WingNews logo WingNews GitHub [2]
top | item 6883260

FreeBSD 10.0-RC1 now available

77 points| samwilliams | 12 years ago |lists.freebsd.org | reply

40 comments

order
[+] lorenzfx|12 years ago|reply
I'll take that as an opportunity to remind you of the FreeBSD Foundation's Year-End-Fundraising campaign (I gave them some money for the first time just last week, to support some of the awesome work they have been doing) https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/
[+] izietto|12 years ago|reply
I don't have much experience of FreeBSD, but I'm curious about it: for what purposes is FreeBSD used? Is it common in some work environments?
[+] barkingcat|12 years ago|reply
While I can't hope to do justice to this question, FreeBSD is a fully functional unix system, with a kernel and userland wholly its own (licensed with the BSD license) as well as a well maintained ports tree that brings in most of the unix application universe (x windows, windows managers, databases, programming environments, etc) and can be used anywhere a unix system is desired.

That said, it is very popular in networking applications (Junos the OS for Juniper network switches is based on FreeBSD) and other embedded situations (Mac OS X has a forked version of FreeBSD as its unix layer. Most people won't characterize OS X as having FreeBSD lineage any more, but at its root, there were some parts that were brought over in the early days.) Sony PS3/4 also has some parts based on FreeBSD.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_based_on_FreeB... for a partial list of interesting applications based on FreeBSD.

It is especially appealing as a non-linux opensource project with a BSD (non GPL) license that is fairly well maintained. The Non-GPL license means that a company can use FreeBSD in a closed-source project.

Usually the FreeBSD core maintainers care more about correctness and principles more than pure performance, so in a straight performance shootout linux would probably still win, but FreeBSD is close enough that it doesn't matter for the types of applications it's usually used in.

There is probably a ton more specific things that people will call me out on, but http://www.freebsd.org/advocacy/ (the advocacy working group) would be a good place to start digging if you are interested.

[+] octix|12 years ago|reply
I'm not an expert, but based on my experience I can tell you following:

1. it is not a Linux, it is a Unix system; 2. it used mostly on servers, stable as centos/red hat/other solid linux; 3. can be used on desktop too; 4.it has a great support for ZFS

I personally used it for a few years, but when I started to develop using java, had to switch to linux...

I'm sure people with more experience can tell you more... but I personally like some parts more on FreeBSD than on Linux (like directory structure, device naming (no eth1,2...)) it just makes sense. IMHO

[+] UNIXgod|12 years ago|reply
It's Berkeley UNIX without AT&T encumbered code. It's common in environments that have real hardware and it's used for secure and stable servers. I've used it for upwards to 15 years if you have more questions I can attempt to help you.
[+] cperciva|12 years ago|reply
for what purposes is FreeBSD used?

Unless it has changed recently, hosting HN.

[+] vbit|12 years ago|reply
I use it as my primary server environment because:

- I find it much easier to sysadmin than Linux

- I use jails to isolate development environments

- I use and like ZFS

[+] chrisblackwell|12 years ago|reply
Looking at the schedule, we can expect the full release to be out the day after New Years.
[+] cperciva|12 years ago|reply
The published schedules are always "best-case" scenarios, since FreeBSD developers look at these to know how long they have to get work into the tree. There is always the anticipation that schedules will slip as issues arise, so I'd guess January 9th for the announcement rather than the 2nd.

(But that's fine -- we do .0 releases somewhere in the November-February time period, and early January falls right in the middle of the range.)