"I have been a Linux user way back from the first time I was introduced to an alternate OS than windows. Even though I was aware of other Unixes like FreeBSD and Solaris, I hadn't come around to installing them on my machine. Two days back, things changed when I downloaded the latest FreeBSD version 6.0 from their official website."
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Member since:
2005-07-06
...it is an O.K. article. But none of the articles seem to have any meat these days. Like performance comparisons to back up claims, focusing on one aspect or another instead of a short, general review, etc.
There haven't been a lot of good articles lately. A few... not a lot.
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Member since:2005-07-06
No, not good articles about Linux or BSD... articles about OTHER stuff. Sorry, I should have been clearer. Here are a couple that I found interesting:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=12753
This one is O.K. just because I think it is good to bring some BSD flavors to light as viable desktops... not very deep tho'...
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=12727
I thought this was interesting (what does it say about regulation?)
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=12713
This was somewhat interesting...
http://www.osnews.com/home.php?archives=week
Not too many of them have been OS related. Mostly hardware or open source or some such thing...
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Member since:
2005-07-06
Strangely enough, I just downloaded two isos and was going to install them right away, just checked out osnews.com for a last time before reboot, and woot, an article on Freebsd installation 
What a luck!
Anyway, here's a nother good one: http://freebie.miraclenet.co.th/server/install_fbsd/
Later,
Member since:2005-11-11
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:2005-07-01
in sort of the same vein ("comfortable with linux but new to freebsd") is this article (mostly written by me,)
http://www.freebsdwiki.net/index.php/Gotchas%2C_Linux
that lists some quick differences that linux users may want to know about linux and freebsd.
Member since:2005-07-11
in sort of the same vein ("comfortable with linux but new to freebsd") is this article (mostly written by me,)
http://www.freebsdwiki.net/index.php/Gotchas%2C_Linux
that lists some quick differences that linux users may want to know about linux and freebsd.
What a horribly written page, full of complete falsehoods and clear misunderstanding of even the simplest concepts (like what a modular/monolithic kernel is).
I've updated the page to clear these up. Please do at least a little research on these things before posting them for the world to see.
Member since:
2005-07-07
I've used FreeBSD myself as my primary OS for a couple weeks in the past (version 5.4). It's a good operating system. That said, I think the major drawback is that the BSDs don't have the package management skills that Debian, Fedora, etc. have. This isn't by virtue of the BSD kernel or anything, but it does make them a lot less useful.
A command like pkg_add -r gnome2 works fine. It installs GNOME and, other than a few things that had to be done post-install, it was fine. But let's say that I install Firefox or Gaim and a new version gets put in the repositories. Upgrading is terribly difficult. Think dependency hell.
To an extent, this shows how FreeBSD is aimed at the server market and that they expect you to keep a somewhat stable system unlike Debian who expects some of its users to be upgrading off sid everyday.
There's nothing wrong with BSDs. I've found FreeBSD to be much easier than certain Linux distributions such as Gentoo and many Slack-derived distros. But FreeBSD can't stand up to the ease of package management one gets with Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE, Debian, etc. It would be really nice to see what Debian GNU/kFreeBSD would be like if any weight got thrown behind it.
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He speaks about binary packages. As far as I know the binary packages repositories are not that often refreshed with new versions. Linux users are used to install binary packages (from mine experience) and that is a fast process. Using ports for upgrade takes more time I guess.
Wouldn't it be a good idea to automate the refereshing of binary repositories from ports collection, say 3 times in the week? Might take huge resources I guess, but people who are used to binary packages would not have any arguments to complain.
Member since:2005-07-01
You'd need a fairly large dev group to do testing and make sure stuff doesn't break; debian does this and sid does have a large amount of breaking (less than it used to, and admittedly I haven't used it in the last 6 months or so,) but it's just to be expected with bleeding-edge stuff. It's really fairly trivial to use portversion (part of the portupgrade port,) to see which ports are out of date and portupgrade to upgrade your installed ports.
Member since:2005-07-06
I hate to rain on everyone's parade here but portupgrade is far from the end-all that many BSD-ers think it is, and I say this as a big FreeBSD fan. My only real beef with FreeBSD is that there's nothing that handles dependencies during upgrades as well as apt or yum. I know, I know, those are for binaries and the ports are source-based, but I can do some pretty huge upgrades with apt or yum without breaking everything. There's a reason that the Gnome on FreeBSD guys provide their own upgrade script, and it's cause portupgrade sucks for upgrading anything with more than a couple of dependencies.
