This is an initial FreeBSD beta driver for 2D and OpenGL for FreeBSD. It requires FreeBSD -STABLE, version 4.7 or later. It can run single threaded aplications even in linux compatability mode.
"In the last few articles, I've concentrated on configuring a FreeBSD system and various applications suited for multimedia. I'll wrap up that series today by tweaking a browser's plug-in support and installing some apps which can be either called by a browser or used on their own."Read the article at ONLamp.
From BSDForums: Marko Zec has setup patches against FreeBSD 4.7 kernel sources, which provide the functionality of maintaining multiple independent network stack images within a single operating system kernel. No userland patches are necessary, except an additional virtual image management util.
"Since FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE in June 2002, we have updated a number of software programs in the base system, such as GCC and sendmail. Several new drivers have been added for USB devices and disk controllers. We have also incorporated updates for XFree86 and our Linux compatibility libraries. FreeBSD 4.7 also incorporates all of the security and bug fixes from 4.6.2 (released in August 2002), including several ATA-related bugfixes, updates for OpenSSL and OpenSSH, and fixes to address several security advisories."Announcement for FreeBSD 4.7 and release notes.
FreeBSD Release Engineering team's Murray Stokely announces that FreeBSD 4.7-RC3 (i386) is now available for FTP network installs. This includes the recent LDT patch and the final package set that will be used on the CDROMs/DVDs. Read the announcement at BSDForums.
FreeBSD Release Engineering Team's Bruce Mah announces that FreeBSD 4.7-RC2 (the second release candidate for FreeBSD 4.7) is now available for the i386 architecture from the usual FTP sites. Both an FTP site and a "disc 1" ISO image are available. FreeBSD 4.7-RC2 for the alpha architecture is being built and should be available shortly.
KernelTrap reports: "Bruce A. Mah announced today the availability of FreeBSD 4.7 Release Candidate 1. The final release is scheduled for just a week and a half away, on October 1'st. The release notes for FreeBSD 4.7 include quite a few improvements to PPP, updates to the 'ahc' and 'ahd' Adaptec SCSI device drivers, and several ATA fixes. Packages that have been updated included IPFilter (v3.4.29), Sendmail (v8.12.6) and XFree86 (4.2.1). Read on for Bruce's full announcement."
From BSDForums: The FreeBSD-STABLE branch (development branch for 4-STABLE) of the source tree has now been frozen in preparation for the release of FreeBSD 4.7. This means that any new commits to the -stable source tree must be approved by the Release Engineering Team first. The expected "ship" date for FreeBSD 4.7 is October 1, 2002.
As seen over at Deadly.org: "Some Bulgarian fellows made a tiny BSD distro, which is a mix between FreeBSD and OpenBSD, has some ports and other stuff -a. Full install is about 200 megs, the install iso is 64 MB.It can run on low end x86 boxes." More infrormation here.
FreeBSD has long been known for stability, security, and good performance, as well as for its strong developer community. But this open-source operating system has been dogged during the past few years by its inability to draw on the wealth of commercial and open-source applications available for Linux. Read the preview at InfoWorld.
Luigi Rizzo has implemented a weight-based process scheduler for FreeBSD-stable, and is in the process of porting it to -current. Read all about it at BSDForums.org.
From DaemonNews.org: FreeBSD 4.6.1 is scheduled for release July 17, 2002 in order to update SSH, BIND, incorporate a partial ATA fix, and other changes from the RELENG_4_6 release branch. On a side note, FreeBSD 5.0 developer preview 2, a full release for the i386, Alpha, and sparc64 architectures is scheduled for release July 25.
Julian Elischer announced that Kernel Scheduled Entities - Milestone 3 (KSE-MIII) have been merged into the -current FreeBSD source tree. The KSE project is a major effort to allow for multi-threaded applications to scale and perform better, especially on SMP servers. The effort involves a considerable amount of re-working the various internal kernel data structures, and though not actually considered part of FreeBSD's "next generation" symmetric multiprocessing project (SMPng), each project greatly enhances the other. Read the full story over at KernelTrap.
KernelTrap has interviewed kernel hacker and guru Jordan Hubbard, one of the creators of FreeBSD and currently a manager of Apple's Darwin project. With just a high school education, Jordan has offered some impressive contributions to the world of computing. In this interview, Jordan talks about his current involvement with Darwin, as well as his past efforts with FreeBSD and 386BSD. He also reflects on his recent decision to step down from the core FreeBSD team.
No, the web site is not updated yet as I write this, but the announce has been sent out to the subscribers of the freebsd-announce mailing list and all the files and ISOs are into place for immediate download. You can read it at BSDForums.org. One of the most significant changes in FreeBSD 4.6 is the adoption of XFree86 4.2.0 as the default version of the X11 System. Some contributed programs have been updated, such as sendmail and the ISC DHCP client. For more information about the most significant changes with this release of FreeBSD, please see the release notes.
Just about 12 days late, FreeBSD 4.6-Release is here. Download its files, or the ISOs (only the mini-iso has been uploaded as of now), and read its release notes. Mirrors available.
Luigi Rizzo, has done an extensive rewrite of the FreeBSD IPFW firewall code (userland and kernel) in an attempt to make it faster and more flexible. His announcement is available over at BSDForums.org. IPFW, the software supplied with FreeBSD, is a packet filtering and accounting system which resides in the kernel, and has a user-land control utility, called ipfw(8).
"I'm one of those people who is sacrificing a small portion of their mental health to the greater good, by testing FreeBSD-current. Now that we're approaching FreeBSD 5.0, the FreeBSD Project needs people to test -current in a wide variety of installations and environments."Read the tutorial at OReilly.
"FreeBSD 4.6-RC1 (i386) is now available for download. The RC has been on ftp-master for over 24 hours so most of the mirrors have the ISO and FTP install tree, except for some reason ftp.freebsd.org. The build for the Alpha platform should be available within the next 24 hours."Read more at KernelTrap.