FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE is now officially available. This release marks a milestone in the FreeBSD 5.x
series and the beginning of the 5-STABLE branch of releases. New features from 4.x include massively upgraded SMP scalability including the new KSE M:N threading implementation, and the new ULE constant time scheduler (currently switched off per default). All in all these features bring scalability of kernel features on SMP systems (at least small to midrange systems) more or less on par with the Linux 2.6 kernel series with the NPTL threads library.
FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE Available
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Diversity is good, FreeBSD still serves a role.
Finally FreeBSD 5.x has hit Stable. This looks very promising for the future. Now it’d be nice to see some benchmarks and see how it outperforms Linux again in both performance and as it always has, in security.
Look forward to see more great BSD news =)
Hurrah!
What a pleasant surprise, I didn’t realize that they were going to declare 5.3 to be the start of the 5-STABLE branch.
Congratulations to the FreeBSD team. I can’t wait until I move at the end of the month, so I can use the downtime to upgrade my main server to the new version.
After all the wait, we’ll finally taste the sweetness of 5.x-STABLE.
Congratulations to my fellow FreeBSD addicts!
Why isn’t the ULE constant time scheduler turned on by default and what release will we see it on by default?
Now it’d be nice to see some benchmarks and see how it outperforms Linux again in both performance and as it always has
Perhaps Bascule would like to publish the numbers he has? I assume the claim made in the news wrt to scalability parity with Linux 2.6 is his.
Lets stop the bickering.
BSD has it’s place,Linux has it’s.
Respect others’ choices.
I’m tired of the constant flame wars !
It’s turned off because it had stability issues. Furthermore, several of the techniques that ULE uses have gone into the 4BSD scheduler now too, making SCHED_4BSD faster in many common situations (such as running MySQL on an SMP system). Seeing the fixes for ULE that recently went into -CURRENT, I think ULE will return in 5.4.
freebsd is based on on 4.4bsd(kernel?), so is there 5bsd?
or any website for 4.4bsd?
I am sure Apple can make good use of this code.
Great to see that there is still momentum behind the FreeBSD movement! FBSD is (as is Linux) an excellent OS – too bad Linux is the more supported by comercial interests
Nah I’d rather use GNU/BSD.
http://www.debian.org/ports/netbsd/
One GNU to rule them all. hahaha!
Really why not have a BSD/Linux
Some guy did try to offer the Linux developers a chunk of change in order for a snapshot of the Linux kernel released under the BSD license. They told him to get lost. It might be impossible anyhow, in a practical sense, as all of the authors that created the GPL’ed kernel code would have to agree to such an endeavor.
Yep, I am tired of flame wars.
Please if we want to compare os to os, wm to wm, providing hard facts or technical data is welcomed.
I like to hear about FreeBSD vs Linux benchmarks with its current kernel, if any.
But one thing to consider, as I already said in other thread in this site, application is important.
Even if FreeBSD has better results compared to Linux (still it may be better in some areas but worse in other areas as usually) FreeBSD doesn’t have some native apps like Oracle. So until FreeBSD has a great margin of performance compared to Linux (I doubt it though), I don’t see any real advantages running those apps using Linux emulation under FreeBSD.
Any comments?
Thanks.
Good comment.
Just be cool – Enjoy the freedom.
peace man,
jim
Go FreeBSD team. As an OS enthusiast, I am extremely excited with this release. November/December is going to shape up to be an excellent month for operating systems. Debian is going stable with a modern system and autodetect features. Solaris 10 is a very fine, and now capable Unix (talking about x86 version). And FreeBSD just went stable and extremely modern.
I love it.
On a side note. My main server is a really old RedHat system… prolly with a whole bunch of security holes. I had decided to upgrade over a year and a half ago to either Debian or FreeBSD. I decided to make my decision based on whichever one goes stable first. I never expected I’d be waiting this long for either one, and I just find it interesting that both are coming out with their new version at about the same time. Kudos to FreeBSD and Debian.
is there any torrent for this release?
well, ./ gave me the answer:
http://people.freebsd.org/~scottl/5.3-torrent
hehe,
bsd woodoos me all aspects and respects though slackware linux has been fascinating me for ages. so many linux distros makes me diziness however..
the more OS(es), the more choices for you. do not bicker them please
And this said by a convinced linux user.
But FreeBSD is *not* like some hobby, wannabe OSes we hear so much about these days: It is a great OS!
…is there anyway to download the FreeBSD handbook (it doesn’t appear to be up to date for 5.3 yet
)?
oh, and from reading the errata it looks like 5.3-stable isn’t quite as polished as stable might infer. We are setting up a server for the school paper and I’m pushing for us to use 5.3 as a beta and plan to transition to 5.4 as soon as it comes out.
“And this said by a convinced linux user.
But FreeBSD is *not* like some hobby, wannabe OSes we hear so much about these days: It is a great OS!
Thats the spirit! I was once on the dark side as well but for about a year now my server has been run on FreeBSD and about 3 years my workstations.
“…is there anyway to download the FreeBSD handbook”
It is in /usr/share/doc/en/books/handbook (or something like that, I’m not at my FreeBSD system atm)
Also you can cvsup the latest doc
I have no need for a server OS, but I’m eager to try new operating systems. I’ve heard lots of good things about FreeBSD’s stability, secuirity and performance as a server, but not so much about it as a desktop.
How does FreeBSD 5.3 compare to current Linux distributions, such as SUSE 9.2 on the desktop side of things? Is FreeBSD competitive as a desktop for an average Linux user?
