Features Coming For FreeBSD 10

Here's a look at some of the planned features that are being worked on for the FreeBSD 10 release.

The FreeBSD 10 features that have already been talked about on Phoronix include:

- FreeBSD 10.0 will deprecate GCC and switch to the LLVM/Clang compiler by default. GCC will likely remain within FreeBSD ports, but LLVM/Clang is the future for FreeBSD rather than using the GPLv3-licensed GCC. Other BSD distributions are also working towards migrating from GCC to LLVM/Clang.

- Libc++ has landed in FreeBSD. The LLVM-spawned libc++ standard C++ library will now be used rather than libstdc++. The libc++ library is focused upon C++11 support and is licensed under the MIT/UIUC rather than GPL.

- FUSE support for FreeBSD so that there is support for user-space file-systems similar to what's available on Linux and other operating systems.

- A new X.Org stack with initial KMS support. Kernel mode-setting support in FreeBSD is still from being at the level as found on Linux for Intel, Radeon, and Nouveau hardware. Linux also has various other KMS/DRM drivers coming about such as for some of the old server chipsets and ARM SoCs. Right now in the FreeBSD world there is active work just towards the Intel KMS code-base with limited work on Radeon and Nouveau.

Some other features being plotted for FreeBSD 10 are listed on the FreeBSD Wiki with some of the most interesting and notable features being listed below.

- PCI hot-plug support,

- Apple Thunderbolt connectivity support.

- 802.11n WiFi/WLAN wireless networking improvements.

- Proper ARMv7 support.

- Xen Dom0 support, Xen DomU x86_64 support, Xen i386 PV support, plus many other Xen related items (USB PV drivers, PV SMP support, SCSI pass-through, PowerPC/ARM/MIPS support).

- Live file-system resizing support.

- More ZFS parallelization.

- UEFI boot-loader support.

- Uber-audio daemon.

- Support for 64-bit Linux binaries (see Linux binary benchmarks on FreeBSD for gaming).

- Animated boot splash support.

Many of these features, of course, are already available under Linux. PCI hot-plug, animated boot splash (via Plymouth and others), ARMv7, and others features have been available on Linux for years. UEFI, Thunderbolt connectivity, and other features are also now stabilizing on the latest Linux distributions. If you're wondering why to use FreeBSD, see this article and also the reasons not to use it.

At the moment there isn't any release schedule for FreeBSD 10.0, but it's likely at least still a year out.