Story JQ97 NeXTBSD, aka FreeBSD-X

NeXTBSD, aka FreeBSD-X

by
in bsd on (#JQ97)
FreeBSD hackers Jordan Hubbard and Kip Macy surprised an audience of Bay Area FreeBSD Users in August 2015 by laying out their version for a new architecture, based vaguely on BSD but with a microkernel and an event-driven framework consisting of something like libdispatch and launchd. Those are big changes if you are familiar with what FreeBSD has looked like for all of its life.

The good news is, this doesn't mean the destruction of the FreeBSD we all know and love. In fact, Hubbard, who is also the CTO of iXsystems (developers of FreeNAS and PC-BSD, both products derived from FreeBSD) aren't aiming to impact FreeBSD but rather change the fundamental architecture of iXsystems' own products.

The slide deck walks you through the proposed, new architecture. Better still, watch the talk yourself, before heading herefor some useful comments to help sort it all out. Others are watching this project with suspicion, too. Check out this excellent rebuttal on the DarknEdgy blog, which suggests, among other criticisms, that the Mach microkernel is an anachronism.

As a FreeBSD fan, I'm glad they're treating this as a separate product and not hacking up the FreeBSD source tree: that gives us time to see how this shakes out.
Reply 5 comments

Surprising? (Score: 2, Funny)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2015-08-28 17:27 (#JRGT)

So... the guy that works at Apple is forking FreeBSD so that it looks more like NeXT/Apple's OS has looked for more than 20 years.

I'm not shocked.

Separate product (Score: 2, Insightful)

by genx@pipedot.org on 2015-08-30 01:29 (#JVVQ)

Good thing and the way it should have happened in the Linux world, with DEs and all Redhat/Poettering stuff.

Good Summary (Score: 2, Insightful)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2015-08-31 13:51 (#JZV0)

I just dinged the other press release of a story, but this is pipedot at its best. There is a notable product, but the idiots behind it only left a video behind, so the enterprising summary reader watched it and provided a useful summary. Nice! More like this. Less like press releases for stupid products.