Date: Sat, 08 Jan 2000 02:15:35 +0000 From: Alex <ak@freenet.co.uk> To: Michael Lucas <mwlucas@blackhelicopters.org> Cc: advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: article on 4.0 Message-ID: <38769DC7.7AD014D2@freenet.co.uk> References: <200001071514.KAA17803@blackhelicopters.org>
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Michael Lucas wrote: > > Does anyone have a complete list of the major > improvements/enhancements in -current? Unfortunately, the mailing > list search engine doesn't work well for this sort of thing, so I'm > stuck with stored messages from -current and hazy information from my > sporadically-firing gray matter. > > The ones that stuck in my brain are: > > *VM enhancements > > *NTFS reading Well, NTFS is not exactly a new feature since it was MFC'd ages ago, although you could probably say "improved NTFS support". > *NFS enhancements > > *Novell connectivity > > *Massive flame wars with dillon, pkh, and karl -- ahem, I'll skip this one > > *Linux emulation improvement & signals changes -- does this actually > improve any other system functions, or does it just improve our Linux > compatability? It's a global improvement: previously the number of signals was limited to 32, now we can have up to 128. Linux had more than 32 signals and the change was needed to improve compatibility (which was probably the main reason it was brought in in the first place). > *scads of device drivers (yes, scads *is* a technical term) You should probably name a few, rather than just say "scads" > *Netgraph (merged into -stable recently, I know, but unfamiliar enough > to most people that it's worth a mention) > > *partial IPv6 support > > Does this cover it? Is there an official document? Off the top of my head, here's some more: - Completely redesigned new bus API which provides the framework for dynamic device allocation/deallocation (and hence potentially for things like device hotplugging/removal) - A brand new PnP system, which automatically detects and configures all ISA PnP devices - The jail feature; see jail(2), jail(8) - Various SMP improvements (in particular, people can now run StarOffice/Linux on SMP boxes) - The great new ATA driver replaced the good old wdc. The new features include support for more chipsets (such as Promise, HPTsomething), DMA-66, DMA support for ATAPI devices, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD support, etc. Also the new utility, burncd. - New pcm driver replaced Luigi's sound driver. It's still under active development, but there's already support for newer PCI sound cards, such as Trident 4DWave. MIDI support not yet integrated but coming soon. - HPFS (/sys/fs/hpfs) - SVR4 emulation (or "compatibility") - Solaris 2.6/7, SCO, etc - Linux compatibility is now truly amazing (VMware is worth a mention) - System compiler updated to GCC 2.95.2, also things like binutils, grep, ntpd, readline, etc etc - EXT2FS brought up to date with the latest version of Linux - Improved USB stack (USB in -stable is unusable) - Improved PPBUS system - Kernel is much more modularised - Laptop support is still the same as in 3.X, but will be greatly improved in the next release, including forthcoming Cardbus support - Last, but not least, support for the Alpha platform! Maybe more? Alex To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
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