FreeBSD 9.1 what's new ?

Hi guys.

Once again a new version of FreeBSD is out and I cant manage to find the "What's new" :(
There is nothing about it in the anouncement.
There is no word about it in the page 'available'.
There is nothing in the forum/announcement.
Maybe it's me but this information is really hard to find.

Take a look at OpenBSD.
The actual version is OpenBSD 5.1.
You go to home page click actual version and you get what's new right there.
Or you can find it in /pub/OpenBSD/5.1/ANNOUNCEMENT in any mirror site.

Where, the hell, is it hidden for FreeBSD ?
And why is there not even a brief summary in the FreeBSD announcement ?
 
It will be announced when there's a release candidate. Not for a beta.
 
@mururoa

1. ZFS Boot Environments (with beadm from Ports: sysutils/beadm).
2. KMS/GEM graphics stack ported to FreeBSD.
3. A lot of 802.11n additions/fixes.

I do not remember any other noticeable 'big things', You can check commits here:
http://freshbsd.org/search?project=freebsd&branch=RELENG_9

Where, the hell, is it hidden for FreeBSD ?

It will be announced with the 9.1-RELEASE, not with 9.1-BETA*.

And why is there not even a brief summary in the FreeBSD announcement ?

Because no one had time to wrote it probably.
 
mururoa said:
Hi guys.

Once again a new version of FreeBSD is out and I cant manage to find the "What's new" :(
There is nothing about it in the anouncement.
There is no word about it in the page 'available'.
There is nothing in the forum/announcement.
Maybe it's me but this information is really hard to find.

Take a look at OpenBSD.
The actual version is OpenBSD 5.1.
You go to home page click actual version and you get what's new right there.
Or you can find it in /pub/OpenBSD/5.1/ANNOUNCEMENT in any mirror site.

Where, the hell, is it hidden for FreeBSD ?
And why is there not even a brief summary in the FreeBSD announcement ?
You may find information about the status of the release at http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.1R/schedule.html.
 
Ok thanks.
The point was to know if yes or no I should consider to migrate to 9.1 when it's out.
I'm not proselytizing OpenBSD, since I dont even have it installed right now, but if you ever want to know what's cooking for next release is as simple as : http://www.openbsd.org/plus.html. Ok they dont differentiate what's new and what's fixed.
 
mururoa said:
The point was to know if yes or no I should consider to migrate to 9.1 when it's out.
There is also other 'feature' of every FreeBSD X.1 release, it has extended support time.
 
A what's new document ought to be written as the release is under development.

For example, the What's New in Python x.x document is always available and updated in head.

Personally I find such documents invaluable in helping me decide if I want to or even can participate in testing a beta or RC release. Surely more testing is desired, not less?

This is not a complaint, just an observation.
 
The .1-RELEASE usually has much more bug fixes than new features. An upgrade is highly recommended.

As a matter of fact, I am about to install 3 new servers and all of them will run 9.1-BETA1 until RC1 is released.
 
Any new features are more likely to be put into FreeBSD 10 rather than 9. Some of the bug fixes in 9.1 or later 9.x versions may enable support for a new piece of hardware or enable use of previously broken feature in the OS but overall there won't be any suprise updates like (for example) bumping the base system openssl *) to a completely new version that would require rebuild of all dependent applications. That's what the ABI stability is about.

*) I took openssl as an example because a new version of openssl was just imported into FreeBSD 10-CURRENT, it won't however make it to any of 9.X releases because it would mean a shared library version bump and an ABI incompatibility with the earlier 9.X versions.

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-security/2012-July/006484.html
 
I'm not sure what to think of this but a fresh install of 9.1 on my desktop, more or less configured the same way as 9.0 was (also a completely fresh install) is now behaving well when I ask it to suspend and resume via acpiconf.

At this point I don't know if 9.1 or a subtle change to how I have the machine configured is responsible, but I'm happy about the outcome.

As soon as I back up this working configuration I'm going to try a plain install on my laptop with no ports/packages installed to see if the situation is improved there.
 
