FreeBSD Versions

[Floppyman]

Hi all,

I was wondering if someone out there could explain the FreeBSD versioning system to me. It seems to me that the current stable release is 4.10. Am I right in assuming that? What about the 5.x releases? Are those production or beta releases? Would it be best to stick with the 4.x releases then for stability reasons? Thanks in advance for the help.

[Xayd]

5.x would be the equivalent of debian testing, for a linux example.

There should not be any major bugs, but there will be ports that do not work yet, and there could be hardware-specific bugs that haven't been found yet.

Stick with 4.x, everything on a 4.x CD will work pretty much as advertized.

[RHLinuxGUY]

Just a RANDOM note, if you are going to play games emulated under winex, I believe it only works on 5.1. Tho they are still working on it, I dont think I've ever read anyone say they had gotten winex to work on FBSD 4.x, only 5.x. So it could act buggy or not work at all, if u try and run it under 4.x. Correct me if im wrong.

[LocoCoyote]

The Wine issue seems to be with 4.8 I did a Google on it and there is some interesting reading if anyone cares to look

[mairving]

5.x is a very major release with a ton of new features added. 5.21 is not a production release but I have found more issues with ports and such with 4.9 than with 5.x. I wouldn't equate it to Debian testing. FreeBSD-current, which is not a release, would be more equivalent to Debian testing.

Here is a comment from someone over at Slashdot

Despite the claim that 5.x isn't yet the production branch, we've been running it on all our development machines and servers for 6+ months now. Apparently the FreeBSD release engineering team has pretty high standards! We're really looking forward to FreeBSD 5.3, which has M:N threading and the new O(1) scheduler as the default. Thread creation in our application is blindingly fast *and* runs on many CPUs at once. After getting off the poor Linux 2.2 and 2.4 threading, there was no turning back.

[LocoCoyote]

If I could just get 5.x to install I would love to try it.

[mairving]

Originally posted by LocoCoyote If I could just get 5.x to install I would love to try it.

That does make a difference. What is the problem?

[RHLinuxGUY]

Wait LocoCoyote, were u talking about WINE? (www.winehq.org) Or WineX? (www.transgaming.com) And I also know wine works just perfect under FBSD.

[Floppyman]

I'm going to run this on dual processor machine. Should I still stick with 4.x or move to 5.x? I heard SMP is improved in 5.x. TIA

[LocoCoyote]

After I get the 5.* boot up screen (the mascot) the system will simply freeze. Nothing I do gets it to respond.
I have absolutly no problem installing 4.8, or 4.9 (haven't gone to 10 yet)

[Floppyman]

Hey LocoCoyote,

Thanks for the reply. Are you using mostly newer hardware on your system? I'm asking since what I'm using is mostly older and thus (perhaps) more compatible.

[mairving]

If you are going to have dual processors, then 5.x is the way to guy since it has much better dual processor support and some support for hyperthreading.

[LocoCoyote]

I would classify the hardware as somewhat older (Celeron [coppermine] on my HP Omnibook XE3).
Mairving..have you tried the hyperthreding features? I am just curious as to how well it works.