FreeBSD/arm64 becoming Tier 1 in FreeBSD 13

notaplumber 5 years ago |

OpenBSD has no equivalent to FreeBSD's support tiers, but arm64/aarch64 is supported with binary packages and syspatches today.

https://www.openbsd.org/arm64.html

Amusing seeing people reacting here on HN to the Apple M1 SoC Linux kernel upstreaming, meanwhile in OpenBSD.. FreeBSD hasn't made any public progress yet on M1 support.

https://marc.info/?l=openbsd-arm&m=161386122115249&w=2

https://github.com/openbsd/src/search?q=m1&type=commits

jchw 5 years ago | |

I mean, Hacker News also reacted to that. I still remember the thread!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26209345

I also wouldn’t fault HN for being more interested in the port for an OS they actually use to a platform they’re intrigued by. Not to say there’s anything wrong with OpenBSD, but I am not interested in switching to it.

notaplumber 5 years ago | | |

Sure that's fair, just thought it was interesting to point out the progress they've been making, especially with their 50th release around the corner (6.9 is due May 1st), and M1 SoC support in pretty good shape OOTB. USB works, Wireless, Ethernet on the M1 Mini, etc. It is lacking SMP and a bunch of other stuff, but still.. ton of impressive work.

Not trying to convince anyone to look at OpenBSD who has no inclination toward *BSD, but out of curiosity, what's missing for you?

jchw 5 years ago | | |

Last I checked OpenBSD lacked any support for Wayland (I tend to use SwayWM; it is supported on FreeBSD I believe, though realistically Linux is going to have the best story here for now.) I also don’t believe Docker runs natively, which is a pain for some stuff. I don’t expect most commercial software (REAPER, IDA/Binja, etc.) to really support BSDs either.

I run multiple machines so it’s not a huge issue if one OS doesn’t do everything I need, but I expect roughly all of the things I want to do to require some kind of VM or emulation under BSD, if it’s even possible at all. So for me, the value proposition is limited. It just seems like more stuff to learn, and I’m not entirely sure what to do with it.

notaplumber 5 years ago | | |

All true, thanks for answering.

chanc3e 5 years ago | | |

I'm onboard your OpenBSD hype train. Swift support came in the last month two also!

I'm an extremely happy arm64 swift using designer rn.

Klwohu 5 years ago | | |

Don't expect Wayland to ever come to OpenBSD.

jchw 5 years ago | | |

I am unaware of any reasons why Wayland won’t come to OpenBSD. Last I checked, progress towards the possibility of running Wayland compositors on OpenBSD had been progressing slowly. OpenBSD seems to support KMS these days, as well as DRM. I don’t know if OpenBSD will adopt evdev, but I don’t think it would be a giant logical leap unless the maintainers are diametrically opposed.

If OpenBSD is unable to transition to Wayland, that does call into question what it will do in the future. My understanding is that Xorg maintenance basically only extends to Xwayland use cases, so it seems like a fork of Xorg or an alternative would be needed to keep things going in the longer term.

moistbar 5 years ago | | |

Out of curiosity, why not?

eek04_ 5 years ago | | |

I have a problem with the leadership. OpenBSD does good technical work, but I don't want to deal with deraadt again.

trasz 5 years ago | |

FreeBSD has been providing binary packages for aarch64 for quite some time - this doesn't happen only for Tier1; I think even mips64 still gets them.

emaste 5 years ago | | |

The difference is that binary packages for Tier-2 and lower are on a best-effort basis, and might be more or less out of date depending on the available package build hardware. For arm64 we now have multiple high-end arm64 servers and can guarantee packages will be built in a timely fashion for all supported branches.

mnd999 5 years ago |

Fantastic, congratulations and big thanks to all that made this happen. I was outspokenly grumpy when the news came out that this wasn’t happening, now I’m so pleased it is.

flatiron 5 years ago |

I remember when it was x86 only. Free=best x86, open=crazy security and docs nuts, net=runs on university toaster. Times have changed!

ashton314 5 years ago |

Wait, so does this mean FreeBSD will work better on a raspberry pi without having to hack on your config files just to get it to recognize all available RAM? I’ve got FreeBSD running on a rpi4—took some doing. It would be nice to just slap an image on it and have it work.

maxioatic 5 years ago | |

> We will also be suggesting one or more low-cost reference platforms for FreeBSD/arm64.

A boy can dream this would be the Pi.

kevans91 5 years ago | | |

This is pretty unlikely, unfortunately. We're generally looking out for a Pi maintainer because it doesn't really have one -- it's not the most desirable platform to hack on, from a developer POV.

maxioatic 5 years ago | | |

Hmm, bummer. Curious as to why it's not that desirable, and is there something else you would rather use?

kevans91 5 years ago | | |

Speaking from personal experience, it's an absolute pain -- they're already an odd duck (w.r.t. booting, for instance), add on that the documentation is incredibly lacking compared to competitors and you've got a platform that's not too appetizing.

Allwinner and Rockchip tend to be pretty solid, as far as SoC go; start here: https://wiki.freebsd.org/arm

Decabytes 5 years ago | | |

I’m curious about what documentation is lacking? I’ve been collecting technical documentation on the RPI4 because I’m trying to understand the platform well, and maybe I’ve come across something that can help?

Klwohu 5 years ago | | |

Are you saying this as a FreeBSD core development team member?

kevans91 5 years ago | | |

I speak as a FreeBSD developer who has dabbled with RPi, having tested and shuffled in a lot of the initial RPi4 patches and did some not-insignificant hacking to get a single RPi image to actually support RPi3 + RPi4.

hibbelig 5 years ago |

What does this mean for the different devices? Will more be supported? I’ve got a cubietruck and a pinebook pro...

rwaksmunski 5 years ago | |

Tier 1 mostly means binary updates and prebuilt packages. More details: https://docs.freebsd.org/en/articles/committers-guide/#archs

Decabytes 5 years ago |

I’m glad to see this b/c I had a good experience with the RPI3 on FreeBSD but a terrible experience trying to get the RPI4 running on FreeBSD. I think I will still have to use a dongle to run the RPIs on FreeBSD which isn’t great but hopefully the overall setup will be easier

waynesonfire 5 years ago |

so awesome seeing freebsd adapting.

m01 5 years ago |

It'd be nice if this was a stepping stone towards (the BSD-based) TrueNAS (formerly known as FreeNAS) coming to arm64/AArch64.

ggm 5 years ago |

semi-kinda blob and blob-like exterality depending on rpi4, black magic to make things work with 8gb, nothing insurmountable but I kind of wish in the future some rpi8 doesn't inherit this risk. Absolutely awesome news and welcome news.

otterley 5 years ago |

Mods: Can we update the link? Here is the actual announcement: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2021-Ap...

dang 5 years ago | |

Changed from https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2021-Ap.... Thanks!

Ducki 5 years ago | |

Oh, my bad, sorry.