FreeBSD Working On Support For LinuxBoot, Going From 256 To 1024 CPU Core Limit

[phoronix]

Phoronix: FreeBSD Working On Support For LinuxBoot, Going From 256 To 1024 CPU Core Limit

FreeBSD developers have published their Q2-2023 status report where they outlined various technical milestones and software accomplishments for this leading BSD operating system...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/FreeBSD-Q2-2023-Improvements

[uid313]

FreeBSD should just port Unix File System (UFS), bhyve, and FreeBSD jails to Linux, then transfer the ownership to the Linux Foundation, and move onto Linux instead as the successor to FreeBSD and the new Unix!

[gnattu]

FreeBSD should just port Unix File System (UFS), bhyve, and FreeBSD jails to Linux, then transfer the ownership to the Linux Foundation, and move onto Linux instead as the successor to FreeBSD and the new Unix!

Not everyone will happy if FreeBSD is gone. You can have thousands reasons to use Linux, but other will have their reason not to.

[zexelon]

FreeBSD should just port Unix File System (UFS), bhyve, and FreeBSD jails to Linux, then transfer the ownership to the Linux Foundation, and move onto Linux instead as the successor to FreeBSD and the new Unix!

Yeah... the more I look at FreeBSD and what they are doing, the more I think they are basically just becoming more and more "Linux", or JAD (Just Another Distro)...

I get it, their "dev model" is fully integrated, top down, blah blah blah, but from a user perspective its still packages software. Also the amount of integrated self dev software done by FreeBSD is very minimal and not actually useful for a usable system. For example they dont have a self developed desktop integrated into their OS, they re-roll GNOME or KDE. As far as I know its the same on the server side, I dont believe they have integrated a self developed web server or file server.

[kgardas]

FreeBSD should just port Unix File System (UFS), bhyve, and FreeBSD jails to Linux, then transfer the ownership to the Linux Foundation, and move onto Linux instead as the successor to FreeBSD and the new Unix!

And Linux should adopt ZFS and DTrace and become new Unix. Ehm, wait, it's never going to happen due to "not invented here" syndrome right? Honestly after Solaris demise I'm glad there is some OS supporting ZFS and DTrace as a Solaris legacy. Unfortunately various Ilumos forks do not have critical mass, at least from my point of view. FreeBSD looks most stable from user-base point of view...

[mdedetrich]

Yeah... the more I look at FreeBSD and what they are doing, the more I think they are basically just becoming more and more "Linux", or JAD (Just Another Distro)...

I get it, their "dev model" is fully integrated, top down, blah blah blah, but from a user perspective its still packages software. Also the amount of integrated self dev software done by FreeBSD is very minimal and not actually useful for a usable system. For example they dont have a self developed desktop integrated into their OS, they re-roll GNOME or KDE. As far as I know its the same on the server side, I dont believe they have integrated a self developed web server or file server.

FreeBSD's biggest differentiating factor is consistency and quality, where as Linux is a giant mess in how packages are made (especially when you take into account distributions). As long as thats the case, FreeBSD is not going to be JAD (just another distro).

[RejectModernity]

FreeBSD's biggest differentiating factor is consistency and quality

Yeah, FreeBSD is consistently bad. Just remember that wireguard driver story. 💀

[kpedersen]

For example they dont have a self developed desktop integrated into their OS, they re-roll GNOME or KDE.

CWM, Hikari are examples of lighter alternatives to DE that are focused on BSD. There was also Lumina as a bespoke FreeBSD desktop. The problem is that DEs are generally not important anyway (that hype died out in the late 90s), so what's the point of developing a new one? Just provide a similar environment on all OSes for those that need it. Gnome and KDE work fine with that.

As far as I know its the same on the server side, I don't believe they have integrated a self developed web server or file server.

OpenBSD has the bespoke httpd(8). Things like Apache httpd were not originally developed for Linux anyway. Finding a GPL licensed web server is rare for one. Most target "POSIX" and leave it at that.

Weirdly, I notice that the FreeBSD developer community is vastly larger than any single Linux distro. Heck, there are more kernel developers working on FreeBSD than Apple and Microsoft combined.

where as Linux is a giant mess in how packages are made (especially when you take into account distributions)

I am actually quite disappointed that out of the many, many Linux distros, not one has focused on providing a concept of a base. Those that come closest (i.e Debian "minbase", Arch "core", Alpine "base") are not at all consistent. They drag in whatever random crap the software needs to build at the current snapshot in time. They are not stable bases. More a list of required packages (and corresponding random cruft). Impossible to audit.

I basically want the opposite of Debian kFreeBSD. I.e the Linux kernel with great hardware support and a BSD-like userland which is clean and deterministic.

[stormcrow]

Yeah... the more I look at FreeBSD and what they are doing, the more I think they are basically just becoming more and more "Linux", or JAD (Just Another Distro)...

I get it, their "dev model" is fully integrated, top down, blah blah blah, but from a user perspective its still packages software. Also the amount of integrated self dev software done by FreeBSD is very minimal and not actually useful for a usable system. For example they dont have a self developed desktop integrated into their OS, they re-roll GNOME or KDE. As far as I know its the same on the server side, I dont believe they have integrated a self developed web server or file server.

It's a side effect of so many infrastructure projects implementing features only in non-portable Linuxisms. They only exist on Linux kernel based systems. When you're faced with that kind of obstinate platform dependence, you adapt or lose functionality you previously had access to. It's the tyranny of the majority software style. Linux had the same problem early in its days with coexisting with Windows. Your point could just as easily have applied to Linux. Linux is becoming so much like Windows... might as well use Windows!

All other platforms have had to implement Linux-like stubs in order to use software that have hard dependencies on systemd, Linux specific system calls, etc. That includes the majority if not all the major DEs along with some server type software. If you want to blame anyone (I don't really blame anyone), blame the software developers for being unable to properly architect portable software systems, especially since using system calls directly is usually considered a very Bad Idea in implementation.

[timofonic]

Not everyone will happy if FreeBSD is gone. You can have thousands reasons to use Linux, but other will have their reason not to.

Sony, Netflix and such. Yes, proprietary corporate lovers thst love to close source their forks. Cheap labor! BSD is a bit the Plan9 of UNIX, just less innovative in comparison.