DragonFly BSD 2.6.1 has been released. “There are numerous big-ticket features in this release as found in the release notes, plus a ton of stability and performance work.”
DragonFly BSD 2.6.1 has been released. “There are numerous big-ticket features in this release as found in the release notes, plus a ton of stability and performance work.”
A ton of work has gone into this project. Seems destined for server work, but I had hoped that some of the system level changes would also be pertinent to the desktop… and that desktops similar to PC-BSD would pop up around DragonFly. So far it has not come to pass.
I think the idea of individual desktops running on top of some sort of dragonfly meta-cluster would be AWESOME.
I’m drooling just thinking about it.
but it would seem to me the server stuff needs to be done and stable before you could even start thinking about that.
Yes, I’m curious what part of that requires dragonfly?
I like the roadmap and the design of hammerfs, not sure what the real tangible benefits of them are exactly. When designing an entire system like this, its tough to keep up with all of the other performance improvements in oses with more manpower.
I think dragonfly needs to a better job of “selling the dream” with specific use cases and a plan of how to get there from here, to enlist some fellow dreamers. Maybe even some dreamers with a business plan that builds on the dream.
I fear Dragonfly may end up being Plan 9 V2, a technically superiorly designed os by brilliant engineers, that isn’t better enough than its predecessor.
Hard to “sell the dream” when the system does not yet implement its ultimate goals.
There is something wrong with that? The important thing is that the ideas get tested, and the best of them will likely end up being incorporated in more mainstream systems at some future point in time.
I am quite sure that no one involved in the DragonFly Project has any illusion about taking over the world.
Regardless, it is one of my favorites and I am always very impressed with the progress made by such a small team.
Yes, that’s why I called it a dream. I’m not sure what world you live in, but my dreams aren’t necessarily of things that already exist in reality. But if you do live in that world, please tell me where it is, so I might never ever accidentally go there.
I always thought of dragon fly as more of a real operating system, rather than being pure OS research. I just don’t want them to sell themselves short. I am likewise impressed with the progress of the small team, but more that that, I wish the team were bigger. I think it could be, if they did a better job of explaining the use cases.
Correct me if I am wrong but as I understand it DragonflyBSD approaches the issue of scalability from a different angle than traditional operating systems so what it should mean is that in the long run – in a world of multicoreness that we’ll see operating systems like DragonflyBSD pull ahead of the competition because of the fundamental underpinnings that make it different from other operating systems.
Occasionally it takes not only a better operating system but also the right circumstances in the industry that results in the emergence of that operating system being ‘the in thing’ – just as Linux emerged as the good enough alternative to expensive proprietary UNIX’s when it was first started to be used in ISP’s. It was good enough and cheaper, now the other benefits that existed back then (open source) are only now starting to be appreciated by the mainstream.
Good things take time and I have a feeling that the lead programmer is quite happy to plod along at a steady pace knowing that the goal will be reached.
Completely agree.
What is beautiful about DragonFly is that is a set of new features or new approaches coming in an already usable system. They do a lot of very impressive things but their system is still running!
Their vkernel implementation is simply amazing, same than its HammerFS (ported to Mac OS X some days ago).
Yes, I would like more explanation about their differing approach to scalability and the potential benefits in a multi core environment over FreeBsd and Linux.
Something like this [forgive the technical mistakes I’m venturing into an area where i am not an expert]:
One of the features they mention is multiple processes working on a single file in a non blocking simultaneous manner.
One potential application of it would be something like Mysql’s innodb table space. If it were previously blocked form simultaneous writes to the differing tables within, allowing multiple simultaneous writes to it could potentially speed things along.
Of course because the changes are at the os level, they couldn’t be implemented in a portable manner, but lets say their was a special version just for dragonfly. Is there a driver for enterprise level flash PCI cards like io fusion? No .. well then the storage system on DragonFly is at a disadvantage and the technically inferior Linux/FreeBSD sequential write methodology could still beat the crap out of it due to the faster storage.
Here is a document I found, but it doesn’t go greatly into depth:
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/presentations/dragonflybsd.asiabsdcon04…
Yes but only if the gains are significant.
Except that Plan 9 is a technically superior OS to Dragonfly…
I’m one of the (least active) DFly’s contributors and I am following its development very closely.
Ok, so we will not conquer the world. Duh, who cares ?
In the meantime, we are learning tons of interesting stuff, we are exploring new ideas and _we are having fun_.
The team consists of skilled, easy-going and very cool people. As for Matthew Dillon in specific, he is a coding god, and by saying this I severely underestimate his skills. Yet, he is insanely patient at explaining things, answering tech/usability questions, fixing regressions, etc.
Cheers