It’s as much functional as Linux, if not better in some areas. I have been using FreeBSD (4.9, 4.10) for a while; it’s fully capable and usable as a desktop. With v5.3, I see improved responsiveness; applications lauch faster. I have done a few searches using find / -name *; results were performed in few seconds. For installation, if you can handle Slackware’s, then you can do it. This is a great OS for desktop.
…now… if that torrent would just work. !??
I know it’s probably just a cosmetic glitch, but looks like the CD lable on CD1 is wrong, my ISO burned with a label of fbsd_miniinst but looks to be the full CD 1. Had me wondering if I got the right ISO file for a few minutes. Oops?
We have just witnessed the release of OpenBSD 3.6, now FreeBSD 5.3, and soon NetBSD 2.0! Does anyone know when that is to happen? Is there a release schedule for NetBSD 2.0 available yet?
Yes, FreeBSD makes a great desktop. You have access to 11911 ports. Many of the popular applications / WM (IE: Gnome/KDE/XFCE/Fluxbox, Blackbox, Matchbox, OO.o, gaim, Firefox, Mozilla and more) and so on can be found at the URL listed below.
FYI: ports = soucre = compile
packages = binary
Check out the software availabe at:
http://www.freebsd.org/ports
As for the statment:
“How does FreeBSD 5.3 compare to current Linux distributions, such as SUSE 9.2 on the desktop side of things? Is FreeBSD competitive as a desktop for an average Linux user? “.
What is an average Linux user?
1) There are no fancy configuartion scripts
2) No GUI installs
Dont let this seem like a bad thing, because it is not. Ncurses is a fast text based installer that walks you through the steps installing your system. And as for the config scripts, well there are none, however there are tons of example scripts installed. For the most part copying over an example config file over and making some edits, poof, you have that application magically set up.
Its not as hard as it sounds.
Reasons I use FreeBSD.
1) Easy upgrades
2) Ports and Packages: easy to install/upgrade software.
http://www.freebsd.org/ports
3) Latest software is availble.
4) Fast, darn fast.
5) BSD vs SysV startup scripts. Unlike sysv startup scripts, you have one file to config to to start services. Its ends up being single user or multiuser. It is a very clean layout. The rc.conf file is a pleasure to work with.
6)Great documentation. 800 pages conviently located to answer your questions:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/
7) Great mailing lists. I make the recommendation to sign up to a mailing lists for additional support.
8) Additional quality documentation can befound at onlamp.
http://www.onlamp.com/bsd
These are just some of the reasons I use FreeBSD. Experience is the best teacher. Give it a try for yourself and be your own judge.
I hope this helps.
Ok: tomorrow afternoon is scheduled to try it out.
To the new users:
Don’t get discouraged too soon. FreeBSD isn’t Linux Mandrake. But once you master it, the time you spent learning it pays off – a lot.
Just one question.
“4) Fast, darn fast. ”
Is it faster than Linux and also, does it have the same window dragging lag that Linux suffers from?
I guess that you just appreciate viri, spyware, slow application launch times and even slower boot times then the rest of the people looking at this annoucement.
Rememeber you OS will no longer be supported in 2005/2006. Thats 300 USD for a new OS, unless you buy a new PC. And you will prabably need a new PC with the next version of bloatware that is coming out.
Enjoy the viri, I dont need viruis software on my PC, I just pass them along.
Best wishs.
Congratulations to the FreeBSD team and all users.
Just one question.
“4) Fast, darn fast. ”
Is it faster than Linux and also, does it have the same window dragging lag that Linux suffers from?
No sure, exactly to what you are refering too. Could it be your choice of Window Managers? It might be a setting in your XFree86 config file (IE: hardware acceleration, video memeory, etc). I typically use a smaller WM (Fluxbox with XFE) and I don’t have a dragging issue, it might be my Hardware.
My basic hardware specs:
PIII 800
Nividea FX 5200 PCI (using genric NV drivers not the Nvidia drivers).
RAM = 512
HD = Sygate 120 gig, ATA100.
I have not used a larger WM in a long time and I do not remember if there was any slow down for dragging.
*BSD aside:
1) Do you have any animations turned on?
2) Check to make sure your XFree86 config file for potential
tweaks. Read your driver man page for hints.
Wish I could be of more help.
Default boot (no GUI, (*bsd)) about 10-13 seconds vs, RH 7.3 (40 sec), 8.0 (50-60 secs)-9.0 (dont remember). These are approximations from what I remember.
PS add an extra 3 seconds for XFree and Flux to start from the time I issued startx.
I come here to see if maybe there are any comments about the product by people who have used it….and all I get is people bashing Linux and Windows. How about this, if you don’t like Linux, shut your mouth, quit complaining about it and don’t use it. Pretend it doesn’t exist if that helps you accomplish this. Oh, and maybe get a life while you are at it.
The new ‘BSD!
I guess that from now on the differences between Dragonfly (forked from FreeBSD 4) and FreeBSD 5-STABLE will be more visible.
I guess that you just appreciate viri, spyware, […]
Firstly, it’s *viruses*.
Secondly, neither are a problem if you follow basic safe computing practices.
[…] slow application launch times […]
Uh, compared to _what_ ? I mean, what are you comparing to draw that conclusion ? Word vs vi ? Outlook vs Pine ? A Pentium 3 vs an Athlon64 ?
There are many aspects of Windows that are worth criticising, but application launch times is hardly one of them.
[…] and even slower boot times then the rest of the people looking at this annoucement.
*Than*
Starting up Windows is no slower than starting up Linux (or BSD) and the accompanying X server and KDE/GNOME.
Having said that, why do you even care ? Why the heck are you rebooting often enough for reboot time to be an issue ?
