From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Nov 10 18:48:59 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6EC1B16A41F for ; Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:48:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: from elvis.mu.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 22ED043D45 for ; Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:48:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from kris@obsecurity.org) Received: from obsecurity.dyndns.org (elvis.mu.org [192.203.228.196]) by elvis.mu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 029591A3C27; Thu, 10 Nov 2005 10:48:59 -0800 (PST) Received: by obsecurity.dyndns.org (Postfix, from userid 1000) id EF25751C5D; Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:48:57 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 13:48:57 -0500 From: Kris Kennaway To: Danny Howard Message-ID: <20051110184857.GA33273@xor.obsecurity.org> References: <20051110012313.GB22149@mind.net> <54db43990511091749h7b7c0753vbf7adbce94eff6cc@mail.gmail.com> <20051110081424.GA46702@xor.obsecurity.org> <20051110180048.GB23887@ratchet.nebcorp.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="lrZ03NoBR/3+SXJZ" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20051110180048.GB23887@ratchet.nebcorp.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.1i Cc: Bob Johnson , John Fox , freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, Kris Kennaway Subject: Re: Status of 6.0 for production systems X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2005 18:48:59 -0000 --lrZ03NoBR/3+SXJZ Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 10:00:48AM -0800, Danny Howard wrote: > On Thu, Nov 10, 2005 at 03:14:25AM -0500, Kris Kennaway wrote: >=20 > > > As I understand it, 6.0 is primarily concentrating on improving some > > > of the major stuff introduced in 5.x, and shouldn't take nearly as > > > long to become a "stable" platform. Even so, conventional wisdom > > > generally warns against using any X.0 release for critical > > > applications, but that depends on your definition of "critical" and > > > your level of tolerance for excitement. > >=20 > > You really shouldn't think of 6.0 as "like a usual .0 release, so > > handle with care", but more like "5.4 plus extra optimization and > > stability fixes". We spent nearly 6 months during the release cycle > > on stress-testing and fixing stability bugs, and that hard work > > resulted in a lot of fixes to long-standing bugs that have existed > > since FreeBSD 5.x. In addition to the improved stability, performance > > is much better than 5.4 in several areas. > >=20 > > Naturally there may be some regressions, but in the average case 6.0 > > seems to be an outstanding release of FreeBSD no matter what version > > number you give it. >=20 > So ... I am genuinely curious ... if 6.0 is basically 5.4 plus > improvements, why isn't it called 5.5? Because under the hood there are a few large changes to support the performance optimizations (e.g. VFS locking), and some that break compatibility. FreeBSD tries to keep compatibility of interfaces within a -STABLE branch, so if we called it 5.5 we'd have broken that rule. Kris --lrZ03NoBR/3+SXJZ Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (FreeBSD) iD4DBQFDc5YZWry0BWjoQKURAm2BAJ4nfnIINoCwUrLVZjdsnwrIVISq9gCY4D/W v2je+i6Bly656Y8W20MUoA== =shMa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --lrZ03NoBR/3+SXJZ--