BSD Index

BSD News and Updates

4Nov2005: Major New Release - FreeBSD 6.0

The long awaited fully SMP supported file system version has been released. While a few parts of the system are still under the Giant lock, SMP performance is up significantly. Lots of testing, many enhancements, and 6.0 is a stable release.

FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE supports the i386, pc98, alpha, sparc64, amd64, powerpc, and ia64 architectures and can be installed directly over the net using bootable media or copied to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for all architectures are available now.

A summary of changes and links are available on the FreeBSD 6.0 Release page.

29Oct2004: FreeBSD 5.3 Scheduled for a November 5th Release

5.3, the first version marked Stable, will be released on Nov5, Ghu willing and the river don't rise. This release has slipped before, and may again, but that's all for the good. I've been planning a new system for the 5.3 release, to run in addition to my 4.10 version which powers Quanta that I use to update this website. 5.3 will be for some new functions, including some test PXE boot for minimal boards and some large storage.

To check on the lastest schedule info for 5.3, go to http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.3R/schedule.html.

15Aug2004: FreeBSD 5.3 Stable Scheduled For October

FreeBSD 5.3 will be the first 5-STABLE release. Check out the 5.3 Release Details from the August 15 Ports freeze to the 5.3 stable release.

15Aug2004: Late FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE Announcement

Date: Thu, 27 May 2004 01:35:03 -0400
From: Ken Smith
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org
Subject: FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE is now available

I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE in October 2003 we have made conservative updates to a number of software programs in the base system, dealt with known security issues, and made many bugfixes.

For a complete list of new features, known problems, and late-breaking news, please see the release notes and errata list, available here:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.10R/relnotes.html
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.10R/errata.html
For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see: http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

FreeBSD 4.10 will become the first "Errata Branch". Release branches for previous versions of FreeBSD would only have critical security fixes applied. With FreeBSD 4.10 the scope of fixes will be expanded to include local Denial of Service fixes as well as other significant and well-tested fixes that may not represent security issues.

The current plans are for one more FreeBSD 4.X release which will be FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE. It is expected the upcoming FreeBSD 5.3 release will have reached the maturity level most users will be able to migrate to 5.X. Most developer resources continue to be devoted to the 5.X branch.

17May2004: FreeBSD March-April 2004 Status Report

From Scott Long:
2004 continues on with wonderful progress. Work continues on locking down the network stack, ACPI made more great strides, an ARM port appeared in the tree, and the FreeBSD 4.10 release cycle wrapped up.

Once 4.10 is released, the next big focus will be FreeBSD 5.3. We expect this is be the start of the 5-STABLE branch, meaning that not only will it be stable for production use, it will also be largely feature complete and stable from an internal API standpoint.

We expect to release 5.3 in mid-summer, and we encourage everyone to download the latest snapshots from for a preview. Check ot the details on the March-April 2004 Status Report page.

01May2004: FreeBSD 4.10 Scheduled for May 5

According to the Release Engineering schedule, the next release in the 4.x series will be available on May 5, ghu willing and the river don't rise. Check Release Engineering for the latest info.

20Mar2004: FreeBSD Status Update

From the January-February 2004 Status Report by Scott Long:

2004 started with another exciting two months for the project. FreeBSD 5.2 was released in early January and then quickly followed in February with the 5.2.1 bug-fix release. Looking forward, we are expecting a late-April release date for FreeBSD 4.10, and mid-summer date for FreeBSD 5.3. And don't forget to support the FreeBSD vendors and developers by buying a copy of the latest CD or DVD sets.

Here is a brief list of work in progress: Get the full information from the freebsd-announce@freebsd.org mailing list.

20Mar2004: SoftIntegration Supports Ch on FreeBSD

Ch 4.5 for FreeBSD
Ch supports FreeBSD 5.1 and above. You can download Ch for FreeBSD 5.1
Third Party Solutions
The Ch LDAP package is a Ch binding to the Open Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (OpenLDAP) C library. Ch LDAP enables all functions in the OpenLDAP library for use in Ch. With Ch LDAP, these functions can run in Ch interpretively without compilation. Ch LDAP allows accessing, adding, deleting, and modifying to directory services.