It always mystifies me why people go on about boot times. It’s not something you should be doing more than once or twice a month, if that.
Rememeber you OS will no longer be supported in 2005/2006.
December 31, 2006. That’s a hell of a lot longer than the FreeBSD team [0] supports their releases (just to keep this somewhat relevant).
Thats 300 USD for a new OS, unless you buy a new PC.
More like $150 – $200 for an upgrade license for the few machines that might actually require it. An insignificant cost out of the lifetime of a machine.
And you will prabably need a new PC with the next version of bloatware that is coming out.
Windows has an excellent record of working quite usably on older hardware. I see no reason to believe this will change.
[0] I’m not criticising the FreeBSD team here – they do an excellent job considering they’re all volunteers and since system updates don’t cost anything, tend to make few major changes and happen fairly frequently it’s less important. But to imply Microsoft’s support lifetimes are poor is just FUDing.
Relax,
Someone comes on and says on a *BSD release post that they rather use XP is kind of like trolling, don’t you think? So I put some trolling back at that individual, waiting for that indivdual to respond.
Its that simple.
FYI:
“Firstly, it’s *viruses*.
Secondly, neither are a problem if you follow basic safe computing practices. ”
Most users dont participate in safe practices. If you do not agree here, I am not sure what to say. Several outbreaks were based on systems that were not patched. Do I really need to post several URL’s to prove my point?
“There are many aspects of Windows that are worth criticising, but application launch times is hardly one of them. ”
Actually in my experience, larger appliations do take long to boot, same version across win OS.
“Starting up Windows is no slower than starting up Linux (or BSD) and the accompanying X server and KDE/GNOME.
Having said that, why do you even care ? Why the heck are you rebooting often enough for reboot time to be an issue ? ”
Actually on a dual boot, FreeBSD starts up in about 12 or 13 seconds and another 3 for fluxbox to start. So my boot time is quicker. Windows, with firewall, virus protection and takes over a minute. That minute has only something like 10 service enabled (excluding virus and firewall).
I also power my machine down and boot up a couple of times a day. I do this for power conservation, it is done for the environment.
And is there really a need to pick on the phrase viri vs viruses. Even though the old school usage of the term is viruses; in a lot of cases viri has grow to be an acceptable term. How about the term Lan, back in the 80’s that was anything connected to a switch, now more contemporary uses refers to building wide deployment. Time and vocabular do change and if you do not like the change that is fine; however, you may one day have to accept the fact that the language is in flux.
FYI: When I say old school, late 70’s and early 80’s. Yes, I was using MS/Apple et al back them. And from the posts that you have made, I believe your experience may predate my own. So, in essence, old school is not a degratatory phrase, in my word. I specificed this so there is no misunderstanding.
As for applications and slower response times, I can break out several old images 95, 98, 2000 and XP and do several benchmarks, however what would be the point. By the time that is completed this posting section would be closed.
As for the OMG and Linux, it was a comparison of boot times on default system installs, nothing more.
Is anyone else facing this issue? On boot process, right after getting to sysinstall system hangs
Thank you
even the linux binaries in FreeBSD run faster than in SUSE 9.1
but people… we all know ya can get long uptimes with the various ‘nix systems
guess what? not everyone cares!
<quote> Having said that, why do you even care ? Why the heck are you rebooting often enough for reboot time to be an issue ? ” </quote>
guess what? some people DO care…. and DONT care how long they can keep their little machines running without rebooting
not everyone is a server admin…. some people dual boot and use their machines for other things…. like, say…. DEVELOPMENT?
rebooting often is a BENEFIT to some people
statements like these are completely asinine and arrogant… assuming everyone’s needs and desires are the same as yours
(end of rant)
Congrats FreeBSD developers! Keep up the great work. If you guys only understood how simple you have made life for “real” system administrators around the planet.
There is an excellent, and I mean excellent, book out there on FreeBSD. It’s “Absolute BSD: The Ultimate Guide to FreeBSD” by Michael Lucas. ISBN 1-886411-74-3. Publisher: No Starch Press.
I dream of the day when I have more than one computer. A true-blue, honest-to-goodness, home-based server I can install FreeBSD onto.
🙂
http://www.filesoup.com/ has disk #1
Well i love The BSD’s and favor them over Linux but a friend of mine favors Linux, and my girlfriend loves windows it is all a matter of taste and feel.
So use what you feel is the right OS for you.
If you don’t like Linux do not use it if you do not like *BSD then do not use it, use what suits you best.
Now personally i am really happy too see that 5.3 is out and declared Stable. and i have good feelings with it that they did not hurry things. 8 Beta’s and 2 RC is good.
Hopefully the ULE sheduler is on by default in 5.4
Thank you very much for the joy and fun you’ll people gave my with FreeBSD.
Monday i am going to order the 5.3 CD set.
http://people.freebsd.org/~scottl/5.3-torrent/
even the linux binaries in FreeBSD run faster than in SUSE 9.1
Are you sure about that?, because SuSE 9.1 already use kernel 2.6.x. Do you have benchmark’s urls where I can look at? Which FreeBSD kernel that benchmark used, 4.x or 5.x?
Did this benchmark (about linux emulation vs linux) run on several distros or just one distro. Did it run under same hardware, same partition? Did both kernel finely tuned?
Now, you can see that statement is useless.
First : no facts shown.
Second : it really is meaningless, because if it is really faster than SuSE, what about redhat, slackware, gentoo, etc.
Now take a look at this benchmark :
http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/
No kernel rules all aspects.
FreeBSD is faster than Linux is a myth. Sorry about that.
Because no kernel performs better at every aspects.
