Submitted by FreeBSD 7.0-RC1 has been released. “The ports team has gotten the release package sets built for most of the architectures (sparc64 is still a long way off) so we have begun including the pre-built packages on the ISOs. Even a very basic post-build test turned up one latent bug in sysinstall, and once that was fixed a more extensive test (load both KDE and GNOME) turned up two more latent bugs. The 7.0-RC1 builds have one of the three bugs fixed in them. The other two bugs aren’t fatal to installs on 7.0-RC1 (they were fatal to installs on 6.3-RC2) and we have more 7.0-RCs coming so I went ahead with making 7.0-RC1 available as-is.”
So what’s new in 7.0? Has anyone a link to some kind of summarized Changelog of the changes between 6.0 and 7.0?
Some hints are here: http://ivoras.sharanet.org/freebsd/freebsd7.html
also check these:
http://people.freebsd.org/~kris/scaling/7.0%20Preview.pdf
http://www.freebsd.org/features.html
FreeBSD is neat. Once installed in vmware, the smallest install takes about 30 seconds to start up. Pretty quick way to play with the oldish+beta version of ZFS they use.
One of the biggest problems (for me) is the lack of 64bit nVidia drivers for FBSD. (Not strictly a FBSD problem [even though nVidia claims other-wise])
I require 64bit (software development, 8GB RAM) and using the nv driver is a big no-no.
… It would have been nice if the FBSD devs could sit with nVidia and solve this problem before FBSD 9…
– Gilboa
Edited 2007-12-31 12:31
nvidia is asking freebsd devs to duplicate and maintain Linux-like calls which no one has stepped up to do just yet.
They do not want to facilitate what FreeBSD has offered as an alternative.
I suggest you look at current- archives for other options to get you running nvidia hardware. It has been recently discussed.
I know the story. [1]
(I’m also subscribed to the nVidia-bsd-forum-thread about it.)
However, as it seems, I doubt that this problem will be solved during 7.x life time.
(Again, this is not strictly a FBSD kernel problem. nVidia should have been able to circumvent the problem – like they do in 32bit)
– Gilboa
[1] http://wiki.freebsd.org/NvidiaFeatureRequests
There will not be any solution for nonsense changes in the kernel. I trust the kernel developers, I don’t trust some developers of low quality blobs (Windows, Linux …). Linux is quiet eager to make such changes day by day with the result of less stability and reliability.
“There will not be any solution for nonsense changes in the kernel. I trust the kernel developers, I don’t trust some developers of low quality blobs (Windows, Linux …).”
Given your choice of words I doubt that you’re are in any position to determine if a certain request (by nVidia) is nonsense or not.
Never the less, I’ll bite:
Which request (within the nVidia’s list) is nonsense and why?
“Linux is quiet eager to make such changes day by day with the result of less stability and reliability.”
Can you name -one- change in the Linux kernel that was supposed to cater for closed source binary drivers?
– Gilboa
Edited 2007-12-31 22:20 UTC
>Given your choice of words I doubt that you’re are in any position to determine if a certain request (by nVidia) is nonsense or not.
Seeing your response it’s almost impossible that you have ever read a FreeBSD mailing list. Would be some experience, there you can get your knowledge about it. Sometimes you don’t have to have to position but the knowledge 😉
Btw. fixing something for a blog _is_ quiet nonsense.
There you go: http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo
>Can you name -one- change in the Linux kernel that was supposed to cater for closed source binary drivers?
‘Such changes’ means, they are eager to switch from one interface to another in just ‘some minutes’. And the don’t do it because out of software evolution, but mere variation. The latter isn’t true for FreeBSD, so there will not be any change _for_ nVidia. Therefore Linux kernel is a mess. And if you don’t trust me, listen to Andrew Mortons words.
Edited 2007-12-31 22:48
“Seeing your response it’s almost impossible that you have ever read a FreeBSD mailing list. Would be some experience, there you can get your knowledge about it. Sometimes you don’t have to have to position but the knowledge ;-)”
True, I’m not subscribed to the FBSD-ML on daily basis – but I do frequent the archives from time to time.
However, trying to make it personal won’t change the fact that you have yet to comment on nVidia’s demands one-by-one.
… And it’s OK to admit that you’re choice of words had no business in any type of reasonable discussion.
“‘Such changes’ means, they are eager to switch from one interface to another in just ‘some minutes’. And the don’t do it because out of software evolution, but mere variation. The latter isn’t true for FreeBSD, so there will not be any change _for_ nVidia. Therefore Linux kernel is a mess. And if you don’t trust me, listen to Andrew Mortons words.”
… So in short, you’re saying:
“95% of my comment had nothing to do with the nVidia AMD64 driver problem (beyond saying that this is not Linux!). I just needed to trash Linux a bit so I can get it off my chest. I feel much better now, thank-you.”
… If you’re looking for Linux vs. BSD fight, you’re barking at the wrong tree here.
My software supports both Linux and FBSD. (Though I’ve yet to port/test it under 7.)
– Gilboa
>If you’re looking for Linux vs. BSD fight
>However, trying to make it personal won’t change the fact that you have yet to comment on nVidia’s demands one-by-one.
