't stake your box on it. Stick with RELEASE unless you have a pressing need for the latest and greatest. The release cycle is quick enough that you can live with it.
  • Pardon me for asking, but what the hell do you need SMP on a gateway for?
  • I've read their license. Forwards and backward and even upside down. Those portions (and they are major portions) of KDE that are not under the GPL can be put in Debian with no problems other than the fact that no one is stepping up to the plate and doing it. Those portions of KDE that are under the GPL may also be distributed since all requirements of the GPL are indeed met. The problem comes when you examine GPL clauses out of context. You have to apply the GPL as a whole. This has been covered in minute detail elsewhere, including on the Debian lists and by attorneys, so I won't quote the GPL yet again.

    What pisses me off the most is that Debian won't include an AL licensed Cervisia (as an example) and it's LGPL licensed kdelibs. That they won't do even this indicates to me their true motive.
  • If you wanna look at uptimes for most NOS's check out Uptimes Project. Look at the all-time Top 10. The leader is an old NetBSD 1.1B box with about 1,500 days which is a runaway lead over the next box which just happens to a Linux one.

    At that level it isn't a useful number (I admit it is still an intresting one). At 1500 days any box not doing really restricted duty is going to be dieing for an upgrade (software or hardware). If it is doing restricted duty it isn't really testing the whole OS. Even NT could run for a month or so if you only run solatare :-)

    The one who dominates the top 20 is FreeBSD though and the rest of the pack is just overflowing with the sheer quantity of everybody and their grandma's Linux box. Which then brings up the Quality vs. Quantity debate :)

    Yep. A more useful mesure would be uptime per boot (with 1st, 5th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 95th, and 99th percentiles), and %controled stop vs. %panic. The number would be arder to influance merely by having a large installed base. It would also be more useful to know that on avrage 50% of OSfoo's boxes run six months without panics then that someone running OSfoo ran it for 3 years in a row...

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