From owner-freebsd-questions  Tue Feb  6  9:49:21 2001
Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Received: from guru.mired.org (okc-65-26-235-186.mmcable.com [65.26.235.186])
	by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 010C137B4EC
	for <questions@freebsd.org>; Tue,  6 Feb 2001 09:49:03 -0800 (PST)
Received: (qmail 67270 invoked by uid 100); 6 Feb 2001 17:49:02 -0000
From: Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Message-ID: <14976.14606.4389.190287@guru.mired.org>
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 11:49:02 -0600 (CST)
To: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
Subject: RE: 4.x  - 3.x  - 2.x
In-Reply-To: <47175872@toto.iv>
X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 10) "Capitol Reef" XEmacs Lucid
X-face: "5Mnwy%?j>IIV\)A=):rjWL~NB2aH[}Yq8Z=u~vJ`"(,&SiLvbbz2W`;h9L,Yg`+vb1>RG%
 *h+%X^n0EZd>TM8_IB;a8F?(Fb"lw'IgCoyM.[Lg#r\
Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

Ted Mittelstaedt <tedm@toybox.placo.com> types:
> Here's a short rundown of stuff that was important to me, keep in
> mind that these days FreeBSD is incrementing the major version number
> much more rapidly, in the old days they were more conservative.

I think it's more accurate to say they've changed the version
numbering system these days. You even reflect it: Changing the minor
number on 2.X (to 2.X+1) is similar to a major version number change
these days. JKH even commented about getting the version number back
when 3.0-RELEASE showed up.

	<mike

> 1.X  First public releases, based on BSD code later ruled "encumbered"
> (ie: BSD 4.3)
> 
> 2.0.X  First major releases based on "unencumbered" code, ie: BSD 4.3 Lite
> (in actual practice well over 90% of the code was left alone in
> the conversion from encumbered to unencumbered)
> 
> 2.1.X  Releases finally reached the stability of the 1.X releases.
> Probably last release you could tolerate in 4MB of ram.
> 
> 2.2.X  Major variance included introduction of Divert Sockets (for
> natting and ipfw)
> 
> 3.X  Shredded the SCSI subsystem and replaced it with CAM, broke a lot of
> older drivers, (arguably of junky hardware)  introduction of Symmectric
> Multiprocessing.  Last releases to support ESDI disks.
> 
> 4.X  many new drivers, reworked VM system, vinum, softupdates, brought back
> a few old favorites (like the Adaptec 1520 driver)

4.X also replaced the old voxware snd drivers with the new pcm driver,
making audio playback setup a *lot* saner. It should be on by default
in GENERIC at some point.  Like the CAM move, it broke old hardware
(some of which is being resurrected). It also seems to have done a job
on recording, but my best platform for checking that is having the
issue confused by SMPng.

	<mike
--
Mike Meyer <mwm@mired.org>			http://www.mired.org/home/mwm/
Independent WWW/Perforce/FreeBSD/Unix consultant, email for more information.


To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message