FreeBSD 14.3 Released

'Michael Larabel of Phoronix highlights the key updates in today's stable release of FreeBSD 14.3: FreeBSD 14.3 has back-ported a number of improvements from FreeBSD 15 back to the FreeBSD 14 series. Plus a number of routine package updates and other fixes. Some of the FreeBSD 14.3-RELEASE highlights include: - Updating the ZFS support against OpenZFS 2.2.7. - Merging of the Realtek RTW88 and RTW89 WiFi drivers based on the Linux 6.14 kernel code. - The LinuxKPI code has been improved to support crypto offload as well as the 802.11n and 802.11ac standards. - The Intel IX Ethernet driver has added support for the x550 1000BAS-BX SFP modules. - Thor2 PCI IDs added to the Broadcom NetXtreme "BNXT" driver along with support for 400G speed modules. - XZ 5.8.1, OpenSSH 9.9p2, OpenSSL 3.0.16, and many other package updates. - Syscons as the legacy system console driver is now considered deprecated. Syscons is not compatible with UEFI, lacks UTF-8 support, and is Giant-locked. ' -- source: https://bsd.slashdot.org/story/25/06/10/2146224 Cheers, Peter

On Thu, 12 Jun 2025 09:31:25 +1200, Peter Reutemann quoted:
'Syscons is not compatible with UEFI, lacks UTF-8 support, and is Giant-locked. '
The “giant lock” is the BSD equivalent of the old Linux “big kernel lock”. This was a leftover from uniprocessor days. It basically says “stop everything else while I do this”. Obviously that became a performance bottleneck in multiprocessor configurations. Linux got rid of the last traces of its lock about 15 years ago; it seems the BSDs still keep remnants of theirs.
participants (2)
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Lawrence D'Oliveiro
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Peter Reutemann