BSD News Archives

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.

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.

The FreeBSD project has published their Q2'2019 summary that outlines the various accomplishments for this open-source operating system project over the past quarter.

It was just last month that DragonFlyBSD pulled in Radeon's Linux 4.4 kernel driver code as an upgrade from the Linux 3.19 era code they had been using for their open-source AMD graphics support. This week that's now up to a Linux 4.7 era port.

While called the Open-Source Summit, the event is primarily about Linux as after all it's hosted by the Linux Foundation. But at this week's Open-Source Summit in San Diego, Deb Goodkin as the executive director of the FreeBSD Foundation presented. Deb's talk was of course on FreeBSD but also why FreeBSD and Linux developers should work together.

Adding to another creation being worked on by DragonFlyBSD lead developer Matthew Dillon, DSynth is a C rewrite of the FreeBSD originating Synth program that serves as a custom package repository builder.

Wayland support is inching ahead on NetBSD for this secure, modern next-generation successor to running an X.Org Server.

GCC 4.2.1 has been out since 2007 and while there have been many big updates to the GNU Compiler Collection over the past decade, that version remains somewhat common in the BSD land due to being the last version under the GPLv2 license. GCC 4.2.2 and newer switched over to GPLv3+ and that is why several BSDs have stuck to using GCC 4.2.1 or at least keeping it in their base repository. But now for FreeBSD 13, this old version of GCC is set to be retired with FreeBSD already being quite focused on LLVM Clang as its default compiler while also offering newer GCC versions via its package management system.

With TrueOS (formerly PC-BSD) no longer focused on delivering a quality BSD desktop as they once did, while there still are options out there for a desktop-focused BSD like MidnightBSD, for those wanting to use a vanilla FreeBSD installation can now setup a desktop easier using a new script.

DragonFlyBSD 5.6.2 is out today as the newest version of this popular BSD operating system.

One of the many interesting Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects this year has been to improve the Wine support on NetBSD. Thanks to student developer Naveen Narayanan, that is becoming a reality.

The NetBSD 9.0 code has now been branched and preparations underway for releasing the next version of this BSD operating system known for its vast architecture support.

DragonFlyBSD is replacing their 48-core Opteron server named "Monster" with two of the new AMD Ryzen 9 3900X "Zen 2" processors as well as a spare Xeon server. DragonFlyBSD lead developer Matthew Dillon continues to be mighty impressed by AMD's latest processor offerings.

While the Linux 4.4 kernel is quite old (January 2016), DragonFlyBSD has now re-based its AMD Radeon kernel graphics driver against that release. It is at least a big improvement compared to its Radeon code having been derived previously from Linux 3.19.

OPNsense, the FreeBSD-based pfSense-forked firewall offering that has continued experiencing increased adoption following the closure of m0n0wall, is out with version 19.7 as its newest feature update.

Separate from the Linux boot issue affecting AMD Ryzen 3000 (Zen 2) processors that has been attributed to RdRand, DragonFlyBSD is the first BSD at least we've seen getting a separate fix to be able to boot these new AMD processors.

In addition to better Wine support on NetBSD thanks to Google Summer of Code 2019, another student developer has been working on DRM ioctl support including when running their Linux emulation packages. Ultimately the hope is they can run the Steam Linux binary on NetBSD to enjoy gaming with DRM+Mesa.

While FreeBSD 12 is the latest and greatest FreeBSD release, FreeBSD 11.3 is now available as the newest for those sticking to the former series.

One of the interesting Google Summer of Code projects on the BSD front this year is porting Wine to run on AMD64 (x86_64) under NetBSD.

Well known FreeBSD developer and leader of their release engineering team, Glen Barber, has left the FreeBSD Foundation but will continue working on FreeBSD as well as coordinating its releases.

Slipping just past this week's DragonFlyBSD 5.6 release is now an early feature for the next series: continued work on the Radeon DRM driver ported to this BSD from the Linux kernel.

While DragonFlyBSD 5.6 was just released earlier this week, DragonFlyBSD 5.6.1 is already available to fix some bugs that crept into this big update.

With the newly released DragonFlyBSD 5.6 there are improvements to its original HAMMER2 file-system to the extent that it's now selected by its installer as the default file-system choice for new installations. Curious how the performance now compares between HAMMER and HAMMER2, here are some initial benchmarks on an NVMe solid-state drive using DragonFlyBSD 5.6.0.

