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FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

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Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#31

Post by mhd »

chugger wrote: post #25
btw0 wrote: post #10

Fewer and fewer people are using FreeBSD, and it's starting to cause real problems. Bugs in ports can't get enough notice. Right now, `htop', an essential tool for me, has been malfunctioning for months: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/159728 At the moment, the built-in GPU in newer CPU (core i3/i5/i7) simply doesn't work in FreeBSD, people have to buy discrete older cards for graphics. Yes, they are…

BSD's legacy lives on via Mac OS X (sort of)

Or every time someone has to make a goshdarn socket syscall on any platform…

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#32

Post by bonch »

btw0 wrote: post #10

Fewer and fewer people are using FreeBSD, and it's starting to cause real problems. Bugs in ports can't get enough notice. Right now, `htop', an essential tool for me, has been malfunctioning for months: http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/159728 At the moment, the built-in GPU in newer CPU (core i3/i5/i7) simply doesn't work in FreeBSD, people have to buy discrete older cards for graphics. Yes, they are…

"Fewer and fewer people are using FreeBSD"

Source?

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#33

Post by munchhausen »

nwmcsween wrote: post #27
clarkevans wrote: post #4

As of this year, I'm no longer a FreeBSD user. I've been a hold-out... finally converting over to Linux this year after years of denial. It was a very hard move for me. The problem is that FreeBSD developers are still fighting wars of the 90's. By and large, with the welcome exception of Colin Percival (of http://www.tarsnap.com/ fame), they have not embraced virtualization. The only saving grace of FreeBSD is that i…

I'm actually thinking of moving to FreeBSD for the very reasons you're stating. FreeBSD has: * ZFS - which is miles ahead of btrfs for production use * libcapsicum - something that isn't completely braindead like posix 'capabilities' * racct and jails - cgroups is a mess, containerization isn't wanted from posts on lkml ( as it's 'not needed' - considering vps hosting is a multi-billion dollar industry ) and it needs…

> * ZFS - which is miles ahead of btrfs for production use

Can you explain in what way? btrfs is less mature, sure, but "enterprise Linux" vendors are about to start fully supporting in their next minor version update releases, and that is a good indicator of production use readiness, since they wouldn't do that if they weren't pretty sure it's not going to blow up in their face via an endless stream of bug reports.

> * racct and jails - cgroups is a mess

Thank you for sharing your opinion, an explanation of why it is a mess would be nice.

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#34

Post by munchhausen »

sgt wrote: post #16
Getahobby wrote: post #15

I have used FreeBSD since 2.2. I used to laugh at the slashdot trolls saying BSD is dying but I really think it is dying. The commercial support is just not there.

"Commercial support" as a selling point is really overrated. You can always get commercial support in any case, from FreeBSD specialists for hire. Apart from that, normal users will always be able to get support from the mailing lists, forums and so on. I'm happy with FreeBSD and there's nothing stopping me from using it both personally and for my businesses. I am not interested in FreeBSD on the desktop, however.

No commercial support makes the software a non-starter in most IT environments, that's the (sad) reality. FreeBSD is a good example of why that is a problem - while technically sound, it is at risk of becoming a fringe OS used only by a couple of enthusiasts and FreeBSD developers themselves. For a project that produces an OS, that is a big issue, since you need users to make sure your OS works on various hardware configurations, or else you will become an "experimental" OS like Plan 9.

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#35

Post by derleth »

Everyone making comparisons between OSes involving a BSD always picks Linux as the 'other OS'. How about a good comparison between the various BSD flavors? Why would I pick FreeBSD over OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, or PC-BSD?

