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Unix Open Source Operating Systems

FreeBSD 13 Released (phoronix.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the latest-and-greatest dept.
"FreeBSD, the other Linux, reached version 13," writes long-time Slashdot reader undoman. "The operating system is known for its stable code, native ZFS support, and use of the more liberal BSD licenses." Phoronix highlights some of the major new improvements: FreeBSD 13.0 delivers on performance improvements (particularly for Intel CPUs we've seen in benchmarks thanks to hardware P-States), upgrading to LLVM Clang 11 as the default compiler toolchain, POWER 64-bit support improvements, a wide variety of networking improvements, 64-bit ARM (AArch64) now being a tier-one architecture alongside x86_64, EFI boot improvements, AES-NI is now included by default for generic kernel builds, the default CPU support for i386 is bumped to i686 from i486, and a variety of other hardware support improvements. Various obsolete GNU tools have been removed like an old version of GNU Debugger used for crashinfo, obsolete GCC 4.2.1 and Binutils 2.17 were dropped from the main tree, and also switching to a BSD version of grep. The release announcement can be found here.
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FreeBSD 13 Released More

FreeBSD 13 Released

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  • Who cares? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 15, 2021 @06:45PM (#61278758)
    It's still inferior to GNU Hurd, the best kernel ever designed.

    • Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Funny)

      by PolygamousRanchKid ( 1290638 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @07:50PM (#61278898)

      It's still inferior to GNU Hurd, the best kernel ever designed.

      Unfortunately, they only designed it . . . nobody ever bothered to actually implement it.

      • 2065 will be the year of GNU Hurd on the desktop of the 300 remaining desktop computers being used by those who chose to stay on Earth and take their chances during the Olsen twins presidency.

      • OP makes funny post, gets 3 Funny.
        You make reply post to actually explain the history behind the OP's post. With bolding. Get 4 Funny.
        I don't know what this place is anymore but it sure as hell isn't Slashdot. Perhaps it's Life, or TV Guide. Maybe Highlights.
  • Can't wait to see what they do in the next version using fbsd13

  • Power to Serve (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LondoMollari ( 172563 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @06:49PM (#61278774) Homepage

    I have been using FreeBSD since the mid 1990s and am still impressed that the project is running ahead full steam creating amazing new releases

  • The Other Linux?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by IMightB ( 533307 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @06:49PM (#61278776) Journal

    Thems Fightin Words!

    Congrats FreeBSD Live Long and Prosper!

  • Other Linux (Score:5, Insightful)

    by darkain ( 749283 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @06:50PM (#61278778) Homepage

    "FreeBSD, the other Linux" ??? The hell? FreeBSD has nothing to do with Linux. More like the other way around. FreeBSD has lineage pointing back to BSD, which is a direct derivative of AT&T UNIX. Linux was an independent clone of that system.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by xack ( 5304745 )
      The Unix/BSD/Linux family tree has become very entangled over 50 years, with borrowings, splits, forks and rewrites over the years. Most of the original Unixes have died off, with Linux and BSD descendents now dominating. It gets even more complicated when you had things Like Mach and Hurd.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      I know, right? undoman can turn in his geek card now.

    • Re:Other Linux (Score:5, Informative)

      by localgh0st ( 1588343 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @07:31PM (#61278848)

      I'm not even going to try to defend the offending statement but FreeBSD does have Linux binary compatibility. That doesn't make it Linux, obviously, but it's also not "nothing".

      "FreeBSD provides binary compatibility with Linux®, allowing users to install and run most Linux® binaries on a FreeBSD system without having to first modify the binary. It has even been reported that, in some situations, Linux® binaries perform better on FreeBSD than they do on Linux®." source: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/bo... [freebsd.org]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by darkain ( 749283 )

        Right, there is an optional ABI compatibility layer for Linux. There is ALSO an optional ABI compatibility layer for Windows binaries. That doesn't make it Windows either though.

