Release Schedule for 2006

[Bill Nicholls]

Let me add my voice to this discussion. I have been a happy user of 
FreeBSD from 4.0 thru 4.11, but have stumbled repeatedly on 5.x and now 6.0.

For some reason, I can get these (5 & 6) installed, but not stable or 
running KDE, yet 4.11 runs solid for months. In addition, not being able 
to run KDE from Generic has been an additional headache.

This has become such a problem that I finally loaded Suse Linux 10 on my 
alternate disk so I can move ahead. I use dual 9G disks and alternate 
installs, stairstepping from one release to the next, with the ability 
to boot back to an older release. This has worked well until now.

This is particularly bad timing because FreeBSD is my *preferred* OS for 
  significant parts of my work, and it was planned to host an important 
DB project on another machine bought for that purpose.

I was hoping that 6.0 would enable me to move ahead on my FreeBSD 
workstation, and then on my DB project. Instead I am stalled and forced 
to go to a less preferred solution.

I don't know what, if anything, I am doing wrong. I gave away an 
expensive SOYO MB because FreeBSD would not install, later found out 
that the advanced SOYO ACPI was the problem, apparently solved later.

Color me frustrated. For me the issue is very simple - I need to install 
release X.Y, install KDE, configure X and get to work. Becoming an 
internals expert or even small time developer is not what I need to do 
even though I have done that kind of work in the past. Now I concentrate 
on getting applications into production, with OS maintenence limited to 
chasing glitches.

Color me very frustrated. I've been used to great stability on FreeBSD, 
less frequent changes than Linux, and fewer problems. The system just 
*worked*. No longer.

I don't blame anybody on the team for this issue because from my POV, 
the attention on getting better SMP and generally upgrading the kernel 
quality was and is a good objective. However, along the way, a few less 
obvious characteristics have lost out.

When it gets to the point that I am forced to use something else despite 
my efforts, then attention needs to be spent making FreeBSD work 'Out of 
the Box' again. Simple is good - you can always get complicated if that 
is your preference, but for a lot of us, FreeBSD is a tool, not a career.

Again, this is not a flame but a plea to make the system simply work.

BillN
http://www.billswrite.com