BSD News Archives

Following the fallout from the OpenSSL Heartbleed bug, OpenBSD developers have decided to fork the OpenSSL code-base to create LibreSSL.

For those curious about the state of FreeBSD, the FreeBSD Q1'2014 quarterly status report has been issued.

Bhyve, the new virtualization hypervisor introduced in FreeBSD 10.0, can now be easily managed by virt-manager.

GhostBSD, the desktop-focused BSD operating system based on FreeBSD, is nearly ready for its 4.0 release.

NetBSD is the latest BSD operating system to have DRM/KMS graphics drivers ported from the Linux kernel.

The Apache web server has been removed from the OpenBSD base operating system over being too bloated and server administrators are now being asked to switch to lighter-weight alternatives.

GhostBSD 4.0 Alpha 1 is now available as a user-friendly desktop BSD operating system that's now based upon the FreeBSD 10.0 source tree while shipping the GNOME2-forked MATE desktop.

The OpenBSD operating system now supports running its X.Org Server without root permissions for better security.

FreeBSD has imported the LLVM Clang 3.4 compiler into its code-base for providing initial support for all the new features of the C++1y (C++14) update.

Since last month's release of FreeBSD 10.0 and PC-BSD 10.0 that followed, many Phoronix readers have been asking about benchmarks of this major BSD operating system update that's home to many new features. Here's an update on my FreeBSD/PC-BSD 10.0 testing thus far.

The MINIX 3 operating system has been successfully ported to ARM and is starting to be supported by some ARM development boards.

EdgeBSD is a new BSD operating system this year born out of the NetBSD code-base. The project doesn't call itself a fork of NetBSD but it aims to push features and changes faster than the veteran BSD operating system.

PC-BSD, the popular FreeBSD derivative that focuses on desktop friendliness and ease-of-use, has reached version 10.0 today following the FreeBSD 10.0 release earlier in the month.

With FreeBSD 10.0 having been released and the final release of the PC-BSD 10.0 coming this week, I decided to try out the PC-BSD 10.0-RC5 ahead of the final release. While I intended to run some benchmarks of FreeBSD/PC-BSD 10.0 against its predecessor and compared to Linux distributions, this initial PC-BSD 10.0 encounter was cut short after about ten minutes.

The FreeBSD Foundation has issued their quarterly status report for Q4'2013 that covers the work they've done on improving FreeBSD drivers, virtualization advancements, desktop improvements, and other enhancements within this leading BSD world.

To follow in the foot steps of this week's FreeBSD 10.0 release, PC-BSD 10.0 is likely to be released next week but for now they have out PC-BSD 10.0 RC5.

It's been delayed by many months but the official release of FreeBSD 10.0 has shipped today!

PC-BSD 10.0 RC4 is now available as one of the near-final releases of this major FreeBSD-derived operating system that is landing a new text-based installer, UEFI loader support, GNOME 3 / MATE / CInnamon desktops, and is shipping with all major FreeBSD 10.0 features.

The OpenBSD Foundation is running into a situation of lack of funding to the point that they can't even cover their electricity costs and may be forced to suspend or reduce their operations without additional help.

While FreeBSD 10.0-RC4 was released last week and it was the last anticipated version before the already delayed final FreeBSD 10.0 release, an RC5 version ended up being warranted today.

While FreeBSD 10.0 is exciting for finally having an AMD Radeon DRM/KMS driver as one of the major features of the new OS, the quality isn't yet on par with the open-source graphics support found on Linux from where the code was originally ported.

With a bit of luck FreeBSD 10.0 will be released in the next few days so here's a look at the arguably ten best features of this next major BSD operating system release.

There's a new development release out of the upcoming PC-BSD 10.0 operating system release that shares most of its changes with upstream FreeBSD 10.0.

FreeBSD 10.0-RC4 has been released today as hopefully the last test release of the popular BSD operating system before declaring the official 10.0 release in the days to come.

After the FreeBSD 10.0 RC3 release earlier in the day, PC-BSD is out with their 10.0 RC2 release as well. PC-BSD 10.0 RC2 pulls in upstream FreeBSD 10.0 changes plus other work of their own as well.

The third and final FreeBSD 10.0 release candidate is out ahead of the hopeful general availability in early January.