    • I've been a FreeBSD user since about forever, but even then I was itching to post a satirical addition to the announcement about it now supporting the 80486, ATA/66, and DDR RAM. Then I noticed that "the default CPU support for i386 is bumped to i686 from i486" and realized there was no need to satirise it...

    • Neither is the other other.

      FreeBSD and Linux are fundamentally different in the area of licensing. Don't imagine that it's unimportant. Major contributors to Linux have outright said that they became such because of the GPL.

      They exist for different reasons.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hawk ( 1151 )

        That goes both ways.

        FreeBSD made *significant* effort to make sure that the entire base distribution was free, and not infected with GPL software.

        hawk

        • FreeBSD made *significant* effort to make sure that the entire base distribution was free, and not infected with GPL software.

          They didn't have to make an effort for that, since the software it was based on was already not GPL. And frankly it was a bad move, because Linux became more popular than FreeBSD specifically because of the license. Well, that and the community. The BSD community was far less helpful and far more elitist than the early Linux community. Ask a question and it's RTFM, noob! Well, look at how that turned out. Now FreeBSD is perpetually trailing Linux due to comparative lack of interested developers.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by hawk ( 1151 )

            >They didn't have to make an effort for that, since the software it was based on was already not GPL.

            Given that replacing gcc was part of that effort . . .

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guspaz ( 556486 )

      BSD replaced all AT&T code by 1991 to avoid requiring an AT&T license to use BSD, and FreeBSD did the same by 1994. Is replacing AT&T code with independent code really so different from starting out as an independent implementation in the first place?

      Regardless, there's so much cross-pollination at this point that it probably doesn't matter. It's all the same software that gets run on top, and even some core OS components like ZFS are shared. And I mean that literally, as FreeBSD now uses Linux'

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by darkain ( 749283 )

        One small piece of clarification: they didn't just "throw out" what was going on in other branches. OpenZFS was the goal from early on, but failed to gain traction, so feature flags were introduced to keep some level of compatibility between divergent branches. Many of those features that were developed outside of ZoL were then merged into ZoL, rather than just throw them out. The codebases were merged back into a single tree, which was a long-term goal of the project anyways.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Guspaz ( 556486 )

          I mean "threw out" in the sense that they decided that, rather than trying to port bits from the new ZoL-based OpenZFS to the FreeBSD port piecemeal, they decided to simply start over by porting the now Linux-based OpenZFS back to FreeBSD, as I understand it. Of course lots of the FreeBSD changes had already been merged into ZoL/OpenZFS.

  • Notably no (kernel mode) Wireguard (Score:5, Informative)

    by im_thatoneguy ( 819432 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @07:06PM (#61278816)

    Probably the most notable thing about FreeBSD 13 isn't what's in it but what isn't: kernel mode Wireguard. Netgate got swindled over some shoddy freelance work. Hopefully it'll make it into 14.

    https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by darkain ( 749283 )

      It will most likely be in 13.1, well before 14 comes out, so much sooner rather than later. And even before that, it is being developed outside of base, via the ports tree, so still possible to install and run the fixed up development code before it is mainlined.

    • Good that garbage doesn't belong in the kernel

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )
      When FreeBSD pulled their code, Netgate played the victim card. Not claiming to be a victim of shoddy freelance work, but a victim of FreeBSD remove their paid-for work. Netgate didn't distance themselves from the freelancer, they doubled down and claimed FreeBSD was being unreasonable "because" Netgate paid for that feature and FreeBSD was using technicalities.

      I've been using pfSense for years and have backed Netgate during that time. I was even believed them when I read their blog about how FreeBSD was

    • WOW. No wonder that Macy's crap code was rejected:

      wg_allowedip_valid(const struct wg_allowedip *wip)
      {
        return (true);
      }

      **FACEPALM**

    • I wouldn't say "swindled" is the best word for it. Sure, it was crap code but it was Netgate's decision to fully ram that crap code into their product despite it being shit. Not to mention completely ignoring the original dev of Wireguard when he reached out. Just another reason to go to OPNsense. After having used pfsense for the better part of a decade, glad I made the switch.