The release of Ch and its toolkits for FreeBSD continues SoftIntegration's leadership in cross-platform scripting, numerical computing and embedded scripting.

28Feb2004: KDE 3.2 Released

KDE is a powerful desktop, one which has become my standard on any *nix workstation. The upgrade from 3.1.3 to 3.2 may not be numerically impressive, but the range of improvements is very large. I'm in the process of doing a portupgrade of KDE-3.1.3 while I'm writing this.

Here is a brief intro to an excellent writeup on KDE 3.2 in Ars Technica:

The K Desktop Environment project has come a long way to this, its eighth major release. The KDE project had been first announced over seven years ago by Matthias Ettrich: So one of the major goals is to provide a modern and common look & feel for all the applications. And this is exactly the reason, why this project is different from elder attempts.

Since then a lot of work has been invested in building up the core foundation of the environment. Between KDE 1.1 and KDE 2.0 the use of external components in the framework had been dropped in favor of lighter and more-integrated native implementations.

These framework components since then have been actively maintained, used, and extended. This stable foundation allows for easier development of new applications. Recent projects now allow the usage of such components in non-KDE applications.

Read about all of the great improvement at Ars Technica.

Note: One of the things I just found out is the 512MB RAM I added in my upgrade process was just slightly flakey, which showed up as a very occasional glitch. When I started the portupgrade, the compiles made the problem obvious, and I swapped in a pair of 256MB DIMMs that were planned for other uses. Those other plans are now on plan B.

26Feb2004: FreeBSD 5.2.1 Released

There has been substantial activity on the developing 'New Technology' of FreeBSD version 5. Since the release of 5.2, hundreds of improvements have been made and rolled into an updated ISO. Here is an overview:

Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 20:31:31 -0700 (MST)
From: Scott Long [scottl@FreeBSD.org]
To: freebsd-announce@FreeBSD.org
Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 5.2.1 Released!

It is once again my great privilege and pleasure to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE. This is a 'point release' and is intended to address several bugs and vulnerabilities discovered in the FreeBSD 5.2 release. These include:
FreeBSD 5.2.1 also contains a number of significant stability and performance improvements over FreeBSD 5.2. However, it is still considered a 'New Technology' release and might not be suitable for all users. Users with more conservative needs may prefer to continue using FreeBSD 4.X. Information on the various trade-offs involved, as well as some notes on future plans for both FreeBSD 4.X and 5.X, can be found in the Early Adopter's Guide, available here:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.2.1R/early-adopter.html

For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the release notes and errata list, available here:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.2.1R/relnotes.html
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.2.1R/errata.html

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

Availability

FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE supports the i386, pc98, alpha, sparc64, amd64, and ia64 architectures and can be installed directly over the net using the boot floppies or copied to a local NFS/FTP server. Distributions for all architectures are available now.

Please continue to support the FreeBSD Project by purchasing media from one of our supporting vendors. The following companies will be offering FreeBSD 5.2.1 based products:

FreeBSD Mall, Inc.
Daemonnews, Inc.

12Jan2004: FreeBSD 5.2 Released for Tier-1 Including AMD64

Here is the full release: 

Subject:[FreeBSD-Announce] Resend: FreeBSD 5.2 Released!
   Date: Mon, 12 Jan 2004 23:12:29 -0700
   From: Scott Long 
     To: freebsd-announce@freebsd.org

Due to the unacceptable binary encoding that happened in the earlier
announcement, I am resending the announcement in a hopefully
more acceptable format.  My apologies for the inconvenience.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

It is once again my great privilege and pleasure to announce the
availability of FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE.  Building upon the success
of FreeBSD 5.1, this release includes:

