FreeBSD Release Engineer Scott Long responds to questions relating to the stability and viability of FreeBSD 5.x releases.He answers questions relating to Mike Jakubik’s concerns of recent problems in FreeBSD 5.x, possible non-support of ports and hardware, its rapid development/evolution, which has lead to FreeBSD 6.x branch in quick succession to FreeBSD 5.x.
Scott explains that FreeBSD 5.x has evolved as a complete and stable operating system, not just a kernel, and has more components and features than FreeBSD 4.x. He thinks that they have gotten over most of the stability and performance hurdles of 5.x.
sounds like a plan to me…. they popped out 6, no need to keep improving 5 if 6 already is improved…. sounds like BSD is finally on the move…
I’m running on 6 and loving it. As for licenses, it doesn’t really matter unless you start defining “free” cause in the end, both licenses are free distribution.
But all the BSDs hate my computer
i see now… (bows in humility)
But all the BSDs hate my computer
What do they do?
Maybe it has something to do with the difference in installers. I’m so accustomed to the FreeBSD installation that more “automagic” Linux distros always frustrate me – if there’s a problem, I can’t get behind the magic installer to fix it. Gentoo and Slackware are pretty much the only installs that make sense to me in the Linux world. (Sick, ain’t it?;)
Actually, the DragonFly installer does a wonderful job of shortening and simplifying *BSD installation without piling “wizards” on top of it.
Anyhow – perhaps you’d like to tell us what problems you’ve had installing, and maybe someone here can help.
BTW (and back on-topic), I’ve been running FreeBSD 6.x for months with no problems at all.
But all the BSDs hate my computer
————————————————————–
What is the issue? Would in be in regards to:
1) Installing
2) Config’ng the system
3) Recompiling the kernel
If your getting specific error messages, post them.
IMHO It’s a very good thing that they decided to shorten the release cycles.
And with the recent optimizations, the great architectural effort they made in the transition 4.x -> 5.x is starting to pay off.
Kudos!
Btw, to whomever might feel like giving FreeBSD a shot, but feels he’s not tech-savvy (or patient) enough: http://www.pcbsd.org
It’s a newborn FreeBSD “distribution”. Basically they added a layer of graphical utilities (installer, package manager, etc) over the FreeBSD operating system. KDE is the default desktop (the utilities are written using QT).
More details here: http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10634&limit=no
And here’s what Dru Lavigne, of O’Reilly fame, thinks about it (basically, that it’s a great advocacy tool!). The review, albeit very recent, refers to a previous version:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/6948
It’s the install. FreeBSD 4.11 NetBSD freezes both freeze up on the boot up….have no idea why. FreeBSD 5.3 installs, but there’s some sort of problem with either X or KDE, not sure which. I’m thinking this is some sort of hardware problem, maybe has to do with my SIS chipset. Mind you, it’s an HP with no doubt the cheapest parts they probably could find:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&docn…
Freesbie 1.1 will run live, but once it’s installed it will freeze up on the boot as well. I don’t know nearly enough about BSD to try and track down these kinds of problems. BSD had run flawlessly for me on older hardware, so I’m thinking it might just be a matter of time before some driver is tweaked or whatever. I wil try again sometime.
I miss FreeBSD for the hands on nature of it and the learning experience, but I don’t always have the patience for it either.
try pcbsd! it installs in 20 mins and is based on freeBSD 5.4…www.pcbsd.org
check it out…i wonder if it works for you!!
I still do not get why they keep stressing that Linux is just a kernel and *BSD is an OS. What is the real difference here? The GNU folks will make sure their tools are perfectly aligned with Linux.
I’m looking forward to a more stabilised branch of FreeBSD. RELENG_5 has been too buggy for so far.
So, FreeBSD 6.0 is just around the corner right? Does that mean that all the design goals for the 5.X series have been met? Are all drivers and subsystems in FreeBSD 6.0 MPSafe? If not, then it would be misleading to release it as 6.0-Rel.
One would assume that the 6.0 release would have all the design goals in the 5.x branch met. How can you go up a major release point if it’s not 100% done? Unless it is all 100% done and now they’re just working on performance improvements, additional features, redeisgns, etc.
You know what I mean? So, what I’m trying to get as is, “Have the desgin goals for the 5.X series been met?”
Also I should note that Fedora Core 3 AMD-64 also wouldn’t install, froze on the boot up. Thought it was a bad disk, got a replacement, and the same thing happened. Something about this machine….
One clarification: I talked about patience before, but I really think it’s needed only in the setup phase.
I mean, once you’ve learned the basics and (like in your case) resolved initial hardware issues, FreeBSD just works.
I’m glad to read in the above comments (Jud) that FreeBSD 6.x already works like a charm.
The guy in the article is asking about a page that describes end of life information. Where is it? For example, is FreeBSD 5.3.1 EOL, and if so, as of when? When will 5.4 be EOL?
s/(Jud)/(Jud and The Daemon)/
http://www.freebsd.org/security/index.html
Don’t tear your shirt if you don’t understand the quick jump to 6.x from still new 5.x series. It is just a version number, nothing more, so what’ss the big deal. What matters is whether the OS works, is reliable or not, right?
Besides, they say that a higher version number (than what your competitors have) is good advertisment…
FreeBSD 6.x sure looks promising when reading Scott Long’s interesting message. DragonFlyBSD, also promising, will have a hard time competing with FreeBSD if everything (SMP etc.) goes ok in the FreeBSD development.
I’ve been using FreeBSD for years now. I like everything about it.
It is a solid OS.
It has a decent license.
It has decent support and community.
It is up to date.
I enjoy using it as a desktop and as a server.
I believe that SMPng will beat all competitors.