Member since:2005-07-01
While gnome _is_ a monster to install, I don't see what's so different -- from a user's perspective while installing -- between
# apt-get install gnome2
and
# cd /usr/ports/x11/gnome2 && make install clean
Yeah, ports take longer than packages -- that's cos you're compiling the binaries and then installing them instead of just plain installing a pre-built binary.
Both fetch dependencies (I didn't have python on my FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE box before I installed gnome2, and it fetched it for me and compiled it in) just fine. I don't know what you mean about FreeBSD's own upgrade script unless you're talking about Makefile in the /usr/ports/x11/gnome2 directory that the "make" calls. If you're talking about upgrading from one gnome version to another, BSD's fs hierarchy is different than linux systems' (non-base progs in /usr/local/, as opposed to most linuxes dropping stuff wherever the package maintainers felt like it).
Ports may not be as simple as apt or yum, but it's hardly fair to say that there's nothing that handles dependencies as well as apt or yum. It deals with dependencies just fine.
Member since:2005-07-06
Dave, you missed what I was getting at completely. I'm not talking about the initial installation. There's no problems there and the ports work great in that case. But try going from Gnome 2.10 to Gnome 2.12 using portupgrade and you'll see what I mean. The ports themselves have no built-in mechanism for doing upgrades and handling dependencies during the upgrade and so we have to rely on an external application for it. For now, that application is portupgrade, and it sucks.
Member since:---
Spesifically for Gnome 2.12, please refer to these :
http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/faq212.html#q2
How do I upgrade to GNOME 2.12?
NOTE: Do not run portupgrade(1) to upgrade to GNOME 2.12!
....blah blah.
Hope this link usefull
Member since:2005-07-11
The package repository is updated for each release, and for major security issues in specific packages, and for major new releases of large packages (like GNOME, KDE, OpenOffice, etc).
What you need to do is configure your own package building system, and use either make package instead of make install in the ports tree, or pkg_create -b after installing a port. That way, you have full control over how things are built (options, versions, dependencies, etc), and you get a nice binary package that you can copy over to all your other machines for installation using pkg_add.
The primary package management system for FreeBSD is the ports tree. Once you view the package repo (pkg_add -r) as a quick workaround to getting a system up and running and stop viewing it as the be-all-and-end-all of software, you'll find that the ports tree and pkg_* tools are very powerful things indeed.
Something I don't like about pure-binary package management is that you have no control over dependencies, options, features, or anything. The package builder determines all that for you and you either accept his choices or you don't install the app. And it really sucks having to upgrade a whole shwackload of apps just to install a single new one because the package builder has a more recent system than you do. (Yes, you can build your own packages for RPM/DEB systems, but it's nowhere near as easy as building a packge using the ports tree.)
Member since:---
The pkg_add -u in OpenBSD-current is wornderful.
To try it now install a snapshot at various mirrors and ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/snapshots/i386/ for PC, other architectures up one dir.
Or it will be available in May 2006 with the 3.9 release.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Have you read the comments on his review? The poor guy's being flamed left and right by [mostly] linux zealots who are zinging him for what appears to be him simply trying something different and finding it's not so bad.
I've used Linux, and still have it as a desktop - it certainly has it's uses.
I have used FreeBSD exclusively on my servers for about 4 or 5 years now (well, the ones that aren't required to be windows, anyway) and it's stellar. Solid, stable, and rarely even *needs* updating, unlike the linux world where it always seems I was playing the kernel of the week game. Things may have improved since 2000, but not so much as to make the problem yet go away.
Anyway, without regard to my preferences, I do really feel sorry for the guy. Do you think he *expected* to get hammered?
Member since:
2005-07-06
Last time I tried FreeBSD I ran some command in the ports tree. (I think it was make clean or something), anyway it seemd to recurse into dependencies (good) and do it multiple times (bad) to perform the operation.
By going through the same package over and over and over again this operation looked like it could take all day. I unistalled it and returned to Gentoo after that.
Is this a problem that still exsists? Did I do something stupid?
Member since:---
I use pkg_add -r *or* a list something like:
[cvsup] [make fetchindex] [portsdb -u]
read UPDATING && cd /usr/ports/[someport] &&
make fetch-recursive && ... I build the dependencies
first just to be sure. HardlyEverFails that way.
make checksum; make extract; make config; make patch; make configure; make build; make install; rehash; pkgdb
-u...then read the documentation in the /work/
subdirectory which is created during the build.