 - Full Tier-1 support for single and multiprocessor AMD Athlon64
and Opteron systems.
 - Dynamically linked root partition for a smaller installation
footprint and better integration with the Name Service Switch subsystem.
 - New and improved driver support for IDE, SATA, and 802.11a/b/g
devices, and significantly better integration with the ACPI power
management subsystem.
 - Client support for the Network File System version 4 protocol.
 - Experimental first-stage support for multithreaded filtering and
   forwarding of IP traffic.  This also provides the foundation for a
   fully multi-threaded network stack in the next release of FreeBSD.
 - In-box support for the latest Gnome 2.4 and KDE 3.1 desktops.

FreeBSD 5.2 also contains a number of significant stability and
performance improvements over FreeBSD 5.1.  However, it is still considered a
'New Technology' release and might not be suitable for all users.  Those
with more conservative needs may prefer to continue using FreeBSD 4.X.
Information on the various trade-offs involved, as well as some notes
on future plans for both FreeBSD 4.X and 5.X, can be found in the
Early Adopter's Guide, available here:

        http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.2R/early-adopter.html

For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see
the release notes and errata list, available here:

      http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.2R/relnotes.html
      http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.2R/errata.html

For more information about FreeBSD release engineering activities,
please see:

      http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

Availability
- -------------

FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE supports the i386, pc98, alpha, sparc64,
amd64, and ia64 architectures and can be installed directly over the net using
bootable media or copied to a local NFS/FTP server.  Distributions
for all architectures are available now.

Please continue to support the FreeBSD Project by purchasing media
from one of our supporting vendors.  The following companies will
be offering FreeBSD 5.2 based products:

   FreeBSD Mall, Inc.        http://www.freebsdmall.com/
   Daemonnews, Inc.          http://www.bsdmall.com/freebsd1.html

If you can't afford FreeBSD on media, are impatient, or just want to
use it for evangelism purposes, then by all means download the ISO
images.  We can't promise that all the mirror sites will carry the
larger ISO images, but they will at least be available from the
following sites.  MD5 checksums for the release images are included
at the bottom of this message.

    ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp2.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp3.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp4.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp5.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp6.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp7.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp9.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp11.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp12.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp2.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp4.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp5.jp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp.cz.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp7.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp.se.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp1.ru.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
    ftp://ftp2.ru.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/

FreeBSD is also available via anonymous FTP from mirror sites in
the following countries: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria,
Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France,
Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Lithuania,
Amylonia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia,
Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden,
Taiwan, Thailand, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

Before trying the central FTP site, please check your regional
mirror(s) first by going to:

ftp://ftp..FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD

Any additional mirror sites will be labeled ftp2, ftp3 and so on.

More information about FreeBSD mirror sites can be found at:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html

For instructions on installing FreeBSD, please see Chapter 2 of The
FreeBSD Handbook.  It provides a complete installation walk-through
for users new to FreeBSD, and can be found online at:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/install.html


Acknowledgments
-----------------

Many companies donated equipment, network access, or man-hours
to finance the release engineering activities for FreeBSD 5.2 including
The FreeBSD Mall, Compaq, Yahoo!, Sentex Communications, and NTT/Verio.

The release engineering team for 5.2-RELEASE includes:

  Scott Long          Release Engineering,
                                          I386 and Alpha Release Building
  Bruce A. Mah          Release Engineering, Documentation
  Robert Watson      Release Engineering, Security
  John Baldwin           Release Engineering
  Murray Stokely      Release Engineering
  Ken Smith         Sparc64 Release Building,
                                          Mirror Site Coordination
  Marcel Moolenaar    IA64 Release Building
  David O'Brien       AMD64 Release Building
  Takahashi Yoshihiro   PC98 Release Building
  Kris Kennaway         Package Building
  Joe Marcus Clarke (marcus@FreeBSD.org>  Package Building
  Jacques A. Vidrine  Security Officer

