# What features are you excited about for FreeBSD 12?



## Beastie7 (Jun 1, 2018)

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!


----------



## rigoletto@ (Jun 1, 2018)

The ZFS native encryption which is being implemented by iXSystems should be merged on 12.


----------



## tankist02 (Jun 1, 2018)

More hardware supported


----------



## bart (Jun 1, 2018)

tankist02 said:


> More hardware supported


totally agree!


----------



## Crivens (Jun 2, 2018)

Something like `kldload s4.ko` to actually work.


----------



## Allan Stark (Jul 30, 2018)

Native SMB2-3 support in mount_smbfs


----------



## xtremae (Jul 30, 2018)

More housekeeping, couldn't care less about new features.
OK, maybe better keyboard support for full nkro.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Jul 30, 2018)

tankist02 said:


> More hardware supported


For what?


----------



## SirDice (Jul 31, 2018)

In case you're wondering what's actually planned for 12.0, this page is fairly up to date: https://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD12


----------



## kpedersen (Jul 31, 2018)

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).


----------



## Chris_H (Jul 31, 2018)

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 (Aug 3, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> For what?


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...


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Aug 3, 2018)

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.


----------



## hotaronohanako (Aug 3, 2018)

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...



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.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Aug 3, 2018)

tankist02

Supermicro often get they hardware tested on FreeBSD. Just look for "OS Compatibility" at the page of each specific hardware.


----------



## Crivens (Aug 4, 2018)

hotaronohanako said:


> 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.


Aaand we have a volunteer for orphaned ports? Gee, thank you!


----------



## Maxnix (Aug 5, 2018)

Crivens said:


> Aaand we have a volunteer for orphaned ports? Gee, thank you!


It's so rare finding such people nowadays! We are really lucky!


----------



## tankist02 (Aug 7, 2018)

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.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Aug 7, 2018)

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 .


----------



## `Orum (Aug 7, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> I'm personally excited for:
> - ZFS RAID-Z expansion
> - ZFS device removal


 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)?


----------



## alexseitsinger (Aug 7, 2018)

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.


----------



## rigoletto@ (Aug 22, 2018)

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.


----------



## usdmatt (Aug 22, 2018)

> 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?



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.



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.


----------



## kpa (Aug 22, 2018)

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.


----------



## Spartrekus (Aug 22, 2018)

not really because it might be quite unstable


----------



## Gerard (Sep 24, 2018)

Allan Stark said:


> Native SMB2-3 support in mount_smbfs


Me too. I cannot understand why it hasn't been incorporated already.


----------



## SirDice (Sep 25, 2018)

There was no incentive for it because it worked. But Microsoft has completely disabled SMBv1 since then and turning SMBv1 back on is really bad advice. So now there's an actual need to support SMBv2 and above.


----------



## Gerard (Sep 25, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> 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.



Personally, I hate having to "cherry pick" parts just to ensure compatibility. When it comes to compatibility, I don't shop for parts that work with my OS; I search for an OS that is comparable with whatever hardware I want to use.


----------



## blackhaz (Sep 25, 2018)

With FreeBSD we definitely have to shop for the hardware to fit the OS, and, let's be honest, you'd better not buy the latest and the greatest, and even with that, there's a risk of not running your gear to its full potential—I'm still locked to 802.11g. I wonder if instead of chasing to support everything FreeBSD would focus more on selected hardware "lineages," e.g. some series of ThinkPad laptops, workstations, and so on - whatever is popular. Call me a heretic but it would be useful to have a BSD OS that is guaranteed to support specific hardware platforms. Perhaps, hardware vendors should be involved. And yes, I'm yearning for NeXT-like application bundles, a feature that isn't even on a horizon. It would be great to not having to build your own or download the entire repo to run a desktop with thousand of packages without special effort or care. 

Sorry for off-topic. I'm also looking for better hardware support.


----------



## drhowarddrfine (Sep 25, 2018)

Gerard said:


> I hate having to "cherry pick" parts just to ensure compatibility.





blackhaz said:


> With FreeBSD we definitely have to shop for the hardware to fit the OS, and, let's be honest, you'd better not buy the latest and the greatest, and even with that, there's a risk of not running your gear to its full potential


It's not hard to do. While other OSes may be compatible with 10,000 devices, FreeBSD is probably compatible with 9734 of them. You only need one and, most likely, the one you have in mind. I did not have to compromise with the off-the-shelf, leading edge hardware I chose when I built my workstation at all while going for performance.

If you notice, almost every complaint about hardware--maybe even every complaint--is only due to Broadcom networking cards or a graphics card. Little else. And, even then, isn't the graphics complaint about non-nVidia or AMD?


----------



## Crivens (Sep 25, 2018)

Mostly the complains come when the cheapest thing ended up on your buy list. The shop where I got my server hardware has a policy allowing to return stuff if it would not work, or using a customer supplied USB stick to boot it, or install from when they build the system from your wish list. And they don't sell the cheapest stuff.

