Fixes and enhancements made since BETA6 on FreeBSD 5.3: fix timekeeping on sparc64 and alpha that would result in the day of the week being stored incorrectly in NVRAM; add support to the fxp driver for the ICH6 chipset; fix the panic on detach problem with USB hubs; import BIND 9.3.0, this completely replaces the old BIND 8.x nameserver in the base system; fix panic when allocating swap on a busy system; fix loader crash when using the ‘lsdev’ command”.
FreeBSD 5.3-BETA7 Released
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Eugenia Loli
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This is great,, cant wait for 5.3 Release,,
Freebsd is the best os there is,, great desktop workstation server..
MMhhhhhhaaaaa,
I can almost taste it…. whooooo hoooo…. 5.3…
I’ve been waiting for 5.3 to come out. I’m currently running -current so it’s not too bad.
But it should take the time it should take. That’s one thing to like about FreeBSD, it’s usually pretty solid by the time it gets released.
Swapper load instability issues resolved… this was my one big scare in regards to throwing 5.3-RELEASE on our colocation server, and I’m glad to hear it’s been resolved.
Hey guys hows the video/tuner card capability of FBSD so far? I tried it with 5.0 and it didnt want to deal with winTV-go very well. Shame because it would be worth it otherwise.
Hmz I am on the english forum now; Can some moderator destroy my previous post?
What I said was:
I am waiting for 5.3-RELEASE too. I’m going to upgrade ** my OpenBSD servers to FreeBSD 5.3 and I’m going to transform my 6.0-CURRENT (5.2.1 that is) to 5.3 as well.
What I don’t get is the following on http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/schedule.html
Today it’s 4 october so the schedule is not up2date.
The release-date went from 1 october to 3 october to 10 october to 17 october and nothing has been changed yet. BETA7 came out 3 days later then the date on the schedule.
Anyway, I’m happy 5.3 is on the way. 🙂 And unlike I go from OpenBSD to FreeBSD I am glad PF (OpenBSD Packet Filter) will be native in the kernel (in CURRENT I have this already).
Some screenshots from 5.2.1-CURRENT with GNOME on http://rootxs.nl/FreeBSD (except for the first 2) 🙂
FreeBSD 5.3 is like Hurd – it comes next year (every year 😉
Hey guys hows the video/tuner card capability of FBSD so far? I tried it with 5.0 and it didnt want to deal with winTV-go very well. Shame because it would be worth it otherwise.
Well I don’t know what winTV-go is, but I my NVIDIA (GeForce4 MX 400) works good, even with the generic drivers. FreeBSD is capable to load binairy drivers into the kernel so _if_ your manufacturer took care he can keep his driver propriety and still make them work on FreeBSD.
As much as I like BSD I’m horrified by the dogmatic view that FreeBSD people have.
I find the FreeBSD community a very friendly and willing to help community.
All part of the scheduale : http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/schedule.html
Don’t listen to the trolls that hang out here sometimes, look it up and have an informed opinion.
“Somehow these FOSS “communities” remind me of fanatical cults…”
Okay, I’ll take the bait. Tell us, which operating system doesn’t have fanatics? Which operating system doesn’t have it’s tedious aspects? Anything that you’ve said about FOSS could easily apply to Windows, OS X and other proprietary OS users so what exactly is your point?
“Install all” would obviously install X, GNOME and KDE. DHCP, static IP, NFS client? Why should I be brothered with such stuff. I just want to surf the web, damnit!
Windows never asked me about it.. and still everything works.
SUSE Linux never asked me about it either.. and still everything works.
Magic :LOL:
Of course there are situations where you want to customize all this stuff but it wouldn’t be such a big deal to include a standard “desktop” install option which relies on sensible defaults and auto-detection.
Of course there are situations where you want to customize all this stuff but it wouldn’t be such a big deal to include a standard “desktop” install option which relies on sensible defaults and auto-detection.