CD Image Checksums
- ------------------

MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso) =
3adbf5641c35ce2fb4f60295a9131794
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-i386-disc1.iso) =
cc2c9f647850df2bf96a478f0cbf18b6
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-i386-disc2.iso) =
ae5e15ee38e3f4f2a05c9355fa0a1aed
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-i386-miniinst.iso) =
40c9a789d7d8e472914f9bc1e34ea04f

MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-alpha-bootonly.iso) =
75f19aa7c24ac91af9bc21376a1d980b
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-alpha-disc1.iso) =
727785cb6485828db5e7f6b75217ed55
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-alpha-disc2.iso) =
b83e38a9cd698051fc05915932b03b82
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-alpha-miniinst.iso) =
87042a14d0de3979667bb9d41bd84d45

MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-sparc64-bootonly.iso) =
e08fe8cf77549c7404acf7ee03eeeb0e
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-sparc64-disc1.iso) =
2373f5bd491a15cfc8fa856fe92b75b9
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-sparc64-disc2.iso) =
2fb598c20873f79fcf1afc112de06641
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-sparc64-miniinst.iso) =
f6f064e3785367f1b2d673502f59565a

MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-ia64-bootonly.iso) =
b8ac4103a1703df9dba00f14a7c7557c
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-ia64-disc1.iso) =
d473c7fc79f8e40b3e331300ead5b90e
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-ia64-disc2.iso) =
c2a59d77bac522e7f8dee0460423cc2a
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-ia64-miniinst.iso) =
a545b3974d18f0fd7796bff84b50825f

MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso) =
4cefddd4dd3f1b67e9f78380a058de81
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-amd64-disc1.iso) =
308af2fa0e96a394d445e8e89c1cbece
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-amd64-disc2.iso) =
b00834c97fbab12d3ea4b159134a8f63
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-amd64-miniinst.iso) =
06f19271f985ca1acbd45fe9a6b13204

MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-pc98-disc2.iso) =
b167880c4e644f16f7377b715ccbf7c6
MD5 (5.2-RELEASE-pc98-miniinst.iso) =
3b6ca2637d41e7052c028a41a1cefc6d

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.3 (FreeBSD)


iD8DBQFAA4o8HTr20QF8Xr8RAg+fAJ4pRfTutrIYLMT1bugQNttBUWFvMgCfYLaI
ljTNmWQTeTmBAhWCRYYX4Xk=
=sxm5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

31Oct2003: OpenBSD 3.4 Release is a Major Upgrade

Just in time to protect your systems from the dreaded Halloween Hackers, OpenBSD 3.4 represents hundreds of changes that improve its security. The change summary list is very extensive, and the detailed list even longer.

So thank these hard working folks by purchasing a CDROM set and/or a T shirt to support future OpenBSD work. IMNSHO, it's clearly the best OS available for firewall and web server use. Read the whole announcement in OpenBSD News.

29Oct2003: FreeBSD 4.9 is Available

From the FreeBSD Announce List:

Subject: [FreeBSD-Announce] FreeBSD 4.9 is now available
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2003 00:55:19 -0800
From: Murray Stokely
To: announce@freebsd.org

I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE in April 2003, we have made conservative updates to a number of software programs in the base system, dealt with known security issues, and merged support for large memory i386 machines with Page Address Extensions (PAE) from 5.1.

For a complete list of new features, known problems, and late-breaking news, please see the release notes and errata list, available here:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.9R/relnotes.html
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.9R/errata.html

This release does not include all of the new technologies that were introduced with FreeBSD 5.1 in June. Most developer resources are focused on improving the FreeBSD 5.X branch, and this may very well be the last major release of FreeBSD 4.X. The security officer team will continue to actively support the 4.X branch according to the normal policy. Additional 4.9.X releases may be made available when necessitated by security vulnerabilities or high-impact bugfixes.

