FreeBSD 5.0 RC2 released, 5.0 final scheduled for January 17

[CougTek]

You can get it from their FTP site.

I'm still a bit bitter from my rough experiences on Linux, but since FreeBSD is supposed to have an upgrading/installation system that actually works (the ports), then I'll continue to keep an eye on it.

I'll wait for James comments about the second release candidate before jumping on the ISO.

 

[ihsan]

Re: FreeBSD 5.0 RC2 released, 5.0 final scheduled for Januar

I'm still a bit bitter from my rough experiences on Linux, but since FreeBSD is supposed to have an upgrading/installation system that actually works (the ports), then I'll continue to keep an eye on it.

For most of the packages, that statement holds true.

A notable kink is MySQL. You can't upgrade them as smooth as you hope. In order to upgrade, you have to backup your data in /var/db/mysql or dump it into a file and delete the directory and then proceed with the upgrade. For some unexplainable reason, it requires you to. This occurs even if upgrade minor releases, 3.23.52 -> .53 -> .54 so and so. Quite an inconvenience I must say if you tend to follow the security update and uptimes is not paramount.

 

[ihsan]

As for 5.0, I'm eagerly waiting for it too but I wouldn't want to jump the gun that early. It seems that there are still many issues among others, OpenOffice, with 5.0 that it's worth sticking with 4.x-Stable tree until 5.x-Stable is issued after 5.1 or 5.2-Releases, for production box at least.

It will take some to be considered stable enough for -Stable, as evidently tried with the 4.x-Release tree so...

 

[CougTek]

Thanks for the advice. Regarding stability, I'm used to Windows and Linux, so even FreeBSD 5.0 should be fine compared to what I have already experienced in the past ;-)

 

[CougTek]

Thanks for the advice. Regarding stability, I'm used to Windows and Linux, so even FreeBSD 5.0 should be fine compared to what I have already experienced in the past ;-)

I mainly use OpenOffice on my Windows box since that's the one where the printer is plugged.

 

[CougTek]

Arrgghh! I clicked on "preview" for the first message, but it posted my message anyway. I didn't make a mistake by clicking the wrong button since I was brought to the "preview" window. The uncompleted message posted anyway. Damn buggy software.

 

[Jeff Poulin]

I used to run SuSE linux on my desktop then switched to FreeBSD. I *loved* FreeBSD compared to SuSE. It was much faster and easier to keep my packages up to date. I ran this for about 4 months, but ran into little problems like I couldn't get OpenOffice to compile, some of my linux apps failed to run under linux emulation, and I just didn't understand the inner workings of the O/S nearly as well as I did in Linux. I then tried Gentoo Linux and it really gave me what I wanted. A ports system much like FreeBSD, but with all the familiarily of linux. I haven't had any problem building OpenOffice and, for me, Gentoo is very fast and bloat-free. The stability is right up there with FreeBSD too, meaning I've never, ever had the O/S crash. That's more than I can say for SuSE or Windows 2000 for that matter.

 

[Cliptin]

This brings up a good question for me.

I have installed both Linux and freebsd in the past and its about time for me to make a permanent installation and concerted effort to "convert". You needn't be concerned with "It depends on what you want to do" type arguments because It will be on a spare machine and I'm currently only interested in getting in on the ground floor with the expectation that any "must have" apps will make their way to the platform in time.

Currently I'm leaning more toward freebsd because I think it is more like other unixes (Very rarely I have to work on a SCO box) and I am not burdened with familiararity to a known underlying system.

I have heard only good things about Gentoo though.

What are the pluses and minuses to starting from scratch with either of these two OSes?

 

[honold]

i'm trying to come up with some fair analogy but words fail me

suffice it to say, it's my opinion that if you start with freebsd you will be able to rapidly adapt to any unix os - the same cannot be said for linux, as it has entirely too many 'linuxisms' (beyond the scope of package management).

 

[Mercutio]

... but, on the other hand, new goodies seem to come to Linux first, and driver support in general tends to be better.

If you learn *BSD, converting to Linux by-and-large isn't a big deal. If you learn Linux first, um, you'll be for some surprises the first time you sit down at a Solaris or *BSD machine.

 

[Jeff Poulin]

I get the gentoo weekly newsletter. There was a good link in today's edition where someone writes about the pros and cons of Gentoo versus FreeBSD. The gist is that for a desktop, Gentoo is better. For a server (especially a uni-processor that doesn't dish out java apps), FreeBSD is better. Here's the link. Of course, being posted in a Gentoo newsletter, you may want to factor in some kind of bias coefficient.

http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-user&m=104094576224242&w=2