9 ms·

DragonFly BSD 4.6 Released

129 points by cgag 10y ago

leni536 10y ago
> The i915 driver has been updated to match the version found with the Linux 4.4 kernel. > The radeon driver has been updated to match Linux 3.18 ... Are they borrowing code from Linux? How do the licenses work out?
- akerro 10y ago
  >Everything at the GPUOpen portal will be open source and licensed under the highly permissive MIT license, allowing developers to not only see the code behind RTG’s tools and libraries, but to integrate that code into open and closed source projects as they see fit. http://www.anandtech.com/show/9853/amd-gpuopen-linux-open-source http://www.anandtech.com/show/9853/amd-gpuopen-linux-open-so...
- mioelnir 10y ago
  While the i915 driver nowadays lives in the Linux source tree, it is still released under a permissive license. Same goes for a lot of drm stuff. I'd assume similar for radeon.
- Freaky 10y ago
  Most of DRM is MIT licensed, including these two drivers.
  - rjsw 10y ago
    The drivers for desktop GPUs are MIT licenced, most of the others seem to be GPL.
jasonkostempski 10y ago
The only thing I currently use BSD for (specifically FreeBSD) is a local Minecraft server. It seems to run much better than vanilla Ubuntu. I hadn't heard of DragonFly before this but seeing as they boast about performance I wanted to give it a shot against FreeBSD. Unfortunately, my server is 32-bit and it looks like they just dropped support for it :/
- PeCaN 10y ago
  They dropped support for 32-bit hardware ages ago (3.8 was the last release with 32-bit support). That message is just in the release notes every time.
losvedir 10y ago
For some amusing context: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-July/006917.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul...
- akerro 10y ago
  Huh it looks like they took DragonFlyBSD as some kind of invasive fork. Well done DragonFlies :)
- PeCaN 10y ago
  Matt's reply to that is a great (& amusing) example of a well-reasoned reply to a very bizarre comment. https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-July/006939.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul...
giis 10y ago
I really like their HAMMER features like 'no fsck' and instant crash recovery. I hope to contribute this project :-) https://www.dragonflybsd.org/hammer/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/hammer/ EDIT: I think it would be nice to compare hammer & btrfs.Any kernel/file-system expert here has any idea/thoughts on the same?
atjamielittle 10y ago
This is a very interesting discussion of the pros and cons of HAMMER and ZFS: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/49789/ https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/49789/ I've been considering using DragonFlyBSD for a home NAS because of the seemingly smaller system requirements for HAMMER.
alberth 10y ago
Can someone smarter than me compare FreeBSD to DragonflyBSD given the fork has now been 11 years. How do the two compare based on features, stability and performance? DragonflyBSD network stack seems of particular interest given that it's lock less. And on overall OS performance, last benchmark I saw was very dated http://dl.wolfpond.org/benchs/Pg-benchmarks.2012-10.pdf http://dl.wolfpond.org/benchs/Pg-benchmarks.2012-10.pdf Curious to know how 4.x stacks up
PeCaN 10y ago
I run Postgres, MonetDB, Redis, and Disque on DragonFlyBSD for various hobby projects. It's been extremely stable, easy to administer¹, and fast². Two of my favorite things: 1. HAMMER, and the upcoming HAMMER2, are very nice filesystems. HAMMER isn't a CoW fs like ZFS and btrfs; HAMMER2 is however. Also, somehow HAMMER2 is more stable than btrfs despite having about 3 developers. 2. Like Solaris, DragonFly isn't afraid to deviate from and advance traditional *nix design. vkernels, lightweight threads, a super cool message-passing API, NT-esque architecture of a decoupled microkernel-ish design running in one address space, etc. It also has neat cluster features not unlike VMS and Plan9, but I haven't used them. -- ¹ I use FreeBSD as a desktop OS so my opinion here could be a bit skewed. But I think, like most BSDs, it's a very well-thought-out system. ² Disque³ on my DragonFly VPS is a bit faster than on my similar Arch Linux VPS; otherwise my workloads are too small to make a good comparison. ³ https://github.com/antirez/disque https://github.com/antirez/disque
- anexprogrammer 10y ago
  > despite having about 3 developers If one of those developers is Matt Dillon low numbers are rarely a hinderance. He turns out an awful lot of superb quality code, ever since the days of DICE on the Amiga. That ended up generating faster code than either of the "professional" offerings, including Lattice. Lattice C on MSDOS later became the first two versions of Microsoft C. One of the people I respect most in this industry.
  - PeCaN 10y ago
    Yeah, Matt Dillon is up there with John Carmack for me in terms of programming masters. He pumps out a lot of high-quality code.
    - olavgg 10y ago
      I think the same about Poul Henning Kamp. I feel I read his name in every module in FreeBSD. Jails, GEOM and so on. And Varnish is a fantastic well though product from him. The architectural difference of how data is stored between Redis and Varnish is very interesting to read about. And I think it tells us why that Redis performs better on Linux and Varnish performs better on FreeBSD.
cgag 10y ago
I'd like to note that this release contains some virtio driver fixes that mean you should be able to run DragonflyBSD safely on a VPS that allows you to upload custom ISOs (vultr seems to be the most popular). Previously there would be rare hard lock ups, but that should be fixed now.
butt 10y ago
Im gay
- mmel 10y ago
  I'm quite excited for this release, too.
- dang 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12221466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12221466 and marked it off-topic.
jxy 10y ago
There is a note on "SMP Performance", is anyone here knows about whether and how *BSD's support the 72-core/64-core Intel Knights Landing chip? I couldn't find any relevant information via google. PS. I asked this question in an earlier post, but since this one is more popular, allow me to ask again. PPS. Google gives me mentions of Linux and Windows server support, but nothing BSD.
- brainbomb 10y ago
  I don't know about "72-core/64-core" but I found older references to 24 and 48-core: http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=2778 http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=2778 http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=2725 http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=2725

