FreeBSD Archive

As computer technology moves forward, you'll already have the established base and experience working with FreeBSD 64-bit. It's not about higher performance except in compiling software, high-end graphics rendering, and math-intensive work such as compressing files or in complex cryptology applications. It's about future-proofing.

"Virtual Bridges, a provider of enterprise and SMB solutions using virtualization for business, announced today the release of Win4BSD Pro Desktop Win4BSD Pro Desktop runs as a FreeBSD/PC-BSD application and allows users to run Windows applications and desktops with seamless ease on the BSD platform. The company also announced that it will be releasing Win4BSD Virtual Desktop Server, a FreeBSD-based desktop consolidation server, during October."

Following in the footsteps of DTrace, another major OpenSolaris feature is making its way to FreeBSD. FreeBSD developer Pawel Dawidek has announced a port of ZFS, Sun's next generation filesystem. In just 10 days of work, Pawel already has ZFS filesystems mounted, with the ability to create files and navigate directories.

This chapter explains the ins and outs of non-standard FreeBSD installations. If you are installing FreeBSD on a system with another operating system previously installed, or if you aren't using a CD or DVD to install FreeBSD, you'll want to read this chapter before performing the installation.

"With the release of FreeBSD 5.5 and FreeBSD 6.1, the second quarter of 2006 has been productive." The status report contains a lot of information about (for example) DTrace, Embedded FreeBSD, GJournal, XFS for FreeBSD, and the new BSDInstaller.

Joel Dahl, FreeBSD developer: "FreeBSD development is fast these days and reading CVS commit mails is a time consuming task, but almost always both fun and interesting. However, somewhat secret, the really interesting stuff can be found in the Perforce repository. This is where all the cool projects are maintained, and the daily activity is quite high." It's a summary of all the 'secret' development they have in their perforce repository. It mentions DTrace, Xen, FreeBSD/ARM, FreeBSD/MIPS, a new USB system, and sun4v development, for example.

"The FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce its participation in the Google Summer of Code program designed to introduce students to open source software development. The FreeBSD Project received over 120 applications, amongst which 14 projects have been selected for funding."

FlightAware uses FreeBSD/amd64 systems to track the locations of up to 70000 flights per day. Will Backman speaks with Karl Lehenbauer about how FlightAware is successfully using FreeBSD with other open source technologies to drive their product.

A project to bring one of the most advanced features of Sun Microsystems' Solaris operating system to the FreeBSD platform has started bearing fruit.

Sun dtrace developer Bryan Cantrill reports on the progress being made by John Birrel on porting dtrace to FreeBSD. "While John has quite a bit further to go before one could call it a complete port, what he has now is indisputably useful. If you run FreeBSD in production, you're going to want John's port as it stands today - and if you develop for the FreeBSD kernel (drivers or otherwise), you're going to need it (once you've done kernel development with DTrace, there's no going back)."

"The Security Team has been concerned for some time by anecdotal reports concerning the number of FreeBSD systems which are not being promptly updated or are running FreeBSD releases which have passed their End of Life dates and are no longer supported. In order to better understand which FreeBSD versions are in use, how people are (or aren't) keeping them updated, and why it seems so many systems are not being updated, I have put together a short survey of 12 questions. The information gathered will inform the work done by the Security Team, as well as my own personal work on FreeBSD this summer."

FreeBSD now both boots and survives a complete 'make buildworld' on the Sun Niagara UltraSPARC T1 CPU. "I'm proud to announce that FreeBSD on the T1 is now stable enough that it can 'make buildworld' natively. The source is currently available in perforce under the view //depot/projects/kmacy_sun4v/... I probably won't roll it back into CVS until the logical domaining support is done. I'm looking forward to receiving input from individuals who plan to deploy it to find out what workloads to target in performance tuning."

SoftwareInReview, well, reviews FreeBSD 6.1, and concludes: "Overall I found FreeBSD 6.1 to be another step in the right direction, and I think it's encouraging that there weren't any revolutionary base system changes in this release. Sometimes big changes are unavoidable, but historically the FreeBSD team has bungled such leaps as the switch to the ULE scheduler, the introduction of SMP, and the liberation of the base system from the big giant lock. Sometimes you have to stop and make sure that what you presently have is working properly, and it looks like now is that time for FreeBSD. I applaud their efforts with 6.1 and look forward to testing 6.2."

Linux may soon have a stronger open-source competitor on the desktop if FreeBSD's plans come to fruition. FreeBSD developer Scott Long told ZDNet UK on Thursday that the operating system, descended from the Unix derivative BSD, is "quickly approaching" feature parity with Linux. "Lots of work is going on to make FreeBSD more friendly on the desktop," Long said. "Within the year, we expect to have, or be near, parity with Linux."