Linked by evilsjg on Wed 16th Nov 2011 00:17 UTC
The DragonFly BSD project has recently decided to hold off on the 2.12 release to address a couple of long-standing issues. Some of the disruptive work done to address these issues has also resulted in the MP Token (giant kernel lock) and other major contention points being finally pushed out of the way of all critical paths. The result?
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RE: That's a remarkable improvement
by reez on Thu 17th Nov 2011 11:06
in reply to "That's a remarkable improvement"
Member since:2006-06-28
Actually there are other things than performance that are awesome about DragonFly.
HAMMER is simply awesome.
The fact that the DragonFly implemented a (complete!) BSD licensed version of TrueCrypt which isn't even free software in its original implementation is great. Even the Linux folks have an eye on it.
They reimplemented dm-crypt/LUKS including all the required dependencies to have encrypted root etc. This also means that they have an own implementation of libdevicemapper and other stuff. All BSD licensed.
They also have vkernel AND jail and they are usually faster than FreeBSD. For example they fixed the head pull-USB-Stick -> crash problem before them. They implemented stuff like IPv6 and multi-IP before FreeBSD. They had llvm/clang support before them. Does FreeBSD support variant symlinks by now? Oh and they have resident.
Of course that doesn't mean that it is without weaknesses. FreeBSD has longer support for releases while most DragonFly folks run HEAD versions. They also don't have commercial support.
But hey, it's Open Source, everyone is able to copy stuff improve it, sometimes it gets ported, backported and what's great about BSD (well, besides OpenBSD, which has other strengths) is that people decide what's good and not what's getting hyped or fits our ideology.
RE[2]: That's a remarkable improvement
by phoenix on Thu 17th Nov 2011 19:09
in reply to "RE: That's a remarkable improvement"
Member since:2005-07-11
The entire FreeBSD OS can be compiled by LLVM/Clang, and the resulting OS can be installed and used with only a few niggling issues here and there. You can even use LLVM/Clang to compile a large portion of the ports tree.
You cannot compile DFlyBSD with LLVM/Clang at this time.
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Member since:
2005-09-15
I never thought that DragonFly would rise above an interesting project whose more innovative pieces might make their way into other, more established, OSes
But to offer this level of performance against its big brother on serious hardware is amazing.
Well done, Matt and company!!