FreeBSD has long been known for stability, security, and good performance, as well as for its strong developer community. But this open-source operating system has been dogged during the past few years by its inability to draw on the wealth of commercial and open-source applications available for Linux. Read the preview at InfoWorld.
FreeBSD 5-DP1 Preview
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Just a few things worth noting:
From the latest I’ve heard, 5.0 may not make the November release date. There are some locking issues that still need to be resolved before 5.0-DP2 will be released.
FreeBSD lacks the polish found in leading Linux distributions. That said, we found only two real negatives to this early preview release. First, the aging character-based installer, though utilitarian, will likely prove challenging to users who may be new to FreeBSD.
sysinstall is definately showing its age. There’s work underway to replace it (libh/sysinstall2, see http://usw4.freebsd.org/~libh/sysinstall2/) That’s all going to be post-5.0, however.
The installer does a good job of auto- detection, but its menus can be tricky to navigate, and some entries, such as networking information, do not seem to get saved during the install process.
The problem is sysinstall uses dialog, which has its own share of problems. It’s sort of a nagging issue for now, as is the packaging system. However, all this is a small price to pay for one of the best kernels available.
Will FreeBSD 5 switch to GCC 3.2? GCC 3.2 now is really stable, and it is very important to make this step with a big new version of FreeBSD (5). GCC 3.2 generates way better code than gcc 2.95
Personally, I’m not a FreeBSD user, but I found the preview extremely odd reading. It mentioned various mundane things, and some of the biggest new stuff (I think) of 5 were just mentioned in passing (new SMP…)
And this: “network file systems, such as NFS and Samba, can now be mounted during system startup”? Huh, has it been necessary to mount NFS mounts manually after startup? That can’t be true? Also, it was nice how they mentioned that with the new release, you’ll be finding such pieces of wondrous software as vim and emacs in the ports. Wow (meaning, what is this previewer thinking…)
While the preview has a point in mentioning sysinstall and manual configuration as downsides, I guess that is an area which really is not that important for FreeBSD. Sure, for desktop its very important (while I’ll argue that there’s nothing wrong with character based install, and you’ll never fit a gfx installer on two floppies), but then you’ll have to think about the intended audience of FreeBSD. Is it really targeted for average consumers, newbies in UNIX-land etc.?
Also, I have a feeling that you have to do basic networking config manually on any system, unless you have DHCP.
The last point of this loong rant is a question: the preview said “Better Perl integration”. I have heard from somewhere that FreeBSD is considering ditching Perl from the base install, so which is correct?
There’s no real need for commercial apps. FreeBSD includes a inux binary runner that alow FreeBSD to run Linuix Commercial apps without an itch : distributed.net uses Sybase for linux on a FreeBSD machine. Besides if commercial vendors had to support *BSD, linux they coud not afford it. I like the Idea of having the commercial app for linux and the ability to run it on *BSD.
Maybe one day commercial vendors will understand that supporting FreeBSD is easier then inux (There’s only one FreeBSD distro) and they’ll switch, but I doubt, the hype is only on linux ….
Unix systems where made to do development on, and turned out to be great servers. I don’t need a KDE like, Mandrake like install for a server. I might need one for a dev’s workstation but its not necessary. The simper the installer the better it works and gets the job done. What FreeBSD needs is the equivallent of jumpstart.
> The last point of this loong rant is a question: the
> preview said “Better Perl integration”. I have heard from
> somewhere that FreeBSD is considering ditching Perl from
> the base install, so which is correct?
FreeBSD has improved Perl support by dropping it from the base install, which at first may sound like an oxymoron. But by putting Perl in the ports collection, it makes it easier to upgrade.
what a crock of an article. its more a brief overview if anything.
The last point of this loong rant is a question: the preview said “Better Perl integration”. I have heard from somewhere that FreeBSD is considering ditching Perl from the base install, so which is correct?
i had thought they were going to switch to miniperl, or re-write all the perl scripts into sed/awk or something similar to remove it from the base. I tested DP1 for a short time, and back then I dont think the Perl argument had come up.
Its a shame there was not more mention of the new stuff like KSE, SMPNG, devfs, etc.
i also feel sysinstall is capable enough for what it does. A graphical install would be nice, but only if I could still do NFS and FTP/HTTP installs (ie: not loose any functionality)
there was a recent thread/article on deadly.org about a graphical installer for OpenBSD, and boy did they kick up a fuss!
i had thought they were going to switch to miniperl, or re-write all the perl scripts into sed/awk or something similar to remove it from the base.
I believe the current aim is to rewrite as much of the Perl as possible in C
i also feel sysinstall is capable enough for what it does. A graphical install would be nice, but only if I could still do NFS and FTP/HTTP installs (ie: not loose any functionality)
sysinstall2 aims for abstraction of the actual interface. It may be dialog, graphical, or whatever fits your mood.
Its a shame there was not more mention of the new stuff like KSE, SMPNG, devfs, etc.
I can attest to SMPng’s quality… I’ve been supping the -CURRENT sources for awhile on my dual Athlon system. I guess I’ve enjoyed the wild and crazy -CURRENT ride long enough… some of the latest locking issues were enough to push me back to a much less exciting 4.6.
One other thing that’s definately worth mentioning is 5.0’s ACPI support, which is light years ahead of Linux’s ACPI implementation.
What does ACPI stands for, where can I find more information on that beast ?
