From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Aug 22 12:39:47 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@www.freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@www.freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3351916A41F for ; Mon, 22 Aug 2005 12:39:47 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gallatin@cs.duke.edu) Received: from duke.cs.duke.edu (duke.cs.duke.edu [152.3.140.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C30DA43D48 for ; Mon, 22 Aug 2005 12:39:46 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gallatin@cs.duke.edu) Received: from grasshopper.cs.duke.edu (grasshopper.cs.duke.edu [152.3.145.30]) by duke.cs.duke.edu (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id j7MCdjVH012278 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Mon, 22 Aug 2005 08:39:45 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from gallatin@localhost) by grasshopper.cs.duke.edu (8.12.9p2/8.12.9/Submit) id j7MCdeCG030966; Mon, 22 Aug 2005 08:39:40 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from gallatin) From: Andrew Gallatin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <17161.51084.456346.976929@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 08:39:40 -0400 (EDT) To: freebsd-current@www.freebsd.org X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 12) "Channel Islands" XEmacs Lucid Cc: Subject: Beta2: Nice job! X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 12:39:47 -0000 After a few critical disk blocks failed on my wife's 5 year old 400MHz, 192MB laptop leaving 1/4 of the files in lost+found, I decided to re-install it (moving from 4.9 to 6). Overall, I was pleasantly surprised at how usable 6.0 is. Pluses: - Once I removed WITNESS/INV,, SMP, and set hz to a sane value, the machine's speed felt comparable to 4.x - ACPI: S3 suspend, battery information, thermal info, and triggering S3 suspend on lid close all work on a 5 year old machine. Major kudos! Minuses: - Maybe /etc/pccard_ether should not depend on $removable_interfaces. After all, it does ignore interfaces which are up. Or maybe I'm just bitter because it took me 15 minutes to figure out why the wireless card was not getting setup on resume... ;) - /var is too small. Installation of packages via pkg_add -r (eg ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6-current/editors/openoffice-2.0.20050725.tbz) runs /var/tmp out of space. Easily fixed by creating a /usr/tmp and setting PKG_TMPDIR to /usr/tmp. I hope sysinstall does that. - X.org is a major downgrade from XFree86 3.x in terms of fonts. linux-mozilla, linux-firefox, etc, all look terrible & blurry compared to XFree86-3.x or Windows. I've installed the bitstream-vera fonts, and messed with ~/.fonts.conf for hours turning on/off anti-aliasing, subpixel rendering, hinting, autohinting, etc. I know I'm having an effect, because each change manages to make things worse. This is a 75x75dpi 1024x768 LCD screen driven by a NeoMagic video chip. I've got the same problem with fonts on my desktop (1600x1200 LCD panel), but I'd always assumed that it was something about this particular LCD. Anyway, I don't want to sound like I'm griping. The only real FreeBSD problems I found were trivially minor. The only major problem I have is the fonts, which is more to do with x.org than FreeBSD. Overall, I was very impressed, especially with ACPI. Nice job! Drew