386bsd new release - when?
Gregory Altman
wondering if I should apply the latest patches or wait for the new
release (the summer is almost over).
--
Greg Altman - gal...@ingres.com (My opinions are almost ALWAYS my own)
Jaye Mathisen
Gregory Altman <gal...@Ingres.COM> wrote:
>I asked that question before, and the answer was - this summer. I am
>wondering if I should apply the latest patches or wait for the new
>release (the summer is almost over).
Well, if you're waiting for a new release to avoid having to patch, I
suspect that you're in for a long wait.
0.2 has lots of new stuff in it, I suspect that the patching problems will
be similar in scope and magnitude to 0.0 and 0.1, meaning lots of 'em.
Look at NetBSD if you need something now.
--
Jaye Mathisen, COE Systems Manager (406) 994-4780
410 Roberts Hall,Dept. of Computer Science
Montana State University,Bozeman MT 59717 os...@cs.montana.edu
Steve Ratliff
: In article <1993Sep1.2...@pony.ingres.com>,
: Gregory Altman <gal...@Ingres.COM> wrote:
: >I asked that question before, and the answer was - this summer. I am
: >wondering if I should apply the latest patches or wait for the new
: >release (the summer is almost over).
:
: Well, if you're waiting for a new release to avoid having to patch, I
: suspect that you're in for a long wait.
:
: 0.2 has lots of new stuff in it, I suspect that the patching problems will
: be similar in scope and magnitude to 0.0 and 0.1, meaning lots of 'em.
:
: Look at NetBSD if you need something now.
: --
I find this post somewhat disturbing. Has the FreeBSD project
been canceled? Is the release of 0.2 imminent? Exactly what is going
on? I, as well as many others would like to know. Things have been to
quiet lately. :)
Chris G. Demetriou
> Has the FreeBSD project been canceled?
no.
> Is the release of 0.2 imminent?
not that we can tell.
jaye said, "if you need something now..."
NetBSD exists NOW, works, and where it doesn't work it's improving.
FreeBSD doesn't really exist now (as they've made no "final" public
release of any version).
386BSD 0.1 exists now, and with the patchkit works, though not nearly
as well as NetBSD 0.9. it's not going anywhere.
386BSD 0.2 (?) doesn't exist now, and nobody has much of an idea when
it will.
hence, jaye said to go with NetBSD...
chris
--
chris g. demetriou c...@cs.berkeley.edu
smarter than your average clam.
Marc WANDSCHNEIDER
>In article <1993Sep2....@news.csuohio.edu> ste...@csuohio.edu (Steve Ratliff) writes:
>
>NetBSD exists NOW, works, and where it doesn't work it's improving.
>
>FreeBSD doesn't really exist now (as they've made no "final" public
> release of any version).
>
>386BSD 0.1 exists now, and with the patchkit works, though not nearly
> as well as NetBSD 0.9. it's not going anywhere.
>
>386BSD 0.2 (?) doesn't exist now, and nobody has much of an idea when
> it will.
>
>hence, jaye said to go with NetBSD...
Just to asdd to the discussion---I just got my machine
a few days back, and sitting there trying to decide which OS I would
install (since there is no way DOS is lving on this thing)
I had the choice of 386bsd 0.1 +pk 0.2.4, FreeBSD, and
NetBSD, or waiting for 0.2
The FreeBSD thing fell through, because it's not here,
and it's still largely 0.1 baseed, which is getting kind of old.
I tried 0.1 + pk 0.2.4, and wanted to make sure I had enough swap space,
and after about 3 hours of fucking up my hard disk, and unhappy
reboot,s I gave up on that and went with the NetBSD stuff.
THe total install took about 90 minutes, and I now have the
latext XFree86 server running with my S3 805 card, and am
wizzing away, compiling programs that I feel like, only
a few problems along the way...
There are a lot of neat features rumored to be in 0.2, but then
again, these are RUMORS, nobody knows when this will be out,
and what exactly it will be like. At least with NetBSD, stuff
is coming out fairly regularly.
The only complaint I have with NetBSD is the rather low tolerance the
major contributors seem to have with "newbies", but this is
something that is overcome with some effort, and thinking
I suppose...
NO Macro yet
Marc 'em.
P.S. Please excuse all the typos. The linkfrom
Seattle to Montreal is fiendishly slow, and I have little desire
to correct mistakes, as it slows things down considerably... :-)
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Wandschneider Montreal, Canada
"Satan has a stranglehold on my toilet and he won't let go!"
- frm the Weekly World News
J Fieber
> THe total install took about 90 minutes, and I now have the
> latext XFree86 server running with my S3 805 card, and am
Would you care to elaborate? Where can I get my hands on this
server? I'm just on the edge of jumping over to the NetBSD ship,
but there are many unanswered questions about whether or not
there is an S3 server that works with the 805 under 0.9. I do
not have the resources (read: disk space) to throw around the X
sources so I'm hesitant to move unless I know I can get a
functional binary.