Several other notes relevant to this I'll leave out
for brevity... APOLOGIZE FOR ANY TYPOS... and this
procedure is on a postit on the monitor so it is
readily always available...
Member since:2005-07-11
Last time I tried FreeBSD I ran some command in the ports tree. (I think it was make clean or something), anyway it seemd to recurse into dependencies (good) and do it multiple times (bad) to perform the operation.
By going through the same package over and over and over again this operation looked like it could take all day. I unistalled it and returned to Gentoo after that.
Is this a problem that still exsists? Did I do something stupid?
Most likely you did something stupid, like running make clean from /usr/ports or /usr/ports/<category> which will recurse into every sub-directory and run make clean, which will clean all the dependencies for each port.
Member since:
2005-07-06
..is this:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~marcone/bsdversuslinux.html
That's all I need to know really.
Member since:2005-07-14
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"And everytime I start getting interested in *BSD, stupid comments like this (and all the RTFM! n00b! ones in this comment thread and the thread below the original article) make me stay with Debian."
Hehe ... good for you. :-) Stay with Debian. :-) But have you ever thought about it a bit? Did you get born with all the knowledge about Debian? Did you get personal help for everythingy you do/did in Debian? I think that you at least once read some manual about it. :-) Thats the same with the comment fra the FreeBSD guys, read the manual cause you'll find a lot of answers. :-)
Member since:2005-07-14
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Here's another pretty powerful argument.
http://www.keltia.net/photos/Bellamy/Daemonette/daemonette_bg1024_t...
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Hehe ... a lot of you guys are talking about updating, and how "hard"/"slow"/"whatever" it is to do in FreeBSD. But theres much more to do than updating all day long! ;-P
I update my FreeBSD desktop once every two weeks using portupgrade and it just works. I start the updating process and go to sleep. When I wake up its done! :-D So I really don't get it when some of you "bitch" about it. :-)
So relax and use your computer. :-D
/B
Member since:
2005-07-11
Upgrading using ports or packages is fairly simple for me. I mainly use binary method "pkg_add -r" if you want to use the latest version you might not be able to find it in the default RELEASE mirror. Try and change the value of the variable PACKAGESITE to STABLE:
setenv PACKAGESITE ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-stable/Lat...
Because packages-*-release directories are built from the ports collection shipped with the release, and are not updated.
But packages-*-stable and packages-*-current are updated roughly once a week.
If you want to make this the default site then take a look at /usr/local/etc/pkgtools.conf
If you do not want to check everytime that the binary package exists for the latest version or not then use portupgrade and pass the -P parameter.
The procedure weekly is like this:
1- I upgrade my port tree using portsnap:
portsnap fetch
portsnap update
2- then I update ports db and check if my installed packages and ports are older than the new port tree:
portversion -v -l"<"
3- if there is anything to upgrade i make sure that PACKAGESITE is using STABLE instead of RELEASE then i run portupgrade:
portupgrade -vaRrPp
Look at the man page if you want to know what the other parameters do.
If you are worried about breaking software you should always check /usr/ports/UPDATING
This is really quick procedure and most of the time portupgrade uses the binary package to update and it works just fine. if the binary package is not there it will just build it from the port.
Gotta Love FreeBSD
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Most people seem to overlook this point. Due to the fact that there are several dozen distributions of linux, there are also many variations on how to do things. With *BSD, the documentation is mostly all in one place. With FreeBSD, I usually find what I want in the FAQ or the Handbook on the FreeBSD website. I never expect to find Linux help on the respective Linux distribution (although, I have to admit, *buntu does a pretty good job).
Member since:2005-08-28
I never expect to find Linux help on the respective Linux distribution (although, I have to admit, *buntu does a pretty good job).
You don't, huh?
http://www.debian.org/docs
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/index.xml
http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/
http://wwwnew.mandriva.com/en/community/users/documentation
Strange that you would mention Ubuntu doing a good job, since that is in fact the only site that I've checked where I can't immediately spot a link to the documentation on the front page.
Member since:2005-08-28
Of course I had to put in a wrong link:
http://www.debian.org/doc
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I'm planning to switch from Ubuntu to FreeBSD during the next weeks, probably I'll miss some nice features (mainly APT, what else ?) but I think that it's worth the switch!
