DragonFlyBSD developer François Tigeot has continued doing a good job in continually updating their kernel's graphics driver code with a port of the AMD Radeon graphics source code from the Linux kernel along with related components like TTM memory management.

Last year it was decided that FreeBSD's ZFS code would be re-based on OpenZFS (ZFS On Linux) code for ultimately better support and functionality as well as largely unifying the open-source ZFS ecosystem. While still transitioning towards the OpenZFS code-base, for FreeBSD it's still looking to be a positive move and one that will pay off for all parties involved.

FreeBSD's Bhyve hypervisor has had a wild ride over the past half-decade of development for advancing BSD virtualization support. Bhyve is mostly used on the server front but can also fill some desktop use-cases now that there is GPU pass-through support working albeit not yet polished.

Joe Maloney of iXsystems has lifted the wraps on FuryBSD, a new desktop BSD focused on tight integration with FreeBSD. FuryBSD joins the likes of MidnightBSD and GhostBSD on providing a sane and easy-to-use desktop experience out-of-the-box along similar lines to the former PC-BSD (TrueOS).

With yesterday's article about the NUMA improvements to FreeBSD's network stack made by Netflix in their quest to serve 200Gb/s encrypted video content per server, in no time the forum comments were quick to theorize whether those changes would work their way back upstream to all FreeBSD users or due to the BSD license would be held as a guarded secret by the company. Fortunately, Netflix continues to impress when it comes to their open-source contributions.

Drew Gallatin of Netflix presented at the recent EuroBSDcon 2019 conference in Norway on the company's network stack optimizations to FreeBSD. Netflix was working on being able to deliver 200Gb/s network performance for video streaming out of Intel Xeon and AMD EPYC servers, to which they are now at 190Gb/s+ and in the process that doubled the potential of EPYC Naples/Rome servers and also very hefty upgrades too for Intel.

FreeBSD 12.1 has released on-time as the first incremental update to last year's FreeBSD 12.

MidnightBSD is one of the easy-to-use, desktop-focused BSDs that makes it easy to run GNOME and other desktops like Lumina atop its FreeBSD base. MidnightBSD 1.2 was released on Halloween as an update providing updates to its base system and various fixes.

Thanks to the BSD wizards at iXsystems, FreeBSD has received an important performance fix/optimization around their ZFS file-system code.

Just in time for Halloween there is a new release of GhostBSD, the operating system focused on providing a good BSD desktop experience built off FreeBSD and the MATE desktop environment.

We are getting mighty close to the release of FreeBSD 12.1 as the next installment of FreeBSD 12 for 2019. It's looking like FreeBSD 12.1 will indeed be ready to set sail in early November.

Theo de Raadt released OpenBSD 6.6 today as the newest feature update to this popular BSD operating system known for its security focus.

With Project Trident moving away from a TrueOS/FreeBSD base to instead Void Linux, if you are looking for a good BSD-based desktop operating system it largely comes down to the likes of MidnightBSD and GhostBSD providing good out-of-the-box setups. As for GhostBSD, they are reaffirming their commitment to using TrueOS/FreeBSD and MATE as their official desktop.

FreeBSD 12.1 is near with the first release candidate shipping this weekend. While a point release over the nearly one year old FreeBSD 12.0, it does come with some notable changes in tow.

DragonFlyBSD's now-default HAMMER2 file-system now has initial file-system checking "fsck" support.

While FreeBSD doesn't see much in the way of game ports besides compatibility with open-source games/engines, FreeBSD's Linux binary compatibility layer for years has allowed running Linux games on FreeBSD and there is also Wine support for FreeBSD to handle Windows software. Thanks to those efforts, it's possible to make a FreeBSD gaming box.

FreeBSD 12.0 is already approaching one year old while FreeBSD 12.1 is now on the way as the next installment with various bug/security fixes and other alterations to this BSD operating system.

TrueOS changing direction was a disappointment back in 2018 with having done away with their desktop version that had been around for years since formerly being known as PC-BSD. But at least there are a few viable alternatives that continue advancing for a nice out-of-the-box BSD desktop experience like GhostBSD and MidnightBSD.

In addition to NetBSD seeing better DRM ioctl support for its Linux compatibility layer (as part of an effort towards possible Steam support) thanks to Google Summer of Code 2019, there were also Wine improvements as a result of this Google programming initiative.

Ultimately the goal is to get Valve's Steam client running on NetBSD using their Linux compatibility layer while the focus the past few months with Google Summer of Code 2019 were supporting the necessary DRM ioctls for allowing Linux software running on NetBSD to be able to tap accelerated graphics support.

The FreeBSD project has published their Q2'2019 summary that outlines the various accomplishments for this open-source operating system project over the past quarter.

It was just last month that DragonFlyBSD pulled in Radeon's Linux 4.4 kernel driver code as an upgrade from the Linux 3.19 era code they had been using for their open-source AMD graphics support. This week that's now up to a Linux 4.7 era port.

While called the Open-Source Summit, the event is primarily about Linux as after all it's hosted by the Linux Foundation. But at this week's Open-Source Summit in San Diego, Deb Goodkin as the executive director of the FreeBSD Foundation presented. Deb's talk was of course on FreeBSD but also why FreeBSD and Linux developers should work together.

Adding to another creation being worked on by DragonFlyBSD lead developer Matthew Dillon, DSynth is a C rewrite of the FreeBSD originating Synth program that serves as a custom package repository builder.

Wayland support is inching ahead on NetBSD for this secure, modern next-generation successor to running an X.Org Server.

GCC 4.2.1 has been out since 2007 and while there have been many big updates to the GNU Compiler Collection over the past decade, that version remains somewhat common in the BSD land due to being the last version under the GPLv2 license. GCC 4.2.2 and newer switched over to GPLv3+ and that is why several BSDs have stuck to using GCC 4.2.1 or at least keeping it in their base repository. But now for FreeBSD 13, this old version of GCC is set to be retired with FreeBSD already being quite focused on LLVM Clang as its default compiler while also offering newer GCC versions via its package management system.

With TrueOS (formerly PC-BSD) no longer focused on delivering a quality BSD desktop as they once did, while there still are options out there for a desktop-focused BSD like MidnightBSD, for those wanting to use a vanilla FreeBSD installation can now setup a desktop easier using a new script.

DragonFlyBSD 5.6.2 is out today as the newest version of this popular BSD operating system.

One of the many interesting Google Summer of Code (GSoC) projects this year has been to improve the Wine support on NetBSD. Thanks to student developer Naveen Narayanan, that is becoming a reality.

The NetBSD 9.0 code has now been branched and preparations underway for releasing the next version of this BSD operating system known for its vast architecture support.