I suppose you could have that but if you only want to surf the web why were you thinking of installing FreeBSD?
The only “rational” reason for FreeBSD to have such a time-consuming and tendious install process is that the new users are supposed to prove “I have no life and I’m willing to waste hours doing unnessesary stuff just to become a member of your cult”.
Nothing about FreeBSD, NetBSD or OpenBSD takes hours to install. Putting them in same category as Gentoo shows that you do not know what you are talking about. XP takes longer to install than any *BSD that I ever tried. So quit trolling and bring something constructive to the comments section.
Windows users in general aren’t a cult at all. I could easily list you “100 things that suck about Windows” and nobody would view me as a “traitor” of the “community”..
Before the days of GNOME/KDE when everyone was still running fvwm or something similiar the Linux people called a full-featured DE “nessesery bloat” or something like this if someone complained about the lack of one. However today most of them just can’t wait for the next KDE release… (they just couldn’t admit that their OS lacked!)
If a new security fault in Windows shows up everyone on the Windows forums bitches or at least nobody would think about making up excuses for MS. If such a fault happens on MacOS X/Linux/BSD the “users” just try to play it down (“it’s not really bad” etc. because the grand popa told them that their OS is perfect and just doesn’t have any REAL faults.
so is it coming with a kithen sink or a real init system?
Is it coming with a something that doesn’t blow so hard as ports?
Do you have any specific complaints with rcNG or ports (and what, pray tell, is a “kithen” sink, or perhaps you have a lisp) rcNG is perhaps the most elegant init system I’ve ever seen.
Of all the complaints you could possibly come up with in regards to FreeBSD 5.x, these are it? You could at least criticize the installer or the package management…
Moron…
“Windows users in general aren’t a cult at all. I could easily list you “100 things that suck about Windows” and nobody would view me as a “traitor” of the “community”..”
You think so? Try it. I’d really love to see you do that. Post an article in here “100 reasons why Windows sucks”, but make sure you got your asbestos on, because you will catch serious hell from Windows users in this forum.
“If a new security fault in Windows shows up everyone on the Windows forums bitches or at least nobody would think about making up excuses for MS.”
You’ve got to be new to this forum or else simply not paying attention. Making excuses is PRECISELY what Windows uers in here will do in that situation. ‘Don’t use IE, get anti virus, turn on the firewall, if you only you’d got the patch on time’, etc, etc. Windows users will make excuses, flame, troll, do everything that OSS users are accused of…just take yourself, for example. Did you come into this thread with a serious comment about a serious aspect or problem with FreeBSD? No, your pitch started with BSD users being unreasonable, and just for good measure, Linux and Mac OS users suddenly got thrown in as well.
Do you have any specific complaints with rcNG or ports (and what, pray tell, is a “kithen” sink, or perhaps you have a lisp) rcNG is perhaps the most elegant init system I’ve ever seen.
ROFL.
What have you seen?
I’m sorry I should make my self clear. and yes I have a lisp.
I haven’t played around with the rcNG system to make constractive accusations to its brokeness so I’ll not go into that.
But I as a overview I find the SysV init system neater. Each chunk of software has its little script that does its own job. Debian have /etc/defualts which could do with some more work but I feel is on the right rode. rc.conf gives
me the creeps why does it have to be one magical file? Haven’t we hackers
gotten beyond ‘oh my god more that one file with configs! noooo! stage’ ?
On the matter of packages, debconf database is a nice idea, a very nice idea.
Preload with configs and off my installer goes, of my upgrade goes. portage has an interactive diff system, what does ports do? clober old configs.
(or is there a magic undocumented option in the BSD Book that I haven’t
found yet?) and what about a kernel package? does ports give me one of
them?
and FreeBSD shell latency is much higher than Linux. I’m sorry but thats
what if feels like. If any one is to jump up and down and call me a penguin
freak that has sold my soul to GNU then may I see some bench marks that
show me otherwise. The machines I’m comparing are Dual 2.8Ghz Xeon vs
1.4Ghz P4, with FreeBSD 5.2.1 and Debian Sarge on them.