So can we speak which areas FreeBSD perform better than linux, and which areas Linux perform better. THIS will be better for us because it will help us choose OS wisely accoording to our needs.
“But one thing to consider, as I already said in other thread in this site, application is important.
Even if FreeBSD has better results compared to Linux (still it may be better in some areas but worse in other areas as usually) FreeBSD doesn’t have some native apps like Oracle. So until FreeBSD has a great margin of performance compared to Linux (I doubt it though), I don’t see any real advantages running those apps using Linux emulation under FreeBSD.
Any comments?
Thanks.”
One comment: a LOT of emulated linux apps will run FASTER on FreeBSD than natively on Linux. That ought to mean something 🙂
“I don’t see any real advantages running those apps using Linux emulation under FreeBSD.”
Specially with comercial apps, where people “certifies” their product against a product (ie: redhat AS). Running it under freebsd would make you to lose the comercial support.
I bet lots of freebsd applications would faster in linux – if we had/need such compatibility layer. I also bet for the contrary. If linux/freebsd would be the best, one of the two would not exist…
I would be very interested in SMP benchmarks but I don’t have the right hardware to do them.
If somebody has enough hardware lying around (2, 4 or more CPUs SMP systems), please do some benchmarks.
I don’t know of ANY SMP benchmarks comparison of FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, Linux, DragonFlyBSD, Windows and perhaps Solaris – THIS WOULD BE GREAT!!! (at least if it would be done from a neutral standpoint, if that is possible at all…)
Yes, but we are talking as sysadmin here.
Faster means nothing to stability and error proof. We need 24×7 stability not just performance.
Well, oracle under linux is faster than windows. But if we speak about oracle client, windows is better because more native oracle management client run under windows than linux, such as Tuning Pack. So faster alone is useless.
Do you want to run oracle server under linux emulation? I don’t.
Still, overall, freebsd is not faster than linux. Like SMPs, that is other reason why I don’t use FreBSD 4.x although I try it several times to see how it grow. FreeBSD 5.x, that still need time to see as it just enter stable state.
So, once again, FreeBSD is not faster than linux. Which kernel, which conditions we speak?
Windows is faster than linux at several areas, and slower at other areas. So as FreeBSD.
One comment: a LOT of emulated linux apps will run FASTER on FreeBSD than natively on Linux. That ought to mean something 🙂
Which apps? Benchmarked by whom?
As usual when these ‘x vs y’ discussions gets going on OSnews, there are a lot of loose fuzzy claims and very very little hard data. That ought to mean something.
FreeBSD still suffers from “redraw lag” or artifacts. This is mainly more of an issue of your setup. What devices you have on your system, your configuration (Are you using DRI, if availible to possible speed up performance), and the X server.
The new X.org 6.8 can double buffer your screen (not enabled by default), and should improve redraw latency with the X Damages extension.
“”4) Fast, darn fast. ”
Is it faster than Linux and also, does it have the same window dragging lag that Linux suffers from?
No sure, exactly to what you are refering too. Could it be your choice of Window Managers? It might be a setting in your XFree86 config file (IE: hardware acceleration, video memeory, etc). I typically use a smaller WM (Fluxbox with XFE) and I don’t have a dragging issue, it might be my Hardware. ”
Depends on your video card. If you have a slightly decent one, then no. I can drag like that on both 4x and 5x with out problem. I am using the nv drivers on either though, just the nvidia drivers, so I can’t vouch for the nv ones.
If faster means nothing compared to stability, why all the arguments are based on “linux is faster than FreeBSD” ?
Ok, don’t want to talk about fast, then talk about stability and security. Which operating system was considered the most secure OS ? And which one accounted for ~65% of all compromises?
Where do you see a Linux ontop of netcraft list? Or any uptime site ?
Everyone knows BSD is a lot more mature than Linux and isn’t a mess as a whole. BSD is designed from scratch to be a consistent system as a whole, and it behaves like so; Linux is a kernel with user tools ontop of it, chaotically added by <insert distro here>. One way to do something on RH might not work on Slack, or that way on debian might not be suitable on SuSE.
This doesn’t happen with FreeBSD (or any other BSD), everything is clearly built and ordered, the directory structure is very clear. The system just feels a lot cleaner.
So, FreeBSD might not be faster than Linux on some aspects, right. As Linux isn’t as fast as FreeBSD on other aspects. But I’ve never seen a Linux that just feels like a system altogether, and I get that feeling while using FreeBSD.
It just feels like a system as a whole..
The only thing preventing me from running FreeBSD instead of Slackware is the Lack of support for DVB tuner cards.
I like FreeBSD’s kernel audio mixer for cards that don’t support hardware mixing. (and users like me that don’t like to use artsd)
I think most of those claims are just hearsay or based upon benchmarks when linux was still 2.2.x or even 2.0.x. Besides that, it is also unclear where this speed advantage lies for FreeBSD. (Desktop) responsiveness? Latency? Scalability? Networking? I/O?
Apart from that, I am really happy that FreeBSD 5 has finally reached a stable state. But I will still stay with FreeBSD 4 on my home server. First, I want to see if there are no showstoppers anymore (e.g. samba) and I will install it on my test pc to see if everything works as planned.
I installed FreeBSD 5.3-RC2 on my laptop a few days ago. Allow me to present a list of the drawbacks I encountered which made me switch back to Gentoo whitin 48 hours.
* USB2 support through “device ehci” in the kernel made my system crash hard on me whenever I tried to mount or detach my USB memory key.
* NVIDIA binary drivers made the computer crash whenever I tried to launch X.
