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FreeBSD and PC-BSD Release New Versions

Mar 07, 2011  By Susan Linton
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PC-BSD

The FreeBSD project announced the release of versions 8.2 and 7.4 on February 24. Both bring lots of new features and bug fixes. FreeBSD can be run on a large variety of architectures and is still considered one of the most stable and hardened systems available. The most user-friendly derivative, PC-BSD, saw a new release the same day as well.

FreeBSD

The FreeBSD project released two versions of its popular BSD-clone line. 8.2 and legacy 7.4 were released simultaneously with many of the same improvements. They feature GNOME 2.32.1 and KDE 4.5.5. Asynchronous Logging Queues support has been improved to allow for variable length messages set at execution by flags for more flexibility. Sysctl has been improved to allow for more current updates and larger contiguous free range in memory management and several new virtual memory variable options. Other memory improvements were seen as well in the areas of detection and reallocation of freed memory blocks. GUID partition tables are now supported and partition table and header checksum verification has been fixed. Quite a number of disk and networking enhancements and fixes were implemented at the kernel level as well as in userspace applications. Lots of network and graphic driver improvements and additions were implemented. Various filesystem support elements have been improved across the board. The security fixes include a bzip2 integer overflow and several vulnerabilities in OpenSSL. And, of course, all your favorite applications have been updated as well.

Upgrading existing installs is supported and FreeBSD comes in several install media formats. CD and DVD ISO images are the most common, but other methods such as network installs are also supported.

PC-BSD

Not to be outdone, PC-BSD released their latest and greatest on February 24 too. PC-BSD is sometimes referred to as the Ubuntu of *BSD. It does embody many of the same elements as most any Linux distributions. Pretty and easy graphical installer, an attractive and useful desktop out-of-the-box, handy applications, and an easy-to-use graphical software manager.

Being based on FreeBSD 8.2, many of the same improvements in it are inherited in PC-BSD 8.2. BC-BSD 8.2 features things like KDE 4.5.5, Xorg 7.5, and Nvidia Driver 260.19.29. Besides a range of KDE apps, the default install comes with software such as ImageMagick, Digikam, and the GIMP. When installing, one can choose extra software including FireFox 3.6.13, OpenOffice 3.2.1, and VLC 1.1.5.

Download PC-BSD 8.2 for 32-bit or 64-bit computers. See the release notes and changelog for more details.

______________________

Susan Linton is a Linux writer and the owner of tuxmachines.org.

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Thanks for the news

Sirius Nguyen's picture
Submitted by Sirius Nguyen (not verified) on Sun, 06/05/2011 - 22:37.

Many thanks!

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I really like the whole story

norbertwalmsley's picture
Submitted by norbertwalmsley on Fri, 06/03/2011 - 01:43.

I really like the whole story of this blog i think its very informative for us. Instant Effect

kde & gnome

John667's picture
Submitted by John667 on Sat, 04/09/2011 - 04:22.

I wish freebsd would abandon the desktop version all together and focus on what it does best: servers.

FreeBSD 8.2

cell phone jammer's picture
Submitted by cell phone jammer (not verified) on Tue, 03/15/2011 - 01:32.

FreeBSD 8.2 can be installed from bootable ISO images or over the network. Some architectures (currently amd64 and i386) also support installing from a USB memory stick. The required files can be downloaded via FTP or BitTorrent as described in the sections below. While some of the smaller FTP mirrors may not carry all architectures, they will all generally contain the more common ones such as amd64 and i386.

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