FreeBSD Archive

"FreeBSD is now, with the notable exception of suspend, a stable functionally complete domU on Xen 3.0. I am currently in the process of adding dom0 support. Suspend support will be turned on as soon as the xenbus + newbus integration work goes in. It is unclear how much sense it would make to post a sparse tree as this is all being done in -CURRENT (the development branch). However, as soon as dom0 support goes in, Xen support will be pulled into RELENG_6, and in all likelihood full Xen support will go out with the release of FreeBSD 6.1."

"For software that's been around since the late '70s, before any of today's more popular operating systems, open source BSDs (in their current avatars) don't get their due share of hard disks. FreeBSD, one of the first BSD flavors to emerge from the 386BSD project, is a Unix-like free operating system based originally on the BSD branch of 386BSD and later 4.4BSD-Lite. This makes BSDs more like traditional Unixes than Linux. Late last year FreeBSD unleashed release 6.0, with better support for 64-bit and wireless hardware. Here's our review."

Without much ado, the FreeSBIE team has released a beta of their upcoming version 2. "You can download the beta from the torrent. You can log in as user 'freesbie' (no password) and try 'startxfce4' or 'startfluxbox'. You won't find the preconfigured menus and settings as Dave's still working on them, but you can run `openoffice.org' from a terminal. All you readers are strongly welcome if you can give it a test and report feedback, we are working hard for the new release." Note: Let's try not to get knickers in a twist over the icon this time, shall we?

"FreeBSD is an enterprise-grade operating system that leaves little to be desired. Most people have tried Linux by now, but a surprisingly large number of people have not yet taken FreeBSD for a spin. Now may well be the optimal time to take the plunge, as FreeBSD 6.0 provides the same rock-solid stability for which FreeBSD is known, and also implements some outstanding new features."

The FreeBSD Foundation received a donation of a blade system from Hewlett-Packard for use as a third-party software build cluster. This 20-node HP BladeSystem cluster triples the speed of the build process for i386 packages.

"I have been a Linux user way back from the first time I was introduced to an alternate OS than windows. Even though I was aware of other Unixes like FreeBSD and Solaris, I hadn't come around to installing them on my machine. Two days back, things changed when I downloaded the latest FreeBSD version 6.0 from their official website."

Have you ever needed a software RAID solution for a low-end server install? Perhaps you've wanted your workstation to take advantage of the redundancy provided by a disk mirror without investing in a hardware RAID controller. Has a prior painful configuration experience turned you off software RAID altogether on Unix systems? Read more at OnLamp.

"The FreeBSD operating system is finally through it's buggy 5.x series and into the more reliable 6.x series. Most of the problems of the old days - kernel panics on multi-CPU machines, AMD64 troubles galore, and shaky network drivers - are gone. FreeBSD still isn't perfect, but at least with 6.0-RELEASE it's more stable and functional than it has been in the recent past."

FreeBSD 6.0 has been released, but an official announcement is not yet available. You can download the .iso images here (mirror list). More information, documentation and release notes for the various architectures can be found here. Note: read this. Update: It's official.

The new FreeBSD logo has finally been chosen, and can be seen here. The FreeBSD website will be updated shortly with the new logo in place of Beastie (on the website that is, not actually replacing Beastie as the mascot).

As laptops and mobility become more effective and prevalent, your job as a system administrator is to provide users with easy, secure access to their data. IMAP is one way to allow users to receive email wherever they go. Cyrus IMAP is a popular server, but installation and configuration is a bear. Fortunately, Francisco Reyes has the answer in this tutorial on installing and configuring Cyrus IMAP with Postfix.

A rather ambitious new FreeBSD-derived distribution called BSD-HALO is currently in the planning and proof of concept stages. Amongst other things, one of the biggest goals is to attempt to produce a virus, malware, and exploit resistant environment. UI will also be a major design factor, and some pre-alpha screenshots can be viewed on the site as well.

FreeBSD's Murray Stokely says that the FreeBSD Project is pleased to announce the launch of the new website today. The new design was created by Emily Boyd, a student at Smith College that they had the pleasure of working with through Google's Summer of Code program. The old website is available here.

BSDForums interviews FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Scott Long relating to various aspects of FreeBSD. Topics discussed include FreeBSD general issues, its academic roots, how FreeBSD compares to other BSDs - OpenBSD, NetBSD, and the ongoing debate on FreeBSD vs. Linux. Scott gives us his perspective on the corporate adoption and popularity of FreeBSD. He brings us up to speed on FreeBSD 6.0, its new features and enhancements, including Apple G4 PowerMac, AMD64 and wireless compatibility. Scott also discusses FreeBSD 6.0's upgrade path and release timetable.