Next the installer, sysinstall needs to be tossed out the window. I do not
doubt the technical abilities of the FreeBSD club/cult but I do feel sad for
their lack of motivation for innovation in areas that aren’t the kernel.
The good old system hasn’t changed while debian is getting its act to gether.
After 10 years of dodgy-ness they are moving on.
why doesn’t/can’t FreeBSD do the same?
And thanks for the invite to slashdot but I don’t hang out with fanatics
like you. I’m not a penguin man, and I’m not a deamon freak, I’m a unix
user.
Once again I like FreeBSD for its good qualities, Linux in changes too fast.
The so called stable kernel gets radical changes, but many systems that
are built using Linux are nicer to use. nicer to keep up to date, nicer to
maintain. And in that respect FreeBSD lags behind. And if cult FreeBSD
doesn’t realise it their going to lose people like myself and many others
that admire the good work that FreeBSD has done but can’t stand people
that are dogmatic and do not have better words than ‘the devil must be
cooler than a fat ugly penguin’
The days of daemons is over and the dorn or ‘services’ are here.
There’s two ways out to reinvent the good qualities of FreeBSD or
sink screeming that this wasn’t supposed to happen.
I hope you smart people can see beyond my lisp… sorry.
I don’t have much experience with FreeBSD, I tried it for 2 months last year as an alternative to Gentoo. Overall I liked it a lot: clean, organized, informative documentation, made sense. The one reason I didn’t stay with it was ports.
Some people still consider ports unique or a definite advantage of BSDs, but to me it was harder to use than portage. Portage has multiple versions of each package and a stable/unstable distinction. Ports have a hack known as portupgrade which can either upgrade all dependencies to their latest version or else hope it compiles. It lacks “minimum version that will do”. On the other hand, you can reliably uninstall packages and their dependencies, not so with portage.
As for binaries, unless I never synced ports, I couldn’t depend on them (or I missed something).
So, I suppose ports work in a minimal setting (server?), but are otherwise trouble and a bit behind the times. ports/portupgrade could be replaced by a system combining the strengths of Gentoo and Debian, it’s 70% there, it’s just too bad not many BSD people seem to care/realize this weakness.
i’m not sure they should bump up bind a whole major version (and much different code) at this late stage.
This thread hasn’t been too bad so far. Usually someone mentions linux and things go down hill from there. Seems so far there’s still one anonymous poster yacking about debian and sys V init. Not sure what that has to do with a new beta freebsd, but it seems off-topic posts aren’t deleted anymore.
Why does every FreeBSD release seem to become a freebsd vs linux systems arguement?
Or for certain FreeBSD users, lets point out advantages FreeBSD has over Linux systems, whether they are true or not.
We will just do benchmarks when 5.3 is released official, and the latest Linux system of the day and see which one is superior in performance
No, it is that way, becuase it is meant to be generic so you can do what ever you want to with it. This include deciding how you want you drive setup. Ever stop to consider there are ppl out there who want it setup differently than you? I’ve personally have had triboot test machines before.
It actually installs quicker than windows xp from my experience. Neither take hours either.
Why all people think that performance/benchmarks are the only things count?
I like FreeBSD because it has very good manpages for the userland (I don’t like GNU manpages). I like the filesystem layout. The configuration files are very clear und easy to use and I like the way how details are solved. I like the release engineering. And the OS consistency is very important for me. I don’t care about benchmarks with a 2% better performance for XYZZY … they are interesting, but I will never change my OS because of benchmark results.
I haven’t played around with the rcNG system to make constractive accusations to its brokeness so I’ll not go into that.
But I as a overview I find the SysV init system neater. Each chunk of software has its little script that does its own job.