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#36

Post by nwmcsween »

munchhausen wrote: post #33
nwmcsween wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually thinking of moving to FreeBSD for the very reasons you're stating. FreeBSD has: * ZFS - which is miles ahead of btrfs for production use * libcapsicum - something that isn't completely braindead like posix 'capabilities' * racct and jails - cgroups is a mess, containerization isn't wanted from posts on lkml ( as it's 'not needed' - considering vps hosting is a multi-billion dollar industry ) and it needs…

> * ZFS - which is miles ahead of btrfs for production use Can you explain in what way? btrfs is less mature, sure, but "enterprise Linux" vendors are about to start fully supporting in their next minor version update releases, and that is a good indicator of production use readiness, since they wouldn't do that if they weren't pretty sure it's not going to blow up in their face via an endless stream of bug reports.…

ZFS has l2arc, raid, scrubbing, dedup and it's stable, no enterprise will use btrfs in production for quite awhile due to bugs still being ironed out (read the mailing list). Regarding cgroups? Accounting is bolted on effectively tracking tracked pages.

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#37

Post by omnipath »

Leynos wrote: post #23
omnipath wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe because it's a pain in the butt to install it? Honestly, I tried FreeBSD 8 two weeks ago, and until there's an easier to way to install it, I can't imagine many people will be interested in it.

If you're looking for a desktop install of FreeBSD, I highly recommend PC-BSD. It's more or less to FreeBSD what Ubuntu is to Debian. It's still a little rough around the edges, but it's a lot more straightforward to get set up than vanilla FreeBSD.

Thank you. I'll give it a whirl later this week.

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#38

Post by dignan »

nwmcsween wrote: post #27
clarkevans wrote: post #4

As of this year, I'm no longer a FreeBSD user. I've been a hold-out... finally converting over to Linux this year after years of denial. It was a very hard move for me. The problem is that FreeBSD developers are still fighting wars of the 90's. By and large, with the welcome exception of Colin Percival (of http://www.tarsnap.com/ fame), they have not embraced virtualization. The only saving grace of FreeBSD is that i…

I'm actually thinking of moving to FreeBSD for the very reasons you're stating. FreeBSD has: * ZFS - which is miles ahead of btrfs for production use * libcapsicum - something that isn't completely braindead like posix 'capabilities' * racct and jails - cgroups is a mess, containerization isn't wanted from posts on lkml ( as it's 'not needed' - considering vps hosting is a multi-billion dollar industry ) and it needs…

There is support for ZFS on Linux at the kernel level [1]. I'm not sure how stable it is (something on my TODO list), but I believe it's actually more current than what's in FreeBSD.

For jails on Linux there's jailkit [2].

I'm not sure if you've seen these, but I figured I'd offer them up as solutions that don't involve changing your platform!

[1] - http://zfsonlinux.org [2] - http://olivier.sessink.nl/jailkit/

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#39

Post by sgt »

munchhausen wrote: post #34
sgt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Commercial support" as a selling point is really overrated. You can always get commercial support in any case, from FreeBSD specialists for hire. Apart from that, normal users will always be able to get support from the mailing lists, forums and so on. I'm happy with FreeBSD and there's nothing stopping me from using it both personally and for my businesses. I am not interested in FreeBSD on the desktop, however.

No commercial support makes the software a non-starter in most IT environments, that's the (sad) reality. FreeBSD is a good example of why that is a problem - while technically sound, it is at risk of becoming a fringe OS used only by a couple of enthusiasts and FreeBSD developers themselves. For a project that produces an OS, that is a big issue, since you need users to make sure your OS works on various hardware co…

With FreeBSD being so mature and old as it is, I think it's a given that the chance that it will continue for many years to come is very high. Sure enough, the risk is higher than going with "mainstream" Linux, but if you have the expertise, especially within the business, then it's a no-brainer if you will clearly benefit from all the great things FreeBSD has to offer. We're running FreeBSD with jails and ZFS etc. on a lot of servers and we're very happy with it. It's not hard for a Linux expert to pick up on. Anyway, that's my opinion.

Re: FreeBSD 9.0-RC1 Available...

#40

Post by brndnhy »

jedberg wrote: post #3

The last version of BSD I used regularly was 3.2, and I've missed it since. Although, I've somewhat gotten my fix by installing via ports on MacOS. Perhaps with this release, I'll try my hand at getting it to run on Ec2. Alternatively, does anyone know of a good cheap vps that runs BSD?

http://arpnetworks.com/
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