I’m looking not for a fight, it’s just a different development model, a development based on quality. Why should I trust a company who keeps telling me about some ‘errors’ in my _open source_ kernel, whereas they are showing me just a blob? Furthermore even the 32 bit ports of this blob is known for it’s low quality in Linux and FreeBSD (it’s bettern than Ati of course). So first they developed a driver for Linux and now they want changes to FreeBSD like in Linux maybe their developers aren’t able to cope with FreeBSD kernel? That’s ridiculus and has nothing to do with a fight, but with common sense!
>My software supports both Linux and FBSD.
If you’re software isn’t one of these (maybe) 1% which depends on special kernel support, I don’t see any relevance for special attention to it. 99% of the so-called ‘Linux-software’ works like a charm in FreeBSD. Have a look at freshports.org. Most support is done by the maintainer, fixing some low-quality work of the developer. But the latter ist true for different Linux distris too.
What does -your- answers (both of them) have to do with my comment? God knows my English isn’t perfect, but have you even read what my comment before posting?
Where did it say that have (any-type-of) problems porting my software (driver) to FreeBSD? I said that I’ve -yet- (as in, didn’t have the time to start; as in ‘I rather wait for 7.0-REL before working on it.) port to my software to BSD 7.0.
Either I don’t know how to compose simple English messages, or you wrote a replay without even reading what I wrote. Choose as you may.
– Gilboa
P.S.
You go on and on about development models (I don’t really disagree – I just don’t see the relevance…) – but you’ve yet to post what’s -technically- wrong with nVidia’s requests. (While I’m not a VMM guru; most of nVidia’s requests look pretty reasonable to me.)
In my long experience, when people start turning a -technical- arguments into a philosophical argument they most likely have a very -weak- technical argument on their hands.
Prove me wrong.
– Gilboa
What the f–k are you talking about again? The missing stuff in FreeBSD is present in Linux AND in Solaris. The Solaris driver came AFTER the FreeBSD driver, now go figure..
Show me the code of the nVidia blob before telling people such a nonsense! Just pointing at some similar functionality in Solaris and showing me a low-quality blog isn’t enough to prove the FreeBSD developers wrong!
nvidia is asking freebsd devs to duplicate and maintain Linux-like calls which no one has stepped up to do just yet.
Solaris has a native NVidia driver for both 32bit and 64bit modes, yet the system doesn’t offer “Linux-like” calls.
The NVidia developers told them often enough in the past where the problems are, if the FreeBSD developer team doesn’t allocate resources to fix this, then you’re out of luck.
Sun pays for development – there is even Flash for Solaris.
>The NVidia developers told them often enough in the past where the problems are
Maybe the problem _is_ in the blob?
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995…
is this what you are talking about?
Yes.
(Again, to anybody reading this, I don’t blame the FBSD people for not doing it – I’m just saying that this problem keeps FreeBSD as VMWare guest on my workstation instead of being the host. Got-it?!?!)
– Gilboa
Sounds like FreeBSD 7 is moving alone quite well. Can’t wait to upgrade my workstation when it’s released.
Edited 2007-12-31 14:52
“Sounds like FreeBSD 7 is moving alone quite well. Can’t wait to upgrade my workstation when it’s released.”
Same here, too. Allthough testers of the 7.0-BETA and -RC stages did not encounter major problems with “outdated” hardware (everything that’s older than one year), I will wait for the -RELEASE. I’m just afrait I would have to recompile and update stuff if I installed an pre-RELEASE system, but I don’t want to install the latest RELEASE of the FreeBSD 6 branch, because at least in my opinion it’s better to use 7 if it’s available as to stay with 6… a new hard disk is already waiting on the shelf (for some months now) – FreeBSD deserves a fresh and clean hardware ground to breed and grow on. 🙂
Great work, FreeBSD team! You gave me the ultimate solution for all of my server and desktop applicances since the days of 4.0. Really, I didn’t yet find anything that beats FreeBSD. At least for me, it’s exactly what I need.
I’ve been running 7.0-BETA’s since B2 on some test servers, desktop and laptops. It’s been pretty trouble free with nothing I could find to be blamed on the kernel.
Kudos dev team!
Any chance for a flash-9 plugin via Gnash or linux-emulation in even a single browser?…must have youtube…
Edited 2007-12-31 18:03
FYI, youtube works perfectly on native gecko browsers (and I think opera too) using linux-flashplugin7 and nspluginwrapper.
Most youtube content _is_ Flash 8 or 9. So if you want to view these videos you have to use Wine+Windows Firefox and native Flash 9 or swfdec-plugin/gnash.
For example?
Why are they labeling this a ‘release candidate’ when it contains known bugs. They are promising more RCs already in the announcement. If this will definitely not be the final release (and therefor not a candidate), how can they label it a release candidate? Why not just call it a beta (as it contains bugs they intend to fix before release)?
With that said I would like to thank the FreeBSD team for delivering a great product, my favorite of all the unices.
Edited 2008-01-01 04:12
An RC is better-than-beta, and the two known problems aren’t fatal (memory leaks in the installer; if you’ve got 512MB or more of RAM you should be good)… that’s pretty much the standard for a release candidate, you give people a chance to shake down the “final” version for any show-stopping bugs while you continue to fix the more minor bugs.
Looking forward to this, I’ve got a couple of new disks for ZFS on my server. 🙂
– chrish
Release Candidate released is an oxymoron.