5 ms·

I don't know, in the 4.x days I worked for a company that built and deployed very stable commercial grade products on the 4.x release. And having used FreeBSD

I don't know, in the 4.x days I worked for a company that built and deployed very stable commercial grade products on the 4.x release. And having used FreeBSD for nearly 18 years now, there have certainly been hiccups, but for the uses I have had 9 and 10 were perfectly usable.

rsync 9y ago
"I don't know, in the 4.x days I worked for a company that built and deployed very stable commercial grade products on the 4.x release." It is very appropriate that you remember the 4.x days like that since that is the last time there was a long term, stable target for FreeBSD development (and investment). Remember, the 4 branch went to 4.11. It is 4.x that I identified in my original mailing list post (2012) as the time, after which, I thought FreeBSD began having problems with focus and longevity.
- rhizome 9y ago
  Funnily enough, 4.x is when jkh went to Apple.
petre 9y ago
I've never had a single kernel panic on FreeBSD and I'm using it since the 4.0 release.
- Roxxik 9y ago
  had a kernel panic once, i think it was some 9.x, when unplugging a mounted usb stick (oops)
  - cperciva 9y ago
    Maybe 7.x? Until 7.2-RELEASE removal of active disk devices was a very reliable panic.
- cperciva 9y ago
  I can't remember if I've ever had a FreeBSD release panic on a server, but I've seen plenty over the years on laptops. The largest source of panics is drivers, and there's far more diversity (and less testing) in the mobile space than in the server space.
- napsterbr 9y ago
  Consider yourself lucky you don't have to deal with radeon drivers! This week alone, I had two different kernel panics, one on my notebook and another on my desktop, both of which use radeon (different gpu models), and in both cases radeon was the culprit. For the record, I think we all agree that this kind of panic is not FreeBSD's fault. Linux support for this kind of driver is more stable and advanced, but, even though I use FreeBSD both for production and personal use, its "expected" case is production server.
  - petre 9y ago
    Isn't the radeon driver proprietary?
  - floatboth 9y ago
    Have you tried drm-next? https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics It's an update of the graphics stack to match modern Linux. Apparently amdgpu leaks memory, but radeonkms might work fine.
  - lmm 9y ago
    AMD/ATI graphics drivers have always been terrible. Never seen a problem with NVidia or Intel.
- JdeBP 9y ago
  I have kernel panics on 10.3 on a regular basis, varying from several times per day to a couple of times per week according to workload. There's something inside wait6 and kevent that causes a thread to sleep whilst holding a non-sleepable lock. I hit it more than most I suspect because on my systems a lot of processes are blocked in kqread, whereas with the stock toolset one sees few processes using kevent. I brought the subject up last year on freebsd-hackers, but nothing came of it. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13622945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13622945

rsync 9y ago

"I don't know, in the 4.x days I worked for a company that built and deployed very stable commercial grade products on the 4.x release." It is very appropriate that you remember the 4.x days like that since that is the last time there was a long term, stable target for FreeBSD development (and investment). Remember, the 4 branch went to 4.11. It is 4.x that I identified in my original mailing list post (2012) as the time, after which, I thought FreeBSD began having problems with focus and longevity.

rhizome 9y ago
Funnily enough, 4.x is when jkh went to Apple.

petre 9y ago

I've never had a single kernel panic on FreeBSD and I'm using it since the 4.0 release.

Roxxik 9y ago
had a kernel panic once, i think it was some 9.x, when unplugging a mounted usb stick (oops)
- cperciva 9y ago
  Maybe 7.x? Until 7.2-RELEASE removal of active disk devices was a very reliable panic.
cperciva 9y ago
I can't remember if I've ever had a FreeBSD release panic on a server, but I've seen plenty over the years on laptops. The largest source of panics is drivers, and there's far more diversity (and less testing) in the mobile space than in the server space.
napsterbr 9y ago
Consider yourself lucky you don't have to deal with radeon drivers! This week alone, I had two different kernel panics, one on my notebook and another on my desktop, both of which use radeon (different gpu models), and in both cases radeon was the culprit. For the record, I think we all agree that this kind of panic is not FreeBSD's fault. Linux support for this kind of driver is more stable and advanced, but, even though I use FreeBSD both for production and personal use, its "expected" case is production server.
- petre 9y ago
  Isn't the radeon driver proprietary?
- floatboth 9y ago
  Have you tried drm-next? https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics https://github.com/FreeBSDDesktop/freebsd-base-graphics It's an update of the graphics stack to match modern Linux. Apparently amdgpu leaks memory, but radeonkms might work fine.
- lmm 9y ago
  AMD/ATI graphics drivers have always been terrible. Never seen a problem with NVidia or Intel.
JdeBP 9y ago
I have kernel panics on 10.3 on a regular basis, varying from several times per day to a couple of times per week according to workload. There's something inside wait6 and kevent that causes a thread to sleep whilst holding a non-sleepable lock. I hit it more than most I suspect because on my systems a lot of processes are blocked in kqread, whereas with the stock toolset one sees few processes using kevent. I brought the subject up last year on freebsd-hackers, but nothing came of it. * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13622945 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13622945