
FreeBSD 12.1 - SpaceInvader
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.1R/relnotes.html
======
cperciva
This release is dedicated to the memory of Kurt Lidl, a long time BSD
developer, who died on October 10th from metastatic kidney cancer:
[https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/in-memory-of-kurt-
lid...](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/blog/in-memory-of-kurt-lidl/)

~~~
rootbear
I was sad to see that in the release notes, I had not heard. I remember Kurt
from the Old Days, when I went to some open houses at UUNET and attended
Usenix conferences.

~~~
cperciva
It was very sudden -- it seems like it was just a few weeks from "Kurt has
cancer" to "Kurt is in a hospice" to "Kurt died". :-/

------
thijsvandien
FreeBSD is amazing, and a major reason for that is how well it is managed. I
would find it very hard to name three other open-source projects of comparable
size that are so well-organized and have consistently delivered for this long.
Here's a warm shoutout to the FreeBSD Foundation, as well as your reminder to
donate:
[https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/)

------
sebiw
Been running Linux servers for years. FreeBSD is what gave me back the passion
to run servers.

It's such a well structured operating system. The documentation is just great
and Jails are a really nice way to get lightly isolated environments to run
different web services.

Thanks to all the people who make FreeBSD possible!

~~~
cpach
I hear you. TBH, most popular Linux distros feels very bloated nowadays. The
other day I created a VM and there I installed FreeBSD for the first time. The
process was really quick. It felt like a breath of fresh air. Much much
simpler than what I had imagined. Everything felt very logical. I have thought
about this before but since I already knew Linux I was hesitant to take the
time to learn another Unix-like OS. But now I feel that I want to carve out
some more free time to get more acquainted with FreeBSD. I’m quite sure it
will pay off in the end.

------
jandrese
> The trim(8) utility has been added, which deletes content for blocks on
> flash-based storage devices that use wear-leveling algorithms. [r344688]

Is this replacing an older utility or is FreeBSD way behind on supporting
SSDs?

~~~
m11r
TRIM has been available in FreeBSD for mounted ZFS filesystems for quite a
while, since ~Sep 2012 in 10-CURRENT[1]. I believe this is just a user space
command for manually TRIM'ing in cases where it doesn't have explicit
filesystem support.

[1]: [https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/all-
ab...](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/faq/all-about-
zfs.html#idp49249016)

------
naniwaduni
> BearSSL has been imported to the base system. [r343281]

Exciting. Is it being used for anything yet?

~~~
cperciva
I believe it was imported so that it could be used by code-verification bits
in the boot loader and exec calls. I'm pretty sure those aren't turned on by
default yet, but my understanding is that Juniper uses them.

------
jackyb
Is there a 300-page or less book that can teach practical usage of FreeBSD?
Like the C book or the UNIX programming environment book. I have it installed
on one of my laptops but never got around to use it.

~~~
blackhaz
Yes, "Absolute FreeBSD" by Michael W. Lucas:
[https://nostarch.com/absfreebsd3](https://nostarch.com/absfreebsd3)

~~~
thijsvandien
Currently part of a Humble Bundle: [https://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-
bsd-bookshelf-2019-...](https://www.humblebundle.com/books/linux-bsd-
bookshelf-2019-books)

~~~
jackyb
Thanks, I'll probably get it.

------
MuffinFlavored
My train of thought went "hmm, I wonder if FreeBSD would be good to use in
production for running some Docker containers" and I stumbled across this
[https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker](https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker)

> Docker's currently broken.

that leads to this:
[https://reviews.freebsd.org/D21570](https://reviews.freebsd.org/D21570)

~~~
jsiepkes
Docker became popular over FreeBSD jails the same way MySQL became popular
over PostgreSQL in the 2005-ish. Not based on technical merit but because of
ease of use. In case of MySQL it was a Windows installer which made for a low
barrier of entry. However MySQL didn't do ACID transactions, views, etc. at
that time, all things PostgreSQL had.

Similarly Docker was easy to use with images but security was a mess. The
first couple of years Docker stance was actually that their container wasn't
to be considered a security boundary and being able to access the host system
"wasn't a bug". This in total contrast to FreeBSD jails which were always
regarded as a hard boundary.

Docker in FreeBSD is not as simple as you might think. FreeBSD has a Linux ABI
compatibility layer in order to be able to run Linux binaties (just like WINE
is a Windows ABI compatibility layer). Docker itself, the CLI application, the
API, etc. is probably the easiest part.

