FreeBSD 10.1 released
lists.freebsd.org
lists.freebsd.org
gpg: Signature made Fri Nov 14 11:08:36 2014 PST using RSA key ID 478FE293
gpg: BAD signature from "Glen Barber <gjb@FreeBSD.org>"If you want a DNS server you may of course install one of your choosing from the pkg repository. I would recommend NSD if you are familiar with BIND.
FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE is also available on these cloud hosting platforms:
- Amazon(R) EC2(TM) FreeBSD/amd64
- Microsoft(R) Azure(TM) FreeBSD/amd64, FreeBSD/i386Edit: After a moment's thought... wasnt Hotmail originally running on Solaris or SunOS?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlook.com#Launch_of_Hotmail
Has anyone here tried it? If so, how mature would you consider it? Usuable, but with warts? Or completely fine?
I'm curious, but I don't want to nuke my server-box just yet :)
* Does not work with certain hardware / UEFI firmware implementations
(due to bugs in either our implementation, or the firmware).
* No support for UEFI nvram variables.
* No integration or documentation for dual-boot configurations.
I remember seeing a bug report about a system where the BIOS treated USB and non-USB disks differently resulting in one working and the other not. There's really no guarantees when you're dealing with broken BIOSes...
EDIT:
I thought about this more after submitting. The many disks are likely for seeding the ports tree. If you have an internet connection available or opt to not install the ports tree you can install off much smaller media.
It used to be the case, I think, that the extra disc images were for installing applications outside the base distributions and the likes as they themselves contained a snapshot of some of the binary archives for a given release. I don't know for sure, though, because I always used ports (which is better and obviously more up to date).
If you install some of the tools in ports-mgmt (portupgrade, for instance, which includes portinstall), you can make the ports collection far easier to manage and use, and it might be more approachable for new users. Not that it's difficult to do a make && make install from the port you want.
I haven't touched FreeBSD in years, so I'd imagine the installer is a bit more forgiving now. That said, my experience with the ports collection was what lead me to select Gentoo for my Linux preferences (later, and more presently, Arch). But, I have very fond memories of using ports, and I think everyone has their preferred methods. The trick is to neither give in or give up and play around with it until you're familiar and have picked tools you're comfortable with (this holds true for almost anything)! I'd suggest giving it another shot.
Edit: I lied. Apparently I have a FreeBSD 10 vm, so it hasn't been years. I don't remember the new installation procedure at all, sadly.
Re: the ports collection, as a former Gentoo/Funtoo user I felt as you describe. But I think the current FBSD package system is better. Unless there's a special use case, it's generally quite satisfactory and a whole lot easier to download and install apps using the "pkg" utility, rather than messing with ports at all.
IMO the FBSD developers have been doing a terrific job of making the OS better without making it tons harder to administer. There's still a learning curve for sure (e.g., ZFS) but it's not insurmountable.
Definitely. I still do this for exactly that reason. Unnecessarily complicating the installation process is just a recipe for frustration unless you have a well tested build script.
> But I think the current FBSD package system is better.
This is true. I don't have much experience with the "new" package system, because I (mostly) stopped using FreeBSD ~5.x with some more recent usage in the 8.x and 9.x series. I've dabbled in it since, rarely, but I think the old habit of "install everything via ports" is so ingrained in some of us whose FreeBSD use dates back that it's a bit difficult to overcome. :) I'll familiarize myself with it one of these days, perhaps, but the disenchantment with Gentoo is largely the reason I use Arch now and it'd be great to use something similar under a BSD. Rolling release + binary packages = vastly nicer than waiting for hours for Xorg/KDE/Gnome/whatever to build. As a fellow former Gentoo user, I hope that if you read this, I won't have triggered unfortunate flashbacks or painful memories as a consequence of mentioning this. ;)
If new(ish) users come across this thread, follow jrapdx3's suggestion and learn pkg--it's supposed to be really nice and circumvents some of the old ways of doing things. FreeBSD has, IMO, done a great job of mixing something like a rolling release platform with a well-tested and stable kernel/environment. It's almost the best of both worlds, though some things might be a bit tedious to get running. (Is Java still a colossal pain?)
> IMO the FBSD developers have been doing a terrific job of making the OS better without making it tons harder to administer.
Here's another thing: FreeBSD is consistent. So much so that even if you return to using it after years, things still* work more or less the same, and that old knowledge transfers well (within reason).
I can't really say the same for Arch, for instance, because there's usually a hugely disruptive change every 6-12 months. I love Arch (I'm using it right now), but sometimes the drastic changes can be ... surprising.
Ports is still fundamental, but often enough a problem. Not only do some ports take a long time to compile (like Firefox) but a little too often won't compile--maddening when that happens 2 hours after entering "make".
OTOH "pkg" is stable and convenient to use, lately showing no glitches, certainly fewer complications vs. portage, rpm, dpkg, et. al. (Don't know enough about Arch to comment on it.) On the whole pkg is pretty painless.
> (Is Java still a colossal pain?)
Yes and no. I installed openjdk 8.x the other day using 'pkg search', then 'pkg install'. Quite simple. However, if for some reason the Oracle version is necessary, then you'd have the hassle of getting it from their site.
