BSD & Darwin Archive

MirOS announced the release of a new snapshot of MirOS BSD #7-current. Read more.

ekkoBSD.org has announced the latest beta release of the ekkoBSD Operating System to the public today.This release supports the Sparc 64bit Platform.

A helpful beginner's guide to managing BSD filesystems. The author outlines what filesystems are, the format of /etc/fstab including some of the more commonly-used options, mounting media such as CDs, and using df to monitor partition space.

ekkoBSD as a core OS offers security, stability, and flexability to your infrastructure. Feature enhancements include ekkoBSD native binaries, new fdialog features, fetch/libfetch, new applications in bin/sbin, and a new installation guide. The GUI installer (EINSTein) is still not functional in this release.

DragonFly BSD was announced in July of this year, with Matt Dillon the originator and main weightlifter of this project. Development has been proceeding at a good clip, with a first release expected in 2004. Here's some data on the amount of activity in the DragonFly source, as of the end of December 2003.

ekkoBSD is a BSD OS which offers security, stability, and flexability to your infrastructure. As a default installation, it gives you an email server, Web Server, ssh, and several other services that would normally need to be added and secured. This release is the first native build under an ekkoBSD host. Some highlights include the replacement of bsd-ftpd with pure-ftpd, security fixes, changes to the hierarchy, the introduction of the new installer, and the new fdialog.

The GNU-Darwin Distribution is a free operating system and a popular source of free software for Mac OS X and Darwin-x86 users, but it is also a platform for digital activism. Founded in November of 2000, the Distribution has the stated goal of bringing software freedom to computer users of every stripe, and vigilantly defending digital liberties.

Technically, the BSD operating systems are every bit as good as Linux, so why aren't they commercially successful? eWEEK.com Linux & Open Source Center Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols and software consultant Brian Masinick explain why.

Fink 0.6.0 was released yesterday and is compatible with Panther. This is a source-only release; binaries will follow in a few days. Changes include: 10.2 with gcc 3.1 is officially no longer supported. 10.2-gcc3.3 and 10.3 are officially supported now, even though not all packages are in the 10.3 or 10.2-gcc3.3 tree yet. The mirror code has been updated to support the mirrors finkmirrors.net will introduce. Additionally, Fink now has a new logo.

Find non-free code at GNU-Darwin, and get a reward from RMS. In preparation for this initiative, the team has greatly improved the software freedom status and GPL compliance of the newest free OS including the ports system, packages, on-line, and hard media offerings. It appears that the FSF wants GNU-Darwin to stay free. As always, many thanks to them, especially RMS, D. E. Evans, Eben Moglen, etc. It feels great to do the right thing, and that GNU-Darwin is finally inside the free software circle. There is also a longer article about this at Advogato.

The LittleWhiteDog web site posted an article showing how to configure and secure a BSD system.

The end of an era for BSD/OS: Yesterday, on the bsdi-users mailing list, it was reported that Wind River Japan had announced that they will be discontinuing BSD/OS Internet Server Edition (ISE) on Dec. 13, 2003. The final version of BSD/OS, BSD/OS 5.1 ISE, will be available as an upgrade for 5.0 ISE customers in October with sales ending on December 31, 2003. This will be available in binary and binary with source code, as with previous releases.

The Darwin team is pleased to announce the availability of the Darwin 7 Preview source code corresponding to select portions of the 2003 WWDC Panther seed. Darwin and a number of other projects are available via Web DAV (as well as regular HTTP).

In December of 1996, Apple acquired NeXT Software. The reason for the acquisition was so that Apple could finally make a modern operating system for their users. They searched high and low for a OS to be the foundation for their new OS. Among the candidates, Windows NT which never even made it past the first stage. Then came Solaris, but Apple and Sun could not agree on the licensing terms and the idea was crushed.