* The ipw driver available at http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ipw/ipw-freebsd.html didn’t work for me. AP was found but dhcp requests failed
* the linux flashplayer played everything in slow motion in mozilla.
* Mplayer refused to use xv output with nv driver, -vo x11 doesn’t scale.
I would consider FreeBSD as a server though.
First, congratulations to FreeBSD team!
About using FreeBSD as desktop – although it’s not designed for nowadays desktop use (well, same about linux), it’s pretty usable. Well, don’t expect latest DE (eg Gnome 2.8) or full support for latest hardware (eg ATI 98xx cards) from FreeBSD-STABLE – if you can live without this, you can get very stable desktop. Being “hardcore” windows user myself, I prefer FreeBSD desktop over various Linuxes (have played with many) – mostly due to underlying OS design and philosophy.
Historically *BSD is mostly used in server environment (or just being plain IT/IP infrastructure device, like router) – IMHO in this area it is best.
IMHO the best (philosophical) expression of FreeBSD vs Linux difference (Unix is used in meaning all *nix family, hackers mean real hackers):
FreeBSD is attempt to port Unix to PC by Unix hackers. Linux is attempt to develop Unix on PC by PC hackers.
1: Not sure about this since I am not have not played with USB on mine yet, but I find it odd.
2: Not had a problem with them on mine. Check the nvidia driver stuff for notes, on some odd setups stuff needs to be tweaked.
3: NDIS
4: Check your cpu load, something may be eating it all up. Also try out preemption, it is nice.
5: Does your card support it?
I have just completed installation on my machine.
Just a minor glitch: I decided to install cvsup-without-gui (no X here) from ports. I don’t know why, but the ports system decided it needed so many other ports, the installation went on for about 10 mins so I decided to stop.
After make clean i have downloaded a package and… weighing 700K, it installed without dependencies.
Look at errata, it has some bugs related to USB keyboard/detaching usb devices:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/errata.html
Long time Linux user here. Having a GREAT time trying 5.3!
Just a minor glitch: I decided to install cvsup-without-gui (no X here) from ports. I don’t know why, but the ports system decided it needed so many other ports, the installation went on for about 10 mins so I decided to stop.
After make clean i have downloaded a package and… weighing 700K, it installed without dependencies.
cvsup is written in Modula. If you wish to compile it from source, you will need all the Modula development tools required to build it.
“I personally have never seen FreeBSD beat GNU/Linux in a good benchmark, even the 2.2 kernels trounce FreeBSD, in the benchmarks I have seen in both speed and stability.”
Give links or shut up pls.
“When I used FreeBSD 4.5 RELEASE, I noticed no difference in stability or speed between it and Mandrake.”
And you are the sole source of stability and speed info in the world. Thank you for showering your wisdom on us common mortals….oh and they could not have possibly improved anything between 4.5 and 5.3..I mean..thats only a 8 version difference.
“My GNU/Linux system is not chaotic, most modern popular distributions (Redhat, Mandrake and SUSE) conform to LSB.”
LSB is chaotic when compared to the FreeBSD file system… That doesn’t mean it sucks..but its true.
“Linux has many security features, selinux kernel and userland patches, rsbac sources, pax, etc… Whether a user decides to take advantages of them its their choice. SSP with gcc… !!!”
google TrustedBSD.
“GNU/Linux Redhat alone, is more popular for servers and more well known than FreeBSD. So ofcourse there will be more attacks against Linux servers, and subsequently more intrusions.”
Do I have to even say anything?…Yahoo….Pair..
“google TrustedBSD. ”
copying old selinux in incompatible non integrated way that virtually noone uses is what you call competence?
“Do I have to even say anything?…Yahoo….Pair.. ”
how does that refute what adam said. for what its worth check yahoo maps.
“copying old selinux in incompatible non integrated way that virtually noone uses is what you call competence? ”
….what?..lol
“how does that refute what adam said. for what its worth check yahoo maps.”
Two of the biggest site hosts..yahoo and pair both use FreeBSD…lots of others do as well….how does that NOT refute what adam said?
“http://maps.yahoo.com was running unknown on FreeBSD when last queried at 1-Nov-2004 21:02:29 GMT” — Netcraft
uhm…yes?
.what?..lol
—
you cant even refute this intelligently?
”
Two of the biggest site hosts..yahoo and pair both use FreeBSD…lots of others do as well….how does that NOT refute what adam said?
”
he said redhat has much higher number of hosts than freebsd. yahoo+pair doesnt even come close. you can quote stastics to prove otherwise. netcraft even?
”
“http://maps.yahoo.com was running unknown on FreeBSD when last queried at 1-Nov-2004 21:02:29 GMT” — Netcraf”
you didnt even understand what i told you. yahoo maps is NOT maps.yahoo.com. its a internal database running linux. check the yahoo evangelist interview
Actually, it *is* virii, you ignoratus =). And I have no problem with people bashing Linux/Windows, as long as they provide some basis – eg the colour scheme is like, so, you know 60’s *grin*.
bye,
Victor
Resonpding to anonymous
When I was talking about security, I was responding to anothers claim; I am not saying FreeBSD is any less secure than GNU/Linux.
Give links or shut up pls.
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1148/sam0107a/0107a.htm
Linux 2.2 trounces a FreeBSD version by 75% in some areas, and FreeBSD can’t handle the simultaneous connections without outaging.
Of course many hosting providers use Linux.
LSB is chaotic when compared to the FreeBSD file system…
LSB + FHS is fine.
The way netcraft measures avaibility is flawed. Uptime on many popular systems, like later versions of Linux are not counted; simply because they have no accurate way to predict uptime. Linux on IA-64 system’s uptime, are also not counted.
