5 ms·

Out of the BSDs, I would say DragonFly is the most innovative. Its implementation of virtual kernels, HammerFS, thread scheduling via message passing and it has

Out of the BSDs, I would say DragonFly is the most innovative. Its implementation of virtual kernels, HammerFS, thread scheduling via message passing and it has been rock solid as an NFS file server, serving all my local media to other *nix nodes on my LAN. Wikipedia gives a great rundown on the innovations and why Matt decided to fork. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonFly_BSD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonFly_BSD

duaneb 12y ago
I would almost term it as a permanent research platform for FreeBSD. Never would I recommend someone run it in production, but if I'm looking for cutting-edge parallel OS techniques, Dragonfly is definitely on the short list. Come to think of it, it might be the only one on my short list—OS innovations seems to be driven by virtualization, container, filesystem, and network concerns more than anything these days.
- joshbaptiste 12y ago
  Indeed.. although they are aiming for a production quality platform with the upcoming release of the HAMMER2 filesystem.
- copx 12y ago
  >I would almost term it as a permanent research platform for FreeBSD DragonFly BSD was forked from FreeBSD because of fundamental design disagreements between Matthew Dillon and the rest of the FreeBSD developers. Thus I doubt that the characterization as "research platform for FreeBSD" fits. You might as well say OpenBSD is a research platform for NetBSD.
  - duaneb 12y ago
    Well, OpenBSD has goals beyond "trying out new shit" on NetBSD... That's not entirely clear with DragonflyBSD.
  - gonzo 12y ago
    DragonFly actually adopts a lot of tech from freebsd.
    - krylon 12y ago
      As far as I know, all of the BSDs have adopted code from each other over time. It might simply be a side of effect of the common heritage and license, but it seems to be one that none of the people involved have a problem with and often consider desirable. But that does not make Dragonfly a "research platform" for FreeBSD. Both systems have different priorities and goals. (Although I wonder if any of the things that Dragonfly set out to do differently has been adopted back into FreeBSD?)
- wolfy 12y ago
  What's wrong about running DragonFly BSD in production ? It has been rock solid for years for my uses -- mostly smtp+imap servers. Don't forget it was originally FreeBSD 4, one of the most stable Unix-like operating systems of its time.
  - rsync 12y ago
    ... and FreeBSD 4 was the most stable, polished and mature release of FreeBSD, ever.
    - josh64 12y ago
      Agreed - I loved 4.11! Though I have been really happy with 10.x so far.
    - _paulc 12y ago
      What about 2.2.8 ?
- ivoras 12y ago
  Unfortunately, little if any of the development is ported in the direction Dragonfly -> FreeBSD. The last time somebody tried porting HAMMERFS it was discovered that the systems are already divergent enough that it would be a huge job because to stay true to form, other Dragonfly's systems upon which HAMMERFS is built would also need to be ported, and as such systems include such basic stuff as the threading model, the effort was abandoned.

duaneb 12y ago

I would almost term it as a permanent research platform for FreeBSD. Never would I recommend someone run it in production, but if I'm looking for cutting-edge parallel OS techniques, Dragonfly is definitely on the short list. Come to think of it, it might be the only one on my short list—OS innovations seems to be driven by virtualization, container, filesystem, and network concerns more than anything these days.

joshbaptiste 12y ago
Indeed.. although they are aiming for a production quality platform with the upcoming release of the HAMMER2 filesystem.
copx 12y ago
>I would almost term it as a permanent research platform for FreeBSD DragonFly BSD was forked from FreeBSD because of fundamental design disagreements between Matthew Dillon and the rest of the FreeBSD developers. Thus I doubt that the characterization as "research platform for FreeBSD" fits. You might as well say OpenBSD is a research platform for NetBSD.
- duaneb 12y ago
  Well, OpenBSD has goals beyond "trying out new shit" on NetBSD... That's not entirely clear with DragonflyBSD.
- gonzo 12y ago
  DragonFly actually adopts a lot of tech from freebsd.
  - krylon 12y ago
    As far as I know, all of the BSDs have adopted code from each other over time. It might simply be a side of effect of the common heritage and license, but it seems to be one that none of the people involved have a problem with and often consider desirable. But that does not make Dragonfly a "research platform" for FreeBSD. Both systems have different priorities and goals. (Although I wonder if any of the things that Dragonfly set out to do differently has been adopted back into FreeBSD?)
wolfy 12y ago
What's wrong about running DragonFly BSD in production ? It has been rock solid for years for my uses -- mostly smtp+imap servers. Don't forget it was originally FreeBSD 4, one of the most stable Unix-like operating systems of its time.
- rsync 12y ago
  ... and FreeBSD 4 was the most stable, polished and mature release of FreeBSD, ever.
  - josh64 12y ago
    Agreed - I loved 4.11! Though I have been really happy with 10.x so far.
  - _paulc 12y ago
    What about 2.2.8 ?
ivoras 12y ago
Unfortunately, little if any of the development is ported in the direction Dragonfly -> FreeBSD. The last time somebody tried porting HAMMERFS it was discovered that the systems are already divergent enough that it would be a huge job because to stay true to form, other Dragonfly's systems upon which HAMMERFS is built would also need to be ported, and as such systems include such basic stuff as the threading model, the effort was abandoned.