“The FreeBSD Release Engineering Team is pleased to announce the availability of FreeBSD 6.0-BETA4. ISO images are available for i386, amd64, pc98, alpha, powerpc, and ia64. Sparc64 is still in the process of being built and will be uploaded as soon as it is ready.”
Nice gonna install it today!
I’m just about to try out FreeBSD again (been some years since last time). Should I go for 5.4 or 6.0-BETA4 for my laptop? Or am I better off waiting till 6.0 is released?
It depends on if you just want to start playing with it, or you want to start working. 5.4 is good for work. I am testing with 6.0-BETAx to make sure my system will work with it, and reporting bugs (PR’s) if it does not. I am waiting until 6 is released before completely replacing 5.x on my system with it.
One of the great things about FreeBSD is that you can upgrade even across major version releases. If you want to install 5.4 for stability, and then migrate to 6.0, you can do so with cvsup ( http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/cvsup.htm… ). After running cvsup, be sure to read /usr/src/UPDATING (for the kernel and userland) and /usr/ports/UPDATING (for the “ports” software tree).
Thats one thing that make FreeBSD one of the best operating system, you can move from a version to other without problems..
Since server-style stability isn’t exactly my main concern on a laptop and I want updated software, I’ll install this new BETA and know that upgrading to the actual release will be a piece of cake. Thanks alot for the responses.
If you absolutely NEED cutting edge support for all your hardware, then 6.0 would be the way to go. If you don’t and your hardware isn’t too funky then just stick with 5.4. As someone mentioned earlier, it’s a fairly simple process to upgrade to 6.0Release when it comes out using the links provided in the thread (a couple hours of compiling after a quick cvsup).
However, if you’re still really curious and still want to check out 6.0 you should go and read the links in the announcement and make sure that none of the problems that are still around will affect you with your hardware setup. (not that that will guarantee no bugs for you).
Personally, I haven’t had any problems since I updated about a week and a half ago, but that was on a PC with common hardware. A laptop, or so it seems to me, can sometimes be a different story. So basically, it comes down to your preference and how daring you are feeling. Hopefully this can help you make a more educated decision.
At a first glance the todo’s list is not encouranging and I’am asking if they can resolve those issues within few weeks.
BTW, I’m confident on them.
I’d prefer to wait one more month and have more tests.
Congrats in advance for the up-coming 6.
6.0-BETA’s has been pretty stable on several production machine’s overhere (we need some newer hardware support)
I already tried installing beta 4 on an AMD Athlon 2000+ home system, 1024MB RAM, and it already froze up before before getting very far, kept freezing at 26% when it was extracting. Also tried on a Celeron laptop 1.5Ghz with 512 RAM and it crapped out while it was scanning hardware to boot up. So I can’t report any bugs if I can’t even install it, much less use it.
Using 6.0 since early CURRENT days. In 5 months only 1 crash and i’m using it every day as my main working machine !
Keep up good work ! Try it ! You will love it !
Just thought I’d let those who are venturing off into 6.0 land and feel that it runs very slowly, just a reminder that ALL of the debugging switches are set to on by default in the beta’s. To experience the full speed of 6.0 is it suggested that you turn those off by recompiling the kernel with them turned off.
I have been using it for about a week and I have to say that the native wireless support is amazing.
Wow! Talk about typeo’s. Sorry about that, hopefully you still get the point.
Here is a link that can help you with the debugging switches
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7390
Have they started supporting wireless devices like a previous FreeBSD 6 article implied? Or will that happen upon final release?
I do believe that almost all wireless devices should be supported through Project Evil which allows FreeBSD to ‘use’ the native binary windows drivers that the manufacturers provide.
Yes, I got Project evil stuff working. This was my first FreeBSD install. I install Beta3, but it sure is buggy – as in kernel panics or lockups.
No, I’m not referring to any other types of hacks. I am referring to FreeBSD’s native support for wireless devices.
See this article OSNews reported on in early August:
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39214098,00.h…
I’ve been running 4.11 on an older computer mainly for the desktop. Is there a compelling reason to upgrade to 5.4 or even 6.0 at this time?
I’ve been running 4.11 on an older computer mainly for the desktop. Is there a compelling reason to upgrade to 5.4 or even 6.0 at this time?
So that you can use Gnome?
Nah, that’s not a compelling reason. 😉 Not to start flamewar on WM/DE’s, I’ve been a Window Maker fan for quite a while. IceWm works pretty well. WindowLab is interesting, but not something I’d use on a regular basis. I just tried out XFCE4 and have been pretty impressed with it. But I’ve spent a lot of time recently trying to understand the configuration file for Fvwm, so my Fvwm desktop is starting to look pretty good to me.
I run 6.0-BETA on both i386 (a laptop) and AMD64, and it’s 20-25 years ahead of anything Microseft can offer today. Their proprietary piece of shit Windows 2003 Server can’t even compare.
FreeBSD is Really good OS!i switched from Linux to FreeBSD 6 months ago and i love it!guess what linux apps work better in FreeBSD then they work in Linux 😉
sure i still have in my disk 5 different Linux i do play sometimes with them “especially Gentoo!” it is lovely!
oh by the way, OpenBSD the most secure OS on earth!(depends to the user and user’s config,you know)I love it’s security management.i have used and planing to install it again after i install extra disk to my pc.
I was wondering, how is FreeBSD’s TV Tuner support. I use the bttv driver on Linux for a Hauppage WinTV GO FM Tuner. It works perfectly for both FM Radio and for TV. Here is the relevant output from lspci on Linux.
00:09.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
00:09.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
Does anyone have any clues as to whether this card is supported in FreeBSD?
bt878 devices are pretty well supported. If you, like I, have a cx88 device, you may be out of luck (I don’t yet know of a stable driver for cx88 on a BSD).
I’m not entirely sure it would be compiled into the kernel by default, or if it’s capable of being built as a module, but a quick search on bttv freebsd should reveal the answer.
This might be of interest to you:
http://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/6-STABLE/hardware/i386/article.html…
Already did..
I’ve been using Freebsd 6 since BETA1 and it’s stable as hell, never crashed on me. If you are planning to install Freebsd on a desktop then I highly recommand using 6 over 5.4