What features are you excited about for FreeBSD 12?

Beastie7

Beastie7

As the title says!

I'm personally excited for:

- ZFS RAID-Z expansion
- ZFS device removal
- pkg base
- other stuff I'll probably remember after this post

Any features, enhancements, new additions that get you hyped up? Lay it all down here!
 
I look forward to the new backgrounds and GUI theme

As always, I look forward to the minimal amount of breakage in the new release and zero replacement of the init system :)

Also, in all fairness, even though I will probably never use an ARM64 or PowerPC chip in my lifetime it is still great seeing FreeBSD support more of this hardware. It kinda just shows that FreeBSD is looking out for the future (if this type of hardware ever does actually hit off).
 
The introduction, and use of command.com as default. I'm also looking forward to having finally having a /System32/ in /. ;) ;)

Seriously tho;
Increased stability?
Wish list:
targeting a smaller kernel
...as in not necessarily reducing the number of drivers in GENERIC. But making the code for those drivers smaller. I know; probably a pipe dream. But still... :)

--Chris
 
tankist02 You need to choose more wisely. Call it luck but I've never had hardware issues except for one Broadcom network card in almost 15 years of using FreeBSD. My current high end workstation, I chose parts I knew worked with FreeBSD. Off the shelf components but name brand parts easily found and widely used like Gigabyte, nVidia, etc. It was easy. I bought them all from Newegg cause it was cheaper than the local Microcenter store which also carried the same things.
 
tankist02 said:
Whenever I try to use FreeBSD as my home desktop on different computers and laptops I always hit some hardware related issues. Like printer, video cards, wireless cards...
Click to expand...

just the same of course all the time you need to have the mind set in solving problems but in freebsd at the time there are minor problems that could be fixed but for some reason the maintainers are not even willing to check anything.

E.g .. Simple things like this one https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/problem-with-i3wm-shortcuts.59398/

and many ports that have not maintainer at all so Im not exited with a release that has a lot of problems comming from prior releases.
 
I got all my laptops from work for (almost) free. I won't refuse them even if they are not supported well by FreeBSD - I can always run Linux on them.

My printer was bought long time ago on a great sale. I won't throw it away and replace with a new one which is supported by FreeBSD. The printer works fine under Linux.
 
tankist02 For the longest time, when I first started my web dev company, I would pick up Windows computers from people who were "updating" theirs and we'd use them as servers and workstations till we got bigger. We didn't have to buy any hardware for five years I think and continued to use some of that till just five years ago .
 
Beastie7 said:
I'm personally excited for:
- ZFS RAID-Z expansion
- ZFS device removal
Click to expand...
:eek: Woah, I need to read the FreeBSD Foundation's press releases more frequently.

I thought both of these features both required block pointer rewrite, and that that was something that was basically never going to happen... Or is it a more limited version of BPR that still lacks defragmentation support? Also, is there any way to go from a mirrored pool to a RAID-Z1 (e.g. two to three disk pool)?
 
I checked out the page that SirDice shared, and sadly I don't see anything that I'm looking for (ie: BCM4331 support), but still excited for the improved hardware support. FreeBSD is such a well organized operating system. It only gets better when it can be used with more stuff.
 
UPDATE about the "ZFS Native Encryption" implementation, and it seems it will just be merged on HEAD after the code freeze be lifted. So, if we are lucky it come on 12.1-RELEASE.

Ping Oko.
 
I thought both of these features both required block pointer rewrite, and that that was something that was basically never going to happen... Or is it a more limited version of BPR that still lacks defragmentation support?
Click to expand...

Haven't looked into it since it was first talked about but I believe it's a bit hacky and redirects blocks that were on the removed device to a new location. I still think you're better off avoiding removing devices unless you get really stuck,

UPDATE about the "ZFS Native Encryption" implementation, and it seems it will just be merged on HEAD after the code freeze be lifted. So, if we are lucky it come on 12.1-RELEASE.
Click to expand...

Yeah I saw encryption mentioned on the mailing list today, which at the moment is just on GitHub. I'm not really a fan of the timed releases for .0 versions. It ends up with major new versions often containing just incremental changes, rather than reviewing possible major features, such as zfs encryption, and planning to get them in for the release. Apart from general improvements and a few new drivers I don't think there's much to get excited about in 12, and a major feature like zfs encryption may randomly appear in a minor point release.
 
In that case FreeBSD 12 will be the testbed for ZFS native encryption despite appearances, I wouldn't trust it until FreeBSD 13 is out as an official release.
 
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