-john
--
=== jfi...@sophia.smith.edu ================================================
======================================= Come up and be a kite! --K. Bush ===
Holger Veit
|> In article <2645oo$1...@homer.cs.mcgill.ca> st...@cs.mcgill.ca (Marc WANDSCHNEIDER) writes:
|> > THe total install took about 90 minutes, and I now have the
|> > latext XFree86 server running with my S3 805 card, and am
|> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^
|>
|> Would you care to elaborate? Where can I get my hands on this
|> server? I'm just on the edge of jumping over to the NetBSD ship,
|> but there are many unanswered questions about whether or not
|> there is an S3 server that works with the 805 under 0.9. I do
|> not have the resources (read: disk space) to throw around the X
|> sources so I'm hesitant to move unless I know I can get a
|> functional binary.
|>
|> -john
Be patient. What Marc is talking about is something which doesn't exist for
the public. This is alpha/beta code of the coming XFree86-2.0 and is available
for a restricted group only. The S3-805 is supported in 2.0, as well as
a number of other S3, Mach, 8514, Cirrus - based accelerated boards.
And this is not only a feature for NetBSD-0.9, but this will work on
any *BSD-of-the-day. So availability of Xservers alone is no reason to
move to 0.9; of course, there might be other good reasons to do this.
--
Dr. Holger Veit | INTERNET: Holge...@gmd.de
| | / GMD-SET German National Research | Phone: (+49) 2241 14 2448
|__| / Center for Computer Science | Fax: (+49) 2241 14 2342
| | / P.O. Box 13 16 | Had a nightmare yesterday:
| |/ Schloss Birlinghoven | My system started up with
53731 St. Augustin, Germany | ... Booting vmunix.el ...
A Wizard of Earth C
>
>Be patient. What Marc is talking about is something which doesn't exist for
>the public. This is alpha/beta code of the coming XFree86-2.0 and is available
>for a restricted group only. The S3-805 is supported in 2.0, as well as
>a number of other S3, Mach, 8514, Cirrus - based accelerated boards.
>And this is not only a feature for NetBSD-0.9, but this will work on
>any *BSD-of-the-day. So availability of Xservers alone is no reason to
>move to 0.9; of course, there might be other good reasons to do this.
Is this based on Amancio Hasty's S3 code? My experience is that the XS3
code does *not* work on NetBSD 0.9; of course, the 0.9 system I have was a
0.8 upgrade, but I've rebuilt since then with the new sources, and it still
fails after changing video modes.
I like the architecture stuff (anybody else up for an Indy port?), but I
guess I didn't realize exactly how much I had hacked my kernel until I
tried to reconcile the differences. Right now, I'm running vanilla 0.9
sources (on one box) and the XS3 I was running fails after blowing the
video mode out.
So for right now, moving to 0.9 has been a loss for me. If X is your thing
(it's one of mine), I'd say stay at 0.8 until the new XFree86-2.0 is let
out or until the XS3 compatability is worked out.
PS: I *do* hope that Amancio's work is what the S3 support is about... I'd
hate to downgrade from ~146k X stones -- more than 4 times faster than a
SparcStation 2 with a CG6 accelerator (almost 5 times!).
Terry Lambert
te...@icarus.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.
Jordan K. Hubbard
>been canceled? Is the release of 0.2 imminent? Exactly what is going
Far from it! If I might be so bold...
FreeBSD
Release 1.0 GAMMA
1. What is FreeBSD?
FreeBSD is a freely available, full source 4.3 (+4.4 enhancements) BSD
release for Intel i386/i486 (or compatable) based PC's. It is based
heavily on Bill Jolitz's 386BSD 0.1, with additions from NetBSD, CSRG,
the Free Software Foundation, and a host of tireless BSD enthusiasts.
FreeBSD currently runs on a wide variety of ISA and EISA bus based
PC's, ranging from 386sx to 486 class machines (though the 386sx is
not recommended). Support for basic IDE/ESDI drive configurations,
various SCSI controller, network and serial cards is also provided.
What follows is by no means a complete list, please refer to the
release notes for more detail:
Disk Controllers:
Adaptec 1542{A,B,C} ISA SCSI controller.
Adaptec 174x EISA SCSI controller in standard and enhanced mode.
DTC 3290 EISA SCSI controller in emulation mode.
Bustec 742a.
Ultra Store 14F.
Ethernet cards:
SMC Elite 16 WD8013 ethernet interface, and most other WD8003E,
WD8003EBT, WD8003S, WD8003SBT and WD8013EBT based clones.
