

DragonFly BSD 4.0 released - fcambus
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/release40

======
joshbaptiste
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
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.

~~~
copx
>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.

~~~
gonzo
DragonFly actually adopts a lot of tech from freebsd.

~~~
krylon
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?)

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fcambus
Also worth mentioning, BSDTalk has an interview with Matthew Dillon about the
4.0 release of DragonFly BSD :
[http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2014/11/bsdtalk248-dragonflybsd-...](http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2014/11/bsdtalk248-dragonflybsd-
with-matthew.html)

~~~
hestefisk
Just listened to this BSD Talk episode yesterday. Matt is doing some extremely
interesting work, not only on the kernel and file system research side, but
also in terms of their completely customised networking stack, which utilises
multi-core non-blocking networking I/O to achieve really high speeds. I would
like to see some of that incorporated back into the FreeBSD kernel (not sure
if it has been done, but I doubt it).

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ash
"The drm/i915 driver is now mostly based on the Linux 3.8.13 implementation
and is no longer similar to the FreeBSD driver. Many Linux APIs and data
structures have been implemented in the DragonFly kernel in order to reuse as
many parts as possible of the Linux drm/i915 code without modifications."

I was wondering how did they deal with licensing issue. I thought Linux
drivers are all under GPL. And DragonFly is (obviously) under BSD. Then I've
noticed gpu/drm/i915 has a permissive (MIT?) license. E.g.:

[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/gpu/dr...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/drivers/gpu/drm/i915/i915_drv.c)

Is it true for everything else under gpu/drm directory? What license does DRM
have?

~~~
glass-
> I thought Linux drivers are all under GPL.

Nope, in fact some of Linux's drivers are licensed with the old-style BSD
license with the advertising clause:
[https://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?q=%22advertising+ma...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/search?q=%22advertising+materials%22&type=Code)

------
tiffanyh
I'd love to see these 2.5 year old performance benchmarks re-ran.

[http://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/](http://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/)

Does anyone know where I can gain the benchmark config/setup so that I can re-
run myself?

~~~
ftigeot
I ran the Postgres benchmarks again in March of this year and DragonFly was
the fastest of all the operating system I tested.

Look at page 20 of these PGCon slides:
[https://www.pgcon.org/2014/schedule/events/754.en.html](https://www.pgcon.org/2014/schedule/events/754.en.html)

I also published the methodology along with results in the pdf files I
originally posted to the DragonFly mailing-lists. Direct link to one of these:
[http://dl.wolfpond.org/benchs/Pg-
benchmarks.2012-10.pdf](http://dl.wolfpond.org/benchs/Pg-
benchmarks.2012-10.pdf)

~~~
tiffanyh
Is there any reason why the DBSD website isn't updated with your data?

Nice report btw

------
adventureloop
This is great news, the DragonFly project keeps doing really interesting
things. The interview linked elsewhere in the thread give a good overview of
how the project is doing. Matthew Dillon mentions in the interview that
DragonFly will be able to be much more than an experimental operating system.

------
datashovel
This project has intrigued me for a long time. I seriously believe it could
eventually become the premiere BSD-flavor OS. Although given all the low-level
changes they've made it may not be easy to "label" it BSD in the future.

~~~
estrabd
FreeBSD itself has diverged significantly from its own 4.x release, which is
where DFBSD forked. I would still call DragonFlyBSD a "BSD" now and in the
future since it still leverages a lot of work from FreeBSD (and other BSDs) to
this day. It would be stupid to not continue to leverage the upstream work.

~~~
datashovel
Agreed. I think it's a fantastic ecosystem, and they should all continue to
feed off one another. A great example was discussed in the interview. The
decision to integrate FreeBSD ports will almost certainly make it easier for
folks who are considering adopting / experimenting with it. (not a recent
decision, but an important one)

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justincormack
The first OS to drop 32 bit support, thus eg fixing the year 2038 problem the
easy way. Not sure if any others will though, at least not until arm64 is more
widespread.

~~~
currysausage
_> The first OS to drop 32 bit support_

The first? What about Windows Server 2008 R2? Or PC-BSD 9.2?

~~~
sspiff
I'm not sure PC-BSD qualifies as an OS unto itself.

Last time I checked, they were mostly a FreeBSD distribution with a bunch of
user friendly sugar coating on top (an easier package manager, default
installation includes a fully configured desktop environment, ...)

I don't mean that as a bad thing - I used PC-BSD for a while and it was great.
Not everyone needs to reinvent the wheel and reimplement drivers etc. But I
see it more as a distribution of an OS than an OS.

------
mhd
The graphics support sounds neat for (developer) workstation usage, hope it
gets at least a basic suspend/hibernate support soon to complete the picture.

------
tiffanyh
What single feature/change caused this to be a major release as opposed to a
minor release?

In reading the OP link, nothing in particular stood out to me.

(Please don't take offense to my statement. The changes are all great. I'm
just typically use to major releases to be when something foundational has
changed and I'm just not seeing that here)

~~~
ftigeot
Dropping i386 can be considered a big feature.

~~~
ams6110
Certainly qualifies as a "breaking" change that could justify a major version
bump.

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forkandwait
Does anyone know if DragonFly's code gets merged inro the FreeBSD codebase?

~~~
DanBC
> Despite this, the DragonFly BSD and FreeBSD projects still work together
> contributing bug fixes, driver updates, and other system improvements to
> each other.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonFly_BSD](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DragonFly_BSD)

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Nux
Wow, nice set of features. It's time I checked Dragonfly BSD again!

[http://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/](http://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/)

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jrobn
Apple has a lot invested in Darwin, but DragonFly BSD would be a nice
foundation for OS X.

~~~
feld
I'd take HAMMER over HFS+

~~~
sigzero
I'd take just about any new filesystem over HFS+.

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ams6110
Really nice to see DragonFly is still alive and progressing. I tend to like
OpenBSD but choices are good!

