BSD News Archives


820 BSD open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.

NetBSD Working On Better OSS Compatibility / Translation Layer, Encouraging Native API Use

While the Open Sound System (OSS) usage hasn't been prevalent on Linux systems in many years, on NetBSD there still is some software making use of the OSS interfaces in not supporting the native NetBSD audio interfaces. Better OSS compatibility via a translation layer is available while ultimately they are working on transitioning more open-source software to support the native interfaces.

27 April 2020 - NetBSD OSS - 1 Comment
FreeBSD To Sponsor Work For 802.11ac Support

While Windows and Linux have seen good 802.11ac "WiFi 5" support and these days are focused on 802.11ax "WiFi 6" with the latest wireless chipsets, FreeBSD is still tackling 802.11ac. But the FreeBSD Foundation is prepared to soon begin sponsoring development work on ironing out their 802.11ac support.

12 March 2020 - 802.11ac - 4 Comments
FreeNAS + TrueNAS Unifying Into TrueNAS 12.0 CORE/Enterprise

BSD-focused vendor iXsystems has developed FreeNAS as their community-oriented NAS operating system while TrueNAS is what they ship on their storage solutions. FreeNAS and TrueNAS have been derived largely from the same code-base. Moving forward to TrueNAS 12.0 later this year, iXsystems is unifying FreeNAS and TrueNAS.

5 March 2020 - FreeNAS + TrueNAS - 17 Comments
GhostBSD 20.02 Brings Custom ZFS Partition Editor, Updater Improvements

For those looking to experiment with a BSD-based desktop open-source platform, GhostBSD has been competing well as one of the few in this field. GhostBSD 20.02 is out and continues being based on TrueOS/FreeBSD stable packages while shipping the GTK-based MATE desktop environment as its out-of-the-box desktop solution.

1 March 2020 - GhostBSD 20.02 - 5 Comments
FreeBSD Along With The Other BSDs Had A Pretty Good Run This Decade

While not attracting as much interest as Linux in the cloud, AI, and other growing markets, the BSDs have seen their share of adoption in many of these areas too as well as the likes of powering some of today's video game consoles. FreeBSD is also well known for powering much of the networking infrastructure of Netflix and other large enterprises. The BSDs advanced a lot from hardware support to new security features and other capabilities this decade setting them on a good trajectory as we get into the 2020s.

25 December 2019 - BSD 2010s - 9 Comments
The FreeBSD Migration To OpenZFS Is Still Looking To Be A Great Change

Last year it was decided that FreeBSD's ZFS code would be re-based on OpenZFS (ZFS On Linux) code for ultimately better support and functionality as well as largely unifying the open-source ZFS ecosystem. While still transitioning towards the OpenZFS code-base, for FreeBSD it's still looking to be a positive move and one that will pay off for all parties involved.

8 November 2019 - OpenZFS + FreeBSD - 39 Comments
GPU Passthrough For FreeBSD's Bhyve Can Work But Is Fairly Rudimentary

FreeBSD's Bhyve hypervisor has had a wild ride over the past half-decade of development for advancing BSD virtualization support. Bhyve is mostly used on the server front but can also fill some desktop use-cases now that there is GPU pass-through support working albeit not yet polished.

6 November 2019 - Bhyve + GPU - 4 Comments
FuryBSD Is A New Attempt At A Desktop Focused BSD

Joe Maloney of iXsystems has lifted the wraps on FuryBSD, a new desktop BSD focused on tight integration with FreeBSD. FuryBSD joins the likes of MidnightBSD and GhostBSD on providing a sane and easy-to-use desktop experience out-of-the-box along similar lines to the former PC-BSD (TrueOS).

5 November 2019 - FuryBSD - 24 Comments
Netflix Is An Example Of A Great Open-Source Corporate Patron To FreeBSD

With yesterday's article about the NUMA improvements to FreeBSD's network stack made by Netflix in their quest to serve 200Gb/s encrypted video content per server, in no time the forum comments were quick to theorize whether those changes would work their way back upstream to all FreeBSD users or due to the BSD license would be held as a guarded secret by the company. Fortunately, Netflix continues to impress when it comes to their open-source contributions.

5 November 2019 - Netflix + FreeBSD - 47 Comments
Netflix Optimized FreeBSD's Network Stack More Than Doubled AMD EPYC Performance
Netflix Optimized FreeBSD's Network Stack More Than Doubled AMD EPYC Performance

Drew Gallatin of Netflix presented at the recent EuroBSDcon 2019 conference in Norway on the company's network stack optimizations to FreeBSD. Netflix was working on being able to deliver 200Gb/s network performance for video streaming out of Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC servers, to which they are now at 190Gb/s+ and in the process that doubled the potential of EPYC Naples/Rome servers and also very hefty upgrades too for Intel.

4 November 2019 - NUMA Network Stack - 47 Comments
MidnightBSD 1.2 Brings Package Updates, Security/Bug Fixes

MidnightBSD is one of the easy-to-use, desktop-focused BSDs that makes it easy to run GNOME and other desktops like Lumina atop its FreeBSD base. MidnightBSD 1.2 was released on Halloween as an update providing updates to its base system and various fixes.

1 November 2019 - MidnightBSD 1.2 - 2 Comments
GhostBSD Reaffirms To Being TrueOS+BSD Desktop OS With Official MATE Desktop

With Project Trident moving away from a TrueOS/FreeBSD base to instead Void Linux, if you are looking for a good BSD-based desktop operating system it largely comes down to the likes of MidnightBSD and GhostBSD providing good out-of-the-box setups. As for GhostBSD, they are reaffirming their commitment to using TrueOS/FreeBSD and MATE as their official desktop.

17 October 2019 - GhostBSD - 63 Comments
GhostBSD 19.09 Provides A Good BSD Desktop Built Off TrueOS & FreeBSD 12

TrueOS changing direction was a disappointment back in 2018 with having done away with their desktop version that had been around for years since formerly being known as PC-BSD. But at least there are a few viable alternatives that continue advancing for a nice out-of-the-box BSD desktop experience like GhostBSD and MidnightBSD.

17 September 2019 - GhostBSD 19.09 - 2 Comments
Wine Is Now In Better Shape On NetBSD Thanks To GSoC 2019

In addition to NetBSD seeing better DRM ioctl support for its Linux compatibility layer (as part of an effort towards possible Steam support) thanks to Google Summer of Code 2019, there were also Wine improvements as a result of this Google programming initiative.

31 August 2019 - Wine + NetBSD - 7 Comments
NetBSD Made Progress Thanks To GSoC In Its March Towards Steam Support

Ultimately the goal is to get Valve's Steam client running on NetBSD using their Linux compatibility layer while the focus the past few months with Google Summer of Code 2019 were supporting the necessary DRM ioctls for allowing Linux software running on NetBSD to be able to tap accelerated graphics support.

26 August 2019 - NetBSD DRM Ioctl - 16 Comments

820 BSD news articles published on Phoronix.