We encourage all our users to evaluate FreeBSD 5.1 and the upcoming 5.2. Because PAE support has only been a feature in 4.X for a few months, it has not received wide-spread testing, and our most conservative users may wish to stay with FreeBSD 4.8 until they choose to migrate to 5.X.

For more information about the distinctions between FreeBSD 4.X and 5.X, or for general information about the FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see :

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

22Oct2003: FreeBSD is 10

As of December 2003, FreeBSD will have been available for ten years. Version 1.0 was released in December of 1993. From the announcement:

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away...in the early part of 1993...the last 3 coordinators of the 'Unofficial 386BSD Patchkit' would go on to start the FreeBSD project that has grown to be used by millions of websites and installations around the world.

Of course, I'm talking about Jordan Hubbard, Nate Williams, and Rod Grimes. Looking for a catchy name, David Greenman suggested FreeBSD and it stuck. With the help of Walnut Creek CDROM, the first CDROM distribution, FreeBSD 1.0, was released in December of 1993.

In honor of these momentous events, we invite you to join us for an evening of celebrating FreeBSD! We'll dance and party the night away with our laptops nearby (and on the DNA Lounge wireless network, of course). Maybe we can talk Jordan into sharing a few stories of the early days...and buy him a drink or two. FreeBSD Mall will have some 4.9 CD's and the coveted FreeBSD boxer shorts ;)

When: Monday, November 24th (8pm - 2am) Where: DNA Lounge in San Francisco (http://www.dnalounge.com) Who: Any and all FreeBSD developers, system administrators, and advocates

Please RSVP at http://www.offmyserver.com/cgi-bin/store/rsvp.html or use the banner on the front of http://www.freebsdmall.com so we can make sure there's enough food and drink for all.

- Murray Stokely & Matt Olander -

P.S. We'll be webcasting live for those who can't make it. Hope to see you there.

19Oct2003: FreeBSD nears 4.9 and 5.2 Releases

According to the FreeBSD Release page, FreeBSD 4.9 will be released as soon as October 23. Version 4.9 has a number of improvements and fixes. The biggest of these is the Page Address Extensions (PAE) support for Xeon chips that can address more than 4GB through the use of PAE.

FreeBSD 5.2 does not have a scheduled release date, but the status page shows that 5.2 is now in semi-frozen state. Currently, updates are restricted prior to the actual freeze status where only fixes are allowed.

10Jun2003: FreeBSD 5.1 New Features

A large attraction of FreeBSD 5.X is a number of new features. These new features and functionality generally involve large architectural changes that were not feasible to port back to the FreeBSD 4-STABLE development branch. (By contrast, many self-contained enhancements, such as new device drivers or userland utilities, have already been ported.) A brief, but not exhaustive list includes:

03Jun2003: FreeBSD support for AMD64 on the way

Excerpted from: http://theinquirer.org/?article=9383

By Arron Rouse: Thursday 08 May 2003, 09:31

THE OTHER FREE operating system is making progress towards support for several 64bit platforms. FreeBSD 5.0 introduced SPARC64 and IA64 (Itanium) to its list of platforms and AMD64 is likely to be added in version 5.2.

Version 5.0 of FreeBSD added some seriously nice and definitely useful features. Background filesystem check (bgfsck), UFS2 and file system snapshots on the storage side of things make for a much more comfortable system. They should also reduce downtime, not that many FreeBSD admins know what downtime is.

27May2003: FreeBSD Databases Explored

FreeBSD is a primary choice for large web sites and database operations. Many web sites use databases for storage of articles and user forums. But beyond that, FreeBSD can support DB greater than Terabyte size efficiently, making it a good choice for internal company DB operations. Combined with one of the DB that are listed here, companies have a real option to replace expensive commercial DBs with open source OS and DB software for the cost of education and training.

Read about the four popular DBs and the six newer DBs that are available from the FreeBSD Ports collection: FreeBSD Databases.

