FreeBSD milestone nears release

cobrawgl

Matt Loney
ZDNet UK
July 30, 2004, 17:25 BST

The most significant update in years of the FreeBSD operating system is due to enter beta testing mid-August. It will boost performance on multi-processor systems and allow the use of Windows drivers for network cards, say the people behind it

FreeBSD, the free operating system that enjoys a growing and extremely loyal following, is nearing a code freeze for its most significant update in years.

       
Scott Long, the software engineer leading the release work, has posted an update saying that he expects to freeze the code for version 5.3 on 15 August, meaning that the code will enter beta testing then. Speaking to ZDNet UK, Long said he is hoping to release the final product on 1 October.

The 5.x development branch of FreeBSD has suffered some stability problems in the past, said Long, and most users have stuck to version 4.10 for production environments. He hopes many of those users will be persuaded to upgrade to version 5.3.

The whole version 5 series is about trying to get more performance out of multi-processor systems, said Long. "The 5.3 release will be the first one where we see the real benefits of that. The multithreaded network stack will outperform everything we've done before, for running applications such as Apache or MySQL." Long said users can expect a typical performance improvement of up to 30 percent in such applications, but cautioned that this is still a "very preliminary" figure.

FreeBSD 5.2 will also introduce a software layer that lets Windows network drivers work with FreeBSD. This layer, dubbed Project Evil, means that wired and wireless network cards should be able to work with FreeBSD even if the manufacturers have not written any drivers for the operating system.

"Bill Paul (a fellow core team member) has done the work there," said Long. "His method was to write a Windows emulation layer that provides the API (application programming interface) hooks that the drivers use. It seems to work for quite a number of drivers so far."

"But the big thing we're pushing," he said, "is stability. We won't release this until it is ready."

Stability is one of the biggest attractions for FreeBSD users, some of whom donate money to individual FreeBSD developers to aid development. Version 5.3 of the operating system is the first to be created using formal lab testing procedures, said Long. "We have proper procedures set up to test stability, whereas before we relied on the community. It's been very interested because we have been able to get immediate feedback on the performance, which is nice."

Once this version is out of the door the core developers will start work on version 5.4, which should improve driver performance. A February 2005 release date is planned for this version. "Then the plan is to have new releases every four to five months," said Long. A new development branch, for version 6.0 will also begin, which will focus on the storage subsystem. That work is expected to take two years.

cobrawgl

转个评论:

I've been using FreeBSD since long before it was apparently dying, since maybe the 2.x branch. I never tried Linux until this past year, because I live under a rock on the dark side of the moon.

I tried SuSE, and it was great and all -- the setup was really nice -- but it's not there yet. In fact, I backed over it with 5.2 immediately afterwards. Why? Well, for day-to-day use, I didn't see any difference between Linux and BSD -- except the cluttered /etc, the fact that YaST didn't like me seeing the cluttered /etc, and this nagging feeling that it was a system of patched together parts, rather than a well-tested, stable "distribution" (note: I'm knocking the distro, not the kernel, and only slightly).

When it came down to it, FreeBSD and a daily-updated ports tree seemed to "click together" better than Linux. For most other day-to-day use, there wasn't a huge difference, though I will say BSD was a tad 'snappier'.

I urge those who haven't tried FreeBSD before to give it a chance. It's not that hard, and it is not, contrary to popular opinion, "better for servers". I play UT2004 and America's Army daily on my BSD box with no problems (thank you native nvidia drivers). What causes most people to gawk after seeing Linux is the text-mode installation -- which is just text menus, but still menus. (I've seen some installation programs that can make you wonder.. OpenBSD, I'm talking to you.)

Last month I introduced FreeBSD to someone who had never, ever used *nix in any form before. After about an hour explaining different concepts (slices, ports and packages, rc.conf), she was off and running and actually, almost sadly, hasn't asked for my help once since then. She had X and KDE up and running within the day.

So give it a try. We have no evil plan. (Except that, yanno, our mascot is related to Satan)

cobrawgl

转个评论:

My debian machine lost it's harddrive recently, coincidently about one hour before I had to head out of town for the weekend. So I needed to install something on some random harddrive and get my email server backup, quickly. Well, all I had laying around was the 5.1 install cds that I had downloaded when they were announced on /., with the intention of trying out FreeBSD sometime in the nebulous future. So I installed FreeBSD for the first time ever, and have all my accounts added back, along with the various services I needed (named, smtp, and ssh) on and configured, in about 45 minutes. That included going through the install with no documentation at all (my internet connection was also routed through the debian box). That was very impressive, to me at least. Now, granted, after I got back I spent every night for a week dinking around figuring out how things are different, switching from sendmail to postfix, upgrading from 5.1 to 5.2.1, adding ext2 support to copy over all my data, setting up X and sound, setting up support for my Zire 72, and playing around with ports until it became second nature.

So, my thoughts having been on FreeBSD for a couple months? Honestly, I dunno. I haven't noticed any speed difference at all, despite many a BSDer's claim to the contrary (this is a 750Mhz Duron with 1.25GB ram). I had to switch out my soundcard (Envy24-based Chaintech for an SB64 I had laying around) because it wasn't supported. The support for my Zire seems to be much nicer (I've always had problems in Linux with USB-based Palms, and tools like KPilot). I really like the init system, and /etc/rc.conf is nice (once you figure out what's supposed to be in there). It's a bit of a pain when trying to run various things (like nagios), where scripts and whatnot are written for Linux and break subtly (or completely) on FreeBSD. However, that's generally a one-line fix of some sort (change an argument passed to ps or nslookup, for instance), so it's not a huge deal. I've never liked Gentoo, and doing a 'portupgrade -a' makes me long for 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. I really like the kernel configuration, it works like a champ. I've recompiled my kernel probably six or seven times (chasing various hardware and software settings), and I've never had a single thing go wrong. I really wish it supported my APC usb-based UPS, but it doesn't.

In summary, when I change hardware in the near future, I'll probably end up putting debian back on. The expanded hardware support, removal of all those little 'bumps' in making software work correctly, and ease and quickness of upgrading and installing software make debian win out. However, if it wasn't for Debian, FreeBSD would be my choice. I use (and administer) Redhat WS3 at work, and I'll take BSD over it any day of the week :-)

Of course, my ideal setup would be a G5 with OSX as my desktop, and OpenBSD on my server. That would be kinda doable if I still had seperate computers for workstation and server (Linux as desktop, OpenBSD on server), but the ever decreasing pool of working hardware forced me down to one. And I'm not masochistic enough to run OpenBSD on the desktop...

blithe

So give it a try.

give freebsd a try !肯定会还你一个惊喜，我的一点体会！

chenzhijin1980

yes.agreed.
i've tried 4.10.but it doesn't support some necessary programs for me
,such as realplay10 . and i think slackware is also a pretty good choice.