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Unix BSD

FreeBSD 12 Released (freebsd.org) 132

Posted by msmash from the for-the-record dept.
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.
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FreeBSD 12 Released More

FreeBSD 12 Released

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  • Linux still playing catch up. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Seven Spirals ( 4924941 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2018 @11:37AM (#57792438)
    They still can't seem to get BTRFS working anywhere nearly as well as ZFS on FreeBSD. Plus, you get a lovely init structure with no Systemd garbage. I love it.

    • ZFS on FreeBSD.

      That has been nothing but an excellent experience for me.

      • Wish the native encryption for ZFS would be released into BSD... yes, GELI, we love you, but I wanna go native, baby.

        • Native OpenZFS encryption definately coming to FreeBSD, (and all the other OSes that use OpenZFS). I played with native ZFS encryption on Linux last summer, (August 2017), and it was pretty stable then. But, details of ZFS send & receive, (raw verses un-encrypted), were still being worked out. And based on the ZFS on Linux github bugs, there are lots of corner cases being resolved.

          So, in some regards be happy OpenZFS on Linux is dealing with all the bugs. Whence they are squashed, the other OSes like
    • I wish Linux would separate the BTRFS development tree from the production tree. Then work for stabilizing Mirroring and other current normal features of BTRFS. Use the development branch to add new features like the forever pending RAID-5/6.

      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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Baki ( 72515 )

      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.

      • The ZFS version is a bit political. Sun originally designed ZFS with versions to enable various features along the version continuum. However, many things happened they didn't foresee. OpenSolaris was pretty much a failure (yes, one can argue *today* about Illumos but that's not in the context when ZFS was created). Now you have four groups essentially charting a different course for ZFS and only two of them really matter: Oracle and FreeBSD. Linux doesn't matter a lick since licensing issues will forever p

    • 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.

      • No. It's coming soon. The stuff in HEAD is already spanking Solaris pretty badly performance-wise, though. It just wasn't tested well enough by the time 12-RELEASE came time to cut.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      We must not allow... a code of conduct gap!

  • FreeBSD (Score:3)

    by Oswald McWeany ( 2428506 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2018 @11:48AM (#57792510)

    FreeBSD sounds great! How much does it cost?

    • Re: FreeBSD (Score:2)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Your dignity

      • Your dignity

        I have no dignity, it must be free!

        • 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!

    • It's free. If it was paid it would likely be called PaidBSD.

  • Love and use FreeBSD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sremick ( 91371 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2018 @12:12PM (#57792658)

    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: (Score:1)

      by bsd_usr ( 140514 )

      Agreed!!

    • ... to the documentation...

      The Handbook is amazing! So much knowledge and wisdom has been accumulated in it.

    • 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: (Score:2)

      by zidium ( 2550286 )

      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!

    • 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)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Wednesday December 12, 2018 @01:14PM (#57792984)
    *ducks*.
  • While I am first and foremost an OpenBSD user, I still consider it a win when a new version of FreeBSD or NetBSD gets released because it shows that BSD Unix continues to remain very relevant in the open source operating system world. I use FreeBSD as the OS for my NAS box and it works very well! I do both NFS and SMB file sharing from it. I haven't delved in to Net- very much but as long as development continues, it's a win!

  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Darkk ( 1296127 )

      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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mi ( 197448 )

      FreeBSD has no dropbox client.

      That's a Dropbox' problem, not FreeBSD's. But Linux has no such client any more either [slashdot.org].

      You cannot count on FreeBSD to run the latest version of LibreOffice, or anything else

      ?? 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...

      Often, Linux apps will not run at all.

      ?? By that logic, Linux is inferior, because "Often, FreeB

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by vbdasc ( 146051 )

      when Linux apps start requiring systemd

      Just say no to Linux apps. Use portable *nix apps instead.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ottdmk ( 1376807 )
      Not really sure what you're talking about. I haven't upgraded to 12-RELEASE, but I'm on 11.3-RELEASE. I have LibreOffice 6.0.7... the stable release. I have Firefox 63, just because I haven't updated in two weeks (I like to compile all my stuff with poudriere) and once my upgrade run is done this weekend I'll be caught up. True, there isn't a Dropbox client. Sorry that's a showstopper for you. Otherwise, I've found that oftentimes new versions of stuff will hit the ports collection before the distros upd

  • No systemd! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Drunkulus ( 920976 )
    FreeBSD's stability, security, and freedom from systemd are all reasons why Linus now runs it at home.

  • Dead BSD sketch (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    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

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