DragonFlyBSD 5.6 is now available as the latest major update to this popular BSD operating system.

FreeBSD 11.3 is lining up for release in July while this weekend the first release candidate is available for testing.

The first release candidate for the next major release of the DragonFlyBSD operating system is now available for testing.

After being an experimental option in DragonFlyBSD for more than the past half-decade, HAMMER2 is the new default file-system of this FreeBSD derivative.

Another weekend, another new FreeBSD test release is now available for evaluation.

NetBSD 8.1 is out today as the latest feature update to this popular BSD operating system.

FreeBSD had a very busy first quarter with a status report out today providing a look at to all of the ongoing development activities for this leading BSD platform.

The second weekly beta of FreeBSD 11.3 is now available for testing.

DragonFlyBSD lead developer Matthew Dillon has been reworking the virtual memory (VM) infrastructure within their kernel and it's leading to measurable performance improvements.

While FreeBSD 12 is the latest and greatest stable series since the end of last year, for those still on FreeBSD 11 there is the 11.3 update due out for release in July while this weekend the first beta was issued.

DragonFlyBSD 5.4.3 was released on Monday with just a hand full of changes over last month's 5.4.2 point release.

The first and only anticipated release candidate for NetBSD 8.1 is now available for testing.

In addition to DragonFlyBSD seeing MDS "Zombie Load" mitigations this week, the DragonFlyBSD kernel now has better Spectre Variant Two coverage with making use of the GCC compiler support.

When Spectre and Meltdown came to light, there was some frustrations in the BSD community that it took time for them to be briefed and ultimately handling the mitigations for these CPU security vulnerabilities. Fortunately, with the new Microarchitectural Data Sampling (MDS, also dubbed "Zombieload") vulnerabilities, the key BSDs have seen punctual patches.

The Radeon (and Intel) graphics driver support on DragonFlyBSD has improved a lot compared to where it was at many years ago, but it remains a perpetual catch-up game with the porting of this driver code from Linux to their BSD kernel.

The developers at iX Systems continue to be on a roll this spring. Just days after announcing their new FreeBSD images built with "ZFS On Linux" for testing as the new FreeBSD ZFS implementation, this weekend they announced their new FreeBSD "pkgbase" images are now available for testing.

If you are interested in FreeBSD at all, their core team of developers is hoping you will take a few minutes and participate in their survey.

OpenBSD 6.5 was released today, about one week ahead of schedule for this security-minded BSD operating system. OpenBSD 6.5 is bringing several prominent new features including RETGUARD as its new stack protector and OpenRSYNC as its ISC-licensed in-progress replacement to rsync.

Over the past decade there's been talks on a few occasions about either spinning NetBSD as a desktop platform or offering up various desktop usability improvements to make it easier to use this BSD as a desktop operating system. In 2019 there still isn't a great desktop experience to NetBSD but the new "OS108" is seeking to improve that with a NetBSD OS paired with the MATE desktop environment.

While awaiting DragonFlyBSD 5.6 as the BSD operating system's next feature release, DragonFlyBSD 5.4.2 has been released as the newest stable point release.

Last year FreeBSD developers decided to re-base their ZFS file-system code based on the "ZFS On Linux" port rather than the Illumos source tree where they originally had been acquiring the support for this BSD. There's now FreeBSD 12 and FreeBSD 13/Head images available for testing of this re-worked ZFS file-system support.

Theo de Raadt and the OpenBSD developers maintaining OpenSSH today unveiled OpenSSH 8.0.

With TrueOS (formerly PC-BSD) shifting away from its desktop FreeBSD focus, the GhostBSD project remains one of the nice "desktop BSD" operating system offerings. GhostBSD 19.04 is now available in MATE and Xfce desktop spins.

DragonFlyBSD lead developer Matthew Dillon who also created the HAMMER family of file-systems remains quite busy on filling out the remaining features for HAMMER2 and tuning its performance.

Not to be confused with NVMe or any other memory/storage tech, NetBSD's NVMM is a new hypervisor that has been in-development the past half-year for Intel/AMD x86-64 processors and will premiere with the NetBSD 9.0 release.

Tomohiro Kusumi has contributed an initial FUSE implementation to DragonFlyBSD for implementing file-systems in user-space support.

Besides the ZFS file-system just being a heck of a lot better all-around than FreeBSD's traditional UFS, tooling around ZFS paired with its native snapshot capabilities is allowing for more resilient installations and upgrades of FreeBSD.