FreeBSD 12 Released (freebsd.org) 132
New submitter vivekgite writes: The 12th version of the FreeBSD has been released, bringing support for updated hardware. Some of the highlights include: OpenSSL has been updated to version 1.1.1a (LTS). Unbound has been updated to version 1.8.1, and DANE-TA has been enabled by default. OpenSSH has been updated to version 7.8p1. Additonal capsicum(4) support has been added to sshd(8). Clang, LLVM, LLD, LLDB, compiler-rt and libc++ has been updated to version 6.0.1. The vt(4) Terminus BSD Console font has been updated to version 4.46. The bsdinstall(8) utility now supports UEFI+GELI as an installation option. The VIMAGE kernel configuration option has been enabled by default. The NUMA option has been enabled by default in the amd64 GENERIC and MINIMAL kernel configurations. The netdump(4) driver has been added, providing a facility through which kernel crash dumps can be transmitted to a remote host after a system panic. The vt(4) driver has been updated with performance improvements, drawing text at rates ranging from 2- to 6-times faster.
Various improvements to graphics support for current generation hardware. Support for capsicum(4) has been enabled on armv6 and armv7 by default. The UFS/FFS filesystem has been updated to consolidate TRIM/BIO_DELETE commands, reducing read/write requests due to fewer TRIM messages being sent simultaneously. The NFS version 4.1 server has been updated to include pNFS server support. The pf(4) packet filter is now usable within a jail(8) using vnet(9). The bhyve(8) utility has been updated to add NVMe device emulation. The bhyve(8) utility is now able to be run within a jail(8). Various Lua loader(8) improvements. KDE has been updated to version 5.12.
Various improvements to graphics support for current generation hardware. Support for capsicum(4) has been enabled on armv6 and armv7 by default. The UFS/FFS filesystem has been updated to consolidate TRIM/BIO_DELETE commands, reducing read/write requests due to fewer TRIM messages being sent simultaneously. The NFS version 4.1 server has been updated to include pNFS server support. The pf(4) packet filter is now usable within a jail(8) using vnet(9). The bhyve(8) utility has been updated to add NVMe device emulation. The bhyve(8) utility is now able to be run within a jail(8). Various Lua loader(8) improvements. KDE has been updated to version 5.12.
Re:Has not changed (Score:5, Insightful)
FreeBSD is focused on being a traditional Unix system. Unlike a lot of Linux distribution like Ubuntu who try to be desktop or workstation that they want to compete against OS X and Windows. FreeBSD mostly stays the Pure Unix system for others to work off of.
FreeBSD is the Chocolate Bar Operating Systems.
Where most of the new candy out there will be based on a Chocolate bar, they will have Nuts, Caramel, nugget.... That will try to make the candy more complex for peoples particular liking, the Standard Chocolate Bar is still around and when the fad candies go away, they will always go back to the Chocolate Bar and build the next fad off of that.
FreeBSD doesn't have too many changes that are noticeable, but they are often necessary to keep it current in today's time.
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...FreeBSD is focused on being a traditional Unix system....
FreeBSD is responsible for a lot of traffic on the 'Net. https://openconnect.netflix.co... [netflix.com]
...FreeBSD was selected for its balance of stability and features, a strong development community and staff expertise. All code improvements, feature additions, and bug fixes are contributed directly back to the open source community via the FreeBSD committers on our team. We also strive to stay at the front of the FreeBSD development process, allowing us to have a tight feedback loop with other community and partner developers. The result has been a positive open source ecosystem that lowers our development costs and multiplies the effectiveness of our efforts....
Re:Has not changed (Score:5, Insightful)
A dark chocolate bar is Gluten Free, Vegan, and full of Carbs. Free Trade wouldn't effect its taste.
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Dark chocolate bars are not supposed to have milk...
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That was not my own metaphor as I was not the OP.
Secondly, if morons don't like dark chocolate bars then it's not the duty of the candy companies to taint their dark chocolate with milk, it's the morons who should buy milk chocolate bars instead.
Re: Has not changed (Score:2)
Significant improvements have been made to virtualization including Amazon and Azure/HyoeerV since 6 or 7 including BSDs own Bhyve. SMP and the removal of big lock and updated desktop environments on the desktop end.
Sure a Unix terminal by default looks the same since 1988 but you haven't used it for anything important.
