4 ms·

I think the highlights don't mention the release's best bits. The full release notes are way larger and it really depends on what you do, what you might conside

by tete 10y ago

I think the highlights don't mention the release's best bits. The full release notes are way larger and it really depends on what you do, what you might consider the most interesting part. Also I am happy to see a bunch of "Sponsored by..." Netflix, Yandex, NGINX Inc, Netgate, Citrix, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Dell, Multiplay, ScaleEngine, etc. in there. https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/relnotes.html https://www.freebsd.org/releases/11.0R/relnotes.html

cperciva 10y ago
I think the highlights don't mention the release's best bits. It's always challenging to put together those highlights... different people consider different things important, and the release engineer has to guess what the largest number of people will care about. (And sometimes things don't end up in the release notes at all because developers forget to flag their commits with "Relnotes: yes", but we're getting better at that.)
kev009 10y ago
As a full time developer, you are correct that the relnotes don't capture all the great stuff. It is difficult to keep track of all that is going on. The only way I know how is to continuously read the commit logs. But distilling that down into a useful document for end users is quite hard, especially retroactively. I will say that the release has non-trivial improvements in TCP performance (Mike Karels, Matt Macy, Netflix crew). VNET jails also should be safe to tear down, and SysV SHM can be jailed/virtualized which should be interesting to many users.
- voltagex_ 10y ago
  >I will say that the release has non-trivial improvements in TCP performance For your average home / small business user? Or do you need to be at Netflix scale to see the benefits? (that's not a bad thing).
  - kev009 10y ago
    It matters most for people doing 10-100gbps throughput, CPU usage will be lower and more stable in all cases though. There has been a lot of improvement to many network card drivers in 11, and I am helping to push/fund the final integration of Matt Macy's "iflib" for the common intel em/igb/ixgbe drivers. There are a lot of goodput improvements coming soon, which will affect all TCP users. I had Matt Macy upgrade TCP CUBIC to match 2016 RFC and most Linux behaviors (HyStart). Hiren Panchasara has been working full time for almost 2 years to address many other goodput and correctness issues in the TCP stack. Some of these are in 11, but the majority will hit in 11.1. Another company is working on the recently announced BBR congestion control from Google and a TCP stack with RACK/PRR https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/201606/Transport https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/201606/Transport. The end result of all this will be a more tightly integrated and coherent TCP implementation, which should make FreeBSD have the best network stack again in 2017 after falling behind for a while.
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      Heh, I'll have to try moving back to CUBIC then. I've had lots of problems with throughput to sites with latency >= 300ms, since FreeBSD 9.
    - gonzo 10y ago
      We did a lot of work on IPsec as well.
- wtallis 10y ago
  Also on the networking front, FreeBSD now has modern AQMs like CoDel and FQ-CoDel. This means it can now compete against Linux for use in a (wired-only) home router.
- dijit 10y ago
  >SysV SHM can be jailed/virtualized which should be interesting to many users. You mean I can run multiple postgresql jails on a machine? YASSS
  - inferiorhuman 10y ago
    IIRC you've been able to do that already, but you need to ensure that the postgres users have different UIDs.
    - empthought 10y ago
      The SysV IPC functionality wasn't sufficiently isolated in jails before; you could enable it, but it would defeat the purpose of a jail as a security and isolation mechanism.
- 4ad 10y ago
  > VNET jails also should be safe to tear down Unfortunately, VNET is still off by default, no?
  - crest 10y ago
    The important word is should. VNET is still an experimental feature.
Esau 10y ago
Reading the release notes indicates they are still working on their EFI/uEFI support. I've also noticed a lot of other free OSes that seem to be struggling with it. Is EFI really that complicated? I also ask because it doesn't seem to me that EFI hasn't really made the PC better for anyone other than Microsoft and Apple.
- loeg 10y ago
  UEFI boot just works, for the most part. 11.0 doesn't have support for EFI runtime services, but a lot of that has been added to CURRENT (which will become 12.0 and maybe make it into 11.1 via backport) very recently.

by tete 10y ago

cperciva 10y ago

I think the highlights don't mention the release's best bits. It's always challenging to put together those highlights... different people consider different things important, and the release engineer has to guess what the largest number of people will care about. (And sometimes things don't end up in the release notes at all because developers forget to flag their commits with "Relnotes: yes", but we're getting better at that.)

kev009 10y ago

As a full time developer, you are correct that the relnotes don't capture all the great stuff. It is difficult to keep track of all that is going on. The only way I know how is to continuously read the commit logs. But distilling that down into a useful document for end users is quite hard, especially retroactively. I will say that the release has non-trivial improvements in TCP performance (Mike Karels, Matt Macy, Netflix crew). VNET jails also should be safe to tear down, and SysV SHM can be jailed/virtualized which should be interesting to many users.

voltagex_ 10y ago
>I will say that the release has non-trivial improvements in TCP performance For your average home / small business user? Or do you need to be at Netflix scale to see the benefits? (that's not a bad thing).
- kev009 10y ago
  It matters most for people doing 10-100gbps throughput, CPU usage will be lower and more stable in all cases though. There has been a lot of improvement to many network card drivers in 11, and I am helping to push/fund the final integration of Matt Macy's "iflib" for the common intel em/igb/ixgbe drivers. There are a lot of goodput improvements coming soon, which will affect all TCP users. I had Matt Macy upgrade TCP CUBIC to match 2016 RFC and most Linux behaviors (HyStart). Hiren Panchasara has been working full time for almost 2 years to address many other goodput and correctness issues in the TCP stack. Some of these are in 11, but the majority will hit in 11.1. Another company is working on the recently announced BBR congestion control from Google and a TCP stack with RACK/PRR https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/201606/Transport https://wiki.freebsd.org/DevSummit/201606/Transport. The end result of all this will be a more tightly integrated and coherent TCP implementation, which should make FreeBSD have the best network stack again in 2017 after falling behind for a while.
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    Heh, I'll have to try moving back to CUBIC then. I've had lots of problems with throughput to sites with latency >= 300ms, since FreeBSD 9.
  - gonzo 10y ago
    We did a lot of work on IPsec as well.
wtallis 10y ago
Also on the networking front, FreeBSD now has modern AQMs like CoDel and FQ-CoDel. This means it can now compete against Linux for use in a (wired-only) home router.
dijit 10y ago
>SysV SHM can be jailed/virtualized which should be interesting to many users. You mean I can run multiple postgresql jails on a machine? YASSS
- inferiorhuman 10y ago
  IIRC you've been able to do that already, but you need to ensure that the postgres users have different UIDs.
  - empthought 10y ago
    The SysV IPC functionality wasn't sufficiently isolated in jails before; you could enable it, but it would defeat the purpose of a jail as a security and isolation mechanism.
4ad 10y ago
> VNET jails also should be safe to tear down Unfortunately, VNET is still off by default, no?
- crest 10y ago
  The important word is should. VNET is still an experimental feature.

Esau 10y ago

Reading the release notes indicates they are still working on their EFI/uEFI support. I've also noticed a lot of other free OSes that seem to be struggling with it. Is EFI really that complicated? I also ask because it doesn't seem to me that EFI hasn't really made the PC better for anyone other than Microsoft and Apple.

loeg 10y ago
UEFI boot just works, for the most part. 11.0 doesn't have support for EFI runtime services, but a lot of that has been added to CURRENT (which will become 12.0 and maybe make it into 11.1 via backport) very recently.