Just wait and see how 6.x will fly
I’ve been thinking about switching to FreeBSD 4.11 or maybe the latest greatest 5.4, will FreeBSD run a Linux 2.6.x kernel? If you’re wondering…no, I haven’t looked at FreeBSD’s site yet, I just thought I’d ask since someone here may already be doing what I’d like to do which is running a custom compiled 2.6 Linux kernel for some of my specialty apps that require said kernel.
In short, I would like to be able to run FreeBSD apps AND Linux apps without dual booting or using software such as VMware, etc.
Thanks in advance!
NoMicro$haft4me
Just load the linux compatibility layer and you’re golden.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/linuxemu….
Have fun!
FreeBSD Rocks – in fact anythingBSD rocks
FreeBSD is Not Linux. You can’t run a Linux kernel with FreeBSD, it has its own.
Just load the linux compatibility layer and you’re golden.
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/linuxemu…...
That’s exactly what I was looking for!
Thanks a million Jeff!
NoMicro$haft4me
By Luk van den Borne (IP: —.upc-g.chello.nl) – Posted on 2005-05-25 20:00:30
Take it like this. Remove GNU software from both FreeBSD and Linux and see what you get.
FreeBSD has its own software along with some GNU but Linux doesnt.
> I’m looking forward to a more stabilised branch of FreeBSD. RELENG_5 has been too buggy for so far.
LOL? you must be joking
FreeBSD does not run on Linux kernel. It has its own kernel FreeBSD’s kernel.
Yes you can run almost any program that runs on Linux. You have two ways to do that.
1- Compile the program from source
2- Run Linux apps using FreeBSD’s Linux emulation.
For one, FreeBSD comes with a huge collection of “ports” (reaching 13,000 ports) If you find what you need there you can install it as easy as typing… make install clean. Or if you do not like compiling you can fetch a binary precompiled package.
For two, FreeBSD ships with Linux emulation capabilities to make it easy to run Linux apps. All you need to do is: to say ‘Yes’ for Linux compatibilty while installing FreeBSD.
I hope this gives you an insight. Beside that FreeBSD got the best documentation out there just check out http://freebsd.org/handbook/ if you find any difficulties during installation.
Enjoy
Also I should note that Fedora Core 3 AMD-64 also wouldn’t install, froze on the boot up. Thought it was a bad disk, got a replacement, and the same thing happened. Something about this machine….
1) From what it sounds like, its an ACPI issue – pretty common unfortunately for the PC world, where people and hardware vendors would rather sell ‘cheap, cheap, cheap’ rather than ‘average price, and pretty good quality’.
2) Its a tough lesson to learn, I hope others learn, NEVER, I repeate, NEVER purchase an HP machine; they’re a ball of missery waiting for the next victim to fall into its trap. If you want a PC, Dell or Lenovo are the way to go. Both produce fairly good quality bits of hardware, using standard PC components, and work fairly nicely with any operating system you can to throw at it.
3) Have you tried installing an firmware update (if they have made one available for download)? maybe that could fix the ACPI issue.
There is an update, dated 2005-05-10 at:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareDownloadIndex?lc=en&lang…
You may find that’ll fix the problems you’re experiencing.
FreeBSD is Not Linux. You can’t run a Linux kernel with FreeBSD, it has its own.
Whilst this may not be the case, the reverse is true!
http://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/
> I have even considered using 4.11 for its stability and
> speed on single processor systems,
This statement, not negated but Mr Scott, is making me to think.
5.x took years to have a new structure, SMP, blah blah that I think are not usefull for a desktop user as me.
They spent years to evolute, to improve on what it’s their first field: server.
But here at work we have a lot of PCs, some olds as mine it’s a celeron 400 with 128mb of ram.
So today FreeBSD is going to have a lot of new features but most of them, I think, are usefull only for a server hardware, right ?
Does it mean I have to stick with 4.x for my old notebook hardware ?
Speaking franckly, I don’t care if it will support SMP, or whatever, but if my notebook is slower than 4.x than I won’t user 5.x at all.
I’m not a tech so franckly I could have said something really orrible, but it seems that 5.x didn’t get my dekstop life better.
Franckly if 5.x is slower than 4.x then I don’t see any reason, unless there are some packages not available for 4.x, to use 5.x and followings.
If the improvements are on the server hardware side only, then sorry 5.x or 6.x are not for me.
Oh How I wish I can continue to use PCBSD/FreeBSD on my system….. Both work flawlessly. However the one thing that irks me is Skype….
Skype works when installed using FreeBSD ports. Alas, the sound quality for Skype on BSD sucks like crazy and the lag is noticable. Skype works flawlessly on Linux for me.
Anyone knows how to resolve this problem under FreeBSD? Please help. My card is a Sound Blaster Live. All other applications work flawlessly except for Skype and alas that is one of the most important applications for me.
Help me solve this Skype problem, please!!!
The specs of my machine are as follows:
celeron 2 GHZ
512 MB RAM
Sound Blaster Live
ATI Radeon Video Card
My main problem with skype is speed and stability of the app. It takes forever to load, doesn’t save the user account, and tends to crash. Other than that any problems I had with quality seemed tractable to high latency at the edge of a wireless network.
How is the rest of your sound quality, music, mplayer?
What versions of the OS have you tried? i know pcbsd is 5.4.
Actually 5.x added a lot of features that will help for desktop use. For one thing, your notebook will be able to turn off when you shut it down. In terms of speed regressions, I don’t think it is something a desktop user will have to worry about. You won’t notice the difference whatsoever unless you are using it on a heavily loaded single-processor server, and even with that, most issues have been resolved.
It could be the cdrom. if its old, it might not be reading the dics very well. i had the exact same problem, put a new cdrom in and freeBSD installed fine