PC-BSD Archive

Jan Stedehouder has used PC-BSD for thirty days to see what living with it is like. On day thirty, he concludes: "Does PC-BSD have the potential to be a serious contender for the open source desktop? I answered that question with a yes, because the potential is there. The solid FreeBSD roots, the very strong and very accessible information, the friendly and mature community and the PBI system provide the foundations for that potential. I don't think it is ready now and I couldn't recommend it yet to someone in the early stages of moving away from Windows to an open source desktop. But I do think that the PC-BSD team has the right target audience in mind and is building an system and a support system that addresses it's needs."

Two reviews of PC-BSD 1.4. The first one concludes: " If you are a new user, there is everything here for you; equally so if you are an experienced techie you can get into the FreeBSD ports tree and compile to your hearts content. Something for everyone here, no matter their level of knowledge or expertise." The second one: "PC-BSD is an extremely user friendly and secure BSD, based on the rock solid FreeBSD 6.2 stable core, with a easy to use package management system, a friendly installation GUI and great hardware recognition. It is easy enough for average users and interesting enough for advanced users."

PC-BSD 1.4 RC1 has been released. "After a month of refinement, the PC-BSD team is pleased to make available the 1.4RC release. This update addresses many of the reported bugs from 1.4BETA, as well as adding working i18n support for international languages. PC-BSD 1.4RC can be downloaded via our mirrors or via Torrent on the 1.4 download page."

The first beta of PC-BSD 1.4 has been released. "After months of hard work, the PC-BSD team is pleased to make available the 1.4 BETA release. This version includes many exciting new features and software, such as 3D desktop support via Beryl, KDE 3.5.7, FreeBSD 6.2, Xorg 7.2, new GUI tools & utilities, and much more." Get it from the download page.

LinuxHelp has reviewed PC-BSD. "PC-BSD is turning out to be an excellent alternative to other desktop operating systems. After testing and using PC-BSD for some time now, I can't but admire the sheer amount of work that is put into creating, developing and molding an OS for the lay person albeit with a strong slant towards FreeBSD. The fact that PC-BSD is able to accomplish all the tasks expected by an end user - be it using the Internet for communication, listening to music, watching movies or using it for recreation purposes holds it in good stead as a viable desktop operating systems."

"iXsystems announced an agreement with Adobe Systems that will allow the next version of PC-BSD to have a Flash-enabled browser available on a default installation. The Linux version of Adobe's popular Flash player will run on PC-BSD using FreeBSD's Linux compatibility layer." In other news, snapshots of the development branch of PC-BSD are now available and built three times a week.

PC-BSD 1.3 was released on New Year's Eve. Dru Lavigne interviewed Kris Moore, Andrei Kolu, and Charles Landemaine of the PC-BSD release engineering team regarding the new release and their involvement within the PC-BSD community.

In his 'A week with...' series, Justin has used PC-BSD 1.3 this week and is sharing his experience. In other news, the PC-BSD team unveiled a sneak peek of the new look of the software installation wizard.

Just in time for the new year, the PC-BSD team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of PC-BSD version 1.3 for public download. You may download this release and view the change log. The team is also launching a web design contest for the new web site of 2007.

PC-BSD 1.3 RC1 has been released. From the changelog: "Fixed icon size issues in KMenu; installer now does not display extended partitions; installer now can use empty primary partition space to install; fixed issue with BSDStats not properly reporting usage; fixed problem with 'Start' icon text not being translated properly; fixed issues when using installer to upgrade system from 1.2 to 1.3; closed numerous other issues from BETA2." Get it here.

After the flood of Fedora Core 6 and Ubuntu 6.10 reviews, here is a review of PC-BSD 1.3 Beta. "PC-BSD has improved quite a bit and the use of its open-source PBI packaging system is a great idea. Although it obviously means there might be a minor delay in newly released products being ported over to the PBI package system, novice users will rejoice because the wait is well worth it. PC-BSD is a well oiled machine with its quick response times, even if you don't have that much memory in your system. Its implementation of a clean interface is welcomed by me and not having a 3D enabled desktop is not something I really would worry about unless you are an eye-candy lover."

"With all of the BSD variants available for download, it's easy to incorrectly assume all of them are pure, incompatible forks from each other. Actually, there are more shades of BSD out in the world than just separate forks. One in particular made the news a couple of weeks ago when it was commercially acquired. The BSD in question is PC-BSD. The company that bought it is iXsystems, a systems deployment and integrator firm out of San Jose that has pretty strong experience implementing *BSD, Unix and Linux systems for its customer base. So, why did the company up and buy PC-BSD?"

The PC-BSD Team is pleased to announce the availability of PC-BSD 1.3 BETA1. This release gives users and testers the opportunity to test-drive the new PC-BSD install wizard, along with the updated base system, running KDE 3.5.4, an improved look and feel, and many other enhancements.

"iXsystems, an enterprise-class hardware solution provider, announced today its acquisition of PC-BSD, a rock solid UNIX operating system based on FreeBSD. PC-BSD is a fully functional desktop operating system running FreeBSD version 6, with a KDE desktop interface and graphical system installer. Its PBI system, developed exclusively for PC-BSD, lets users download and install their applications in a self-extracting and installing format. iXsystems' acquisition of PC-BSD will provide funding to the PC-BSD project to increase distribution of PC-BSD and develop future versions of PC-BSD. Development is currently underway for a version of PC-BSD that will allow for easy installation and operation on servers, workstations, and laptops."