Uptime can be skewed by kernel patches, especially randomizing ones.
Ok, don’t want to talk about fast, then talk about stability and security. Which operating system was considered the most secure OS ? And which one accounted for ~65% of all compromises?
65% of all compromises? I don’t care with report that doesn’t show numbers and type of compromises has been received by each OS. It did not show us how much severity / damage that compromises created to those servers.
The most secure OS? OpenBSD : the most secure OS by default not FreeBSD.
As I seen at security focus stats that Slackware has fewer bug than FreeBSD, but RedHat has bigger number. So again, if we are refering linux, we should choose one distro because Redhat is different than Mandrake or SuSE or Debian.
Still that doesn’t make FreeBSD more secure than linux. Slackware has fewer hole than FreeBSD.
Where do you see a Linux ontop of netcraft list? Or any uptime site ?
I don’t care netcraft uptime list. Because that only list 10 (?) longest uptime server. FreeBSD, Linux and Windows server already has enough time to serve our needs. It doesn’t need to be the longest.
Longest uptime is useless. I am a sysadmin for our company servers. And I don’t care about uptime. Performance, stability is my main concern. I don’t care if all 10 list is FreeBSD, or Linux or Windows.
So, FreeBSD might not be faster than Linux on some aspects, right. As Linux isn’t as fast as FreeBSD on other aspects. But I’ve never seen a Linux that just feels like a system altogether, and I get that feeling while using FreeBSD.
I agree that FreeBSD feels a lot cleaner than some of Linux distros, but not all. That is why i use slackware because it is clean, stable and has good performance, has few hole.
And linux has more support of commercial companies, has more hardware support than FreeBSD. Sad but true.
So I as sysadmin will take both side. Slackware linux because it is stable, good performance, few hole and on the other side has more support of commercial companies.
It is not a promotional page for Slackware. It is not.
I just want to say that concept that FreeBSD feels cleaner than linux might be true but not to all distros.
In correlation to the uptime issue.
Redhat has relased their distribution’s kernel’s before 2.6 with higher timer frequencies (HZ=512) . Redhat is undoubtingly one of the most popular GNU/Linux distributions for servers; this allows for the uptimes as queried by Netcraft method as being reported as incorrect — to a higher degree than vanilla kernels for 2.4 and prior.
I should also mention this applies to Alphas also, and later 2.4 kernels. And we all know many realeases of Redhat Enterprise Edition uses a modified 2.4 kernel.
@adam and other ‘linux is teh bestest’ zealots.
Uptime is nonsense. (not a good measurement of
reliability). However, netcraft has another chart showing the most reliable sites (fewest failed requests) at the end of each months. I wonder why you don’t mention that? Perhaps because FreeBSD takes more of the top 10 places each month than any other OS? So whom should we believe? someone posting random crap on osnews <yeah, sysadmin magazine was very convincing) or netcraft?
Some data:
http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2004/11/01/most_reliable_hosting_…
Top 3 most reliable sites in October was running FreeBSD. 4th was Open. And linux comes only as No5. Than we have another FreeBSD at No 8.
Why can’t ppl accept that it is good to have alternatives, and simply shut up. This is a FreeBSD 5.3 is released kinda thread … who cares about linux anyway? I don’t, and I don’t read much linux related annuncments (unless its slack), but more importantly, I don’t go spamming linux related announcments with ‘freebsd is teh bestest’ kinda messages. (Oh, look, here’s a test that shows FreeBSD routing 1 million packets/sec while linux can do only 100K bwabwahbwah!!!)
w00t… can’t wait to test out 5.3!
http://www.samag.com/documents/s=1148/sam0107a/0107a.htm
Linux 2.2 trounces a FreeBSD version by 75% in some areas, and FreeBSD can’t handle the simultaneous connections without outaging.
Linux win and lose, FreeBSD win and lose at some areas, not all. So saying Linux is faster than FreeBSD is false as also saying FreeBSD is faster than Linux.
I hope all you FreeBSD fans can understand this.
I hope all you Linux fans can understand this.
I appreciate both os as each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
For clarification :
I never said that FreeBSD sucks, and linux rules, did I? I appreciate FreeBSD and tried it if in the future will be used at my server to replace Slackware.
But I will not say that FreeBSD rules and linux sucks either only because this thread is about FreeBSD – especially without facts.
Mind you all FreeBSD fans, you should criticize your own OS to see if it fulfill all claims.
ps : Thanks for a link, Adam.
@adam and other ‘linux is teh bestest’ zealots.
You start to attack people don’t you.
Is it your pet? It is just a software for god sake !
Don’t defend it like you should die for it.
Why can’t ppl accept that it is good to have alternatives, and simply shut up. This is a FreeBSD 5.3 is released kinda thread … who cares about linux anyway?
Yes, I agree that it is very good to have alternatives.
But it started when one of FreeBSD fan claims FreeBSD is faster than linux.
So all benchmark showed up. That shows no OS is faster than others.
One of linux zealots who post without thinking is already put to moderation anyway. Chill out man, it is only a software. I don’t care if someone said Linux sucks if it is sucks.
I don’t care. OS is just a tool anyway, not my life.
Congrats! Been waiting for this since the initial projection of a Oct 3rd release. Any ideas as to when GNOME 2.8 will creep in? And yes, stop this stupid GNU/Linux Vs *BSDs religious war, like the DE wars, it smacks of insecured bigoted infantilism. There is enough room for GNU/Linux, the various flavours of BSD and BEOS. Get on with life peeps, its Open Source after all.
if you are going to post a magazine article, can you please post one that is within the last YEAR?
try to prove your point with a CURRENT release instead of a 3-4 year old release.