129 points by cgag 10y ago

> The i915 driver has been updated to match the version found with the Linux 4.4 kernel. > The radeon driver has been updated to match Linux 3.18 ... Are they borrowing code from Linux? How do the licenses work out?

akerro 10y ago
>Everything at the GPUOpen portal will be open source and licensed under the highly permissive MIT license, allowing developers to not only see the code behind RTG’s tools and libraries, but to integrate that code into open and closed source projects as they see fit. http://www.anandtech.com/show/9853/amd-gpuopen-linux-open-source http://www.anandtech.com/show/9853/amd-gpuopen-linux-open-so...
mioelnir 10y ago
While the i915 driver nowadays lives in the Linux source tree, it is still released under a permissive license. Same goes for a lot of drm stuff. I'd assume similar for radeon.
Freaky 10y ago
Most of DRM is MIT licensed, including these two drivers.
- rjsw 10y ago
  The drivers for desktop GPUs are MIT licenced, most of the others seem to be GPL.

jasonkostempski 10y ago

The only thing I currently use BSD for (specifically FreeBSD) is a local Minecraft server. It seems to run much better than vanilla Ubuntu. I hadn't heard of DragonFly before this but seeing as they boast about performance I wanted to give it a shot against FreeBSD. Unfortunately, my server is 32-bit and it looks like they just dropped support for it :/

PeCaN 10y ago
They dropped support for 32-bit hardware ages ago (3.8 was the last release with 32-bit support). That message is just in the release notes every time.

losvedir 10y ago

For some amusing context: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-July/006917.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul...

akerro 10y ago
Huh it looks like they took DragonFlyBSD as some kind of invasive fork. Well done DragonFlies :)
PeCaN 10y ago
Matt's reply to that is a great (& amusing) example of a well-reasoned reply to a very bizarre comment. https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-July/006939.html https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2003-Jul...

