FreeBSD 14's RC2 dances to the tune of OpenZFS 2.2

Release Candidate 2 of FreeBSD 14 is out, and includes nan recently released OpenZFS 2.2. So far, nan OS is not looking radically different from type 13, but bigger changes are afoot.

RC2 appeared connected Friday and nan task is expecting to merchandise nan adjacent awesome type astir November 7. At present, nan release notes for nan caller type are besides a activity successful progress, but nan highlights are there.

One of nan header features is besides new: OpenZFS 2.2. With bcachefs still not successful Linux and Red Hat's next-gen Stratis going obscurity fast, ZFS remains nan authorities of nan creation successful filesystems for Unix and Unix-like OSes. Because OpenZFS is covered by a GPL-incompatible license, astir Linux distros still don't see it. That intends it is still a compelling characteristic for FreeBSD.

As we described a fewer months ago, OpenZFS 2.2 has a new, faster encryption algorithm, amended support for Linux instrumentality handling, and measurement scrubbing is quicker too. Since nan large firm Linux distros won't touch ZFS, nan NetBSD and OpenBSD projects are not arsenic willing successful being high-performance fileservers, and Dragonfly BSD is moving connected HAMMER2, its ain next-gen filesystem, ZFS remains a slayer characteristic for FreeBSD, truthful a caller type pinch amended capacity and responsibility betterment is simply a important win.

Filesystems aside, FreeBSD is simply a comparatively humble update for a caller awesome version. It supports much CPU cores connected some x86-64 and ARM64, it boots up faster, and has tweaks to amended some wired and wireless networking and powerfulness management. It uses nan lightweight Dragonfly Mail Agent successful spot of Sendmail, and includes a caller instrumentality for firmware updates, fwget, though for now this only supports immoderate Intel and AMD GPUs.

We gave nan AMD64 type a speedy trial tally successful some nan very latest VirtualBox 7.0.12 and UTM 4.4.4. RC2 installed smoothly connected both, though conscionable arsenic we saw successful type 13.1, attempting to instal onto ZFS connected VirtualBox's default 16 GB thrust failed. It succeeded connected UFS, though, and ZFS worked connected UTM's larger virtual difficult disk, which defaults to 64 GB.

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We were amused by nan informing connection from nan desktop-installer script:

It 'as been, 'as it? 'Ow astir that, then? Unfortunately, successful testing, we couldn't get X11 to commencement nether either VM, and nether UTM, we needed to reconfigure nan VM's networking to Bridged Mode to talk to nan web astatine all.

One point that FreeBSD 14 drops from nan erstwhile merchandise is support for ISA sound cards. We fishy that this won't inconvenience excessively galore group successful 2023, but nan scheme is that nan adjacent awesome release, FreeBSD 15, will driblet support for 32-bit processors altogether. It, and nan pursuing FreeBSD 16, will still support 32-bit executables connected 64-bit processors, but past that is planned to spell distant too.

RC2 still feels a small unfinished to us, particularly fixed that it's near beta testing. We scheme to return for different look aft it's been released. However, up to a point, this is reasonably normal for FreeBSD: it's very overmuch a server OS, not a graphical desktop OS for general use by non-specialists.

The Reg FOSS table had a agelong gathering pinch immoderate of nan project's board astatine nan Open Source Summit successful Bilbao, and we dream to activity pinch them connected immoderate of nan issues we've had pinch nan OS successful nan past. ®