The Top BSD News This Year: Ubuntu Atop BSD, FreeBSD 11.0, DragonFly's HAMMER2
2016 saw the release of FreeBSD 11.0, UbuntuBSD making a few splashes, DragonFlyBSD advancing on several fronts, DRM/KMS Linux drivers seeing more ports to the BSDs, the original Lumina Desktop Environment seeing adoption, PC-BSD becoming TrueOS, and much more.
Here's a look at our most viewed BSD stories on Phoronix for 2016:
UbuntuBSD Brings Ubuntu Atop The FreeBSD Kernel
The inaugural release of UbuntuBSD is now available, which the developers have codenamed "Escape From SystemD", and pairs the Ubuntu userspace with the FreeBSD kernel.
FreeBSD Gets A Much Faster Sendfile Thanks To Netflix
Thanks to work done by Netflix and NGINX, a new, drop-in-replacement sendfile syscall has been written for FreeBSD that is much faster.
Trying Out The FreeBSD-Powered TrueOS With Its Custom Qt Desktop
While I've been running PC-BSD on some systems for years I hadn't tried out any of its rolling-release FreeBSD 11.0-based spins under the new TrueOS brand nor had I tried out the project's Qt-based Lumina Desktop Environment since it reached 1.0. That changed today with trying out the latest weekly spin of TrueOS x64.
Lumina Desktop 1.0 Released
The PC-BSD/TrueOS developers have announced the release of the Lumina Desktop Environment 1.0.
More Details On PC-BSD's Rebranding As TrueOS
Most Phoronix readers know PC-BSD as the BSD operating system derived from FreeBSD that aims to be user-friendly on the desktop side and they've done a fairly good job at that over the years. However, the OS has been in the process of re-branding itself as TrueOS.
FreeBSD 10.3 Officially Released With Much Better Linux Binary Compatibility
FreeBSD 10.3 is now out in stable release form.
FreeBSD-Powered Firewall Distro OPNsense 16.1 Released
OPNsense, the open-source firewall project powered by FreeBSD that began as a fork of pfSense, is out with a new release.
Lumina Desktop 0.9 Adds Window Compositing Support, New Text Editor
The BSD-focused Lumina Desktop Environment has released version 0.9 of their open-source, Qt-powered desktop while version 1.0 is expected later this year in step with PC-BSD/FreeBSD 11.0.
PC-BSD 10.3 Is Looking Great, Plus Trying The Linux Compatibility Layer
Following this week's release of FreeBSD 10.3 has been the releases of the deskop-friendly PC-BSD 10.3 operating system along with PC-BSD's server-focused TrueOS 10.3 release. I've fired up PC-BSD 10.3 for some benchmarking and so far the experience has been going great.
PC-BSD / FreeBSD 11.0-CURRENT Performance
Last week I had plans to run some fresh FreeBSD vs. Linux gaming benchmarks using the FreeBSD's Linux software binary compatibility layer.
Lumina Desktop 1.1 Released
The BSD-focused, Qt-powered Lumina Desktop Environment is out with its version 1.1 update.
DragonFlyBSD Decides To Drop PulseAudio
DragonFlyBSD developers have decided to remove PulseAudio from their dports packaging system and patch their desktop software to not depend upon this open-source sound server.
FreeBSD 11 Is Still Being Respun & Tested, Hope To Release Next Week
Last week news came out that the FreeBSD 11.0 release wasn't going to happen as planned but it needed to be respun due to security issues. The release was supposed to happen on 3 October, but now we find out it needed to be re-spun again and is still going through testing.
FreeBSD Now Has A Port For CentOS 7 Binary Support
We've known for a while that FreeBSD has been working on a CentOS 7 compatibility layer while now that work has finally landed in FreeBSD ports.
DragonFly's HAMMER2 File-System Sees Some Improvements
The HAMMER2 file-system is going on four years in development by the DragonFlyBSD crew, namely by its founder Matthew Dillon. It's still maturing and taking longer than anticipated, but this is yet another open-source file-system.
FreeBSD 11.0 Reaches Beta
BSD fans looking to do some testing this weekend can try out the beta of the upcoming FreeBSD 11.0.
PC-BSD's Lumina Desktop Now In Beta For v1.0
The Lumina Desktop Environment has made available their v1.0 beta release of the Qt-written desktop.
DragonFlyBSD's Intel DRM/KMS Driver Now On Par With Linux 4.3
While the FreeBSD's Intel kernel DRM/KMS driver is still dating back to the Linux 3.x kernel days and the state of other BSD distributions vary when it comes to their DRM/KMS support, DragonFlyBSD continues moving forward with their DRM/KMS driver porting from the Linux kernel. Their i915 DRM driver now is based off the relatively recent Linux 4.3 kernel.
FreeBSD 11.0 Alpha 4 Released
The fourth alpha release of the upcoming FreeBSD 11.0 is now available for testing.
FreeBSD Is Trying To Figure Out If Anyone Uses Its VGL Graphics Library
FreeBSD VGL provides a library for accessing graphics modes and carrying out basic drawing operations atop its syscons console driver. Not only is basic graphics output on a virtual console supported by libvgl, but mouse input is too handled. However, not many people seem to be using this library.
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