FreeBSD 8.1 Enters Beta; Final Coming In July

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD 8.1 Enters Beta; Final Coming In July

FreeBSD 8.0 was released in November, but now the first update in the 8.x series is approaching. FreeBSD 8.1 has entered beta and is expected for final release around July...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=ODI5OQ

[hdas]

Looks like the FreeBSD room is empty .

Aside, my first attempt at FreeBSD was out of curiosity - it was 6.0 in 2006. It was not quite a pleasant experience. After spending a considerable time, I had gotten almost everything to work, including Linux emulation. I had to put a considerable effort on almost everything. I had to change the default shell from sh to bash (may be I missed some install option) and set up PATH variables. Had to recompile the kernel to get audio working (and also some hi-resolution boot screen). Mounting and umounting an iso image (done simply in Linux by mount -o loop) required managing loop devices directly. And the list goes on. Filesytem support is abysmal to my liking - all my data used to be in ReiserFS 3.6 then, which did not have any support whatsoever - not even read-only. Ext3 support was also read-only I think. Bootloader and partitioning was non-trivial too. The package management was nice - both source (ports) and binaries. But again, ports felt nowhere close to portage (I use Gentoo). Overall, felt like an alien system. And there was nothing to gain there - either speed or stability or features. Speaking of features, I believe the driver support for various hardware is still small (tiny?) compared to Linux.

If it were my first attempt at an OS, I would have given up on first day. But thanks to my endless perseverance and tinkering with Slackware and Gentoo that at no point was I remotely close to giving up. So yes, use Slackware, Gentoo (and Debian) and become a man .

[vermaden]

Hi, hdas

I had to change the default shell from sh to bash (may be I missed some install option) and set up PATH variables.

Isnt that the way UNIX system should be? You have defaults, You do not like them, You set your settings/applications ...

Had to recompile the kernel to get audio working

I use FreeBSD since 5.x series, in 6.x it was not needed to recompile kernel, just load appreciate sound module, recompiling was only needed when You had some very fresh patch that was not in the RELEASE.

Mounting and umounting an iso image (done simply in Linux by mount -o loop) required managing loop devices directly. And the list goes on.

Looking at this that way, its still easier then on Solaris for example

I use that cross-UNIX script for that (even on Linux):
http://strony.toya.net.pl/~vermaden/text/loop.sh

Filesytem support is abysmal to my liking - all my data used to be in ReiserFS 3.6 then, which did not have any support whatsoever - not even read-only.

ReiserFS is STRICTLY LINUX filesystem, why FreeBSD developers should add support for any existent filesystem on earth?

Do Linux supports WRITE (or even reliable READ) from UFS/UFS2/FFS BSD Filesystem? No.

Ext3 support was also read-only I think.

ext3 is mounted as ext2 on FreeBSD (without journal), and works as ext2 filesystem. In R/W of course.

Bootloader and partitioning was non-trivial too.

Its just DIFFERENT, while Linux needs plenty of MBR partition FreeBSD is done with only ONE primary partition, all other partitions can be created inside that one primary partition using bsdlabel, Solaris does the same thing too.

Bootloader is even configurationless, its just boot-cfg -B /dev/DISK to add it and it by itself detects partitions and boots what its needed.

Overall, felt like an alien system.

Too many people start to use FreeBSD counting that they will see there same sollutions that You know from GNU/Linux userland, they forget that its entirely diffrent/other operating system.

And there was nothing to gain there - either speed or stability or features.

But now we have ZFS for example, or Grand Central Dispatch from the late developments, but that of course was not available in the 6.x days.

But thanks to my endless perseverance and tinkering with Slackware and Gentoo that at no point was I remotely close to giving up. So yes, use Slackware, Gentoo (and Debian) and become a man .

Funny, I used to be Slackware user, then migrated to Gentoo and finaly settled down on FreeBSD as a better place to live

Regards,
vermaden

[hdas]

Ah there, so the room is not empty . I was hoping that my trolling would get noticed .

I agree with most of what you said. Especially the part that I was expecting FreeBSD userland to behave almost _exactly_ as GNU/Linux - after all, I thought all Unix (/like) systems should behave the same. <sarcasm>But imagine my horror when I had to type something like /sbin/mount instead of mount.</sarcasm>

I think, yes, sound probably didn't require recompiling kernel, but probably I just had the ricer itch to recompile the kernel as always.

Well, loop devices weren't really an issue, just my rant. I had written a small script too.

Yes, I shouldn't have expected ReiserFS support back then - I used to think that Linux is the center of the universe (which is true ) and that ReiserFS is a popular enough filesystem. (There were a couple of read-only tools for Windows too.) Indeed Linux doesn't support UFS write either. Aside, I dearly hope one day there is at least one filesystem which all OS have stable rw support. (Unfortunately not Fat, but hopefully btrfs. Hope it gets included as part of html6 or 7 .)

ZFS, dtrace and grand-central sound exciting, but not compelling for my purposes. Besides, I would take basic hardware support and applications over something fancy any day. (For a related analogy, I was disappointed that KDE SC 4.4 still does not have something as basic as a networkmanager frontend and have to use gnome nm-applet, all the while they chase a social desktop.)

I was on the same path, but came back to Gentoo after a couple weeks of FreeBSD and it has been Gentoo since then (~5 years now). Works for me. I guess many were (are) on a similar path: Red Hat 8/9 -> Fedora and Mandrake -> Debian -> Slackware -> Gentoo -> ... (Oh, and insert Ubuntu and OpenSuSE somewhere in the beginning and Arch somewhere in the end of the list for others .)

[vermaden]

Ah there, so the room is not empty . I was hoping that my trolling would get noticed .

Hah

I dearly hope one day there is at least one filesystem which all OS have stable rw support. (Unfortunately not Fat, but hopefully btrfs. Hope it gets included as part of html6 or 7 .)

Currently its mostly ext2 with 128 inode size imho (FreeBSD/Linux/NetBSD/OpenBSD/OpenSolaris) ... but dunno about Solaris/AIX/HP-UX/...

IMHO UDF should be implemented on all archs/oses for that purpose ... or some equivalent.

Regards,
vermaden