> ... I (mostly) stopped using FreeBSD ~5.x ...
Maybe I should feel a little embarrassed that I still have one DB server which has been running FBSD 6.0 since 2005 (I think). And it's been running continuously, only stopping here and there because of power outages. Haven't changed any of the software, the only maintenance has been backing up the DB, rotating logs, and so on.
I keep meaning to update that system but I don't seem to get around to doing it. After 80,000 hrs on the job I guess we might call it "stable".
I've only once tried using FreeBSD for a desktop machine, and lengthy compilation times (followed by the occasional failure) were one of the reasons I didn't, and another one of the reasons why I eventually dumped Gentoo as my choice for workstations. I remember building Xorg overnight once on Gentoo only to discover that it had failed about 30 minutes after I went to bed.
I'm still a little upset over that, thinking back on it.
> (Don't know enough about Arch to comment on it.) On the whole pkg is pretty painless.
Arch is a rolling release distribution with binary packages; it seems that pkg operates in a manner similar (identical?) to this. It really is the best of both worlds: New packages, when updates are released upstream--usually within days--without the need to compile.
Though, I wouldn't recommend Arch for much other than a workstation (partially due to the nature of rolling releases--breakage happens), it has actually been a fantastic distro for someone whose nix history went something like OpenBSD -> FreeBSD -> Gentoo. You update the system periodically, new packages are downloaded and installed, and updates occur frequently. Compilation is mostly limited to the AUR (Arch User Repository), but the benefit with Arch is that its build tools create binary packages by default that you can then use on other machines of the same architecture. Gentoo allows the same thing, but IIRC it's not something it'll do by default and it's a bit fussier. If you do have to build something, Arch will build the package first, then install from that. But the main repositories have essentially everything you'd want, so compilation truly is limited to less popular/common packages. Everything else is just a download + install away.
But again, Arch is susceptible to some breakage at times, although I've had pretty good luck avoiding this. I guess it's like anything else: If you're careful and apply some meticulous scrutiny to the process, you're less likely to break things in a manner that's difficult to fix. Updating regularly (as with other rolling releases, like Gentoo) is also helpful. Too long between updates can create a bit of a difficult situation to get out of.
> Yes and no. I installed openjdk 8.x the other day using 'pkg search', then 'pkg install'. Quite simple. However, if for some reason the Oracle version is necessary, then you'd have the hassle of getting it from their site.
Okay, that's not too bad. I vaguely* recall it being painful back during 5.x-6.x, but I never had much need for Java on FreeBSD either outside some odds and ends.
> Maybe I should feel a little embarrassed that I still have one DB server which has been running FBSD 6.0 since 2005 (I think).
NOPE! (I wouldn't.)
When I ran FreeBSD (all the way back through the latter 4.x days, probably 4.5-4.6 at the absolute earliest, but I think we had a 4.7/4.8 machine running for a number of years), the beautiful thing about it was definitely its stability. You could do exactly that: Go for ages without updating it and as long as it wasn't Internet-connected, there wasn't really much you needed to worry about. And even if it was, you could just update whatever software you had listening on open ports, within reason, and not worry (I'd do this with Apache or BIND). I know this goes counter to much of the philosophy here, but sometimes if it ain't broke...
The curious thing regarding FreeBSD was the more conservative upgrade path you'd often feel compelled to take, and you seldom felt guilty for leaving a machine untouched. You could always take comfort in the fact that it'd Just Work and remain fairly secure.
I sometimes have to patch the sources with change sets from HEAD or STABLE to get bug fixes.
My system is still crashing consistently with a fully updated 10.0.
It's only a question of time before I find something which crashes 10.1.
They don't bring the system down in Linux, either. Stop spreading FUD.
FreeBSD sometimes completely stops booting on your hardware or turns unstable for no good reason. (search on google for posts from people who can't boot FreeBSD 8.x on hardware which was running 6.x or 7.x without the slightest bug)
FreeBSD can crash your system because of an unstable driver after a major upgrade like 9.2 to 9.3.
You can see they're right, "FreeBSD doesn't take your system down like Linux", it's much worse.
qlogic drivers had bugs in 10.0 which crash the system. Fully updated 10.0 is still affected.
The point holds for 10.1. A bug in 10.1 will only be fixed in 10.2.
PC-bsd, pfsense and freenas use patches from STABLE and HEAD to get things done, they can't use unpatched FreeBSD because it's not meeting their needs.
You seem to be working on 8.5, 9.4 or 10.2 and the others don't see a release until you're done with the one you're focusing on.
I'm using 9.3 right now. I had to wait until you were done with 10.1, hoping FreeBSD 9.4 will be next.
There's no way to plan anything around FreeBSD's release or development process. There's no telling if your new FreeBSD version is going to be stable or not, a driver from STABLE might be more stable than the same driver from RELEASE.
Many live systems are lagging behind with FreeBSD updates because updating those systems can lead to extended downtime due to potential bugs in drivers or a potential breakage caused by the merging of conf files.
Err... that's exactly what 10.1 is.
It's ok, we can agree to disagree.
Or perhaps you've got something else going on entirely. It's hard to say from your post.
~ Happy Hacking
ducks