Isolan AT 4141-0 (16 bit)
Isolink 4110 (8 bit)
Novell NE2000 ethernet interface.
3Com 3C503 Etherlink II
FreeBSD does NOT support IBM's microchannel (MCA) bus.
A list of contributors may be found in section 5 of this document,
with a more complete list in the file "/usr/src/CONTRIB.FreeBSD" bundled
with the distribution.
FreeBSD incorporates many of the best features of 386BSD 0.1, "the
patchkit", additional material from CSRG's "Net/2" release, and many
of the the FSF's latest utilities. Many hundreds of bugs were fixed,
and many out-of-date pieces of software were upgraded to their current
releases.
Additionally, many packages such as XFree86 1.3, xview 3.2, elm, mh
and dozens of other miscellaneous utilities have been ported and are
available as add-ons. See section 3 of this document for more
details.
2. How is FreeBSD different from 386BSD, NetBSD or BSD/386 for the PC?
2a. The only currently available release of 386BSD is 0.1, which just
about everyone (including its author) admits is rather buggy and in
great need of replacement. It's also showing its age, and many of the
software packages making it up are out of date. Little more need be
said about 386BSD.
2b. NetBSD is quite a bit more up-to-date, as it is an actively
maintained codebase and has many people working on it. There are very
few significant differences between the FreeBSD and NetBSD groups, and
perhaps someday the two groups will merge. For now (at the time of
this writing), there are several differences worthy of note:
1. FreeBSD is the only release that allows you to install
the OS from DOS. This is not available for this first gamma
shipment but will be provided on the CDROM.
2. FreeBSD is still very close to 386BSD 0.1 and, as such, presents
a relatively easy upgrade - both at the user and the device
driver level - for existing 386BSD users.
3. FreeBSD is a bit more lenient when it comes to using GNU
code and tries primariy to stick to 4.3BSD as most people
expect it to look like now, not necessarily what 4.4BSD
will look like at some point in the future.
2c. BSD/386, though frequently confused for 386BSD, is a commercial
product released by BSDI, Inc. and, as such, comes with full support -
something we are obviously unable to offer for a non-commercial
product. BSDI is also a good deal more stable than either NetBSD or
FreeBSD and should definitely be your first choice if you are
considering commercial use (for around $1,000, we still think a fully
supported operating system with *source code* is a pretty good deal!).
Let it be stated now and for the record that we are not "in competition"
with BSDI! Theirs is a product, ours is "hackerware", provided for
your pleasure and enjoyment - use it at your own risk!
3. It all sounds great! Where do I get it?
If you have gotten this distribution on CD, then you've already gotten
all of FreeBSD and the various optional packages with your
distribution.
If you don't have it on CD, and would like to, you may order a copy
from Walnut Creek CDROM, 4041 Pike Lane, Suite E, Concord, Ca. 94520.
1-800-786-9907 or 1-510-674-0783.
Cost is $39.95 + $5 S&H in the U.S. and Canada, $10.00 overseas.
California residents please add sales tax.
Should you be dissatisfied for any reason, the CD comes with an
unconditional return policy.
If you are not one of the lucky few who own a CDROM drive, or can't
afford the distribution (it's not THAT expensive!), fear not! You can
still ftp FreeBSD and any or all of its optional packages from
``freebsd.cdrom.com'' - the offical FreeBSD release site. By the time
you read this, it may also be on one or more "mirror" sites somewhere
else on the internet; check with archie for details.
If you do not have access to the internet and electronic mail is your
only recourse, then you may still fetch the files by sending mail to
`ftp...@decwrl.dec.com' - putting the keyword "help" in your
message to get more information on how to fetch files from
freebsd.cdrom.com. Note: This approach will end up sending many *tens of
megabytes* through the mail, and should only be employed as an
absolute LAST resort!
Finally, if you wish to order FreeBSD on floppy disks or tape, you
may do so from:
Winning Strategies, Inc. 61 Crestwood Drive #18, Daly City, CA 94015
<j...@wimsey.com>
3.5" & 5.25" floppies $200.00
Contains "core" FreeBSD.
Shipping - add $15 for U.S. and Canada, $25 for overseas.
150MB QIC tape $100.00
Contains "core" FreeBSD + XFree86.
Choice of either 3.5" or 5.25" boot floppies.
Shipping - add $10 for U.S. and Canada, $30 for overseas.
DAT & Exabyte tapes $100.00
Contains everything on the Walnut Creek CD ROM.
Choice of either 3.5" or 5.25" boot floppies.
Shipping - same as for QIC tape.
All packages contain printed copies of the release and installation notes.
Visa, Mastercard, U.S. $ Money Orders, or U.S. $ checks drawn on a
U.S. bank accepted for payment.