From that it’s clear you have no clue about rcNG, as it does the same thing but the config options are factored into a single place. rcNG provides a clear dependency structure which is automatically managed by the options in rc.conf as opposed to SysV in which there is no clear dependency structure or formalized mechanism for determing which services depend on what other ones, and you’re instead expected to select a BASIC-style arbitrary order in which services should start using symlinks.
I don’t know what crack you’re smoking, but if you think SysV is neater/cleaner than rcNG I can’t imagine it’s very good…
FreeBSD makes a superb server. It has a narrower focus than Linux, but it is good at what it does – running services securely for extended amounts of time.
I’m looking for a good Linux distro to use on the desktop, but it’s tough to find one I like after being spoiled by FreeBSD. FreeBSD’s support from my desktop machine’s video capture, sata raid, and marvell ethernet NIC are all lacking. I’ve narrowed my Linux search down to Gentoo and Debian. We’ll see how they do.
Until then, it’s 4.x on my servers, and 5.x on my desktops.
Somehow these FOSS “communities” remind me of fanatical cults. They’re all brainwased to follow the party line. They never critize their idol of worship etc. And they try to protect their touchy-feely “communities” with little fences of user-unfriendlyness. Not suprising: Having to endure some unnessesary pain is a typical initiation ritual of cults. In the case of the free *NIX scene this is the installation (I don’t mean SUSE or something but the real “community” projects like Gentoo, Debian or all the *BSDs). For example “I toyed around with the idea to install FreeBSD (additionally to WinXP). However after reading the first few sentences of the installation manual I decided to forget about it. No, it’s not to complex for me – just painfully tendious. Boot the CD, choose “use free space”, “install all”, “ok”. A dual boot installation doesn’t have to be more complex than that. Coding this is trivial and it doesn’t ’cause problems for people who need/want to do a more customized install either. The only “rational” reason for FreeBSD to have such a time-consuming and tendious install process is that the new users are supposed to prove “I have no life and I’m willing to waste hours doing unnessesary stuff just to become a member of your cult”.”
Everyone has opinions. I’m not a Linux god or a BSD god by any means. I personally have found freebasd to be very logical in the way you install it. It doesn’t take hours either my friend. I was able to get it installed much faster than any Linux or any other OS includeing Windows XP.
What is tendious? I’m not finding it in any of my dictionaries…
“I have no life and I’m willing to waste hours doing unnessesary stuff just to become a member of your cult”
What a load of crap. It’s a minimalistic installer for sure, but its not at all time consuming. What the hell are you smoking?
And yes, I agree that there are much better installers, I just don’t agree with most of the rest of your idiotic rant.
Running 5.3B7 on my Inspiron laptop right now… with only 128 MB of RAM, current running services: PostgreSQL, CUPS, Apache2, sshd, and KDE 3.3 is still snappy in the foreground.
In fact, while posting this, I have GIMP 2, several Firefox tabs, Kword, and various other windows and terminal prompts open. Nice… a definite performance bump since 5.2.1. (Yes, I know I should get more RAM, but it is still fun to see how well FreeBSD handles this)
To install FreeBSD I need only download the mini.iso, burn the small thing, boot into it, partition, label, upgrade or clean install?, select ftp media, select install option (everything), wait under an hour, select additional packages (KDE 3.3), wait a bit again, boot into freebsd, adduser, xconfig, startx. a couple of hours. Then play with additional “packages” if you want quick installs. If Mom/Pops want easy, they can use Mandrake. IT’S ALL GOOD.
The excessive tweaking of a system is an addiction and not necessarily a sign that the tweaker is a loser. As any addiction does, it has it’s effects on the social life.
That said, Geee Whizzz, 7 beta’s. Never in my life.
Also, I understand that by upgrading as described above, I am not upgrading sources; yet I have managed to do an upgrade of 5.3 this way through beta 3-6. with beta6 I cvsuped using ports-supfile to get the very latest in kde.
