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DragonFly BSD?
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15 reviews of this app found across Reddit:
Dragonfly BSD somehow manages to outperform Linux. It takes everybody by surprise and nobody understands what's going on.
The traditional UNIX-style monolithic kernel design is brought into question.
DragonFly was forked from FreeBSD around version 4.8 of FreeBSD - that was 10 years ago, so there's a lot changed since then.
Both of them using the same ports system and pkg tools is the major similarity at this point. I think DragonFly was actually using pkg first, which is mostly an accident of timing. Look hard enough and you'll see shared elements between all the BSDs, really.
FreeBSD uses a more complex locking system, where multiple layers of locks need to be tracked. DragonFly uses a token system, which is much simpler. The payoff for DragonFly has been a simpler programming model and a generally more responsive system. (see the performance page on dragonflybsd.org. )
Disclaimer: I have been working on DragonFly for most of its existence and run the DragonFly BSD Digest, so of course I would have these opinions.
Versioned file systems are not a new idea at all: VMS had one, DragonFlyBSD has a similar thing (automatic snapshotting).
It's just not a commonly requested feature, and the benefits of having versioning at the FS layer, instead on top of it, are questionable in most scenarios. Note that there's a lot of overhead, and possible duplication of effort, when doing it indiscriminately.
Dragonfly exists because FreeBSD revoked Matt Dillon's FreeBSD commit rights.
He had been the technical lead of FreeBSD during a time period in which FreeBSD improved a lot. Disagreements on architecture eventually led to this fork.
Dragonfly's there to prove a point: Matt was right. And it has already proved that point. Despite the small team, it is scaling far better than the other BSDs.
The only BSD that does scale semi-decently is Dragonfly.
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/performance/
And its hybrid kernel design could do very well, but it being a relatively young fork of freebsd, it just isn't trusted... yet.
Here's a document describing the main design ideas behind HAMMER:
It's basically supposed to be the only filesystem you will ever need, with live snapshots, historical data retention etc.
Before downvoting the parent, please consider these SMP benchmarks. I know this is /r/linux and we all love linux here. But that doesn't mean every single technical choice the kernel devs have made over the past 20+ years is optimal for today's computing environment.
From the 4.2 release page: http://www.dragonflybsd.org/release42
> The SCTP protocol (an alternative to TCP and UDP) has been removed. Its code was originally written at the beginning of the 2000s and having never been updated since then, it was starting to become a problem for the general evolution of the network stack. Not having had any known user in 15 years, its removal was an obvious choice.
> There's never more than literally ~5 developers at any given time, which is why it's so far behind Linux/BSD.
I don't think that's the case. It is because HURD is at a dead end, as it hasn't solved its well-known architectural flaws nor has it migrated away from the inadequate Mach microkernel. 5 developers is, by the way, very optimistic. Last I looked it was more like 0 to 3.
Dragonfly BSD, Escape, Genode, HelenOS, Minix3 are actually promising designs rather than deadends, and therefore have developers, despite being far behind Linux/BSD, whatever that means.
I am running DragonFly on my C720 and like it. It's not speedy by any stretch, but it was cheap and works well. The Chromebook page on the DragonFly site will help if you haven't seen it:
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/newhandbook/ConfigChromebook/
Also the AUTODEEP setting for processor states will help:
http://www.dragonflydigest.com/2014/12/10/15218.html
Suspend/resume isn't supported, but you can save a lot with that and other settings.
Any way you could start mirroring DragonFlyBSD? I've been following it from it's inception and contributing here and their. It's a great, very performant operating system that grows leaps and bounds with every release. Most of their mirrors are subpar and I think they could really use a awesome mirror like mirrors.rit.edu. I know of at least one RIT alum that contributes to the project also.
Besides that, I love the project and use it all the time for Arch updates. Thanks!
Matt Dillon. Contributor of Linux. Former head of FreeBSD. Former Amiga developer, mostly known for his DiceC compiler.
He's currently the benevolent dictator of Dragonfly, which he forked from FreeBSD after a conflict about OS design around the new SMP reality. Matt went the hybrid kernel direction (system servers), whereas FreeBSD went the Linux direction (lock labyrinth).
He is smart enough to see that Linux's design isn't the ultimate one. For a system developed by a small team, Dragonfly sure does scale well, which says a lot about its design and the potential for further improvement (e.g.: Beating Linux).
Specifically on NTP, the DragonFlyBSD team has written DNTPD - DragonFly Network Time Daemon, their own from-scratch implementation. http://www.dragonflybsd.org/features/ I wonder if it would be worth it to port to other systems.
Especially when you can get BSD for free and it's as easy to install as Ubuntu.
My predecessor told my boss that he absolutely needed a Mac for Photoshop and Dreamweaver, so I'm sitting in front of a tiny macbook pro as work and i have to say that the CLI side of things is very hobbled.
Down for me. Google to the rescue: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:blather.michaelwlucas.com/archives/994
EDIT: It's only some basic install instructions. Maybe http://www.dragonflybsd.org/ is a better place for an introduction to the OS.