  • I run Mint at home and it does what I need, but I'm curious what advantages there might be to switching to FreeBSD.

    What might be some compelling reasons why someone would use or switch to FreeBSD from another Linux distro? Security, performance, stability...?

    • Re:Good reasons to switch? (Score:5, Informative)

      by ItsJustAPseudonym ( 1259172 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @07:36PM (#61278860)
      Freedom from systemd.

      Possibly better security, although if you want a more security-focused distro, maybe OpenBSD would be a choice.

    • Re:Good reasons to switch? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by darkain ( 749283 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @08:12PM (#61278942) Homepage

      My primary reasons:
      1) Native OpenZFS support, which I use extensively
      2) Jails: a more sane and secure containerization system that act more like manageable VMs rather than static deployables.
      3) dtrace is essentially "god mode" for debugging syscalls and applications.
      4) when needing to custom build 3rd party software (in my case, things like MariaDB), the ports tree build system is far simpler than anything else out there. I don't want to have to fuss with build environments, toolchains, or other crap that gets in the way. I just want to go in, do my job, and move on. FreeBSD allows this effortlessly compared to any other OS.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Guspaz ( 556486 )

        How is FreeBSD's ZFS support any more native than Linux's, when FreeBSD uses a port of ZFS-on-Linux? FreeBSD uses OpenZFS, which uses ZoL as its upstream. Both the FreeBSD and Linux implementation basically work the same way too, the OpenZFS core with an SPL (Solaris Porting Layer) to interface with the kernel.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by darkain ( 749283 )

          At this point, no, it isn't using ZoL. The ZoL codebase was changed into the primary OpenZFS codebase, with "ZoL" now containing the "linux" specific bits, just like "ZoF" containing the FreeBSD specific bits. What makes it "native" on FreeBSD is that it is included in-kernel, and is the default filesystem at install time. Everything in FreeBSD is built around the inclusion of ZFS now. The entire ecosystem of other system utilities are being built with the assumption that ZFS exists. This includes things li

    • Re:Good reasons to switch? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by reg ( 5428 ) <reg@freebsd.org> on Thursday April 15, 2021 @09:50PM (#61279108) Homepage

      The biggest thing with FreeBSD is the overarching design of the system is based on "the principle of least astonishment." When you do something, the system should respond in a way that generally avoids you saying "what the #$%#$!". That means that when you do an upgrade the names of the network ports don't suddenly change and you have to do digging through random wikis to find out that you've been changed from network manager to network tools or some nonsense and now "eth0" is "en3p2". I cannot tell you how many times I've done an os update on Ubuntu to find I cannot boot or cannot ssh into the machine after booting. And these are simple VMs where I just installed the system, some software, and run "apt upgrade"... With FreeBSD, the experience on 14 is still quite similar to 2.2...

      The stable versions are also not so stable that you get left way behind. FreeBSD is a full OS, not a kernel with libraries and tools. Everything should work together, and if it doesn't it's a bug. But most stuff is not in the base, only things needed to get up and running. Ports/packages are sometimes less nuanced than apt on Linux, but they get updated and all work together. That means you can have a stable base OS, but keep all the business end patched for security. The entire system is also well documented, so although blogs and google searches will turn up interesting ideas, most often the basics are in the Handbook.

      That said, FreeBSD does not have the hardware support of Linux. If you're running on server hardware or a workstation you'll be OK, but on desktops and laptops it is harder to get all the pieces working well, and battery life will be bad... X and graphics cards are also finicky. The place FreeBSD really shines as a headless storage server. If you're used to Linux, FreeBSD also has the habit of putting things in different places or using different tools, but one cannot be consistent over a long period of time and also follow the latest fad.

      • The biggest thing with FreeBSD is the overarching design of the system is based on "the principle of least astonishment." When you do something, the system should respond in a way that generally avoids you saying "what the #$%#$!". That means that when you do an upgrade the names of the network ports don't suddenly change and you have to do digging through random wikis to find out that you've been changed from network manager to network tools or some nonsense and now "eth0" is "en3p2".