Back to topic, I'd want better power saving & ACPI.


----------



## NewGuy (Oct 8, 2018)

drhowarddrfine said:


> It's not hard to do. While other OSes may be compatible with 10,000 devices, FreeBSD is probably compatible with 9734 of them. You only need one and, most likely, the one you have in mind. I did not have to compromise with the off-the-shelf, leading edge hardware I chose when I built my workstation at all while going for performance.
> 
> If you notice, almost every complaint about hardware--maybe even every complaint--is only due to Broadcom networking cards or a graphics card. Little else. And, even then, isn't the graphics complaint about non-nVidia or AMD?



We have very different experiences with FreeBSD and hardware compatibility. I've tried FreeBSD with dozens of workstations and laptops over the past ten years and never had the OS work 100% with any of them. With over half FreeBSD won't even boot. This covers a range of OEMs, different video cards, different network cards (none of them were Broadcom), different CPU brands. Either I have unusually bad luck, or you have had exceptionally good luck.

With servers I tend to have pretty good luck, at least with older or virtualized platforms. But consumer hardware is always a no-go for me with FreeBSD.


----------



## kpedersen (Oct 9, 2018)

Gerard said:


> I don't shop for parts that work with my OS; I search for an OS that is comparable with whatever hardware I want to use.



Really? I am actually the opposite. I am more of a software guy so I suppose that might be why. But when I sit down at a computer, the operating system is the important part for me, I generally don't give a damn about if it is running an Intel, AMD, or... (nope, that is about it in 2018 unfortunately) processor.

So I am quite happy to pick the compatible hardware up to an extent. I.e I will be upset one day when Laptops supporting FreeBSD are non-existent.

I guess it is slightly similar to a macOS user expecting to have to buy Apple hardware in order to use macOS. The only difference is that other than the price, It is extremely easy to find resellers for this type of "compatible" hardware for macOS.


----------



## _martin (Oct 26, 2018)

Well, it's not a feature but it's a bug fix I have to dance around in 11.2 now: CVE-2018-15473.


----------



## Crivens (Oct 26, 2018)

Yeah, that one looks nasty.


----------



## bch (Oct 26, 2018)

I am happy that FreeBSD is still a portable piece of C software and the prime example for that is the ARM port.  Really, great work.  
I am not missing much in 11.2 though.  It works great, is really stable and has many useful features.  Does anyone know about bhyve improvements?


----------



## Bean6754 (Nov 17, 2018)

Being able to use a progress status option for dd: `dd status=progress`

It's a small thing that I like.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Nov 21, 2018)

I don't see support for Optimus Technology but `top` has gotten an overhaul. Yay.


----------



## Sensucht94 (Nov 21, 2018)

POWER9, PowerPC e6500 (for PowerPC Notebook project), Pine64 and RISC-V support, GELI-encrypted ZFS boot, jailed bhyve, bectl, lua loader


----------



## unitrunker (Nov 22, 2018)

There's some work on virual filesystem passthrough that looks very very interesting for bhyve. I like this better than loopback to the host over nfs (which is itself a neat trick). No idea if this will be part of 12.


----------



## Datapanic (Nov 23, 2018)

I just tested 12 RC1 with OpenSim 0.9.0.1 (latest) with 4 OpenSim servers and 1 Robust Grid server and 1 Percona 5.7 server setup and it all works - including custom builds using packages gcc, mono and more. Normally consists of a set of virtual machines on vmware but I also run it on a set of jails and the jail setup outperforms any other setup, including doing the setup on OpenSUSE.  I'll be upgrading these systems to FreeBSD 12.0 when it's released.


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Nov 25, 2018)

> A summary of changes since 12.0-RC1 includes: kernel debugging support in various kernel configurations has been disabled - this was missed when branching releng/12.0 from stable/12



If I interpret this correctly that _is_ a good thing. 

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/soldiex-website.66277/#post-391044


----------



## jrm@ (Nov 25, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> I'm personally excited for:
> ...
> - pkg base



Unfortunately, packaged base will not be ready for 12.0.


----------



## Beastie7 (Nov 26, 2018)

That's very disappointing to hear. What's the hold up?


----------



## Deleted member 30996 (Nov 28, 2018)

Trihexagonal said:


> I don't see support for Optimus Technology but `top` has gotten an overhaul. Yay.



What a fool I've been... 

I just installed FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE on my Thinkpad W520 with support for  Nvidia Optimus Technology out of the box.


----------



## chrcol (Dec 10, 2018)

usdmatt said:


> 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,
> 
> 
> 
> 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.



Yeah this is a concern for me as well. e.g. the version of clang got bumped up some major revisions between minor point 11 releases.  In the past the compiler version was static for an entire branch. 

Also that ports get forcefully disabled now when the world is EOL, and there is effectively no LTS branch of FreeBSD anymore as the extended release's have been scrapped.  

But for sure I feel a release should be released when ready not to a time schedule.

What happed to the "whats cooking" pages for Major FreeBSD versions, they provided good detailed information, now they seem to have been replaced with sparsely populated wiki pages.

