DragonFly BSD 4.8 Released
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The DragonFly BSD 4.8 operating system update has released, according to news outlet Softpedia.
Here is the official Dragonfly announcement.
DragonFly version 4.8 brings EFI boot support in the installer, further speed improvements in the kernel, a new NVMe driver, a new eMMC driver, and Intel video driver updates.
The details of all commits between the 4.6 and 4.8 branches are available in the associated commit messages for 4.8RC and 4.8.0.
Big-ticket items
Improved kernel performance
This release further localizes cache lines and reduces/removes cache ping-ponging on globals. For bulk builds on many-cores or multi-socket systems, we have around a 5% improvement, and certain subsystems such as namecache lookups and exec()s see massive focused improvements. See the corresponding mailing list post with details.Support for eMMC booting, and mobile and high-performance PCIe SSDs
This kernel release includes support for eMMC storage as the boot device. We also sport a brand new SMP-friendly, high-performance NVMe SSD driver (PCIe SSD storage). Initial device test results are available.EFI support
The installer can now create an EFI or legacy installation. Numerous adjustments have been made to userland utilities and the kernel to support EFI as a mainstream boot environment. The /boot filesystem may now be placed either in its own GPT slice, or in a DragonFly disklabel inside a GPT slice.DragonFly, by default, creates a GPT slice for all of DragonFly and places a DragonFly disklabel inside it with all the standard DFly partitions, such that the disk names are roughly the same as they would be in a legacy system.
Improved graphics support
The i915 driver has been updated to match the version found with the Linux 4.6 kernel. Broadwell and Skylake processor users will see improvements.Other user-affecting changes
- Kernel is now built using -O2.
- VKernels now use COW, so multiple vkernels can share one disk image.
- powerd() is now sensitive to time and temperature changes.
- Non-boot-filesystem kernel modules can be loaded in rc.conf instead of loader.conf.
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for curiosity sake: who is actually using dragonfly bsd and why?
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@matteo-nunziati said in DragonFly BSD 4.8 Released:
for curiosity sake: who is actually using dragonfly bsd and why?
I've deployed it a bit in labs. I'm always watching it closely because Hammer is very important.
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@scottalanmiller said in DragonFly BSD 4.8 Released:
@matteo-nunziati said in DragonFly BSD 4.8 Released:
for curiosity sake: who is actually using dragonfly bsd and why?
I've deployed it a bit in labs. I'm always watching it closely because Hammer is very important.
Hammer?
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@dafyre said in DragonFly BSD 4.8 Released:
@scottalanmiller said in DragonFly BSD 4.8 Released:
@matteo-nunziati said in DragonFly BSD 4.8 Released:
for curiosity sake: who is actually using dragonfly bsd and why?
I've deployed it a bit in labs. I'm always watching it closely because Hammer is very important.
Hammer?
One of the world's most advanced fileystems. Dragonfly is important as a kernel alternative ecosystem to FreeBSD, from which it split (in many ways Dragonfly is the real FreeBSD and FreeBSD is the "new" product that split from it) but its real relevance is as a filesystem research platform. The kernel maintainer there writes a totally unique filesystem, called Hammer, just for Dragonfly.
