Where is FreeBSD going?

[Paul Robinson]

On Wed, Jan 07, 2004 at 05:23:30PM -0500, Garance A Drosihn wrote:

> I would add that I've been running almost exclusively on 5.x
> for over a year now (except for one machine which I have not
> rebooted in over a year...).  There have been some *very*
> painful transitions at various times, but once I get past
> the transitions the system has been quite stable.  (fwiw,
> in my case, I am only running on desktop systems).

Well, what you've told me there is:

- 5.x is a pain in the arse to make the transition to
- You're not running FBSD in the same environment I am
- But for you that's all OK, and I should agree

:-)

Which doesn't get us much further down the road, but thanks for the input. I
have two boxes here that need to go into a co-lo tomorrow, and therefore
need to be installed today. 5.2-RC2 does seem to be holding out better than
expected now I've had it up for a week or so on a dev machine. I'm tempted
to whirl it out on these boxes, but if they die I'm screwed. Dunno. I'm not 
sure if I can trust you, Des, and others when it's my cahunas on the line.
 
> So, once we stop making major API/ABI changes and the branch
> is truly stable (with a 6.x branch for new cutting-edge
> developments), I personally am quite confident that 5.x will
> be a stable, production-quality system.  And there are a
> number of features in 5.x that I think are tremendous
> advantages -- especially for boxes in a production setting.

It might be worth somebody getting those written up and sent out to 
-advocacy to start the ball rolling, as per another mail somewhere in this 
monstrous thread.
 
> My guess is you're going to have a large bar tab at the next
> BSDcon...  Certainly I hope so!

I've run tabs at the bar at conferences before, and I'm sure I'll do it 
again...

-- 
Paul Robinson