In the forum discussion from yesterday's article about Sony using the LLVM/Clang compiler for the PlayStation 4 with its game development kit, some readers questioned whether the PlayStation 4 was really powered by FreeBSD. FreeBSD can be found on the PlayStation 4 along with Mono and other open-source components.

As some other interesting open-source audio news this week besides PulseAudio now supporting the systemd journal is that Lennart Poettering's sound server is continuing to be better supported on FreeBSD.

There is new work within the FreeBSD camp to port Apple's launchd from OS X to non-Darwin systems.

The second release candidate to FreeBSD 10.0 is now available and with it comes Radeon KMS graphics driver bug-fixes and other cleaned-up and fixed code.

Just shy of a week since the release of FreeBSD 10.0 Beta 4, the first release candidate for this delayed operating system update is now available.

The latest FreeBSD code (for 10.0) supports not only Intel KMS but also the open-source AMD Radeon driver ported from the Linux kernel. This Intel/Radeon KMS support has since trickled into DragonFlyBSD and other BSD platforms. However, not all is up to par when it comes to graphics support on FreeBSD. Here'a a road-map and test matrix with some other items still on the BSD developers' agenda.

HAMMER2 file-system improvements have landed hot on the heels of the exciting DragonFlyBSD 3.6 release.

Besides FreeBSD 10.0 Beta 4 being out, so is the latest update to the FreeBSD-derived PC-BSD operating system. Besides being based off the FreeBSD 10.0 packages and features, interesting about this PC-BSD update is the GNOME 2 desktop has finally been replaced by GNOME 3, MATE, and Cinnamon desktop alternatives.

The final beta build ahead of the long-awaited and delayed FreeBSD 10.0 has now been made available.

Last year I wrote about OpenBSD being forked as Bitrig, a new BSD operating system. It's been a year and a half since the project's inception but there still isn't an official release, except there are development snapshots and there is still development work happening.

FreeBSD 10.0 was originally slated to ship as stable in November, but that didn't happen and now it doesn't look like this major BSD operating system update will be ready to ship until sometime in 2014.

DragonFlyBSD 3.6 is out today and it's an extremely exciting release for the BSD operating system!

The FreeBSD Foundation is sponsoring a new FreeBSD Journal publication that's about to begin publishing bi-monthly issues concerning BSD.

There were plans originally to ship FreeBSD 10.0 as stable in November, but that isn't going to happen. It's not even clear if FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE will be ready to ship before the end of the calendar year, but at least progress is being made and when the release does happen there's a great number of new features.

This week in California was a one-day FreeBSD Vendor Summit and during the event was an update on the Bhyve virtualization hypervisor that is playing an important role in FreeBSD 10.0.

While PC-BSD is a terrific desktop incarnation of FreeBSD, it's mostly focused around the KDE desktop. In the event you happen to be looking for a BSD platform to run underneath the Xfce 4.10 desktop, the MATE 1.6 fork of the GNOME2 packages, or the LXDE desktop environment, GhostBSD is another alternative that's powered by FreeBSD.

The latest beta release of FreeBSD 10.0 is now available for testing.

OpenBSD 5.4 was released this morning to kick off the round of open-source operating systems updating for November. OpenBSD 5.4 brings new and improved hardware support, including finally supporting the TI OMAP3/OMAP4 ARM SoCs and updating the Linux-ported Intel DRM graphics driver.

The second beta release for the FreeBSD 10.0 operating system release was delayed but made available Monday afternoon.

At the beginning of the year I wrote about a new project, Arch BSD, that aims to have Arch Linux powered atop the FreeBSD kernel. Arch BSD strives to be a lightweight and flexible BSD distribution that tries to "Keep It Simple" and nearly one year later the project is still kicking.

Following in the ways of FreeBSD, the NetBSD operating system is soon going to be importing LLVM and the Clang C/C++ compiler for use on their platform.

The latest multi-threading improvements to the DragonFlyBSD kernel involve reducing SMP contention for allowing the BSD operating system to better utilize large multi-core systems.

FreeBSD 10.0 has been in alpha for just one month but announced today is the first beta of the forthcoming FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE.

In late August an open-source AMD Radeon KMS graphics driver was added to FreeBSD after being ported over from the Linux kernel; this new Radeon KMS driver will be a feature of FreeBSD 10.0. DragonFlyBSD developers have now in turn ported the FreeBSD Radeon graphics driver to their BSD distribution.