~~~
natmaka
In 201709 I tried to install FreeBSD, and could not find any reasonably
practical way to verify the CD image PGP seal, nor clear pertinent
documentation.

On the official IRC chat some people tried to help, however this patently is
not a common issue. How weird. Who wants to install an OS without being able
to verify the image seal? Downloading through HTTPS may be MITM'ed, or the
image replaced on the server.

I reported the problem. Somebody also reported it more than a year afterwards.

More than 2 years after my initial report... the ticket remains open. At best
the BTS seems neglected.

The FreeBSD maintainers probably agree upon the relative importance of those
seals, because they publish them at
[https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.1R/signatures.html](https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.1R/signatures.html)
, however this is neglected in documentation (
[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/b...](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/bsdinstall-
pre.html) ). BTW I just noticed that the signing key isn't in the strongset (
[https://pgp.cs.uu.nl/mk_path.cgi?FROM=8D12403C2E6CAB086CF64D...](https://pgp.cs.uu.nl/mk_path.cgi?FROM=8D12403C2E6CAB086CF64DA3031458A5478FE293&TO=EF201A39)
)

Everyone involved probably thinks there are more important things to do. I
don't complain, as nobody "has to" do anything upon this matter.

My point is that such a way to handle this may reveal that most FreeBSD
"hacktivists" just aren't willing to do such menial but necessary onboarding-
facilitating job, which would IMHO be useful.

It may be part of the reasons why FreeBSD has way less users than it could and
should. In a way it is related to "ease of use", however this "image sealing"
is more fundamental than bells, whistles and porcelain.

The ticket:
[https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=222044](https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=222044)

~~~
MuffinFlavored
> It may be part of the reasons why FreeBSD has way less users than it could
> and should.

I would like to gain understanding as to why the _BSD maintainers + developers
invest the time they do into their projects. They are awesome projects, but...
who are they for? The 0.1% of people who lie to themselves saying "FreeBSD
makes a great desktop/laptop?" Mac OS X makes a great laptop, that's why it is
in every coffee shop around the world. Linux must beat _BSD server usage 10:1,
if not 100:1. I'm sure somebody below will prove me wrong but I strongly feel
it's just the echo chamber effect of reddit/Hacker News. I can't think of any
good reasons somebody would use *BSD over Linux and "their man pages are great
+ the clib is written in the same repo as the kernel + userland utilities"
isn't good enough of a response for me.

~~~
jsiepkes
> I can't think of any good reasons somebody would use *BSD over Linux

Well one reason could be that you are a commercial company and you make a
proprietary appliance. FreeBSD's license (3 clause BSD) is way easier in that
case then the GPLv2, let alone GPLv3 (which a lot of userland is licensed in
most Linux distro's). Examples of some high profile appliances running
FreeBSD: Sony's Playstation 4 and Juniper's Junos OS which runs on their
firewalls and routers.

Ubiquiti is getting a lot of flak for not being GPL compliant and the only
thing I can think of when I hear this is: "Why did they use Linux if they
wanted to make a proprietary product? They wouldn't be in this mess if they
had used FreeBSD.".

Another reason could be FreeBSD ships ZFS out of the box because combining the
CDDL + BSD licenses is not a problem. However GPLv2 (Linux kernel) + CDDL is a
problem.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
> Well one reason could be that you are a commercial company and you make a
> proprietary appliance

Any other use cases other than licensing that would make somebody want to use
*BSD instead of Linux/Mac?

~~~
aranjedeath
Yeah, it runs better.

I've used FreeBSD on my production systems instead of Linux since I started
this whole bit 15 years ago. Linux surprises me. FreeBSD, for example, does
not. I do not walk away from production FreeBSD systems and have them fall
over for reasons other than hardware failure. Full stop.