How is the new threading library working out? more responsive?
Oh, and anyone given it a go on AMD64?
GNOME 2.8 and KDE 3.3.1 went in the ports tree like three to five hours ago. I heard that xorg 6.8.1 might be ready to go in ports tree this week or next week.
kaiwai,
I tried it, didn’t like ACPI (MSI K8N Neo Platinum), other than that everything else seems to be running fine.
http://www.marcuscom.com/tinderbox/
&&
http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/faq2.html#q21
🙂
With all the fresh new BSDs (NetBSD 2.0 once it is released, OpenBSD 3.6, FreeBSD 5.3), are there any reviews planned by you, Eugenia or a comparison of all 3. I would be very interested in a comparison of Net- and FreeBSD as a commom desktop machine and server machine…
schof
“Still that doesn’t make FreeBSD more secure than linux. Slackware has fewer hole than FreeBSD.”
When was the last freebsd kernel exploit which allowed a local user to gain root?
Compare these to any number of Linux kernels, and there will always be more ways to root linux than any of the BSDs. I can’t remember the last time a kernel exploit allowed someone to get root on BSD, yet I can think of 4 or 5 ways to do so on Linux, just the last year.
Also, I’ve never seen a FreeBSD box crashed because a malfored packet hit the firewall.
I don’t see where Linux is “more secure”.
“Longest uptime is useless. I am a sysadmin for our company servers. And I don’t care about uptime. Performance, stability is my main concern. I don’t care if all 10 list is FreeBSD, or Linux or Windows”
Uptime means stability too, after all if it’s running for 200 days it must mean it works. Not saying that small uptimes don’t mean performance is good — Just stating LONG uptimes normally mean good performance/stability.
(quote from the site benchmarking bsd/linux/solaris):
“Our real-world test observed a 75% performance gap between the best and worst performing operating systems, with Linux enjoying a 35% lead over runner-up Solaris”
hm.. linux beating solaris by 35% ? I don’t buy it actually. And everyone knows BSD has the best network stack around. As for the SMP benchmarks someone suggested earlier, I think Solaris is a easy winner there. Linux should beat FreeBSD on SMP too, but things should get closer on future 5.X releases, when the ULE scheduler is polished and working properly.
Oh, to counter that link upthere:
“Conclusion: FreeBSD outperforms all other operating systems in this benchmark. However, all contestants scale equally well, there are no clear losers. And the overall latency in this benchmark is so low that the results are interchangeable in practice. (Note: this initially said “NetBSD” instead of “FreeBSD”. That was a brain fart, sorry, and thanks to Maxwell on Slashdot for pointing this out)”
Geez, so goes the 35% advantage. And that was against FreeBSD 5.1 (which was the worst release along with 5.2 for the past few years imo). A new benchmark on 5.3 would be quite different (even better).
http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/
And everyone knows BSD has the best network stack around.
That seems to be news for the FreeBSD developers:
http://groups.google.com.au/groups?q=linux+freebsd+%22single+in…
I’m aware of their recent claim to have ten times the routing performance of Linux (although they must have done something wrong, because I’ve seen reports of Linux routing about 800K packets per second on similar low end Xeon systems).
However, while they may be ahead in routing performance with fast fowarding turned on, their end to end packet performance is slower than Linux, and has apparently slowed quite a lot further in 5.x due to heavy locking.
So no, it is flat wrong to say BSD has the best network stack. (Ditto for Linux).
I don’t see where Linux is “more secure”.
Oh my God,
I did not said that “Linux is more secure”. DID I?
For god sake, I just said that Linux can be more secure or less secure than FreeBSD depends on which distro.
Uptime means stability too, after all if it’s running for 200 days it must mean it works. Not saying that small uptimes don’t mean performance is good — Just stating LONG uptimes normally mean good performance/stability.
I know about your point too, THAT’s why I said that longest uptime still means FreeBSD is not more stable than Linux, Solaris, Windows, etc.
It show that FreeBSD has good stability. No more.
Will you argue that?
It is afterall only the first 10 MACHINES, right? That doesn’t mean that OS number 11 – 1000 are less stable.
Oh, to counter that link upthere:
“Conclusion: FreeBSD outperforms all other operating systems in this benchmark. However, all contestants scale equally well, there are no clear losers. And the overall latency in this benchmark is so low that the results are interchangeable in practice. (Note: this initially said “NetBSD” instead of “FreeBSD”. That was a brain fart, sorry, and thanks to Maxwell on Slashdot for pointing this out)”
I am sorry, but I think you misread the page.
That was a conclusion about socket.
Please read at the bottom of the page.
Quote :
—————————–
Linux 2.6 scales O(1) in all benchmarks. Words fail me on how impressive this is. If you are using Linux 2.4 right now, switch to Linux 2.6 now!
FreeBSD has by far the best performance of the BSDs and it comes close to Linux 2.6.
——————————-
Still it means that Linux 2.6 is better than FreeBSD 5.1 about scalability.
Not that Linux kernel as general is more scalable than FreeBSD.
Not that Linux kernel is faster than FreeBSD.
See, I don’t generalize one benchmark as a whole. I think you should.
And that was against FreeBSD 5.1
And it was done to Linux 2.6.0-test7. Not a stable kernel too. So, what do you want to say?
Man, can’t you receive the argument that :
LINUX is NOT more secure than FreeBSD.
LINUX is NOT more faster / stable than FreeBSD.
FreeBSD is NOT more secure than LINUX.
FreeBSD is NOT more faster / stable than LINUX.
Please, each kernel evolve to something better every release.