I'll have an incredible kernel, firewall system (PF ported from OBSD) and a fully documented system (this is disgusting in Linux). I've been using Linux since '96, tried a couple of times FreeBSD and OpenBSD, will see what happens.
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1) many linux distros i have tried filtered the kernel from automatic default updating. so to be fair, in freebsd updating can be done with a single command at the prompt.
2) In fact I have been using freebsd since 5.1 without ever doing a "make world". (often a fresh release canidate is available and i am ugrading with vanilla install before the need to rescue the current installation.
"cvsup ports-supfile" portsdb-Uu and "portupgrade -avRr" i run when significant security issues appear at freshports.org. that is all.
what i am trying to say is; FREEBSD is rock solid.
Member since:
2005-11-12
5) The file system used is the Unix File System (UFS2) which supports additional features not supported in Ext2(3) filesystems.
I wonder what features he is talking about. Last time I checked UFS didn't even support journaling. And of course there are more filesystems than just ext* in Linux.
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For a comparison, read http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix2000/g...
Member since:2005-11-12
I'm aware of that text. I haven't read the whole but parts of it. Anyway:
Soft updates guarantee filesystem consistency but it doesn't guarantee that no data will be lost. If you save a file on a soft updates enabled filesystem and then immedeately pulls the power to the computer the file is probably not written to the disc. Journaling filesystem doesn't have this problem.
And a journaling filesystem can be mounted immedeately after a crash. It justs needs to replay the journal which takes 1-2 seconds. A soft updates filesystem however still needs to run fsck. In FreeBSD 5 and later this is done in the background but still.
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Great, an outdated comparison to an outdated 'journaling' (logging actually, not quite the same as modern journaling file systems) file system.
Anyway, I don't think anyone has claimed that soft updates doesn't do what it's supposed to do wrt maintaining file system integrity.
The problem is the need for running fsck after an unclean shutdown. With modern file systems easily going into the terrabyte range (I'm only 200GB short of that myself on my _home_ computer), fsck requires a lot of time and a lot of memory to run. Background fsck was supposed to alleviate the downtime caused by running fsck, but unfortunately it has been known to cause kernel panics, and also has significant impact on performance (in addition to the already mentioned need for much RAM).
A journaling file system is a must, and they have realized that and are working on adding journaling to UFS. I'm actually not sure who's working on it besides Scott Long though.
That last sentence also highlights what is really FreeBSD's major problem these days: they are very short handed wrt the amount of competent people acontributing to kernel, compared to the systems they would like to stay competitive with, Linux and Solaris.
Member since:
2005-07-06
for those of you who have problems with ports and dependency handling on upgrading, try Gentoo/FreeBSD, http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/gentoo-alt/bsd/fbsd/index.xml ,the project is young but shows some potential.
Portage is the main thing that keeps me in linux userland because I have yet to find a more feature rich, polished, and easy to use package management in any Linux distro or BSD varient.
I think I may jump on board this project because the sooner i have portage on bsd, the sooner i switch 
On a side note, I believe Debian is working on it's own port to FreeBSD as well.
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I used FreeBSD 4.7, 4.8, and 4.9 on my laptop and I liked it a lot. Unfortunately FreeBSD 5.x didn't like my hardware. I tried FreeBSD 6.0 for the same laptop and it felt just beautiful -- even better than 4.x. But meanwhile I had found a new home from Debian. Even though FreeBSD 6.0 felt just as snappy as my prelinked Debian system with i686 optimized kernel and reiserfs (and it booted considerably faster), I switched back to Debian because I had grown to like binary packages.
Building your own packages from "ports" system gives you more power to customize things but it also takes more time and effort (edit Makefiles and other ports-related config files; wait for ports tree to be updated, wait for ports db to be updated, wait for packages to compile). Ready-built binary packages are just more convenient to use, IMO.
But I'll be sure to give FreeBSD another go when someone introduces a GUI or ncurses frontend for "pkg_add -r" that will allow you to select a binary package repository you want and shows descriptions for available binary packages plus lists the available binary updates for your installed packages. Such utility shouldn't be too hard to program but I guess no FreeBSD user with some hacker skills has ever needed such utility. Too bad for me. Still, FreeBSD rocks! Keep up the good work. : )
Member since:2005-07-06
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If you don't like portupgrade, maybe you do like portmanager. I always used portsnap + portmanager to keep my freebsd 5.4 system up to date. And I never had any dependency problem.
I think FreeBSd should have a better binary packages system. Because it's clear to see ports is way better then the binary system.
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