The first Release Candidate for FreeBSD
4.11 has been made available. Please see the full
announcement on the FreeBSD-STABLE mailing list
here. The full 4.11 release schedule is here. For the “ULTRA” conserative, this appears to be the last release cycle for the 4.x branch.
The first Release Candidate for FreeBSD 4.11
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Are there two forks of FreeBSD? 4.x and 5.x?
5.x used to be a Release Engineering; it has stabilized recently.
I would not call it ‘forks’, just different development trees. It’s ‘always’ been like that, just the way freebsd gets developed.
neo: there is no fork
I tried and tried and tried to get FreeBSD 5.3 to work properly on my system, but it would only work if I disabled UDMA access to my IDE disks… and if I ran in the much slower PIO4 mode.
I have never had a problem with any other OS with regards to this… even DragonFly BSD didn’t have this problem when I briefly installed it. Ditto for multiple flavors of Linux, and ditto for Windows XP.
The ATA driver for FreeBSD 5.x is seriously broken.
On my notebook (toshiba satellite celeron 400mhz 128mbram)
* 5.3 installed with user installation (no X)
at login the cooling fan run continuosly
* 4.10 no cooling fan problem
Not sure what the problem was and I didn’t research on that but I was a bit disappointed and so 4.10 was a must for me (now I’m using Debian, though).
go 4.x branch 🙂
Anyone know when the 4.x branch will reach end of life. I don’t really want to install it on my servers and find that it is not longer supported in a year or so with no easy upgrade path.
What i’v tryed FreeBSD 4.x & 5.x and they feel quite the same for desktop-user. What i liked the most, compared to other BSD’s is that pkg_add works without any configuration.
After install, all i needed to do was type “pkg_add xfce4” and it did it as fast as my adsl could download binarys.
But wich was mystery for me, is that why they say that FreeBSD is ‘cutting-edge’ while latest xfce 4.0.6 was only thing i could find while linux does have 4.2rc2. Even FreeBSIE had 4.2, but why couldnt i find it from FreeBSD 4.10?
NetBSD has nice pkgsrc, but what it doesen’t have is up-to-date binarys. Does any of you know the pain of p200mmx trying update couple of packages and depencys wich may take 4 days? Let me know, if there is something out there to make this faster on low-end computers.
I’m not a guru neither am i nerd, but i still have brains and my critisism about why these marvelous OS’s collapses in these tiny problems wich may make your experience as nightmare.
Can’t live with them, but can’t live without them. BSD’s are good at that they make you think “how could I make this better”
Using 4.X doesnt mean you are ultra conservative. Simply, somebody cant afford to reboot a crashed server every week if its a 7-24 critical system, with 100s/1000s of users.
Mentioning “conservative”, one would think there is so huge gap bethween 4.X and 5.X as it is bethween win98 and winxp (and we know that it isnt true)
I like the mandatory access control features of 5.3 You can enable a lot features without a policy,quick and dirty.
gods_design,
I found this link on a mailing list. If your definition means security patches, this link might provide some insight.
http://www.freebsd.org/security/index.html#adv
As for the concept of “Ultra Conervative”: The 4.x branch has proved exceptionally stable over the years. It is time tested and so forth. The 5.x branch has recently become stable (as of 5.3). Is 5.3 stable? YES. Is there anything wrong with the 5.x branch. NO.
If your use to the way things work in 4.x, then 4.11 would NOT be a bad choice, more of a logical step. The 5.x branch is living up to various expectations (aka nothing wrong with the 5.x branch).
Just MHO.
I have some systems with FreeBSD 5.3 and 6.0-CURRENT, only one of them met the ATA problem. I really don’t know why, but it’s really not a standart system (Maxtor ATA133 and ATA66 controller).
I must say that FreeBSD 5.3 is stable enough. With some tricks, hacks, optimized options, it just can work well and sometimes even faster than 4.x.
Anyway, I you guys don’t like new things, just use the 4.x – the “rocky” stable
. And don’t worry about the support for 4.x, patches and bug fixes will be available.
For XFCE question: just simply cvsup (update) your ports tree, and you’ll see the newest XFCE there. The ports for all 5.x, 4.x is practically the same.
But wich was mystery for me, is that why they say that FreeBSD is ‘cutting-edge’ while latest xfce 4.0.6 was only thing i could find while linux does have 4.2rc2. Even FreeBSIE had 4.2, but why couldnt i find it from FreeBSD 4.10?
Well, there are a couple of factors. First of all, the ports tree is not really a part of the base system and is maintained by volunteers. The ports tree in general tends to favor stability over new releases. Also due to the fact that most OSS develpoment favors Linux right now, most projects release packages for Linux with each new version.
I think this is one of the big differences between FreeBSD and Linux from a user point of view. If you want binary packagages as soon as they are released, FreeBSD is probably not the best way to go.
In regards to “ULTRA conservative.” Given that the recommended upgrade path from 4.10 to 5.3 involves backing up everything, reinstalling, rebuilding your ports, and restoring all user data, I’ve got better things to do with my life than to spend a weekend going through this process, and ironing out all the quirks from stuff that I forgot. I’ve just not seen anything in 5.3 to make it worth my while.
I rather like the new 5.3 release; I haven’t had the best luck with previous 5.x versions (and their 4.x Alpha port is pathetic since Mozilla won’t compile).
<blockquote>
I’ve got better things to do with my life than to spend a weekend going through this process, and ironing out all the quirks from stuff that I forgot.
</blockquote>
yeah like sitting at home and posting on osnews.
But wich was mystery for me, is that why they say that FreeBSD is ‘cutting-edge’ while latest xfce 4.0.6 was only thing i could find while linux does have 4.2rc2. Even FreeBSIE had 4.2, but why couldnt i find it from FreeBSD 4.10?
“Cutting-edge” in software means it may cut you. “Bleeding-edge” means it’s likely to make you bleed. Are you sure you want this? Besides, you probably haven’t noticed but XFCE has released the release candidates for 4.2 with a platform-independent GUI wizard installer/uninstaller. Just download the installer, use it, and you’ve got the latest XFCE on FreeBSD 4.10. 🙂
Sometimes i just feels so fustarated by those big ‘Linux this .. Linux that’ headlines everywhere and it would be nice to try it out on some BSD. But i feel a lot safer when using software from BSD ports knowing that it has checked for one more time before handing it out to users.
Depencys are the hell that prevents user from trying out latest software because, it would also require all the latest widgets and GTK’s. It is hard to move from windows to BSD because of these depencys. At Windows i just had to install latest software and it worked, now i have to observe whole system before even considering it.
Maybe that’s the reason why i’m still using windows as a desktop and BSD to secure my windows
What problem chipset?
Not seen any problems here with it, so I would not say they are seriously broken. Both PATA and SATA work nicely ^_^
Try the mailing lists and submitting a pr.
dictionary:
conservative – Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change. (for whatever reason, too much trouble, like it the way it is etc…)
A progessive person will move toward new things even if it presents problems or takes a lot of effort.
I think the use of conservative for people that use 4.x is just about right, but appearantly 4.x users feel stepped on their toes, why?