Robert Watson posted another bi-weekly version of the FreeBSD 5.2 open issues list, slightly restructured. At this time, there are four “show stopper defects” listed: panics when building ata-raid arrays, ATAng crashdump causes disk corruption, pipe/VM corruption on Alpha, and lingering PSE instability. There are only 5 issues left of on the “required features” list: KSE support for sparc64, KSE support for alpha, Fine-grained network stack locking without Giant, MAC framework devfs path fixes, and ACL_MASK override of umask support in UFS.
It looks like 5.2 wont be in the stable tree. Here is a link to the road map.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/articles/5-roadmap/sched…
Waiting for the performance enhancements till 5.3. I can wait. Waiting for the quality that FreeBSD puts out. And glad to do so. Keep up the good work.
A while ago, I was looking forward to the release of FreeBSD 5.2, as I was under the impression that it would be the begining of the new stable branch. Now it seems as though FreeBSD 5.3 will be. Not much we can do but sit and wait, but I am begining to wonder if the entire 5.x series will be nothing more the FreeBSD-CURRENT.
I have been using 5.x since before 5.0-R, and there has been significant improvements in all areas of the system. As time goes by, I notice fewer and fewer stability issues, and more of the new features come online. I will be very happy to get away from the 4.x series for good once 5.x stabilizes, but it’s gonna be a while.
I wonder if we’ll be seeing the first release of DragonFly before this occurs.
Don’t sit and wait !
Test it, stress it punch it, and report bugs/issues.
Or better yet, help to fix them.
i don’t have a dual cpu system….is there anything that a newbie would miss by using 4.9?
Well, I don’t know – I’m a newbie too, and tried both 4.8 and 5.1 – They are both fine, I am currently using 5.1. The latter has slightly older packages, but you will use the ports system anyhow, so that’s not much of a difference (I think 5.1 comes with KDE 3.1.2, 4.9 with 3.1.4).
One advice: read the Handbook before you go installing it. It is very well written, and yes, its newbie friendly, and most importantly: up to date. So, when there are differences between the 4.x and 5.x branches, they are explained in the handbook.
All I can say of 5.1 is that it is rock stable, I didn’t have any problems using it (one home desktop, and one server). But its up to you – if I hadn’t installed 5.1 a few weeks ago, I would use a dice now to decide
Go with 4.9. It’s faster and more stable. On a single cpu box, you’re not going to be missing too much unless you are into trying out the new security features like acls and mandatory access controls, witch aren’t exactly for everyday folks, nor easy to use.
Just a side note, I prefer KDE, but I’ve found it to be (sadly) broken in a few minor, yet irritating places (I have filed the appropriate reports) so if you want a usable desktop system out of the box, use Gnome 2 instead.
4.x is the stable branch (production use). This is if your playing it safe.
5.x is the new technology release. This is the bleeding edge of FreeBSD.
4.x and 5.x both support SMP or multiprocessor. There are enhancements to the 5.x for SMP (and more).
Depends on your view point on which on you should use. If you have 1 PC or Server and you can afford to have some bugs to work out (go 4.x). If you want to be on the edge and test new features or get support for hardware that doesnt exist yet in 4.x, then you should use 5.x.
Hope that answers your questions.
PS: sign up for some of FreeBSD mailing lists. You will find some friendly support. Also, the 4.x vs. 5.x questions have been asked. You may also search through the archives. Very helpful if you ask me.
Anonymous (IP: —.satx.rr.com) – Posted on 2003-11-02 00:57:26
i don’t have a dual cpu system….is there anything that a newbie would miss by using 4.9?
New compiler which should improve performance, prelinking, improved hardware support, native threading which in some but not all cases will improve responsiveness even in pseudo-SMP, that is, hyperthreading capable CPU’s.
What I am looking forward to is 5.3 when the fine grainess is more complete and Opteron port is bought on board as a mature first class citizen.
Regarding the Opteron, the one thing I am interested in is the move by AMD to produce a multi-core Opteron in 2005, which should prove a very interesting thing to have on the market, especially for people like me who like “killing a flea with a canon”.
Kingston (IP: —.home.cgocable.net) – Posted on 2003-11-02 01:14:39
Just a side note, I prefer KDE, but I’ve found it to be (sadly) broken in a few minor, yet irritating places (I have filed the appropriate reports) so if you want a usable desktop system out of the box, use Gnome 2 instead.
Just regarding KDE and GNOME. I found on FreeBSD 4.8 that when I compiled GNOME 2.2, when I selected text from the terminal the whole desktop would freeze for around 15seconds then suddenly start working, on the other hand, when I use KDE, I haven’t seen any of that strange behaviour.
Has this issue been corrected in 2.4 or does it still plague it? regarding Mozilla, are they going to one day clean up the DNS resolving code in is so that it doesn’t grind to a halt when opening up multiple tabs and access more than 1 site at a time? I’ve heard of the complete rewrite that is currently at the Mozilla CVS head, however, I was hoping that some of the bugginess has been fixed. The strange part is that I have not noticed this behaviour in Konqueror or Opera.
“Just a side note, I prefer KDE, but I’ve found it to be (sadly) broken in a few minor, yet irritating places (I have filed the appropriate reports) so if you want a usable desktop system out of the box, use Gnome 2 instead.”
hmmm… Using KDE on FSBD 5.1. I built it from ports, I have all the addons (kdemultimedia, kdeaddons, etc..) but found no broken packages yet. Of course, I don’t use _all_ the progs … but which ones are broken? Its fast and its stable for me at least…
Konqueror most notably, and I’m having issues with KDE on 4.9, not 5.1. It works flawlessly on 5.1. I used the packages from the instalation cd.
Konqueror most notably, and I’m having issues with KDE on 4.9, not 5.1. It works flawlessly on 5.1. I used the packages from the instalation cd.
That is one of the things I learnt early on, never use the packages off the CD. Download the Mini-iso and build the packages manually. You’ll find that if you install the mini, sup to the latest ports cvs revision, a large number of those issues will disappear.
“Konqueror most notably, and I’m having issues with KDE on 4.9, not 5.1. It works flawlessly on 5.1. I used the packages from the instalation cd.”
I agree CooCooCaChoo – althought I didn’t try it on 4.8, but building it from ports might be a better solution. Just be careful not to build the metaport – First kdebase, the gradually add packages you need. I have to admit that first I came to FreeBSD I planned to use packages, but the ports system seems to work so flawlessly, that now I have my entire system built from the ports collection. If you are on a dial up, you can choose to download all the distfiles (without building them) first, so you can have all the stuff you need in one session. (and the first port to build should be portupgrade
)
I also had issues with KDE and the same problem with the terminal occured. GNOME, however was perfect, except for the hardware monitoring applets, which were not working, don’t know what the status is on them now.
Yesterday, and it works very well. I am still running 5.1 on a test desktop, but I will be doing a clean install to 5.2 when it gets released. I’m afraid I will be sticking with the stable branch until the 5.x branch is finally declared stable.
Yeah, that’s pretty much my thoughts on things. I’ll be very happy once I can use 5.x because it’s the only real option. Kind of off-topic, but does anyone here know anything more about the dynamic root sillyness? I do so hope that it remains an option, and is not made default in 5.2 or 5.3.