Which Release?

F

FreeBCP

Some years ago I used FreeBSD 5.4 on a home-built machine, but after a couple of hardware changes and frustration therewith switched to Ubuntu. Later I purchased a Dell Inspiron 530n with Ubuntu 7.10. I am thinking about switching back to FreeBSD and would like to use 5.4 or 5.5 but am unsure of whether it will work well with Dell Hardware. If I do use a newer release I will probably go with the latest Legacy, but would really like to use 5.x if at all possible, unless I can get some of the older software by back-port (not sure if that is the right term). I would say that I am - or at least was - an intermediate BSD user, but have been away from it for a few years now. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thom
 
If the hardware in question were a laptop I would be more cautious, but on a PC I would advise 9-Current especially since it will become 9-Release in a month or 2. But FreeBSD versions 5-6-7 are definitely out for a fresh system.

FreeBSD has a lot of new features, so read-up a little before jumping to the install; specially important are disk partition (GPT) and file sys (ZFS).
 
Beeblebrox said:
If the hardware in question were a laptop I would be more cautious, but on a PC I would advise 9-Current especially since it will become 9-Release in a month or 2. But FreeBSD versions 5-6-7 are definitely out for a fresh system.

FreeBSD has a lot of new features, so read-up a little before jumping to the install; specially important are disk partition (GPT) and file sys (ZFS).
Click to expand...

Actually, I am pretty sure that Legacy will run on the machine (three years old) in question, but perhaps I should consider 8 or 9.

Part of my thinking is that I am already familiar with 5, and am sure some changes have taken place that might be a bit disconcerting. I also would like to be able to easily use older ported software wherever practical for similar reasons. Will definitely do some reading before making a decision.
 
Do you realize that the ports tree is the same for all FreeBSD versions? If you install FreeBSD 5, you'll still get the same ports as you'd get with FreeBSD 8.
 
I do realise that. But IIRC, I can install some of the desired ports before I update, as unwise as that might be. The more I think about it, I had probably better just go with 8.
 
Do it the other way around. Install FreeBSD 8 or 9, and update ports with portsnap(8) before installing any at all. Then start installing what you want, without having to jump through hoops to get up to date with /usr/ports/UPDATING.
 
Thanks guys. I don't recall learning anything about portsnap.

Beeblebrox said:
FreeBSD has a lot of new features, so read-up a little before jumping to the install; specially important are disk partition (GPT) and file sys (ZFS).
Click to expand...

Will this info be in release notes or the handbook? I used to be very comfortable with FreeBSD but have been in Ubuntuland so long now that it has made me a lazy user. I don't know why it seems so intimidating to me now unless I didn't really understand what it was that I was doing back then.

Thom
 
Thanks again. I was mainly wondering about GPT and ZFS. It concerned me a little when I read the following:

FreeBSD Handbook 20.2.1.1 said:
The total system memory should be at least one gigabyte, with two gigabytes or more recommended. In all of the examples here, the system has one gigabyte of memory with several other tuning mechanisms in place.

Some people have had luck using fewer than one gigabyte of memory, but with such a limited amount of physical memory, when the system is under heavy load, it is very plausible that FreeBSD will panic due to memory exhaustion.
Click to expand...

It sounds as if this is a little more bloated than previous versions of FreeBSD.

I still have not located anything regarding GPT. In the past I used the entire disk, though I vaguely recall creating a second partition before customizing the kernel.
 
FreeBSD as an operating system is not bloated. It is ZFS that demands a lot of resources, or very careful tuning if you have few resources to spare. If that's a concern, use UFS.
 
Ah, of course! It had not occurred to me that I UFS would still be an option!

You are right, I was thinking more of the OS rather than resource use. As I said, it has been awhile and Ubuntu has turned me into a lazy user. I hope I can pick things up more quickly as I make the switch back. One of the reasons for coming back to FreeBSD is that I want to be able to build the system from the ground up and customize it for my own (rather paltry) needs.
 
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