—
http://islande.hirlimann.net
“Will FreeBSD 5 switch to GCC 3.2? GCC 3.2 now is really stable, and it is very important to make this step with a big new version of FreeBSD (5). GCC 3.2 generates way better code than gcc 2.95”
The plan is to have GCC 3.1 in the base system upon the 5.0 release. Since 3.1 was the current stable release at the time I recieved this information, the plan may be now to go to 3.2. I don’t think they are in a big hurry to switch seeing as they are having enough problems with threads and SMP.
http://google.com/search?q=acpi
I pretty much agree with the article.
FreeBSD(not to mention NetBSD) is a _great_ os. But, the poor installer, and the
fact that _many_ things needs to be manually configured, is why “common” people dont dare to use it. Hackers probably dont give this a second thought though, and if FreeBSD is to be an OS for hackers, it is great as it is.
FreeBSD IMHO has the second best installer i’ve ever seen…(i love OpenBSD’s installer b/c it fits on a single floppy disk) it’s very clean, provides a lot of control, and leaves you to configure things the way UNIX was meant to be configured
i can’t wait until 5.0 comes out…FreeBSD rocks it hard!!!
-bytes256
The new SuSE 16 MB boot ISO is so sexy I want to marry it…
“Will FreeBSD 5 switch to GCC 3.2? GCC 3.2 now is really stable, and it is very important to make this step with a big new version of FreeBSD (5). GCC 3.2 generates way better code than gcc 2.95”
When the GCC (CVS, former 3.2 now 3.3) ABI bug was discovered and the gcc team announced that a bugfix won’t be released in a (quick) minor release/update. Many OS maintainers were upset because this meant they had to wait till December (at least) to get the fixed version of gcc. But maintainers like RedHat, Suse and (especially) FreeBSD wanted to include a gcc in their next major releases that would have a stable ABI and (hopefully) compatible with future releases of gcc. So they begged the gcc steering commitee so that gcc-CVS, at that time gcc-3.2 was renamed gcc-3.3 and a new gcc-3.2 was introduced, which is basically a gcc-3.1 with ABI fixes.
And yes, it seems that FreeBSD 5.0 will include gcc-3.2 as their base compiler. IIRC there was a post from a FreeBSD maintainer in the gcc mailing list that stated that they have to have a gcc with a stable ABI until September so that it can be included in 5.0. They were quite happy when the GCC team announced a intermediate major gcc release.
[in true Slashdot fashion]
BSD Is Dead! Long Live BSD!
Seriously, I keep picking FreeBSD over Linux _because_ of the installer; the quickest install I’ve ever done.
IMHO, the best parts of FreeBSD-5 will be the nw SMP and Samba with native ACL support.
> The new SuSE 16 MB boot ISO is so sexy I want to marry it…
Well, the FreeBSD mini-iso might not be “sexy” in the sense of having a graphical installer that requires 32 (or is it 64?) megs of RAM and stomps all over your configuration files, but you can download a mini-iso of FreeBSD 4.6 too. Also, building a full-featured system from that base is actually easier using either ports or packages. (Assuming that you’re not scared of typing “pkg_add -r” or “make install” at a shell prompt.)
I actually read this article several times to make sure i was not jumping to conclusions on how lame it is. For a review of a Developers Preview it falls short, there is no mention any of the new features that are been added such KSE,DEVFS,64Bit UFS,background fs checker and other things mentioned in the above thread.
If you are going to review a DP talk about how it’s going to make things better and even discuss the new features a little and what benefit they will have for users/admins/developers.
I do agree about sysinstall somewhat but it’s still one of the best installers out there.
Overall not very informative and when they said that emacs and vim are available that was enough.
Can’t see what’s the problem whit the installer, it works just fine everytime. For a new user it’s just a question of getting used to it, even Win2K have a partly based text mode installer. This jornalists should have known better.
For the applications that’s true, there is not a repeated to exaustion group of appliocations that are all beta and all do the same.
Can’t wait for 5.0 and the SMPng.
The installer is great. If they ever go graphical i hope they include it as a failsafe-option.
I don’t know why but i find FreeBsd much easier to use than Linux. And it installed whithout probs on my laptop ! (Mandrake crashed several times during installation)
Ok, lots of people said the article missed to mention/go into detail of certain new stuff in -CURRENT. Includes 64bit UFS, KSE, SMPng and GEOM. That’s sad, because these are kickass features, that will own over Linux (as long until they’re going to copy these concepts).
But this thing about FreeBSDs installer. Ok, it might be irritating the first moment to very newbies, but this installer is the best installer I ever encountered. It’s easy and straight-forward. Just because it’s text-based, it doesn’t imply it’s old and crappy. They actually do work on it, just check cvs-all mailing list. And it’s actually also able to install XFree86 4.2.0 including WM.
I just installed freeBSD for the first time. I like the installer much better than the one for windows2000/NT or even Mandrake. What really impressed me was the multitude of ways to install your system.
I was amazed at how easy it was to setup and install by ftp server on my laptop. The only problem was the connection to the default ftp kept dropping, so I just switched to another, and it worked fine. I don’t even think this sort of installation is possible with most other OS’s.
All the options were pretty self explanatory, and there is detailed and well written installation guide on the internet for any problems. The only problem I had was getting X up and going, but this was more do to not-quite-supported hardware than anything.