Guest post by The FreeBSD project has announced the immediate release of version 9.1, featuring a new Intel GPU driver and dozens of other drivers, an optional new C+11 stack, lots of improvements to IPv6 hardware offload support, and more. You can now run a ZFS file system in a jail, and the kernel now provides support for IronLake, SandyBridge, and IvyBridge CPUs. Check out the release notes for the juicy details.
FreeBSD now has the beginnings of KMS, which is necessary for current Intel graphics chips. It’s been a part of RELENG for a few months now, with 9.1 is included as a full release. However, you still need to add a couple options to /etc/make.conf when you build Xorg through the ports system. I’m not sure if the pre-built packages for Xorg will support KMS.
Also, as with 9.0, the installer (bsdinstall) isn’t as mature as the 8.x series and before (earlier versions used sysinstall). You may have difficulties trying to dual-boot with an existing OS on the same drive. I’m less familiar with the new partitioning setup in bsdinstall: I scared myself into thinking I hosed my Windows install, and when I successfully rescued Windows, I still didn’t have a bootable FreeBSD system.
I attribute this to user error. I’ve made it work in the past by doing it differently than I did this time. I’ll try again in a couple of days. I should mention that bsdinstall is more extensible and will eventually be capable of much more than sysinstall, but does need time to mature. With 9.0, if you configure the wired network during install, it’d work after a reboot, but the wireless network would only be partially configured, and wouldn’t be operable.
A coupe of months ago, I built a kernel with KMS, but it wasn’t fully operational on my i7 laptop. I got a garbled screen with a working cursor. This may have something to do with the fact that my laptop has nVidia Optimus, but the Intel driver doesn’t have similar problems under Linux. I can’t wait to try it again with the new release.
Also, it works great in a virtual machine. There’s not much that needs to be said.
All in all, it appears to be a solid release, but aren’t all FreeBSD releases solid? The only issues I’ve had with FreeBSD are the above mentioned. One is user error (but used to be simpler), and the other is an issue with laptops (which is probably last on the Dev’s lists). I do hope the Intel driver works properly on my laptop. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow night.
It would be just perfect if I could run FreeBSD on my netbook without having to make a ndis on Windows XP wireless Drivers(broadcom).
I know those guys work hard on this OS
Ironically, that’s still my problem on Linux also.
The state of Wi-Fi sucks, I’ve given up on that damn Broadcom chip years ago. To this day, the number of distributions it will actually work on either automatically or after just a little bit of trouble can be counted on one hand. The rest? It’s not even worth the trouble. The system is from over half a decade. It is infuriating and hopeless.
yeah
broadcom support insists to use their archaic “use our blobs with our firmware” business model, to develop a mixed closed-open driver. that realy sucks
at last, my driver (BCM4313) is working as expected, and i didn’t faced any crash(yet)
It’s not just wireless, hardware in general seems to be a problem. I’ve tested the 9.x series on around 12-15 machines so far. I think it has successfully booted on 2 or 3 of those machines. Each of these boxes successfully runs Windows and Linux.
I love the design of FreeBSD and I think they are making some wonderful progress with file systems and package management. Sadly I can’t make sure of these features without replacing my hardware.
I couldn’t even get the FreeBSD 9 installer to boot on some HP servers (SL390’s) when I tried. Admittedly this was via. the iLO3 virtual DVD-ROM drive, but that works in FreeBSD 8 and for an OS that’s supposed to be suitable for servers, it’s kind of worrying that it failed to boot on such common server hardware under such common conditions.
If I get the chance I’ll try 9.1 in the next week or so and see if that’s any better.