HEY, how ’bout that debate. wam bam. this month, the world holds it’s breath.
I’ll give everyone a hint about the installer: just do the express install and install everything. It’s quick and easy. It’s not like Linux where that’ll give you 4 different editors, browsers, etc. You’ll get a basic yet functional system. After that, compile the stuff you need after that. I’ve set up dynamic DNS servers in under 2 hours.
I spent this evening installing my girlfriends computer with Windows 2000. After doing all the updates (over cable) and installing Firefox and AntiVir, it’s taken me nearly 5 hours.
“I spent this evening installing my girlfriends computer with Windows 2000. After doing all the updates (over cable) and installing Firefox and AntiVir, it’s taken me nearly 5 hours.”
That’s it?!? Heh. I remember back in the days I had to actually use Windows 2000 for development, it would literally take me 2 full days to get everything the way I needed it. Granted, that was running on a PIII 600Mhz machine, but still…
Now, with FreeBSD it takes me only a about 3-4 hours (mostly unattended) to install from the mini .iso, and then download all packages I need, as well as compile a custom kernel and tweak a few startup settings. In other words, when you have complex needs, that is where FreeBSD really shines. It’s all there at your fingertips, no fuss.
It has a narrower focus than Linux, but it is good at what it does – running services securely for extended amounts of time.
I’m confused about your “narrow focus” statement please elaborate. There over 300 various Linux distros. One for almost every specific need that a admin would need. Debian stable is comparable to FreeBSD for server duties. Rock solid just like FreeBSD.
I’m looking for a good Linux distro to use on the desktop, but it’s tough to find one I like after being spoiled by FreeBSD.
Countless number of distros aimed at the desktop. I’m am sure you will find several. You should go over to distrowatch and look at some more if you have time.
FreeBSD’s support from my desktop machine’s video capture, sata raid, and marvell ethernet NIC are all lacking. I’ve narrowed my Linux search down to Gentoo and Debian. We’ll see how they do.
Try Ubuntu if you want a easy to install desktop OS. Its based on Debian.
Also the new Debian-installer is a great improvement over the older one. Of course I am speaking of the pre-rc2 recently released. So installing Debian should not be a problem. You will get a base install(if you want), very little to no services running. No bloat system. Just apt-get from there and construct your Deb system the way you want.
http://distrowatch.com
http://ubuntulinux.org/
I’ll give everyone a hint about the installer: just do the express install and install everything. It’s quick and easy. It’s not like Linux where that’ll give you 4 different editors, browsers, etc. You’ll get a basic yet functional system.
@MattPie
Now you know it is not nice to make sweeping statements that pigeon hold all distros together like that! Or was that a little cheap shot at the Penguin crowd?
Not all Linux distros come with all that bloat that you claim is standard with Linux. It is more likely the DE KDE that comes with all those extra apps or the decision of a few distros. Nothing wrong with choice. If you do not like the way a certain DE/WM or distro does things, move to another. Same with the BSDs. I am sure if I install KDE on FreeBSD it will have a similiar number of apps(I used KDE as my DE when I used FreeBSD 5.1 awhile ago).
I’ll give everyone a hint about the avoiding bloat in Linux:
Install Debian using the Sarge-installer. Apt-get what you need.
“It’s quick and easy. You’ll get a basic yet functional system.”
Same with Debian. And to be on topic I look forward to the new FreeBSD 5.3 release as well as OpenBSD 3.6. All FOSS is good!
By “narrow focus” I mean “running services securely for extended amounts of time”. The Linux Kernel is constantly gaining new capabilities, so that it can grow to become all things for all people. People want to run it on everything from Palmtops to Macs to IBM Mainframes. I think you will find most FreeBSD installations are dedicated single-processor x86 systems.
The only “rational” reason for FreeBSD to have such a time-consuming and tendious install process is that the new users are supposed to prove “I have no life and I’m willing to waste hours doing unnessesary stuff just to become a member of your cult”.