Linux still playing catch up. (Score:5, Insightful)
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From the bcachefs page:
"Performance is generally quite good - generally faster than btrfs,"
Actually, that's wrong - phoronix did a whole bunch of speed tests. It was middle-of-the-pack or slower in a fair few instances.
see:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=bcachefs-linux-2018&num=1
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I took a look the other day. The TODO list is where ZFS was twelve years ago. They'll be close to feature-comparable real soon now. Yeah, uh huh.
I do think as many people as possible should fund his Patreon but some realism is necessary.
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ZFS on FreeBSD.
That has been nothing but an excellent experience for me.
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Wish the native encryption for ZFS would be released into BSD... yes, GELI, we love you, but I wanna go native, baby.
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So, in some regards be happy OpenZFS on Linux is dealing with all the bugs. Whence they are squashed, the other OSes like
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Except for a lack of TRIM support, and a few too many quriky bugs from the still rapidly changing code base.
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That being said, there are workarounds such as 'scp'. In all other respects, I like being on FreeBSD. I have an XFCE desktop configured on it, and it is nice and fast.
Also, if you just installed FreeBSD directly on the computer, you would not have to worry about VirtualBox. I would have
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Have used FreeBSD on all my servers (home and otherwise) since Freebsd 8, definitely worth a look. 100% recommend, as someone who manages 100s of Ubuntu boxen every day.
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A long time ago, (2011?), I used BTRFS as my root file system for 2 of my 4 Linux computers. Not for most of the features. My main goal was to get sub-volumes, so I could perform OS updates on a writable snap shot. For me, that worked perfect and the times I had to ba
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But ZFS on Linux is working quite well too. In fact it is slightly newer, the version which includes experimental encryption support.
FreeBSD 12 might have caught up, though the release notes didn't mention any new features so I suspect the ZFS version has not changed.
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Did 12 get us native ZFS encryption on BSD?
I would like to know, not having a Flat vs. Phillips flamewar. GELI crashes too often.
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It's been subsisting on the brains of other operating systems.
FreeBSD (Score:3)
FreeBSD sounds great! How much does it cost?
Re: FreeBSD (Score:2)
Your dignity
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Your dignity
I have no dignity, it must be free!
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No, it means you have no currency with which to purchase increased respect from the software you use.
It is priced in dignity because you have to be sufficiently motivated to do the extra work needed. If you have enough dignity not to be willing to suffer the vagaries of software for the masses, you might be able to afford to use this!
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It's free. If it was paid it would likely be called PaidBSD.
Yes, that's the point of my bad joke!
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as you ask.. the ex CEO of Ted Baker apparently..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk]
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"Try it and I'll stab you." --Aiz Wallenstein.
Love and use FreeBSD (Score:5, Insightful)
FreeBSD has so many technical advantages over Linux. It's unfortunate that stupid things held it back in the day and caused Linux to be the one most-commonly adopted.
From the unified kernel and userland environment, to the fantastic ports system, to the documentation, to the ridiculous stability, to the performance, to ZFS, to the LACK OF SYSTEMD... I use it anytime I can. Unfortunately its lack of popularity hold back using it as a desktop (it can be done, but it's gotten to the point that so many things have become dependent on Linux-isms and Linux has gone so off the rails with things that it's too much effort for dev teams to make alternate proper unix versions that'd run on FreeBSD and such. So you have issues with drivers for peripherals, video cards. Popular desktop environments won't compile (the only Gnome that works is an old version). No Dropbox, etc. For years though I ran FreeBSD as my primary desktop on my home computer.
You used to see FreeBSD rule the top uptime lists, and tons of web hosting providers used it. But then when things like cPanel stopped making FreeBSD versions, that dwindled away. Now if you want FreeBSD on a webhost you're going to have to fully manage it from the ground up, and use something like Digital Ocean.
I still use FreeBSD at home in the form of FreeNAS and pfSense. And if I have cause to build a unix server for any reason which I'd be managing from a terminal, I absolutely choose FreeBSD.
Re:Love and use FreeBSD (Score:4, Informative)
Quite a few blogs from big companies that specialize in network or storage, like Netflix, where they thoroughly tried Linux. Tried every optimization, hired specialists, made their own custom tweaks, but Linux kept spontaneously blowing up under extreme loads. Think of a single server saturating a 100Gb interface while maintaining 10 million connections and creating 100,000 new connections per second. Linux' IO stacks cannot handle those loads without a major refactoring the stacks and the kernel as a whole. FreeBSD was engineered from the very beginning for these kinds of things. It's not perfect and has a lot of areas for great improvement, the structure is all there, purposefully architected and designed.
