FreeBSD In Q2-2022: More Than 30k Ports, Driver Improvements, Better Linux Compatibility

The FreeBSD project has published their latest quarterly status report highlighting the advancements made to this open-source BSD operating system.

The FreeBSD Q2-2022 status report is now available to showcase their various accomplishments over the past quarter. Some of the Q2 achievements include:

- The FreeBSD Ports collection is slightly above 30,000 ports (packages) being available.

- FreeBSD continued improving its Linux compatibility layer with updates around Year 2038 compatibility, improving the ARM64 emulation layer, system call tracking work, and various fixes.

- Blued is a new utility for Bluetooth configuration and lets unprivileged users connect to and use Bluetooth devices on FreeBSD.

- OpenVPN Data Channel Offload (DCO) for moving data packet processing is showing promising results for FreeBSD with throughput going from around 660 Mbit/s to around 2 Gbit/s.

- Various WiFi driver improvements such as for Intel and Realtek wireless hardware.

- FreeBSD is planning to turn on shared page address randomization by default for 64-bit binaries on all architectures.

- The FreeBSD Foundation as of writing is at $158,184 USD of its 1,400,000 goal for the year. Those wishing to donate to the FreeBSD Foundation can find more information on FreeBSDFoundation.org. The FreeBSD Foundation meanwhile has sponsored software development work on updating OpenSSH in base, LLDB multi-process debug support, wireless improvements, ZFS support in makefs, WireGuard improvements, and more.

The FreeBSD quarterly status report in full can be read via FreeBSD.org.