
DragonFly BSD 4.6 Released - cgag
https://www.dragonflybsd.org/release46/
======
PeCaN
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)

~~~
rodgerd
> NT-esque architecture of a decoupled microkernel-ish design running in one
> address space

Given Mr Dillon's background I'd have called it Amiga-ish, but perhaps that's
just nme.

~~~
PeCaN
I'm more familiar with NT's internals than Amiga's, but I'm sure Amiga is what
influenced the design.

Though Amiga was more of a true microkernel but without memory protection; NT
and DragonFly have memory protection but the kernel is a single executable
composed of multiple message-passing modules.

------
alberth
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

------
losvedir
For some amusing context: [https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
current/2003-Jul...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
current/2003-July/006917.html)

~~~
PeCaN
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-Jul...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
current/2003-July/006939.html)

------
giis
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?

------
jasonkostempski
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
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.

------
atjamielittle
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.

------
cgag
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.

------
leni536
> 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?

~~~
Freaky
Most of DRM is MIT licensed, including these two drivers.

~~~
rjsw
The drivers for desktop GPUs are MIT licenced, most of the others seem to be
GPL.

------
jxy
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
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)