        Like when Ubuntu decided the NT1 protocol should be disabled by default in Samba, despite it still being widely used. That really screwed up my home file server.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hawk ( 1151 )

          My favorite was when the maintainer of FVWM on Debian decided, in an incremental, standard, update, that the *only* reasonable way to handle windows was the stack of one at a time--and therefore overwrote the users .fvwmrc file without asking or keeping a backup . . .

          [eyeroll]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AReilly ( 9339 )

      My personal reasons for running it (note, this is different from an argument to switch from Linux):
      1) I've been running BSD since the mid-80s and haven't felt the need or desire to change. Works for me.
      2) Ports: everything on my system is built from source, and the ports framework makes that "just work". I like that I can debug and fix anything on my system.
      3) Simplicity: I still feel as though I can understand everything that is happening. There aren't too many system processes.
      4) ZFS
      5) The community ma

    • Re:Good reasons to switch? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RazorSharp ( 1418697 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @11:15PM (#61279258)

      I would not consider FreeBSD as an alternative to Mint, as Mint is primarily designed to be a desktop OS and that is where FreeBSD is the weakest. You CAN run it as a desktop OS, but the whole point of a distro like Mint is to make it easy on the user so you don't have to do stuff like compile your own kernel. If you're using random hardware for FreeBSD, that's probably something you'll have to do.

      If you're running a server, I wholly recommend FreeBSD. If you have a home NAS it's a stellar choice because it's nimble and ZFS is standard. Ditto if you have a VPS or a dedicated web server.

      I just recently switched over to FreeBSD with the whole CentOS debacle. It had started to feel weird using Linux for a server anyway since it seems like it's been receiving a lot of desktop-oriented bloat. Of course there are some svelte distros that excise the cruft, but I think FreeBSD is a neat distro and it's been around for a long time. For my server, I wanted stability and FreeBSD provides that. For the desktop, I still use Linux. I tried FreeBSD on desktop once and it was just too much unnecessary work. That's why distros like Mint exist.

      • I would not consider FreeBSD as an alternative....

        Thank You for expressing that. FreeBSD is not the best option for a desktop. And I want to ask forgiveness for saying this but..., I do wish that the FreeBSD dev community would stop pretending their commercial pitches for their products in public discussions are some sort of unbiased anonymous opinions. Informed structured opinion is a privilege but so is open discussion.

    • Freebsd is good as a non gui server. It has desktop environments, but not as user friendly as most linux distros to get going with
  • Calling freebsd the other linux is dishonor. It's more of a real unix than linux is and isn't compromised by systemd garbage
    • Artix, Void, Gentoo still exist as a non-systemd Linux.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by goulo ( 715031 )
        Devuan is another Linux without systemd. I've been using it for a couple years.
        • Problem with the non-systemd linuxes, as time goes on more tools and applications will probably just expect that systemd is there and stuff just won't work on them anymore.You'll pretty much have a whole different OS much like the bsds vs linux

  • They seem to have gotten that backwards, calling Linux "the other UNIX" would be more accurate, but even that ignores Minix.
    Why, when things reach mass general recognition, do similar but different things (even older things) become viewed as derivatives?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      >even that ignores Minix.

      "Linux: the Minx with a different arrogant egomaniac!"

      ???
       

  • I am a *BSD user
    and I try hard to be brave
    That is a tall order
    *BSD's foot is in the grave.
    I tap at my toy keyboard
    and whistle a happy tune
    but keeping happy's so hard,
    *BSD died so soon.
    Each day I wake and softly sob
    Nightfall finds me crying
    Not only am I a zit faced slob
    but *BSD is dying.
  • I used FreeBSD for many years (and contributed patches to core). Then, the core team decided to adopt a CoC that is extremely racist and sexist. Make a discriminatory comment towards some groups, and that conduct will be punished, including by revoking commit rights (as it should). Make discriminatory comments towards other groups (white; male; heterosexual), and probably nothing happens. Spelled out to work like that in the CoC. Many committers complained; many thought breaking financial transparency over

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