Don’t generalize one advantage as a whole.
Because if you do, I will said that Linux is better than FreeBSD as a whole. Although it is just -test kernel and although it is just scalability benchmark. Although may be there are other benchmark said that FreeBSD is better at one or some areas than linux.
I think, I said enough and won’t say again.
This is fantastic news. I’ve been using FreeBSD since 1999 and look forward to using the new features.
Kudos to the FreeBSD development team!
Please. Stop the BSD vs Linux vs Windows vs blah vs bleh flame wars.
Every OS has its purpose. FreeBSD have never (and I doubt it ever will) aim to the desktop users.
I’ve used FreeBSD for several years (now moved on to DragonFly simply cause I like 4.x -style), and I’m quite happy with it. It only runs the external internet services I need. I use Windows XP on my home computer. I’d run some kind of Linux desktop on another computer if I could afford the hardware. I run several Windows Servers in heavy enterprise enviroments at customers..
I hope that just shows some of you that alot of us enjoy the benefits of each OS. Sure, you can choose to just use one OS. Why not?
And now to the ontopic: Good to see that 5.x is starting to get a little more mature. I still see a lot of bugs on the Errata page, but thats not surprising, as I still consider 5.x as the bleeding edge.
Congrats to the FreeBSD team.
13005 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2601.000 FPS
14362 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2872.400 FPS
14976 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2995.200 FPS
14921 frames in 5.0 seconds = 2984.200 FPS
Without having to tweak some nvidia driver settings.The driver just does its job when issued “make install”.No problem with install and kernel at all.Great job guys!
i hust tried FreeBSD 5.3. Runs great…. all hardware are clearly identified. also i like the file NOTES at /usr/src/sys/i386/conf . its very easy to look at the good reference file for configuring devices.
Great FreeBSD 5.3 Team.
-B.Sathish Kumar
Security is what you make it to be as a system administrator.
Yesterday, after checking my system logs on my Slackware box at home, I found that some ‘individual’ had tried for hours, I can supply that section of the log, to break into the only port he could find. Needless to say, he didn’t get there.
The IP was registered to some place in the Netherlands.
FreeBSD, Linux, or even, yes, I admit, redmond can be hardened to a point where it is more resistant to attack. Operating systems are operating sytems, they are my job, not my life.
BTW, I was joking about uptime. It really is measured in seconds and it made me laugh. I really don’t see how stating the obvious and being tickled about it is an offense.
Operating systems are operating sytems, they are my job, not my life.
For some Evaluating/Exploiting Operatings Systems in the security context is a way of living.In fact quite a few have build their careerusiness on it.
Why can’t we all be just happy that we have so many choices for completely free modern operating systems. A company can install either Debian or FreeBSD and have performance, security, uptime, and manageability that compete extremely well against their commercial counterparts (Solaris, RedHat, Windows, Novell). FreeBSD is a gem. Like Debian, it is extremely stable, secure, and easy to manage. It is also made to be installed in your server room. There aren’t that many operating systems out there like that. The vast majority of free distributions have taken an approach so that their deployment in the server room is unthinkable(gentoo or Fedora). Let us celebrate the FreeBSD Stable release and be happy that we have such a great OS.
You start to attack people don’t you.
Is it your pet? It is just a software for god sake !
Don’t defend it like you should die for it.
It isn’t me going to a Linux specific thread ranting about the superiourity of FreeBSD … it is the other way around, and you have the balls to lecture me on taking OS choices too personal? BTW, it wasn’t specifically you I directec my post. Quote: “But it started when one of FreeBSD fan claims FreeBSD is faster than linux. Aha. So you just couldn’t resist, you had to defend the reputation of the OS of your choice … Can you see the irony of your statements now? So, be cool (I have 3 OSs installed on my main puter anyway: slack 10, winxp_sp2 and freebsd – and I like it all … more or less. more: freebsd; less: lin&win
)).
On the other hand: you are right in most things you said. The message that I thought needed some correction (even if it came out too personal) was this: “I personally have never seen FreeBSD beat GNU/Linux in a good benchmark, even the 2.2 kernels trounce FreeBSD, in the benchmarks I have seen in both speed and stability.”
This is just plain FUD. fefe’s tests seemed to be quite reasonable, and they showed that FreeBSD 5.1 was almost as good as linux 2.6.x (in some areas it was better, in others, it was worse, and there were some tests in which linux won only because the author didn’t bother to read the documentation for how to create more than 5000 processes) and absolutely better than linux 2.4.x
Yeah, now trolls are modded down, and I don’t really care anymore (busy updating my server machine
)
Ciao.
Everything works great except mod_php4 that I installed from the ports and I can’t start a session.
Happened on my 2 computers.
Quote: “But it started when one of FreeBSD fan claims FreeBSD is faster than linux.
Aha. So you just couldn’t resist, you had to defend the reputation of the OS of your choice … Can you see the irony of your statements now?
I am sorry if make you upset because of my comment.
Nope, it is not an irony.
Because I will not ‘die’ because of just OS.
And I didn’t defend linux the way you said. I will not defend Linux if it has weaknesses.
I just reply with facts to someone post something wrong about speed. And to someone else who ask to shut up eventhough facts are shown
.
Sometimes zealots don’t want to see facts, that I really hate, linux fans or *bsd fans.
Linux has flaws, yes, and has holes, yes, but I will admit it.
So you see, it is not an irony.
Because I will not ‘die’ because of just OS
Oh really? You are a coward!!! (please, don’t take this that seriously:))) It was you who began talking about dying for an OS (ooops), and now you put it in quotation marks!! And please, go on explaining it is not an irony, lol.