Compare this

http://www.ivoras.net/freebsd/freebsd9.html

to this

https://wiki.freebsd.org/WhatsNew/FreeBSD12


----------



## kpa (Dec 10, 2018)

The Clang change isn't a problem unless you can prove that it breaks a userland API/ABI (go ahead and prove me wrong, I doubt you can), that's what the stability in FreeBSD is all about and not about whether the tools used to build the programs are this version or that version.


----------



## Hakaba (Dec 10, 2018)

chrcol said:


> Compare this
> 
> http://www.ivoras.net/freebsd/freebsd9.html
> 
> ...



Or compare this :
https://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.0R/relnotes.html

to this :

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.0R/relnotes.html ?


----------



## Hakaba (Dec 10, 2018)

For me Hardware support.

But I have to read in deep few addition in jail.



> The pf(4) packet filter is now usable within a jail(8) using vnet(9).


sound good, no ?


----------



## -Snake- (Dec 14, 2018)

I would like the installer to work correctly, as did the freebsd 11.


----------



## olli@ (Dec 15, 2018)

My main reason for updating to FreeBSD 12 (actually stable/12, to be exact) are improvements in the *NVMe* support and *TRIM*, because my new hardware includes an NVMe SSD that can do 3 GB/s (read _and_ write), and I want to make good use of it.

There are also some improvements to *bhyve*, but it still doesn't support pass-through of CD / DVD / BD drives, so I'm stuck with VirtualBox which supports that.


----------



## DriverBuilder (Dec 19, 2018)

Now Supervisor Mode Access Prevention(SMAP) works as expected in 12.0-RELEASE.


----------



## joggx (Dec 23, 2018)

Beastie7 said:


> As the title says!
> 
> I'm personally excited for:
> 
> ...



Where you found these info? 

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.0R/relnotes.html#storage-zfs


----------



## chrcol (Dec 27, 2018)

Hakaba said:


> Or compare this :
> https://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.0R/relnotes.html
> 
> to this :
> ...



The official relnotes has always been pretty bad.  Hence these alternative url's.

How can I comment on my favourite new Feature if I dont know what the new features are?


----------



## chrcol (Dec 27, 2018)

kpa said:


> The Clang change isn't a problem unless you can prove that it breaks a userland API/ABI (go ahead and prove me wrong, I doubt you can), that's what the stability in FreeBSD is all about and not about whether the tools used to build the programs are this version or that version.



Well for me I have to audit every compiler change, as need predictable behaviours in binaries.  I got round this by using a specific version of a compiler from the ports tree instead of base compiler, but now the ports tree maintainers have started removing compilers that are not EOL upstream.  Which makes it hard to rely on a compiler version in the ports tree as well, because the removal of compilers is now unpredictable and not in line with support policies upstream anymore.

Compiler development tends to be ahead of other software development, so a compiler gets released, and then there is a time lag for software developers to catch up and make their software work properly with that compiler, but if the OS is always on the latest bleeding edge compiler you dont get that 'matured' advantage.

Now if as you said the only concern is userland code, then perhaps that concern needs to be widened a bit, I know in the past the base compiler had to be stable on all ports as well.

I am looking at this from a LTS perspective, whilst FreeBSD seems to be gradually moving more and more to a rapid development model, other OS's have done the same but tend to have alternative policies in place for LTS user's as well.


----------



## ralphbsz (Dec 27, 2018)

chrcol said:


> Well for me I have to audit every compiler change, as need predictable behaviours in binaries.


Purely out of curiosity: Can you explain why you care so much?  For example, if the compiler maintainers improve the code generator or optimizer slightly, and create a nearly equivalent but faster instruction sequence, why would this create problems for you?  At what level do you really care about the binary being predictable?  Perhaps you could (should?) have the compiler run only once, and take its output and check it into your change control system and rely on it?

I'm just interested in why someone would go to the extreme of auditing the generated code, that's an interesting workflow.


----------



## theITguy (Feb 1, 2021)

Hi Guy´s,

I have a question. Why is so necessary to update th FreeNAS to the newer version. We have FreeNAS 11 SMB3_02 and mount_smbfs tied. I read all comment but our FreeNAS is kind a big and I would like to do it without the update. Might be there some another option...

We have our Virtuel Mashine with Veeam, and connected iSCSI with FreeNAS. I want to make a copie of Veeam Backup file witch lies one the FreeNAS Drive. I have between FreeNAS and iSCSI Virtuel Mashine 60-80Mbit/s it´s all ok but if I take the copy to my WD Elements trough RDP than max 5,5Mbit/s  .  
RDP makes slower, is my opinion after experience and Google.

There is some option to make it faster without connect directly on FreeNAS with USB drive?
Trough Server somehow and not on complicated way? I have not much time and therefore is important.

Thank you and have a nice day!


----------



## Crivens (Feb 1, 2021)

We are a FreeBSD support forum. For FreeNAS questions, please contact those guys.


----------