That’s your opinion. Sure people that are used to Microsoft Systems are lazy and want everything for free (most of the people advocating Windows don’t buy Windows) and don’t want to do anything for it.
FreeBSD is commandline based. The GUI is extra, not a must have like in Windows. It’s a total different system so comparing FreeBSD to Windows is senseless.
Once again I like FreeBSD for its good qualities, Linux in changes too fast.
The so called stable kernel gets radical changes, but many systems that
are built using Linux are nicer to use. nicer to keep up to date, nicer to
maintain.
So this is another proove you are talking about a system you don’t know. How can it be easier than doing “cvsup /path/to/ports-supfile; portupgrade -arR” ??
Why does every FreeBSD release seem to become a freebsd vs linux systems arguement?
Because there’s always someone that starts with trolling. 😉
I’m looking for a good Linux distro to use on the desktop, but it’s tough to find one I like after being spoiled by FreeBSD. FreeBSD’s support from my desktop machine’s video capture, sata raid, and marvell ethernet NIC are all lacking. I’ve narrowed my Linux search down to Gentoo and Debian. We’ll see how they do.
So you will like Project Evil, loading binairy Windows network drivers into the kernel can be the solution for your marvell ethernet NIC.
Debian stable is comparable to FreeBSD for server duties. Rock solid just like FreeBSD.
yeah right, rock solid and old. Still using GIMP 1.x. It’s like XMMS that still runs with GTK1, that’s why I use the forked Beep Media Player.
I upgraded my machine’s CPU to AMD Duron 1.8GHz (cache-limited version of Athlon XP Thoroughbred 2400+ core) and now FreeBSD is refusing to boot.
I tried every version, but every single one of them fails to boot correctly.
The problem seems to be at the npx0 detection process…the kernel stops right after detecting fpu.
Suspicious of CPU fault, I tried cpu and fpu benchmark software, but there seems to be no fault…Linux boots fine and Windoze boots fine…and it just works fine in these os’s. However, when I tried Debian potato boot-cd, it refused to boot correctly…with exact same behavior as FreeBSD: fpu detection failure. So I had to pass no387 option to kernel to boot. But 2.4.x and 2.6.x kernels seems to be working perfectly….even without any math emulation enabled!
Why are a lot of people still whining that they want to see th e performance. Of course is it a very important aspect of an OS but dont forget
management
stability
security
scalability
features
and there are probably more aspects that i`m forgetting. Get the OS that suits your needs…
i like freebsd and i play around it (and with it) from version 4.4. now i have installed at work fbsd 5.3 beta 3 , cvsup-ed to last version (5.3 beta 7). it works fine, smooth, but there are 3 things that bother me:
1) java support : no java 1.5 final (one that was released last week); only jdk 1.5 beta 1 and with linux emulation; i have a working jdk1.4.2 with linux emul and one native (1.4.2 compiled); and java plugin for browsers is a tedious process to accomplish
2) wine support : still using wine-20040505 (from May, and now is October); i know this is not the fault of freebsd team, but it’s not a pleasure to use a little old version when it’s needed
3) i don’t like iso’ images form of release by this perspective: when i had freebsd 4.4 there was 4 cd images with many packages; now it’s only 2 images, and the second image (CD nr. 2) it’s a rescue system; i have to download packages from the web or build ports (again, with download from the web); I LIKE TO FIND A METHOD FOR BUILDING AN EXTENDED SET OF ISO IMAGES (ex. 10 – 15 iso’s) with all packages collection from an official freebsd mirror – at home i don’t have internet, at work i have; so i want it for home (actually at home i have a SUSE 9.1 pro).
p.s. i don’t want a flame war FBSD-Linux, i just want to know how to generate my iso’s
thanks in advance.