18Apr2003: OpenBSD Updates

It looks like DARPA doesn't want us to have a really good firewall - it might hamper access by those new Homeland Security folks. Read about the cancelled POSSE project. I've added a link to an interesting article on building OpenBSD firewalls from earlier times. With all the improvements despite the cancelled project, OpenBSD looks to be an optimum choice for firewalls and possibly other Internet server applications.

DARPA cancels POSSE funding for OpenBSD

But several improvements have been retained.

"OpenBSD has made some serious gains in security recently--and it was already starting from a high level. For example, they have made the stack non-executable and made the default compiler provide propolice/SSP code, the W ^ X memory permissions system, and substantial improvements to the pf host firewall system, which now gives most commercial firewalls a run for their money.

Building an OpenBSD Firewall

Choosing OpenBSD As A Firewall Platform Brandon L. Newport, CISSP

Appalachian Web Solutions, a Carolina based hosting and web design company, decides to use OpenBSD as their firewall.

"My partner and I decided to evaluate different firewalls before actually putting anything into production. I have worked as a network and infrastructure security consultant for almost 10 years and have experience with various firewalls like Cisco PIX, CheckPoint Firewall-1, Gauntlet, and Raptor among a few lesser known firewalls. My partner has been a network, systems, and security administrator for 6 years and has worked with Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, AIX and Windows operating systems as well as CheckPoint Firewall-1 and Cisco PIX firewalls. We both knew that the firewall should be integrated into the system and if it was to be on an operating system, that operating system must be secure and have a good track record for security."

17Apr2003: FreeBSD 4.8 Released

"I am happy to announce the availability of FreeBSD 4.8-RELEASE, the latest release of the FreeBSD -STABLE development branch. Since FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE in October 2002, we have made conservative updates to a number of software programs in the base system, added initial support for Firewire and other new hardware technologies, and dealt with known security issues."

For a complete list of new features and known problems, please see the release notes and errata list, available here:

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.8R/relnotes.html

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/4.8R/errata.html

This release does not include all of the new technologies that were introduced with FreeBSD 5.0 in January. FreeBSD 4.X releases offer a more conservative platform than FreeBSD 5.0 at this time. For more information about the distinctions between FreeBSD 4.X and 5.0, or for general information about the FreeBSD release engineering activities, please see :

http://www.FreeBSD.org/releng/

8Apr20003: Open Darwin and AMD-64 Support

Open Darwin:
The OpenDarwin-20030213 Binary Release is now available. This release is intended to fix many of the significant deficiencies in Darwin 6.0.2, as well as provide a more stable platform for future Darwin development. It is available for both PowerPC and x86 architectures from: http://www.opendarwin.org/en/news.php#24

AMD-64 Support: Here is the list of operating systems to support x86-64 platform:

The full list (at Xbit Labs) of AMD-64 Software Support Covers:

20Jan2003: FreeBSD 5.0 Released

From the FreeBSD mailing list: Scott Long [scott_long@btc.adaptec.com]

It is my privilege and pleasure to announce the availability of FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE. The culmination of nearly three years of work, this release starts FreeBSD on the path of advanced multiprocessor and application thread support and introduces support for the sparc64 and ia64 platforms. Among the long list of new and improved features:

FreeBSD 5.0 Developer Preview #2 Now Available

The FreeBSD Project is proud to announce the availability of the second Developer Preview snapshot of FreeBSD 5.0 (5.0-DP2). This snapshot, intended for widespread testing purposes, is the latest milestone towards the eventual release of FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE, currently scheduled for mid-December 2002.

Since the release of 5.0-DP1, a number of new features have been added on the CURRENT development branch. A few of these include:

Much more information can be found in the release documentation, as described below.

WARNING
This snapshot is not a supported release, and has not undergone any of the usual quality assurance checking that is a part of normal FreeBSD releases. It may include serious software bugs. Do not install this software on a machine where important data may be put at risk.