Your pc did not suspend when requested - Is that the only reason you installed FreeBSD 9.1? I have not had any similar problems yet with 9.0. If there were a world record for the number of installs / re-installs of an operating system, nobody here would beat me. I have done re-installs or new installs simply out of boredom.

Now, I intend to stop all that nonsense and get on with the business of actually using (and studying) my computers. So I currently have FreeBSD 9.0 on an old Compaq Armada, and two modern Toshiba laptops. I run debian on my netbook as there is currently no FreeBSD device driver available for Broadcom Corporation's BCM4313 wifi chipset.

In addition to FreeBSD being a kickass operating system, the community on this forum is also very friendly (Except that DutchDaemon character :( )

- I am joking of course about Mr DutchDaemon - who works hard to keep posts legible and I know he does other stuff which we are not even aware of :)
 
Actually I did install 9.1 Beta on the off chance that ACPI support for suspend/resume had improved. Maybe it did, or maybe something I've configured has made the difference.

I'm going to guess the former rather than the latter but will do a clean basic install of 9.1 Beta and test that to see for sure. I've got a spare drive kicking about so I'll do that soon, as well as checking 9.1 Beta out on my laptop which also failed to resume on 9.0.

The main reason I've been looking at FreeBSD 9 and now 9.1 is to bring myself up to speed on the latest in zfs before I upgrade my servers, but if it aides in getting suspend/resume working for my workstation and laptop, so much the better.

Edit: Well my positive ACPI/suspend/resume experience is not due to core FreeBSD 9.1 after all; it appears to be specific to my X configuration. I'm trying to duplicate the same config on a second machine right now to see if the working resume is a result on that machine as well. Time to move this to another thread.
 
vermaden said:
1. ZFS Boot Environments (with beadm from Ports: sysutils/beadm).
2. KMS/GEM graphics stack ported to FreeBSD.
3. A lot of 802.11n additions/fixes.

\o/

You just made my day! Back to running FreeBSD on a laptop!

Happy BSD hacking dance:
ヘ(^_^ヘ) || ノ^_^)ノ || ヘ(^_^ヘ) || ヘ(^_^ヘ) || ノ^_^)ノ
 
neilms said:
In addition to FreeBSD being a kickass operating system, the community on this forum is also very friendly (Except that DutchDaemon character :( )

I must complain. You forgot to mention me.
 
Hi guys,

I have the same "problem". People need the release note in order to know if a beta is worth testing or not. In my case, I need to know if this release includes the active/active iSCSI multipath patch announced to be in 9.x (by the way "brain*beep**beep**beep**beep* Unix alike" have been doing that for years...It would be so nice to have it for using it with let's say...ZFS)
 
According to the release schedule, it's no longer in beta status. 9.1 has advanced to RC-2 and according to the schedule, the release has been built and the announcement is comming on 2012AUG17.
 
The schedule page is out of date. The only source you can trust is the SVN repository. The releng/9.1 branch is there and the version on that branch says RC1 at the moment.
 
Agreed

I agree with the OP. We are now on RC3, and there is zilch about what's new. Even if there is nothing new, and it's all bug fixes, then there should be verbiage right up front explaining that. And for that matter, if it's just big fixes, then how about summarizing the big ones?
 
I think asking "What's New?" of an OS that is still in it's beta stage (ie development) is a bit premature.
 
9.1 is not in beta, it is at RC3, and just days (weeks?) from release. Surely the developers can give us an idea of what they have been working on? Or, is it just infinite monkeys typing away on infinite keyboards?

Is there a road map?
 
dave said:
9.1 is not in beta, it is at RC3, and just days (weeks?) from release. Surely the developers can give us an idea of what they have been working on? Or, is it just infinite monkeys typing away on infinite keyboards?

Is there a road map?

See post #3 above; maybe also subscribe to the mailing lists and peruse http://www.freshsource.org. ( You are requesting additional resources (time, energy, annotation, paperwork, ) that the developers may not have at their disposal.) What you are requesting goes into the RELEASE NOTES and even that is a lot of effort to compile in its entirety if it is to be accurate, all-inclusive, etc.
 
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