It should be noted, lest you get the wrong impression that "FreeBSD"
is anything but, that almost no one in the "core team" makes money
from distributions or anything else connected with FreeBSD. We simply
provide this information as a public service for those wishing to get
their releases from somewhere other than the net (and the easier it
is for you to get ahold of our software, the happier we are).
4. Who do I yell at if doesn't work?
Your suggestions, bug reports and fawning praise are all of great
value to us - please do not hesitate to report any problems you may
find (preferably with a fix attached if you can!). Bug reports will
be dutifully filed by our faithful bugfiler program and you can be
sure that we'll try to respond to all reported bugs as soon as possible,
or at the very least feel guilty if we don't:
Bug reports:
Questions / Suggestions
FreeBSD-...@freefall.cdrom.com
5. But who's responsible for all this? Give us their names!
FreeBSD is the work of many dozens, if not hundreds, perhaps BILLIONS
of individuals [stop - erase, go back -ed] ok, perhaps only dozens of
individuals from around the world who have worked, nay slaved,
tirelessly and unpaid to bring you this release. It would be very
difficult, if not impossible, to enumerate everyone who's contributed
to FreeBSD, but nonetheless we shall try (in alphabetical order, of course,
since trying to figure out who goes first would cause a fight). If your
name is not mentioned, please be assured that its omission is entirely
accidental and we value your contributions more than life itself.
The Computer Systems Research Group (CSGR), U.C. Berkeley.
An incalculable debt..
Bill Jolitz, for his extensive work with 386BSD.
And, finally, US! The FreeBSD "core" group:
J.T. Conklin
David Greenman
Rodney W. Grimes
Jordan K. Hubbard
Scott Mace
Andrew Moore
Rich Murphey
Paul Richards
Christoph Robitschko
Andreas Schulz
Rob Shady
Nate Williams
Special mention to:
Robert Bruce and Jack Velte of Walnut Creek CDROM, without
whose help (and continuing support) this release would never
have been possible.
The NetBSD group for their frequent assistance and commentary.
Additional FreeBSD helpers and beta testers:
Gary Browing Jon Cargille
Chris Demetriou Julian Elischer
Bruce Evans Sean Eric Fagan
Guy Helmer Terry Lambert
Gary Moyer Jaye Mathisen
L Jonas Olsson Chris Provenzano
Dave Rivers Guido van Rooij
Steven Wallace Rick Weldon
Terry Williams Garrett Wollman
And everyone at the University of Montana for their initial support.
Thanks to everyone, especially those not mentioned, and we sincerely
hope you enjoy this release of FreeBSD!
The FreeBSD Core Group
--
Jordan Hubbard j...@violet.berkeley.edu, j...@al.org, j...@whisker.lotus.ie
Jordan K. Hubbard
> release of any version).
This is no longer true.
Jordan K. Hubbard
>code does *not* work on NetBSD 0.9; of course, the 0.9 system I have was a
>0.8 upgrade, but I've rebuilt since then with the new sources, and it still
I can't verify this, but I can say that Amancio's server does work
under the FreeBSD 1.0 just released. Might be useful to someone who
isn't on the 2.0 beta group (I am, but can appreciate the frustration
other S3 users must feel).
Jordan
Jaye Mathisen
Jordan K. Hubbard <j...@whisker.lotus.ie> wrote:
>
> And everyone at the University of Montana for their initial support.
I am almost positive Jordan means Montana State University (well, at
least that's where Nate and I are at, I don't think the arch-enemy is
doing anything with this stuff quite yet :). (of which Nate is
the main man).
I knew I should've proof read this thing better, but you see something
so many times, it starts crossing the old eyeballs :).
Jordan K. Hubbard
>least that's where Nate and I are at, I don't think the arch-enemy is
>doing anything with this stuff quite yet :). (of which Nate is
That is indeed what I meant. My fervent apologies! When I wrote the
release notes, I actually DID try fingering everyone I knew there,
including Jaye, in the vain hope that there would be some sort of
"Student of ..." line somewhere in there, but as I didn't find one I
took a guess. Then after both Nate and Jaye proof-read it and didn't
squawk, it wandered completely from my mind.
FreeBSD would like to thank MONTANA STATE UNIVERSITY. Not the
University of Montana, nice people though they probably are... Of
course, considering that most of the alumnus of both institutions are
cows, I hardly see how it matters, but one must strive to be exact..
[Ooh, Nate and Jaye are gonna get me for that, I just know it!] :-)
Jordan
Herb Peyerl
>course, considering that most of the alumnus of both institutions are
>cows, I hardly see how it matters, but one must strive to be exact..
Moo?
--
hpe...@novatel.ca | NovAtel Commnications Ltd.
hpe...@fsa.ca | <nothing I say matters anyway>
<NetBSD: A drinking group with a serious computing problem!>