FreeBSD FreeNAS drops FreeBSD in favor of Debian

[Oliver_H]

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/fr...php?f=5&t=4959

And, a great surprise: iXsystems, a company specialized in professional FreeBSD offers to take FreeNAS under their wings as an open source community driven project. This mean that they will involve their professionals FreeBSD developers to FreeNAS! Their manpower will permit to do a full-rewriting of FreeNAS.
Personally, I come back to actively work in FreeNAS and begin to upgrade it to FreeBSD 8.0 (that is "production ready" for ZFS).

[vermaden]

@oliverh

Great news, now we just need to wait for ZFS version 21 to be imported into FreeBSD (to get deduplication)

I have tested newest developer build of OpenSolaris (build 128a with ZFS version 22).

Deduplication option is disabled by default, but after you enable it on rpool, you gain almost 2 x space of installed OpenSolaris (dedupratio was 1.97x).

[Oko]

Originally Posted by Oliver_H

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/fr...php?f=5&t=4959

Two thumbs up for the news. Hopefully IX systems can also drop idiotic PBI from PC-BSD and make something out of PC-BSD as well.

This is huge OT but I wanted to mention that Juniper Networks has donated MIPS port to FreeBSD project. So FreeBSD is not i386 system anymore. It now runs on real hardware

[vermaden]

@Oko

Hmmm

http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=4063

[Beastie]

It's a very nice news indeed.

Oko, aside from the unreal Intel hardware and PowerPC, FreeBSD already supports ARM and SPARC. Aren't these real enough for you?

[vermaden]

@Beastie

ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/releases/

ARM is still not Tier 1 architecture, which means that its not easy to install it on ARM box, the are no official CDs/DVDs and so fo ARM.

[Oko]

Originally Posted by Beastie

It's a very nice news indeed.

Oko, aside from the unreal Intel hardware and PowerPC, FreeBSD already supports ARM and SPARC. Aren't these real enough for you?

My posts are already carefully monitored by moderators for "hostile tone" so I do not want to get into deep discussion. If I was you I would check two things.

1. List of Tier one architectures for FreeBSD.
2. Actual list of supported hardware.

Then send me a private e-mail if you want further to discuss the issue. FreeBSD on embedded devices is really coming no questions about and that should mean that ARM support gets better
quickly.

Respectfully,
OKO

[TerryP]

FreeBSDs always been strongest on the X86.... heck, OpenBSD and NetBSD still list support for VAX.


With iXsystems putting resources at it, FreeNAS can't get any worse then changing OSes on everyone lol.

[Oliver_H]

http://www.leidinger.net/blog/2009/1...s-for-freebsd/

Some further information from a FreeBSD dev regarding the 'why'.

This WE I was told that FreeNAS seems to want to move from FreeBSD to Linux (since then it seems there could be a linux and a FreeBSD version). One of the reasons seems to be a missing sensors framework.

As I was committing a port of the OpenBSD sensors framework (produced as part of the Google Summer of Code 2007) to FreeBSD and had to remove it afterwards because one committer complained very loudly, I was asked what the status of this is.

The short status is: Nobody is doing something about it.

[vermaden]

@Oliver_H

This also includes info why they have been rejected @ FreeBSD:
http://kerneltrap.org/OpenBSD/BSDCan...sors_Framework

[Oliver_H]

Yes I know, it's a pity. But I didn't mention it because I think it's somewhat offtopic in this thread.

[shep]

From the Distrowatch Weekly Web site:

FreeNAS A somewhat controversial announcement from the FreeNAS project hit the news wires last week. According to media reports and based on a discussion on the project's forum, this specialist operating system providing free Network-Attached Storage (NAS) services will switch from its current FreeBSD base to Debian GNU/Linux for its future releases: "My decision to use Linux for the next version was because there are too many bugs in the core FreeBSD system. Simply have a look into the bug tracker. FreeNAS does not run on many systems, mainly new hardware gives trouble. The main reason is the driver problem with FreeBSD which seems to be no problem with Linux because there are great companies that support it." This rather inflammatory statement was not taken kindly by some FreeBSD fans. However, later in the week, project founder Olivier Cochard-Labbé made a new announcement. It now seems that FreeNAS will continue as a FreeBSD system - after being offered sponsorship by iXsystems (the same company that also sponsors the development of PC-BSD): "A great surprise: iXsystems, a company specializing in professional FreeBSD, has offered to take FreeNAS under their wings as an open-source, community-driven project. This means that they will involve their professional FreeBSD developers in FreeNAS! Personally, I will come back to actively work on FreeNAS and will begin upgrading it to FreeBSD 8.0."

[Oliver_H]

>My decision to use Linux for the next version was because there are too many bugs in the core FreeBSD system.

Well, apart from the nonsense-character of this saying, we now see a broken community. Talking of bugs, he will certainly experience a sea of tears, while coping with different kernel releases and their non-linear development "just for fun".

[roundkat]

An interview on BSDTALK with iXSystems..

http://bsdtalk.blogspot.com/2009/12/...h-paetzel.html

Very good news as the FreeNAS project will be "moved" away from the
MonoWall "GUI".

rk

[There0]

Well, apart from the nonsense-character of this saying, we now see a broken community. Talking of bugs, he will certainly experience a sea of tears, while coping with different kernel releases and their non-linear development "just for fun".

I totally agree, i dropped the use of Linux's (except livecd BackTrack) because i was sick of all the (non functioning) differences, including trying to get something complied. This is were BSD developers shine, at least there stuff works, and if it is still in testing or otherwise at least they document it clearly.

I love FreeNAS and really hope they do continue to use FreeBSD as a base, some good news i was reading above about IX systems, good stuff to hear i was about to drop FreeNAS completely.