I generally agree with you, portage is quite nice. They obviously looked around, took the best and built a nice elegant system from scratch. That’s comfort we at FreeBSD can’t afford. We can’t just throw out ports, it’s too much work in it already and it’s not possible to rewrite whole 13000 ports into different system over night.
Sadly, ports system is reaching the border how far it can be easily extended with new features. Multiple versions of ports are possible by having several ports of same software, but things like minimal versions of dependencies or cool binary package system would be hard to add.
I would not consider portupgrade a hack, BTW. It’s a third party application, yes, but it’s strongly suggested by FreeBSD team and it works very well.
1) java support
It’s getting there. This has more to do with how SUN develops and makes sure Java IS Java. If you really need bleeding egde Java support perhaps you should look into Linux, at least for the time being.
2) wine support
Since wine is first and formost developed for Linux, BSDs will always lag some time after in releases. ‘s only natural.
3) i don’t like iso’
Um, not sure of this (as I have very fast net both at my workplaces and at home, I’ve no had the need). Have you checked the Handbook? Try asking on a suitable mailing-list (not -current) as I’m quite sure you’ll get the correct help there.
*To the rest*
What I find annoying is people (mostly Linux users, note that I did not say fanatics) bringing up and bashing stuff that they obviously have no knowledge about or even tested.
rcNG was for me such a bliss to use after SysV on Solaris and Linux and the old BSD init system that I still (I’ve been using is since FreeBSD 5.0) get a smile on my face each time I do “more /etc/rc.conf” or “ee /etc/rc.conf”. It is so elegant and easy to immediatly get an overview of the settings.
FreeBSD is not perfect and neither is Linux or any of the distros so please let’s keep it to valid arguments.
1) java support
Java is an old pain of FreeBSD, yes. With no official support from Sun, it takes time and effort of, sadly, only few skilled volunteers. Linux’ 1.5 under binary emulatious should work well enough for ordinary usage.
2) wine support
There’s a problem that June and newer wine’s are using a new memory mapping routines, that crash under FreeBSD. The fix (in FreeBSD sources) is being worked on, but it goes slowly, as it looks like more extensive rewrite of mmap kernel facility would be needed.
3) i don’t like iso’
Well I suppose you can just download whole content of ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5.3-release and put it on DVDs/hard drive and bring it home… The reason why package ISOs were dropped is simply that there’s too many packages.
on 1 (Java) and 2(wine) i totally agree with you, it’s a pain.
on 3 (all packages on cd’s) -> well, i don’t have a dvd and i want it to be bootable also (whole collection).
i will RTFM on this subject and thanks to you guys.
on 3 – i like to have something (if possible):
CD’s 1,2,3, … , n. put cd 1 on cdrom, boot it, install fbsd core, install packages on the first cd (one that is inserted and running), then the system ask for cd number “x” for packages selected prior by me.
– something similar to other linux distros – well known by majority of people.
i repeat again: i like freebsd and i want (if possible) this feature
On bullet 3 – I think you could do this by building custom release with extended package set, but that’s nontrivial operation and you need already installed FreeBSD to do it, anyway…
Portage: please don’t. I used gentoo for 2 months (not on my own accord) but at that time, portage was lacking proper reverse dependency lookup (and worked around this lack with the worldfile). This was in april-may. Also, in FreeBSD, port maintainer’s have the task of selecting the best options (read: accepted by 99% of the users) for each port, and they are quite sane. Portage doesn’t have that, and in fact it sells this lack as a feature: use-flags. It was a nightmare to configure the use-flags to have a relatively sane system (no xfree installed as a dependency of midnight commander lol.) Ports just worked.
Also, I can start installing 50 ports, and if one fails, it just go on. I can leave my puter building, and at the and, I will have a nice summary of which ports succeeded, which ports failed, and why. No ‘skipfirst’ kinda things. And make search key|name always had better results than portage equivalent.
