FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE Announcement
Date: Sunday, 19 Jan 2003 09:00:00 -0800 From: scottl@FreeBSD.org (Scott Long) To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org Subject: FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE Now Available It is my privilege and pleasure to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE. The culmination of nearly three years of work, this release starts FreeBSD on the path of advanced multiprocessor and application thread support and introduces support for the sparc64 and ia64 platforms. Among the long list of new and improved features:
* UFS2, the second generation UFS filesystem, shatters the current 1TB filesystem barrier.
* Background filesystem checking (bgfsck) and filesystem snapshots eliminate the need for downtime to do filesystem repair and backup tasks.
* Experimental support for Mandatory Access Controls (MAC) provide an extensible and flexible means for administrators to define system security policies.
* Fine-grained locking in the kernel paves the road for much higher efficiency of multi-processor systems.
* Support for Bluetooth, ACPI, CardBus, IEEE 1394, and experimental hardware crypto acceleration keeps FreeBSD at the forefront of new technology.
* The GCC 3.2.1 compiler provides the latest installment of the ever-improving GNU Compiler Collection.
* GEOM, the extensible and flexible storage framework, and DEVFS, the device virtual filesystem, simplify storage and device management while opening the door for new enterprise storage technologies.
* Support for the sparc64 and ia64 platforms expands FreeBSD’s support of advanced 64-bit computing platforms.
The list of features is even longer than I expected. I’ll follow the mailing lists for teething issues but I’ll be installing it somewhere before too long. A release of this scope — a major number — is much more of a big deal than a kernel release in Linux since with FreeBSD, you get the kernel and all the userland programs as well as up to date ports — more than 7000 of them. It’s been my experience that there’s a much higher certainty that things will work with a minimum of hassle than with any other open source OS, to say nothing of the proprietary ones. It’s been my habit to email my thanks to the release engineering team once I get the new version in place. I’ll be doing the same this time, I’m sure.