The purpose of this snapshot is to get wider exposure to FreeBSD 5.0's new features, in advance of the release. As such, we expect that testers of 5.0-DP2 will follow the technical discussions on the freebsd-current@ mailing list.

AVAILABILITY
FreeBSD 5.0-DP2 is being released for the alpha, ia64, i386, pc98, and sparc64 architectures. As of this writing, 5.0-DP2/i386 is available, with other architectures to follow soon. The checksums for the two i386 ISO images are as follows:

MD5 (5.0-DP2-disc1.iso) = 997ef9ed5aa3e0721678f5482d2fc664
MD5 (5.0-DP2-disc2.iso) = 425718dbf1b771c8317556b7a13842c6

Before trying the central FTP site, we strongly recommend that you check FTP mirror sites in your country or region, such as:
ftp://ftp.(your country).FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
Any additional mirror sites will be named ftp2, ftp3, and so forth. Appendix A of the FreeBSD Handbook has additional information about FreeBSD mirror sites; it is available on-line at: http://www.FreeBSD.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html

Some of the mirror sites known to carry 5.0-DP2 (in alphabetical order by country code) are:
ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp2.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp2.at.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.au.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp4.de.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/
ftp://ftp.dk.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/

Release documentation is available in the distributions, as well as on the FreeBSD Web site.

Release notes:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.0R/DP2/relnotes.html Hardware notes:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.0R/DP2/hardware.html Errata:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.0R/DP2/errata.html
Early Adopter's Guide:
http://www.FreeBSD.org/releases/5.0R/DP2/early-adopter.html

LATE-BREAKING NEWS
Certain parts of the KDE and GNOME desktop environments did not make it to the package sets in the i386 ISO images. The sparc64 and ia64 snapshots may or may not have package sets associated with them.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The FreeBSD Project wishes to thank the companies, developers, and users who continue to make FreeBSD releases possible. Many companies donated equipment, network access, or person-hours to finance our ongoing release engineering activities, including:
The FreeBSD Mall, Compaq, Yahoo!, Sentex Communications, NTT/Verio, and Packet Design.
We greatly appreciate their contributions.

The release engineering team for 5.0-DP2 includes:

FreeBSD 5.0-DP2 is, as with every release, a cooperative effort of all of the FreeBSD committers, as well as FreeBSD users all over the world who have submitted new features, bug fixes, and suggestions. Please join us in thanking everyone for their hard work in polishing and improving the state of the FreeBSD -CURRENT development branch.

We'd like to emphasize once again that this snapshot represents a work-in-progress. Please help us by testing it now, so that we can make FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE as stable and useful as possible. Thanks! Bruce A. Mah (For the FreeBSD Release Engineering Team)

Opera for FreeBSD
Register story on this release of Opera.

OpenOffice 1.0 for FreeBSD
Note that the source for this is a 136+MB download and FreeBSD 4.6 needs patches, 4.7 is okay. Go to /usr/ports/editors/openoffice and do a 'make install' for the details. Don't forget to update your ports file.

Registration Open For 2nd European BSD Conference

2002 November 15-17, 2002 Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A conference organized by Stichting EuroBSDCon
OVERVIEW
The Berkeley Software Distributions (BSDs) represent one of the oldest and most vigorous streams of Open Source development. Together, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Darwin, and BSD/OS represent millions of servers and desktops. The BSDs have long been part of the backbone of the Internet, in everything from embedded applications to large server installations, and will soon be widely deployed on consumer desktops.

If you want to develop cutting-edge network applications, then the European BSD conference is the place to be. Meet all the movers and shakers of the BSD community, and learn how you can use BSD as part of your enterprise-grade solutions. The official language at the conference will be English.

IMPORTANT DATES
Deadline early registration: October 18, 2002 Closing date: November 6, 2002
MORE INFORMATION
Official website: http://2002.eurobsdcon.org/
Registration: http://2002.eurobsdcon.org/registration.html

All content on this site is Copyright 2001 - 2003 by Bill Nicholls
All Rights Reserved