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FreeBSD 9.1 released
The FreeBSD project has announced the release of FreeBSD 9.1. This is the second release from the stable/9 branch, which improves on the stability of FreeBSD 9.0 and introduces some new features. Further information can be found in the release notes.
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FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Dec 31, 2012 7:00 UTC (Mon) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
Great. When is FreeBSD 10 coming?
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Dec 31, 2012 12:08 UTC (Mon) by alfille (subscriber, #1631) [Link]
It's quite eye-opening installing FreeBSD compared to a standard Linux distribution.
Before the flames, I've installed BSD before, on obscure platforms, and played with the partitioning, packaging tools and configuration. But once you step away, you forget all the arcane details.
This was on a VM and the actual installation from a minimal ISO works. Getting packages is a nuisance -- even the online documentation shows a half dozen different command invocations and discussion of pkg vs pkgng but no overall explanation that the creation skeletons are already installed and you travel to a particular directory to compile and install the actual program.
Creating a desktop looks like quite a bit of work.
I appreciate that this is a different vision, and that usability is hard work, and that once you are immersed in FreeBSD the details seems logical and intuitive. But for a curious explorer, you wonder whether the benefit/effort ratio is greater than 1.
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Dec 31, 2012 12:22 UTC (Mon) by job (guest, #670) [Link]
Agreed. It's not that it's difficult, it's just that it is so sparsely documented compared to other aspects of the system (where it really shines, FreeBSD is much better documented than a Linux distro of similar size).
FreeBSD really needs a default way to keep the system update, to install packages, and to upgrade release, and to document this clearly in the guide.
It's probably not even very much work compared to the monstrous work that goes into each release. AFAIK these mechanisms are in place and work well (but I've had more experience with OpenBSD myself where these things are always that smooth).
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 1, 2013 7:20 UTC (Tue) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
But after all the setup it feels like linux. FreeBSD 9 is no better than Debian stable or RHEL6.x series. Sometimes all the setup you do are just too much and pretty useless. For making the web Flash files to work, you 'll have to do a part of an old Fedora installation.I did setup FreeBSD 9.0 last year and eventually removed it and moved to Arch Linux for a bit until I finally settled at Debian Testing.
pkgng could bring FreeBSD back into the game, but it all depends on how reliable it is.
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 2, 2013 14:24 UTC (Wed) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]
What keeps me away from the BSDs is hardware support -- USB peripherals in particular. FreeBSD also had a longstanding bug that caused kernel panics when USB devices were yanked. That has been fixed in DragonFly, and also reportedly in FreeBSD but I haven't tested. But I've got used to plugging in my HP printer to my Linux laptop and have it "just work"...
On the other hand I just switched to a minimalistic tiling window manager (i3) and am totally enjoying it. So maybe I should go back to FreeBSD or Dragonfly and get a minimalistic system with a modern filesystem. (Actually, I very likely will, when I get some free time, but I will continue to read LWN and to use Linux on at least one machine.)
I'm fine with the old ports/packages system. pkgng looks very promising, though.
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 2, 2013 4:02 UTC (Wed) by aristedes (guest, #35729) [Link]
I think that you have made your installation attempt at an unfortunate time in the FreeBSD evolution. The FreeBSD manual is usually very good, but FreeBSD is currently transitioning to a new packaging toolkit (pkgng) and the docs are still some way from completely catching up.
Also, with the recent security issues within the project infrastructure, the binary packages are not being generated in the usual fashion and may be lagging behind. Hopefully these issues will be resolved soon.
As a regular user of Gentoo and (less so) Ubuntu, I find FreeBSD to be the most consistent and easiest to get around, particularly the packaging. But as you say, I've used it since version 3, so I'm immersed in the logic of it.
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 3, 2013 0:42 UTC (Thu) by Lukehasnoname (subscriber, #65152) [Link]
WOW, I typed a long response but the page crashed. Awesome.
The summary was that apt-get's tools (update, upgrade, install, remove, autoremove, purge) along with dpkg and apt-cache's search functions are a Goliath compared to BSD's pkg_add, pkg_delete, etc. tools.
Basically, apt-get was a lot more intuitive in its search assistance and its connectivity to default repos, among many other aspects.
I hope FreeBSD has looked at Debian's system for some binary package inspiration.
"The page crashed" Posted Jan 3, 2013 0:56 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Pardon the digression, but could you fill us in as to what "the page crashed" means? We've received no crash reports here, so it wasn't a site code crash. But we don't like having people lose their work typing in comments, so I'd like to know what happened so we can maybe try to address it.
"The page crashed" Posted Jan 10, 2013 0:06 UTC (Thu) by Lukehasnoname (subscriber, #65152) [Link]
Sorry to mislead you, it wasn't LWN's fault.
The web proxy at work occasionally prompts for HTTP authentication erroneously, and I can't escape/hit back to my text. It takes me to a 403, and my comment is gone.
Happens on Reddit and Slashdot, too. Thanks for the concern!
"The page crashed" Posted Jan 10, 2013 11:56 UTC (Thu) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]
You could try using https (https://lwn.net/). That way, you can be sure the proxy will not interfer, unless the proxy does a MITM attack on the SSL/TLS connection. If it does MITM, you have bigger problems (check the certificate to be sure; for me, it is showing as being from GeoTrust).
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 1, 2013 14:58 UTC (Tue) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
Is this a conspiracy theory or is it for real?
Astonishing war in BSD camp. Read this link for more details.
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?76208-FreeBSD-i...
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 1, 2013 15:06 UTC (Tue) by hadrons123 (guest, #72126) [Link]
Sorry,my bad.
The whole article looks like flame-war and so unreal.
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 2, 2013 5:11 UTC (Wed) by imgx64 (guest, #78590) [Link]
That thread breaks several world records in Flamebait-density.
Phoronix!
I couldn't add any more flamebait to it if I tried.
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 3, 2013 18:30 UTC (Thu) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]
I never thought anyone could top the classic "BSD is dying", but it looks like that one did it. Good find.
I also cannot believe people still fall for it; even the post title itself ("FreeBSD is Dying") referenced the classic "BSD is dying" post, and it is an obvious update of it to more modern times. Anyone who has been in the community long enough should have already seen the original.
FreeBSD 9.1 released Posted Jan 4, 2013 20:10 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
At least it makes it clear that "BSD is dying" is not dying.
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