So please, don’t come up with suggestions of ports becoming portage. I don’t want that, and I think most users who used both would agree with that. The funny thing is that all portage vs ports arguments start from a small but valid thing: in FreeBSD, syncronization of ports/sources/documents and installing ports is split (done by to different progs). This isn’t a big deal at all, although it would be nice to have one. Which reminds me: you have ONE. I mean, put these lines in your make.conf:
SUP_UPDATE=yes
SUP=/usr/local/bin/cvsup
SUPFLAGS= -g -L 2
SUPHOST=cvsup6.FreeBSD.org
DOCSUPFILE=/root/sup/doc-supfile
SUPFILE=/root/sup/standard-supfile
PORTSSUPFILE=/root/sup/ports-supfile
And from then on, doing make update will update your ports tree. Anyway. As I said, you may be right in your starting argument, but I dread the moment that would bring portage kinda things to FreeBSD. Ports are lean and mean and you don’t have to configure anything to have a system that combines maximum usability with leanness. Thanks to our excellent port maintainers, who don’t dump make knowbs on the users and call it a feature (note: you still have the flexibility: you can tweak every port the way you like, you can include additional options in make conf, its just you don’t have to right at the beginning).
3) i don’t like iso’ images form of release by this perspective: when i had freebsd 4.4 there was 4 cd images with many packages; now it’s only 2 images, and the second image (CD nr. 2) it’s a rescue system; i have to download packages from the web or build ports (again, with download from the web); I LIKE TO FIND A METHOD FOR BUILDING AN EXTENDED SET OF ISO IMAGES (ex. 10 – 15 iso’s) with all packages collection from an official freebsd mirror – at home i don’t have internet, at work i have; so i want it for home (actually at home i have a SUSE 9.1 pro).
You’re better off downloading the mini-iso, get the internet connection setup, cvsup the ports, THEN download and install via the ports system.
Why? too many times I have found that on many occasions, there are faults with the bundled pkgs, hence, you’re better off using the ports system rather than the pre-compiled binaries. ALSO, by using the porting system, you won’t end up downloading a whole heap of unneeded crap thus saving time and money (assuming that you’re paying for this ISP connection).
What about porteasy so that you don’t have to cvsup ?
Mine is a question.
Why? too many times I have found that on many occasions, there are faults with the bundled pkgs, hence, you’re better off using the ports system rather than the pre-compiled binaries. ALSO, by using the porting system, you won’t end up downloading a whole heap of unneeded crap thus saving time and money (assuming that you’re paying for this ISP connection).
That’s fine if you have a fast connection but samiky stated that he didn’t. So thats not really an option then even if I agree that is is better
That’s it?!? Heh. I remember back in the days I had to actually use Windows 2000 for development, it would literally take me 2 full days to get everything the way I needed it. Granted, that was running on a PIII 600Mhz machine, but still…
Heh.. You were just lazy. It usually took me only one day to install my development machine with Win2k on a similar computer. But it still is a nightmare – countless install and reboot cycles.
Here we are, at last!
I hope they made progress with those small issues about ACPI support, ‘cos I want to run FreeBSD as primary OS on my Acer Aspire laptop. 🙂
Heh.. You were just lazy. It usually took me only one day to install my development machine with Win2k on a similar computer. But it still is a nightmare – countless install and reboot cycles.
I admit it. I was lazy! I actually left the console on occasion during downloads to do other productive work ;-). No, it really did take 2 days, because of all the software I had to install and configure (sigh… sort through CD book, insert CD #1, wait, insert CD #2, etc… then *again* install all downloaded patches to each CD-based piece of software, reboot…reboot…reboot…). Whereas, with FreeBSD, I can just choose all my software at once and let the system take over the downloads and dependencies.
I know Freebsd has done a lot of work to SMP with this new release, so i was wondering how many processors Freebsd scaled to now?
I have read posts to various mailing lists sighting problems above 6 CPU systems. I only have dual cpu machines at my disposal so I can’t speak to this directly.