giis 10y ago

I really like their HAMMER features like 'no fsck' and instant crash recovery. I hope to contribute this project :-) https://www.dragonflybsd.org/hammer/ https://www.dragonflybsd.org/hammer/ EDIT: I think it would be nice to compare hammer & btrfs.Any kernel/file-system expert here has any idea/thoughts on the same?

atjamielittle 10y ago

This is a very interesting discussion of the pros and cons of HAMMER and ZFS: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/49789/ https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/49789/ I've been considering using DragonFlyBSD for a home NAS because of the seemingly smaller system requirements for HAMMER.

alberth 10y ago

Can someone smarter than me compare FreeBSD to DragonflyBSD given the fork has now been 11 years. How do the two compare based on features, stability and performance? DragonflyBSD network stack seems of particular interest given that it's lock less. And on overall OS performance, last benchmark I saw was very dated http://dl.wolfpond.org/benchs/Pg-benchmarks.2012-10.pdf http://dl.wolfpond.org/benchs/Pg-benchmarks.2012-10.pdf Curious to know how 4.x stacks up

PeCaN 10y ago

I run Postgres, MonetDB, Redis, and Disque on DragonFlyBSD for various hobby projects. It's been extremely stable, easy to administer¹, and fast². Two of my favorite things: 1. HAMMER, and the upcoming HAMMER2, are very nice filesystems. HAMMER isn't a CoW fs like ZFS and btrfs; HAMMER2 is however. Also, somehow HAMMER2 is more stable than btrfs despite having about 3 developers. 2. Like Solaris, DragonFly isn't afraid to deviate from and advance traditional *nix design. vkernels, lightweight threads, a super cool message-passing API, NT-esque architecture of a decoupled microkernel-ish design running in one address space, etc. It also has neat cluster features not unlike VMS and Plan9, but I haven't used them. -- ¹ I use FreeBSD as a desktop OS so my opinion here could be a bit skewed. But I think, like most BSDs, it's a very well-thought-out system. ² Disque³ on my DragonFly VPS is a bit faster than on my similar Arch Linux VPS; otherwise my workloads are too small to make a good comparison. ³ https://github.com/antirez/disque https://github.com/antirez/disque

anexprogrammer 10y ago
> despite having about 3 developers If one of those developers is Matt Dillon low numbers are rarely a hinderance. He turns out an awful lot of superb quality code, ever since the days of DICE on the Amiga. That ended up generating faster code than either of the "professional" offerings, including Lattice. Lattice C on MSDOS later became the first two versions of Microsoft C. One of the people I respect most in this industry.
- PeCaN 10y ago
  Yeah, Matt Dillon is up there with John Carmack for me in terms of programming masters. He pumps out a lot of high-quality code.
  - olavgg 10y ago
    I think the same about Poul Henning Kamp. I feel I read his name in every module in FreeBSD. Jails, GEOM and so on. And Varnish is a fantastic well though product from him. The architectural difference of how data is stored between Redis and Varnish is very interesting to read about. And I think it tells us why that Redis performs better on Linux and Varnish performs better on FreeBSD.

cgag 10y ago

I'd like to note that this release contains some virtio driver fixes that mean you should be able to run DragonflyBSD safely on a VPS that allows you to upload custom ISOs (vultr seems to be the most popular). Previously there would be rare hard lock ups, but that should be fixed now.

butt 10y ago

Im gay

mmel 10y ago
I'm quite excited for this release, too.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12221466 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12221466 and marked it off-topic.

jxy 10y ago

There is a note on "SMP Performance", is anyone here knows about whether and how *BSD's support the 72-core/64-core Intel Knights Landing chip? I couldn't find any relevant information via google. PS. I asked this question in an earlier post, but since this one is more popular, allow me to ask again. PPS. Google gives me mentions of Linux and Windows server support, but nothing BSD.

brainbomb 10y ago
I don't know about "72-core/64-core" but I found older references to 24 and 48-core: http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=2778 http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=2778 http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=2725 http://dmesgd.nycbug.org/index.cgi?do=view&id=2725