From jkh@nx.ilo.dec.com Sun Jul 3 20:57:05 1994 Path: sran230.sra.co.jp!sranhd.sra.co.jp!sranha.sra.co.jp!news.iij.ad.jp!wnoc-tyo-news!aist-nara!oskgate0.mei!chorus.mei!ced.mei!panasonic.com!newsserver.jvnc.net!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!agate!agate!usenet From: jkh@nx.ilo.dec.com (Jordan Hubbard) Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.announce Subject: [FreeBSD] FreeBSD 1.1.5 RELEASE is now available Followup-To: poster Date: 29 Jun 1994 20:43:53 -0700 Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation, Galway Ireland Lines: 105 Sender: cgd@agate.berkeley.edu Approved: 386bsd-announce-request@agate.berkeley.edu Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: agate.berkeley.edu Status: R The FreeBSD group is pleased to announce their final Net/2 based release, FreeBSD 1.1.5. This release represents a substantial improvement over FreeBSD 1.1R, and we'd like to encourage everyone to upgrade to this relesae as it will be the last release for awhile while we devote our full energies to producing FreeBSD 2.0. FreeBSD 1.1.5R is available in: freebsd.cdrom.com:~ftp/pub/FreeBSD/FreeBSD-1.1.5-RELEASE This will truly be the last 1.x release, and this release heralds the end of the Net/2 based FreeBSD distribution. The next release from this group will be FreeBSD 2.0, and entirely 4.4 LITE based. This release contains everything but the patch file for upgrading from 1.1R to 1.1.5R, which will have to wait a little longer while I stare at the output produced by CVS and try to untie all the various weirdnesses that have no doubt entered the tree (and no doubt with substantial help from Rod, who's done this before). I promise to get both of these out ASAP so that 1.1.5R is quickly usable by all segments of our user base. Here's a brief list of what's new in 1.1.5 (from the WHATS_NEW file): -- KERNEL IMPROVEMENTS SINCE FreeBSD 1.1 -- 1) Bounce buffers. This allows systems to use bus master ISA controllers in systems with more than 16MB of memory. 2) VM performance improvements. Many new enhancements to the Mach derived VM system including page table preloading (dramatically reduces page faults); page usage statistics gathering (improves page replacement thus reducing thrashing); clustered page-ins and page-outs (reduces paging I/O overhead). 3) Overall kernel performance improvements. Some critical functions have been inlined; the trap, pmap, and other critical code has been optimized, etc. 4) Improved scheduling algorithm. Improves interactive performance on busy machines, expecially in cases where lots of software builds are occurring. 5) Disk I/O clustering. Improves the I/O speed dramatically on most disk drives. 6) Vastly superior optional floating point emulator from Bill Metzenthen. Faster and more reliable/accurate/complete emulation and has fewer bugs. Provided as an option in the kernel (the original emulator is still the default). 7) IP Multicast support. Allows reception of Internet multicast packets. 8) Improved sound support. Version 2.5 of Hannu Savolainen's VoxWare sound drivers. Supports SoundBlaster, PAS, GUS, and other common sound boards. 9) New device support for the ST01/ST02 and Future Domain 950 SCSI adapters. 10) X10 device driver from Gene Stark for X-10 style remote power control. (such as Radio Shack "Plus 'n Power") 11) PS/2 mouse driver from Erik Forsberg. 12) Busmouse driver from Rick Macklem. 13) IBM/National PCMCIA ethernet driver from Keith Moore. 14) Improved floppy driver support. 15) Much improved syscons driver (now default) with user-editable ascii keymaps and many other new features. 16) Many improvements and fixes to nearly every supported device driver. 17) Many improvements and fixes scattered throughout the kernel. -- USER CODE IMPROVEMENTS SINCE FreeBSD 1.1 -- 1) Man pages now compressed by default, saving quite a bit of space for small configurations. 2) "Secure key" freely distributable encryption support. 3) Many many bug fixes and miscellaneous enhancements. 4) Sun math library now available for faster FPU support (see #5). 5) New /etc/make.conf mechanism allows users to tailor how their systems are built (from source) and switch various options on and off. 6) C++ shared libs are now fully supported (and libg++ shared by default). Thanks from all in the FreeBSD development group for all the kind help and good wishes we received during all of our previous 1.x releases! We couldn't have done it without you, and we hope that our 2.0 future will be an even brighter one for all concerned! Regards, Jordan (FreeBSD core team)