fast rate of major FreeBSD releases to STABLE

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Thu, 17 May 2007 16:30:50 +0100
> From: Chris <chrcoluk at gmail.com>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-stable at freebsd.org
> 
> I have mentioned this before about releasing a new major version of
> FreeBSD at such short intervals.  Now I am wondering what path the
> FreeBSD community is taking in regards to server and desktop use.
> 
> Stuff I would love to see in FreeBSD 7.x (CURRENT) before 7.0 release
> which looks like it isnt going to happen
> 
> Multi IP Jails - waiting since 4.x, patches done for both 5.x and 6.x
> but never commited.

No idea.

> Dynamic tcp windows - I think is patched but not heard if commited.

It should be in 7.0. 7.0 will have really major network improvements. I
even had one vendor tell us that if we wanted to improve the performance
of their 10GE card, we should switch from Linux to FreeBSD-current.

> More hardware support - FreeBSD still has poor hardware support when
> compared to other OS's, in particular vendors such as realtek nics.

An on-going issue. Linux simply has more people working on device
support, so it often (but no always) gets support first. Current does
have several new network devices including more wireless NICs.
 
> A more user friendly installer so datacentres stop been put off FreeBSD.

While sysinstall is ugly, I find it very easy to use and use it for
non-installation stuff (fdisk and bsdlabel) for its friendlier user
interface. I have never been happy with GUI installers although a
re-write if sysinstall would probably be a good thing.

> Work on the network code so STABLE stops panicing and lagging on low
> amounts of ddos that 4.x barely flexed at and even 5.x could cope
> with.

This is probably better, but I have not done much testing.

> The recent ports freeze has also concerned me, this is the longest
> ports freeze I have witnessed since I started using FreeBSD years ago
> and its for a desktop element of the os, does it matter if servers
> running FreeBSD have to remain on vulnerable versions of ports as a
> result of this?

Now this is totally bogus. The freeze before the 6.0 release was VERY
long and several have been longer than this one has been so far.

The ports collection is one of the greatest things about FreeBSD and
having lots of ports break when a major one (such as Xorg) is updated is
very difficult and takes a lot of time to build test everything. Just
creating an upgrade procedure that works for everyone running FreeBSD of
any supported version is a major effort.

> The viability of upgrading FreeBSD to a new major version at least
> every 2 years is small, can choose not to upgrade as security patches
> will exist but ports only get supported on the latest STABLE tree now
> and I expect 5.x development will be killed off like 4.x was when 7.0
> hits release.

??? I should leave this to others, but in the past FreeBSD has received
heavy criticism for taking too long between releases. I guess you just
can't win. Yes, V5 development is pretty well at an end (though V5 was
not one of FreeBSD's better releases and I never used it on production
systems), but V6 support will continue for quite a while.

> Why cant 7.0 be released when more long awaited features are added and
> then not as STABLE tree only as CURRENT (like 5.0 was) and if 7.0 is
> considered stable then 7.1 can be STABLE branch.  I consider 6.2 to be
> the first release in 6.x branch close to proper stability and that
> release is under a year old before a new major release is due.

The release of V5.0 was as a development release because V5.0 had so
many changes from V4 that all developers had to know that there were
going to be problems, but the RE team also realized that, if they did
not draw a line in the sand, it would only get worse.

I am VERY sure that RE and the developers NEVER want to go through that
again.

As of today, CURRENT is in pretty excellent shape, but it still does
have a few issues and more will certainly pop up when it is released. No
one who has any experience is going to drop 7.0 on any critical
system. I run it on one desktop and my laptop. I am NOT going to install
7.0 on my DNS servers or any other critical system. Depending on how
things go with 7.0, I will probably install 7.1 on most systems. I may
be braver than most, though (or more foolish).

> Please dont flame me as I am a avid FreeBSD server user not a fan of
> linux so not been a troll this is a serious post.

I'm not flaming (yet), because you ask some good questions and are
probably suffering from fading memory of prior releases. (I know that I
try to forget a couple of them.)
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4  EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751
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