And due to licensing, FreeBSD gets a lot more research. At least in the USA, publicly funded research must be free for all and that does not play well with GPL. FreeBSD's licensing doesn't care. This same issue also applies to many internet standards, where the sample implementation must be license compatible with everyone. GPL does not play well with others.
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What technical advantages does it have over Linux. Most benchmarks I've seen clearly show linux has a huge advantage.
When you see them crying over systemd, don't bother looking for these "technical reasons" that you seek. It is the neckbeard talking. And it isn't even connected to the eyes or ears. It may receive enough of the low-level vibrations to bleat back a key word, but that's as much as you're going to get out of it.
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I run Linux, but I don't want things that are Linux-only on my machines. They limit my freedom to move to another OS if the need arises one day, and it's a huge red flag for me. That's why I won't touch systemd with a ten-foot long pole. And I'm clean shaven, by the way.
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Well, if they have that much confidence, maybe they really do have a bigger e-peen?
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Agreed!!
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... to the documentation...
The Handbook is amazing! So much knowledge and wisdom has been accumulated in it.
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From someone that actually thought of testing FreeBSD, you have effectively convinced me NOT to. I didn't know there were such a high amount of issues for desktop use!
Re: Love and use FreeBSD (Score:1)
I think it's been 15 years since you used a bsd. They have a very sane update path now.
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At least the open source community wised up in the last decade and most projects are using BSD's License instead of that terrible GPL crap! Coding in 2003 was a pain!
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You used to see FreeBSD rule the top uptime lists
And then sysadmins got some common sense and rebooted to apply some kernel security fixes.
Anyone know if Netcraft's confirmed it? (Score:3)
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That's not a FreeBSD problem, as I just went there on firefox without any complaints.
Nice! (Score:2)
Sadly: it's all about the apps (Score:2)
Sadly, when Linux apps start requiring systemd, the BSDs will be nearly useless. It will happen, we all know it.
As it is:
FreeBSD has no dropbox client.
You cannot count on FreeBSD to run the latest version of LibreOffice, or anything else. Often, Linux apps will not run at all.
Not as many drivers as Linux, but that is less of a problem.
For now, at least, FreeBSD might make a good server.
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I've been using FreeNAS and PfSense for years which are great performing servers with practically zero downtime other than patches and reboots. FreeBSD is geared towards as server platform and rightfully so. To make it into a desktop not so much. I rather they focus less bloat and keeping performance high in FreeBSD than trying to support the desktop apps to muck things up. Leave the desktop to Linux as it's more supported by the community.
Microsoft did the same thing with their Windows Server instal
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That's a Dropbox' problem, not FreeBSD's. But Linux has no such client any more either [slashdot.org].
?? Of course, you can — the editors/libreoffice port [freshports.org] is usually up to date (it is now, for example). Which is more than one can say about, say, RedHat RPMs. Now try installing an up to date LLVM on Debian...
?? By that logic, Linux is inferior, because "Often, FreeB
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when Linux apps start requiring systemd
Just say no to Linux apps. Use portable *nix apps instead.
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No systemd! (Score:2, Interesting)
Dead BSD sketch (Score:1)
I wish to complain about this FreeBSD what I downloaded not half an hour ago from this very website.
Oh yes, the, uh, the 12 . What's,uh....What's wrong with it?
I'll tell you what's wrong with it, my lad. It's dead, that's what's wrong with it!
No, no, it's uh,it's resting.
Look, matey, I know a dead OS when I see one, and I'm looking at one right now.
No no it's not dead, it's, it's restin'! Remarkable release, the 12, idn'it, ay? Beautiful graphics support!
The graphics support don't enter into it. It's stone
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Whomever gives him a hug will risk being banned from FreeBSD!!
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I ran it on my desktop for a couple years, but it was just *nix, nothing special.
If you needed "support," I'm surprised you'd have still been using it past the first week.
But your aversion to Codes explains a lot. You're simply allergic to following instructions. This explains both sides; why you can't computer and need hand-holding, and why you're no good at having your hand held.
You're right that they're garbage people. Awful, horrible, [pejorative] people. They agree. It means you're not supposed to talk